Sitting of 25 June 1975

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRIVATE BUSINESS
  FRASERBURGH HARBOUR ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
  Read the Third time and passed.
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

    European Security and Co-operation
    Mr. Sproatasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the latest progress on the CSCE.
    The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. James Callaghan): This matter was considered by the Foreign Ministers at their meeting in Luxembourg yesterday. They issued the following statement:
    "The Foreign Ministers of the Nine are willing to complete the work of the conference as soon as possible. Taking into account the substantial progress accomplished on numerous subjects, they think that it is now both desirable and feasible to complete the negotiations in Geneva so that the third phase can take place in Helsinki by the end of July.
    The realisation of this hope depends on all delegations as hitherto accelerating their work and their efforts so that general agreement may be reached on all outstanding questions. The Nine, for their part, are ready to make every effort to contribute to this end."
    Mr. Sproat: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that reply. Although believing myself that the balance of advantage lies just with the West in these talks, and congratulating the right hon. Gentleman and his Department on the skilful contribution they have made to these talks may I ask him to confirm that any result-
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    ing documents will in no way whatsoever give new approval or recognition in international law to frontiers emerging as a result of the Second World War? Will he also say how confident he is that the principles of non-intervention set out in Basket I will be regarded by the Soviet Union as superior to the Brezhnev doctrine?
    Mr. Callaghan: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he said. The documents will be political and not legal documents, but they will have considerable significance, even though they are political documents.
    As to non-intervention, there has been a great deal of discussion about the phraseology of these matters, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will find it satisfactory when he sees the final version. I should not like to pronounce on the exact legal status, except in the context of what I have already said.
    Mr. Eldon Griffiths: I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for making what is an important statement about the progress of this conference. Surely he appreciates that the House needs and wants to know——
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member must ask a question.
    Mr. Griffiths: I was about to ask: will the right hon. Gentleman take an opportunity, before any final agreement is reached in Helsinki, to provide the House with a good deal more information, so that we may discuss this important matter, which could transform the political and, indeed, the security scene of Europe, if, as we all hope, it is successful?
    Mr. Callaghan: The documents are in a state of final preparation but are by no means completed. They then have to be officially translated, and the work will take a great deal of time. I shall try to lay them before the House as quickly as possible. They are all bound to be completed before we go to Helsinki.

    Cyprus
    Mr. Atkinsonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what further progress has been made towards a political settlement based on the independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-alignment of the

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    Republic of Cyprus and towards the further aims outlined in Command Paper No. 6066, paragraphs 10 and 11; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. James Callaghan: Her Majesty's Government continue to support the inter-communal talks under the good offices of the United Nations Secretary General, a third round of which is due to take place in Vienna on 24th July. As my right hon. Friend the Minister of State told the House on 10th June, the Commonwealth Committee has not yet met, but is expected to do so in July.
    Mr. Atkinson: Does the Foreign Secretary agree that the continuing presence of about 38,000 Turkish troops and the creation of a permanent Turkish State in Cyprus is in direct defiance of the United Nations' decision? Does he further agree that there is now a need for additional initiatives outside the third round of the opening talks in Vienna? Is it not the responsibility of our own Government, as a guarantor nation, now to seek further sanctions, and does my right hon. Friend not agree that when a nation is in defiance of a United Nations' decision, the only sanction available to the world is the imposition of an arms embargo or an economic embargo upon that nation until it conforms to the decision? Will the Foreign Secretary therefore now consider the whole business of imposing an arms embargo or an economic embargo upon Turkey until that nation conforms to the United Nations' decision?
    Mr. Callaghan: There is no doubt that the terms of the United Nations' resolution have not been carried out. That has been consistently stated. Her Majesty's Government's position on the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus is quite clear. We do not recognise it, nor has it claimed recognition as an independent State.
    As to how we enforce compliance with the United Nations' resolution, that is a matter of opinion. My hon. Friend seems to think that an arms embargo and a trade embargo would do that. I have no evidence at all that either measure would be successful, except to increase the stubbornness of the Turks.
    Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine: Will the Foreign Secretary say what he has been
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    able to do to protect Briish residents in Cyprus and their property there? Will he say, further, what he has been able to do about the property there of those normally resident not in Cyprus but in the United Kingdom?
    Mr. Callaghan: There is a later Question about that matter. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will ask his supplementary question then.
    Mr. Brittanasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will now make a statement on the compensation of British citizens for loss of or damage to their property in Cyprus.
    Mr. Wallasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations have been made to the Turkish Government about damage to the property of British subjects in Cyprus, and with what effect.
    The Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Roy Hattersley): I would refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply which I gave to the right hon. and learned Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) on 11 th June and my hon. Friend's reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger) on 18th June.
    I am now able to inform the House that as the result of the ministerial talks held in Ankara and Brussels last month, further contacts took place earlier this month in London between British and Turkish officials on the claims of British subjects and the counter-claims of the Turkish-Cypriots. There have also been recent discussions in Nicosia between the leader of the Turkish-Cypriot community and the British High Commissioner on the subject of claims. Her Majesty's Government will continue to do all they possibly can to ensure that the interests of British citizens are satisfactorily resolved.
    Mr. Brittan: I welcome that answer. As the Turkish Foreign Minister told the Minister of State as long ago as 22nd May that his consideration of this question would be tempered by what he described as a sense of justice, may I ask whether the Minister of State accepts that there will be some disappointment at the fact

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    that there have not yet been practical proposals for the recompense of British citizens? Will the right hon. Gentleman remind the Turkish Foreign Minister that if he is inspired by a sense of justice, justice delayed is justice denied?
    Mr. Hattersley: I have a good deal of sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman says. However, I must tell the hon. Gentleman that when I met the Turkish Foreign Minister in Ankara some weeks ago, there was a first genuine sign of hope that the problems of the British citizens concerned would be resolved. I was impressed by the determination and sincerity with which the Turkish Foreign Minister promised to make some progress in this matter. We can only hope that the progress which I am sure will come about, will come about speedily, because that is an absolute necessity.
    Mr. Wall: Will the right hon. Gentleman remind the Turkish Government that Turkey has many friends in this country but that their friendship is under certain strains due to the delay in settling the legitimate claims of elderly British people in Cyprus—a delay which has now continued for far too long?
    Mr. Hattersley: I made exactly that point to the Turkish Foreign Minister five weeks ago. I told him not only that Parliamentary pressure was growing irresistible but that it was pressure with which I wholly sympathised. I think that he understood that point very well.
    Mr. Hooson: The right hon. Gentleman is impressed by the attitude of the Turkish Foreign Minister, but has any practical progress been made in these talks? Has there been any discussion of practical proposals for compensation?
    Mr. Hattersley: There has been some practical progress, although certainly not as much as one would wish. However, the fact that early this week and late last week there was discussion as a result of Turkish emissaries being sent to London is in itself a sign of progress. I cannot pretend that there are figures or numbers that I can yet offer to the House as a Turkish offer, but the conversations have begun, and that is progress.
    Sir D. Walker-Smith: May I, too, ask the right hon. Gentleman to accept my congratulations on the progress achieved
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    and on the terms of his answer to my previous question, to which he referred? May I now ask him whether, in principle, the Turkish Government accept liability, subject to the proof of damage and matters of quantum in each case?
    Mr. Hattersley: No, Sir, not entirely. The Turkish Government, as represented by its Foreign Secretary when I met him five weeks ago, acknowledged the statement as I described it. The Turkish Foreign Secretary said that he understood that there were problems involved not simply in allocating blame but also in deciding which authority was the legal authority on which responsibility had to lie. But the fact that the Turkish Government sent a representative to Britain is an indication that they want to play a practical part in meeting the needs. When I saw the Turkish Foreign Minister he said that in terms of money he knew that they could not be met by the Government of Cyprus but would have to be provided by another source. I assumed that to mean—and I hope it to mean—the Government of Turkey.

    Middle East
    Mr. David Watkinsasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth affairs what consultations are currently taking place between himself and Dr. Kissinger designed to secure a permanent peace settlement in the Middle East.
    Mr. Leslie Huckfieldasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent discussions he has had with the United States Secretary of State about the Middle East; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. James Callaghan: Dr. Kissinger and I are in constant touch through diplomatic channels concerning the Middle East. We last discussed the subject in person when we met on 30th May. We continue to encourage the United States to play a major rôle in the search for a just and lasting settlement.
    Mr. Watkins: In these consultations will my right hon. Friend stress that one at least amongst the many major factors in this situation is that the State of Israel should define the borders within which she constantly tells the world she wishes

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    to live in peace but which so far she has refused to delineate?
    Mr. Callaghan: That is a question of timing. Obviously that moment will come, but I doubt whether this is the right psychological moment to press Israel to take a definitive step of that kind. There is much more prospect of another round of negotiations on a limited basis providing a lessening of further tension.
    Mr. Huckfield: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that the State of Israel has already withdrawn some troops from Sinai and stands fully prepared to discuss the future of the Gidi and Mitla Passes, and is willing to engage in further discussions on the political status of the West Bank, possibly as part of a wider confederation? Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind also the need to keep the momentum of the present initiative going, and will he stress to Secretary of State Kissinger that he endorses all that he is doing to encourage that momentum?
    Mr. Callaghan: I agree with the last part of my hon. Friend's question about the need to keep the momentum going. If, as he says, Israel is willing to consider the matters that he has enumerated, there is some prospect of a further step towards peace.
    Mr. Walters: Quite apart from his conversations with Dr. Kissinger, has the Foreign Secretary been able to discuss this matter with his EEC colleagues in Luxembourg, and does he accept that, now that the referendum is over, Middle East countries are expecting Britain and France to take the lead in formulating an independent European policy and perhaps an independent European initiative in the area?
    Mr. Callaghan: Over the past few weeks I have had discussions with Mr. Rabin, Mr. Allon and Mr. Fahmi, the Foreign Minister of Egypt, and Mr. Khaddam, the foreign Minister of Syria. We touched on these matters in Luxembourg yesterday, but we did not go into them in depth, although I remind the hon. Gentleman that a meeting of experts took place in Cairo on the Euro-Arab dialogue on Monday 15th June. We can all construct further initiatives. There is no difficulty about that. The problem is to ensure that the initiatives now taking place come to sucessful fruition.
    Mr. Faulds: In my right hon. Friend's consideration of the Middle East problem will he bear in mind that the stage-by-stage process favoured by Israel and the United States merely serves, both in the passage of time and in Israel's expansionist settlements, to consolidate Israel's occupation of Arab territory? Many of us are becoming increasingly unprepared to accept this and would welcome a speedy move to Geneva, at which both Britain and France should be represented, in response to Arab requests.
    Mr. Callaghan: That is a partial statement of the situation which I do not wholly accept. There are great merits in a step-by-step approach when there is no complete trust between the two sides and when an intermediary such as the United States is playing its part. I believe that this is still the best way forward. It services the cause of peace rather than any individual State in the area.
    Mr. Frank Allaunasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if, in order to encourage the current Middle East peace negotiations, he will prohibit the proposed arms supply to Egypt and future arms supplies to Israel, and take the initiative for a joint embargo on arms supplied to both sides in the Middle East by Great Britain, the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and France.
    Mr. James Callaghan: No, Sir; an effective agreement on some measures of arms limitation in the Middle East is likely to be possible only with the support of the parties to the dispute and in the context of a general settlement.
    Mr. Allaun: I understand that our explanation is that we want to maintain the military balance. Has not the same argument been used as an excuse by arms exporters for a century, with fatal results? Whatever the cost to Britain in lost exports, would not it be far, far less than the cost to Britain and to all mankind of a third world war, resulting from the escalation of the resumption of fighting in the Middle East?
    Mr. Callaghan: The answer to the last part of my hon. Friend's question is, "Yes, it would". No one wants a third world war. As regards the first part of my hon. Friend's question, arms exporters

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    may send arms only under licence, and the British Government have laid down a clear policy on these matters, to which we adhere. But the situation at the moment is that if Britain did not meet minimum requests from these countries, not only would these countries themselves feel that Britain was unwilling to assist; they would turn elsewhere, and perhaps to quarters to which my hon. Friend would not wish them to turn.
    Mr. Goodhart: Can the right hon. Gentleman think of any agreement controlling the supply of arms in the Middle East or anywhere else which has not been immediately broken by the Communist countries concerned, almost as soon as it has been signed?
    Mr. Callaghan: The USSR is playing a restrained rôle in the Middle East at present. In those circumstances, I do not wish to engage in a propaganda battle with her.
    Mr. Corbett: Will my right hon. Friend think again about his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East (Mr. Allaun) and accept that, if the four countries named in the Question agreed not to supply arms to the nations in the Middle East, at least the attempt might be worth while? If they do not have the means with which to wage war it makes the waging of war unlikely, if not impossible.
    Mr. Callaghan: That is an ideal situation, but I live in a world of reality, and there is not the faintest chance of that being achieved.
    Mr. Leslie Huckfield: Does my right hon. Friend recognise that the Secretary of State for Defence has been extremely skilful at concealing some of the details of the reported arms deal with Egypt? If the reports of a £450 million arms deal are true, bearing in mind the present initiatives being undertaken by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, is not this the wrong moment at which to be selling arms, and is not the amount too large?
    Mr. Callaghan: The answer to all three questions is "No".
    Mr. Aitkenasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth
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    Affairs if he will seek to pay an official visit to the Middle East.
    Mr. James Callaghan: I have accepted invitations to pay official visits to Egypt and to Syria. No dates have yet been fixed.
    Mr. Aitken: Is the Foreign Secretary aware that that is a most welcome reply, but that he has a lot of ground to catch up when he visits the Middle East, because he is the only Foreign Minister from a major Power in the Western World not to have been to the Middle East in either 1974 or 1975—a record which compares unfavourably with the active visits by other Foreign Ministers? When he makes these visits, will the right hon. Gentleman please reassure people that Britain does not want to opt out of peace making in the Middle East?
    Mr. Callaghan: The hon. Gentleman forgets that, with remarkable prescience, I went to the Middle East in the weeks before I became Foreign Minister in 1974, and returned from there on the day that the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) declared a General Election, having had conversations with President Sadat, Israeli leaders and many others, so that there was no great need to return, quite apart from the fact that we have had two General Elections. I do not complain about this. We are fortunate in being a staging post, which means that leaders of Arab countries as well as leaders of Israel frequently come through London. I imagine that if we were to do an arithmetical totting up, for what it is worth—it would not be worth very much—I probably would be found to have had more contact with Arab leaders than have many other Foreign Ministers.
    Mr. Roy Hughes: Does the Foreign Secretary agree that despite all the wheelings and dealings that are taking place—with which I would not necessarily disagree—the crux of the situation in the Middle East is that the Palestinians have been displaced from their homeland? Does he agree that in any future settlement it is their interests and their welfare which must he given the first consideration?
    Mr. Callaghan: There is no doubt that the future of the Palestinians is one of the very difficult matters that will have

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    to be settled if there is to be an overall peace settlement. That is one reason why there is still much to commend a step-by-step approach, although there is also no doubt that some people want a return to negotiations in Geneva. However, despite public protestations about the desire of a return to Geneva, I am not at all sure that those protestations are matched by private desires.
    Mr. Eldon Griffiths: Does the Foreign Secretary not agree that my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet East (Mr. Aitken), has a point? I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman has been heavily involved in European negotiations, and I realise also that other Ministers have been to the Middle East. I believe, from personal experience, that a visit by the Foreign Secretary at this time would be opportune and would assist in the development of our trade and diplomatic efforts in the Middle East.
    Mr. Callaghan: I recognise that. As I said in my original answer, I have accepted invitations to pay official visits to Egypt and Syria, and I have other areas in mind to visit. The hon. Gentleman will also know that there are many other problems also which are engaging our attention from day to day.
    Mr. Hooson: Does the Foreign Secretary have any intention of meeting the leaders of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation? It appears that that organisation is the key to the whole situation, and it would be as well to have direct consultations and talks with it.
    Mr. Callaghan: The leaders of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation have not yet recognised the existence of the State of Israel. In those circumstances, I find it difficult to meet them.

    South Africa (Iron and Steel Corporation)
    Mr. Canavanasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many complaints he has received on behalf of British citizens resident in South Africa about the activities of the Iron and Steel Corporation of South Africa.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Edward Rowlands)Five such cases
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    have come to the notice of our consular posts in South Africa.
    Mr. Canavan: Can nothing be done about this corporation placing in the British Press misleading advertisements which depict South Africa as a land flowing with milk and honey and which lure British workers to that country with paid passages and promises of housing for their families? These workers often find themselves stranded in South Africa, and then Members of Parliament are obliged to ask the Foreign Office to assist in bringing them back to Britain, to their families. Can nothing be done to stop the further exploitation of labour by this racialist régime?
    Mr. Rowlands: British workers going to South Africa should be cautious in their approaches, especially to some of the advertisements, which in some cases could be misleading over matters of overtime and conditions of work. On the practical action that we can take when problems arise in South Africa, the staff of our posts in South Africa keep a close watch on these matters. The recently appointed First Secretary will shortly be visiting the area where a number of our immigrants work and will discuss a number of matters with them.
    Mr. Ian Lloyd: Has the time not arrived when the Foreign Secretary should remind some of his colleagues that British governmental responsibility for the actions of a State-controlled South African-governed corporation ended in 1909, and that if British citizens have complaints against such a corporation, the proper address to which such complaints should be sent is the Minister for Industry in South Africa?
    Mr. Rowlands: I do not think that any British Government or consular post in South Africa can wash its hands of the problems which may arise with British citizens.

    Non-Proliferation Treaty
    Mr. Robin F. Cookasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will now make a statement on the result of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.
    Mr. Hattersley: The most important achievement of the conference was the adoption by consensus of a Final Declara-

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    tion, copies of which have been placed in the Library. I believe that the support shown for this constructive declaration demonstrates the will of the great majority of Governments to increase the effectiveness of this vitally important treaty and will encourage non-parties to join.
    Mr. Cook: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for depositing that declaration. Does he agree that it indicates that no real progress has been made towards further restriction of the proliferation of nuclear technology? Will he reconsider the opposition expressed by the British Government at the review conference to the proposal that the sale of nuclear technology should be restricted to parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and to the proposal that the reprocessing of nuclear fuel should be placed under international control? What view did the Government express to the Government of West Germany at the recent London talks on the proposed contract with the Government of Brazil, which will give that country a nuclear weapon capability, although it has consistently refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty?
    Mr. Hattersley: I cannot accept the desirability of changing the position we took at the conference, nor can I accept that the disappointments at that conference were as great as my hon. Friend supposes. The joint declaration shows some progress, which we should all welcome.
    The hon. Member will have to give me notice of the second part of his question.

    Southern Africa
    Mr. Gouldasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will make known to the United States of America Her Majesty's Government's views on the situation in southern Africa.
    Mr. James Callaghan: Full opportunity is always taken of my regular contacts with the United States' Government to explain Her Majesty's Government's views of southern Africa.
    Mr. Gould: Will my right hon. Friend try to ensure that when the issue again comes before the Security Council, South Africa will not be protected from the
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    consequences of its illegal occupation of Namibia by the combined vetoes of the United States and the United Kingdom?
    Mr. Callaghan: I should never want to use a veto, but, on the other hand, the language that is used in resolutions must also be acceptable to Her Majesty's Government. On this occasion, despite the great work that had gone into securing a constructive resolution, this was overturned at the last minute and I was not prepared to instruct our delegate to vote for it.
    Mr. Blaker: Now that Mozambique has become independent, is the Foreign Secretary in a position to give the House more information about his intention regarding aid to that country, in the context of the imposition of sanctions against Rhodesia? Will he confirm that if this is his intention, such aid should be firmly in the context of a United Nations' resolution? How does he envisage that the quantum of such aid should be assessed?
    Mr. Callaghan: As I have explained on previous occasions, this matter will, first, have to be discussed with the new Mozambique Government, which took office only yesterday or today. Following the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, we should prefer the initiative to be taken through the United Nations, and that is what we shall work for. On the other hand, I should not rule out bilateral aid if that seemed to be the only way of assisting.
    Mr. Hooley: Is my right hon. Friend aware that I have studied with some care the exact text of the resolution which the British Government vetoed? Is he aware that the text was absolutely consonant with Labour Party policy as it has been expressed over many years?
    Mr. Callaghan: No, Sir, I am not aware of anything of the sort. The resolution proposed was unreasonable and extreme. It sought to make a determination under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, which would have paved the way for a whole range of actions that we believe would have been unjustified.

    Law of the Sea Conference
    Mr. Knoxasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth

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    Affairs what discussions have taken place, since the end of the Geneva session of the Law of the Sea Conference, with the chairman of the Committee of 77; and whether he will make a statement.
    Mr. Hattersley: Since the Geneva session ended on 9th May, we have been examining the single negotiating texts produced by the chairmen of the main committees. We shall be having extensive consultations on these with other States, including members of the Group of 77, before the next session of the conference.
    Mr. Knox: Will the Minister discuss with Mr. Evensen the concept of the exclusive economic zone? Will he also discuss the compatibility of this with the concept that the sea-bed should be the common heritage of mankind?
    Mr. Hattersley: We should be hoping for too much if we believed that much progress could be made at this conference without the acceptance of some of the general principles of the economic zone. I understand that within that concept there have to be understandings about sharing the revenues that might come from it, and free passage among, upon and above it. Therefore, the British representative at the discussions to which the hon. Gentleman referred will bear all these points in mind.
    Mr. McNamara: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the impatience felt in many of the fishing areas over the failure to come to some concrete decisions about fishing and economic zones? This is causing great distress. People do not know what investment to put into the industry. When shall we be told something definite for them?
    Mr. Hattersley: I understand the problem that has been created, not least because of the progress of the Law of the Sea Conference and the need to carry out parallel discussions on the common fisheries policy with the EEC. The combination of those two negotiations is causing a good deal of uncertainty. My hon. Friend will understand that an international negotiation of the sort that has been taking place in Geneva, and before that in Carácas, is bound to take some time. If it is to succeed, it needs to have the support of many nations with many
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    different interests. That can be achieved only over a long period.
    Mr. Henderson: Is the right hon. Gentleman in a position to tell the House about the recent talks which his right hon. Friend had with the Norwegian Foreign Minister and the Icelandic Prime Minister on the desire of those countries to increase their fishing limits? Is he able to say whether he is putting forward proposals whereby our limits can be increased at the same time, on the basis of mutual co-operation and understanding with them?
    Mr. Hattersley: Our obligation is to conclude with our partners and friends a successful Law of the Sea Conference and to make sure that the common fisheries policy of the EEC meets the needs of our own fishermen. We are pursuing that end. I do not think that the revelation of negotiations with individual countries would help that.
    Mr. Wall: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the growing pressure among fishing industries of many nations towards demanding united action for a 200-mile EEZ? In view of the slowness of the Law of the Sea Conference and with the very difficult questions of international law it has to determine, will the right hon. Gentleman consider an interim decision on this matter?
    Mr. Hattersley: It is important that no decisions or arbitrary unilateral actions are taken before the outcome of the main considerations. We have made it clear that we would not contemplate taking a decision or making statements which were in conflict with international law. It is important that the entire thing be done as a package rather than individual items being pursued.

    Mozambique
    Mr. Dalyellasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what consultations he has had with the Government of Brazil on aid to the new Government of Mozambique.
    Mr. Rowlands: None, Sir, although my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, when recently in Brazil, took the opportunity to exchange views with the Brazilian Government on recent developments in Africa.
    Mr. Dalyell: What will be on the agenda when Mr. da Silveira comes here in October?
    Mr. Rowlands: As my right hon. Friend has just said, the particular need of aid for Mozambique is a question that we wish the independent Government of Mozambique to determine and discuss with all parties. We hope that it will form part of a United Nations programme.
    Mr. Hurd: May I press the Minister on the answer given to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Blaker)? The Secretary of State told us that there have been preliminary contacts with the Frelimo authorities before independence. What scale of sums was discussed as the possible British contribution? Would this be at the expense of existing foreign aid commitments which might be less purely political in origin?
    Mr. Rowlands: It is difficult to make an assessment at present. There have been no detailed discussions, either bilaterally or internationally, about the degree of aid to Mozambique at present.

    Mr. Tindemans (Visit)
    Mr. Watkinsonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he expects Mr. Leo Tindemans to make a visit to the United Kingdom.
    Mr. Hattersley: Mr. Tindemans will visit the United Kingdom from 29th June to 2nd July. He will have talks with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, with my right hon. Friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary and with other Ministers and will also meet representatives of opinion outside the Government.
    Mr. Watkinson: How will Mr. Tindemans be going about meeting other elements of opinion in Britain besides Ministers? Are the Government to have formal or informal talks on this matter? Will my right hon. Friend consider having a debate on the subject of political union in Europe while Mr. Tindemans is here?
    Mr. Hattersley: The subject of a debate must be one for my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. As to whether the talks will be formal or informal, I think that the assurance for
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    which my hon. Friend asks is the assurance that the talks in which we take part will not result in commitments by the Government. I certainly give him that assurance without qualification.
    Regarding Mr. Tindemans' conversations with people outside the Government, the position is that his programme is being determined by and organised by the Belgian Embassy in London. I understand that as part of that programme the Belgian Ambassador has arranged already for Mr. Tindemans to visit Scotland and Wales, and to call on representatives of the major political parties.
    Mr. Eldon Griffiths: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Mr. Tindemans has already sought discussions with the Leader of the Opposition and has been made very welcome and assured that these discussions will be very full and frank?
    Mr. Hattersley: Extraordinarily enough, I included the right hon. Lady the Leader of the Opposition among the major political parties.

    Namibia
    Mr. Hooleyasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the policy of Her Majesty's Government concerning the future of Namibia, in the light of the expiration of the deadline set by the Security Council for South African withdrawal from Namibia.
    Mr. James Callaghan: Our policy concerning the future of Namibia remains as I stated it in this House on 4th December last. Our position in the Security Council was explained in answer to my hon. Friend's Question on 18th June and again earlier this afternoon.
    Mr. Hooley: Will it continue to be the policy of Her Majesty's Government to give diplomatic aid and comfort to South Africa by vetoing in the Security Council and voting against in the General Assembly of the United Nations, resolutions designed to bring pressure on South Africa to give up Namibia?
    Mr. Callaghan: That is clearly not the case. As I explained earlier, it depends on the nature of the resolution. We have made it quite clear to South Africa that we regard her occupation of Namibia as unlawful. We have indicated

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    to South Africa that she should withdraw, and we are having very friendly conversations with SWAPO, and, indeed, are giving it aid. None of these matters can give very much comfort to South Africa, to use my hon. Friend's words, but whether we should declare that this is a threat to peace, with all the consequences that that entails under Chapter 7, is a different matter. Another resolution which could have been equally effective could have got past without a veto.
    Mr. Townsend: Arising from his meeting with the President of SWAPO on 11th June, will the Foreign Secretary say exactly what is the extent of the educational assistance being given to SWAPO and what is the Government's intention about such assistance in the future?
    Mr. Callaghan: I should require notice to be able to give a detailed reply, but I am quite certain that we are giving £35,000 to assist young men, and perhaps women, from that country to come here to study. Subject to the approval of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Overseas Development, I am willing to increase that sum in order that we may have a trained cadre of people available to help in Namibia when the time for the freedom of that country arrives.

  EUROPEAN COMMUNITY

    Referendum
    Mr. George Gardinerasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what arrangements he has made for the supply of information to the public on EEC matters following the referendum result.
    Mr. Hattersley: The special arrangements made during the referendum campaign have been terminated, but the arrangements which existed previously will of course continue.
    Mr. Gardiner: Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that there is now likely to be a growing public demand for information on EEC matters—a demand which cannot be properly met by the Commission's own information offices? Does he accept that there is therefore a responsibility on the Government to provide more authoritative information on the Community's aims and
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    objectives, particularly within the Council of Ministers? To that end, would it not be helpful if Ministers made more frequent statements to the House on what they are doing, have done or are proposing to do, within the Council?
    Mr. Hattersley: There is a very comprehensive system of statements, debates. White Papers and other matters which has been agreed by the House as a result of a previous report and which the Leader of the House announced some months ago as part of our intention of making sure that the House is informed about Community matters. I shall be making such a statement later this afternoon. I think that the way the country has to be informed on progress in the EEC is through debates, questions and procedures in this House, and I am sure that we have given adequate opportunity for those debates and other procedures to be carried out.
    Mrs. Bain: Will the right hon. Gentleman undertake to publish a White Paper to explain to the people of Scotland the full implications of EEC membership? Will he refer particularly to the future of the steel, fishing and agriculture industries and of the Scottish Assembly and the Scottish Development Agency? Will he confirm or deny the validity of guarantees given to the people of Scotland on these issues by the pro-European campaign during the referendum?
    Mr. Hattersley: I think that the hon. Member is making her speech three weeks late. It would be unchivalrous of me to remind her of the votes in Scotland as a result of the previous speeches that she made. I do not commit the Government to producing a specific White Paper on the subjects she referred to, but the Government are obliged to produce periodic White Papers on progress within the EEC and I have no doubt that these subjects will be touched on there.
    Mr. Roy Hughes: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the EEC draft proposals should be readily available to the public, particularly through Her Majesty's Stationery Office? Is he aware that the Paymaster-General has already given an assurance to the House that steps are in hand to achieve this end? What progress has been made?
    Mr. Hattersley: I cannot, offhand, give my hon. Friend new information about draft proposals being available to the public through the usual sources, but no doubt he will recall that they are made available as quickly as possible in the House. I can only reiterate my answer to the first question. The real obligations of parliamentary scrutiny are to make sure that this House is aware of what goes on and to give hon. Members the opportunity of publicising their views on these matters. That we have promised to do.

    Foreign Policy
    Mr. Hurdasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent progress has been made in working out a common foreign policy for the member States of the EEC.
    Mr. James Callaghan: There is a growing wish among member States of the European Community to use the political co-operation machinery to work for common positions on foreign policy. Member States now regularly discuss international events as they occur. There has been continuing close co-operation on the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, on the Euro-Arab dialogue, on the problems of the Middle East and Cyprus, and on developments in Portugal, Latin America and Africa.
    Mr. Hurd: I thank the Foreign Secretary for that reply. Does he not feel that the foreign policy differences which exist between members of the Community are now differences of emphasis and not of fundamentals? Would it not be possible to go beyond the machinery for co-operation which the right hon. Gentleman has described and make a strenuous effort now to get a concerted policy across the board?
    Mr. Callaghan: If we were to try to get a concerted policy across the board we should encounter a lot of difficulties. It is better that we should foresee what is likely to happen in these situations and work out common positions, rather than adopt an abstract group of principles from which, when the strain is applied, we should probably depart.
    Mr. Spearing: Does my right hon. Friend agree that further co-ordination of foreign policies of member States
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    might have implications for the overseas aid policies of at least some of those nations? Will he confirm that the proposal to give the Foreign Secretary and the Minister of Overseas Development similar powers in respect of these functions has nothing to do with the proposals for the co-ordination of the foreign policies of member States.
    Mr. Callaghan: I had never thought of that matter until my hon. Friend suggested it. He is quite right in saying that the discussion of the aid programmes and the fact that Britain is the largest member of the Commonwealth and carries with it about 30 other Commonwealth countries into these discussions, is transforming Community debates on aid to the developing countries. Those factors are giving these debates a greater sense of urgency and relevance, and I hope that they will produce more aid.
    Mr. Powell: Will the right hon. Gentleman lay before the House or otherwise publish the evidently important speech that he made yesterday in the Council of Foreign Ministers, of which what appear to be extracts have appeared in the Press?
    Mr. Callaghan: If that is the wish of the House I shall be delighted to do so. I shall certainly put a copy of the speech in the Library. I do not rate its importance as being above that.

    Treaty of Rome
    Mr. Cryerasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make representations that Articles 92 and 93 of the Treaty of Rome should be applied with a high degree of flexibility.
    Mr. Hattersley: Our objectives on the retention of those powers needed to pursue effective regional and industrial policies were satisfactorily achieved in renegotiation, but I can assure my hon. Friend that we would make representations if they seemed necessary.
    Mr. Cryer: Does my right hon. Friend accept that it is frequently the task of a Labour Government to distort competition, contrary to the terms of those Articles? Will he attempt to ensure that the Labour Government are free to apply their policies towards industry without interference by the Commissioners, who,

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    as he knows, are not subject to the right of veto in this respect?
    Mr. Hattersley: It is important to approach Community policy and the policy of the Labour Party not as matters of semantics but as matters of reality. I have no doubt that a Labour Government would be able to do what they wished within the Treaty of Rome and within the Community.
    Mr. Crawford: Will the right hon. Gentleman give a categorical assurance that the EEC will have no control over the constitution, financial powers and autonomy of the Scottish Development Agency?
    Mr. Hattersley: I think that I can give that assurance, but I am reluctant to give an assurance as total as that on any occasion without suitable notice. If I cannot give such an assurance I shall gladly write to the hon. Member about it, and if I am wrong I have no doubt that he will publish my refutation of my own answer.

    European Parliament
    Mr. Gryllsasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is the policy of the EEC on direct elections to the European Parliament; and what communications he has had with the Council of Ministers on this subject since the referendum.
    Mr. Hattersley: At their meeting in December 1974 the EEC Heads of Government noted that the objective laid down in the Treaty of Rome of election by universal suffrage should be achieved as soon as possible. We shall now undertake a thorough study of this matter.
    Mr. Grylls: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that now that the referendum is over, the time for prevarication over direct elections to the European Parliament is also over? Does he agree that to have direct elections to the European Parliament in 1978 would be the best way to strengthen the democratic control of the institution? Will the Government hasten to make a decision on the matter, in agreement with what the rest of the Community did in 1974?
    Mr. Hattersley: I disagree with each of the three points of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question. There has
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    certainly been no prevarication. If we had not taken time over the matter during the renegotiation, it would have been that we had prevaricated but that we had moved with an urgency and speed which were altogether intolerable while the British people were making up their minds as to where our future lay. The hon. Gentleman must understand that a high level of democracy is preserved within the Community by the existence of a Council of Ministers, each democratically elected and each able to prevent proposals going ahead which, in their view, are not in the national interest. There must now be a careful examination of the desirability and propriety of direct elections. I have no doubt that when that careful examination has been completed, my right hon. Friend will report it to the House.
    Mr. Heffer: As the question of direct elections was not one of the items in the renegotiated terms, will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that not only shall we examine the matter in depth but that the views of the Labour Party will be taken into consideration before there is any question of a commitment of any kind by the Government?
    Mr. Hattersley: That would be such a step forward—some hon. Members might describe it as a step in the other direction—such a step in our constitutional history that it would be essential that all the parties and many interests be consulted before the Government made up their mind.
    Mr. Eldon Griffiths: In the process of whatever consultation the Government feel to be right in the matter, will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that there is the fullest debate in the House?
    Mr. Hattersley: Yes, Sir. I give that assurance at once. Before any system of direct elections was implemented, legislation would need to be passed in this House. But the hon. Gentleman is right in implying that at the earliest stage the House should be notified of the Government's intentions and given any opportunity to express its views. I promise the hon. Gentleman that that will happen.

    Foreign Ministers
    Mr. Blakerasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement about

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    his latest meeting with other EEC Foreign Ministers.
    Mr. James Callaghan: At the meeting of the Council of Ministers yesterday I took the opportunity to assure them that following the referendum the United Kingdom would play a full and constructive part in Community policies and activities. In the course of a long agenda we discussed the Community's relations with Canada, Egypt and Portugal; we held an Association Council with Cyprus; we took note of Greece's application to join the Community; we considered the next steps on raw materials and commodities; and among various trade items, I am glad to say, we reached a satisfactory settlement on the question of beef exports to the Community from Botswana.
    Mr. Blaker: If the country continues on its present mad economic course, shall we not find it increasingly difficult to exert in the Community the influence we should be capable of exerting? If we can bring inflation under control, however—as other member countries of the Community appear to be doing—does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we shall be able to play a major rôle in influencing the policies of the Community, both internal and external?
    Mr. Callaghan: I do not necessarily accept the hypothesis with which the hon. Gentleman began his supplementary question, but every one of us on the Government side of the House remembers that on a very early page in the Labour Party manifesto we said that our first and most important task was to overcome inflation, and I believe that the steps now being taken will achieve that end. [HON. MEMBERS: "What are they?"] Those are questions that should be addressed to other Ministers. I have little doubt, having been at least an observer of some of the discussions, that there is more prospect of our overcoming inflation with—[An HON. MEMBER: "Careful."] I shall be very careful—the consent and assent of the trade unions and the people of this country than by any kind of statutory policies or political coalitions.
    Mr. Hooson: Is it correct that the right hon. Gentleman finds himself greatly inhibited in initiating any foreign policy moves because of the present rate of inflation? Does he find that rate an in-
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    tolerable hindrance to taking major steps in foreign policy?
    Mr. Callaghan: I am being tempted on to Tom Tiddler's ground. The answer is a mixed one. Britain's view is taken very seriously by our colleagues in the Community and other nations in the world. At the same time, I cannot depart from what I said on the 8 o'clock news—I do not know whether anybody listened to it—[Interruption.] I am glad that I had an audience. I said that of course the impact of inflation weakened our ability to take initiatives in foreign affairs. It weakens it in many ways. It weakens the respect with which we are listened to if our affairs do not seem to be under proper management, and it limits the assistance we can give when there are a number of desirable ends at stake.
    For example, we must now consider the question of aid to succour democracy in Portugal. I should like Britain to be in a position in which we could ensure that Portugal followed a democratic path by assistance from outside, if such a thing is possible. But how can I look my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the eye and ask him for large sums at present? I give that as an example. There are many other illustrations of that kind.
    Mr. Jay: Can my right hon. Friend say what was the settlement on beef exports from Botswana that he mentioned?
    Mr. Callaghan: Yes, Sir. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity of boasting. The Batswana, who are so heavily dependent on cattle, instead of being required to pay a levy of 100 per cent. on their imports into the Community, as under the Community rules, will now pay a levy of 10 per cent. That is the minimum that anybody could be expected to pay. I am glad to say that that levy will make very little difference. They will also charge an export tax which they will be able to use in any way they like, in their own country, to reimburse their people. The Botswana delegation met me at 1 a.m. today in Luxembourg, and thanked me profusely. That only goes to show how much the fears that some people expressed before the referendum have proved to be incorrect.

    Energy Policy
    Mr. Rostasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if EEC energy policy will be discussed at the next Heads of State meeting.
    Mr. Hattersley: The agenda for the meeting has not been settled, but I expect that energy matters will be discussed.
    Mr. Rost: Have the Government satisfied our European partners that the British National Oil Corporation, as it is proposed to be established under the Petroleum and Submarine Pipe-Lines Bill, will in no way contravene the rules on fair trading and unsubsidised competition? If so, how?
    Mr. Hattersley: Certainly we have satisfied our partners. I assume that we have done so by the force and logic of our argument.
    Mr. Watt: At the meeting will the right hon. Gentleman confirm this country's determination that the oil to be taken from the Scottish sector of the North Sea will be refined in the United Kingdom, and will not be shipped or piped straight to our EEC partners?
    Mr. Hattersley: Such questions are more appropriate for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy, but I must remind the hon. Gentleman that our policy on the national control of oil—a policy which was shared by the previous Government—has been accepted—[Interruption.] The British national policy on British oil was accepted by our predecessors when they were in Government, and it is in all ways consistent with our membership of the Community.

    Mineral Resources
    Mr. Tim Rentonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will take an initiative towards the development of an EEC policy for the development of mineral resources among the Group of 77.
    Mr. Hattersley: The Prime Minister's initiative on commodities at the Heads of Commonwealth Government meeting at Kingston sought to create a broad frame-
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    work within which policies for individual raw materials, including the development of mineral resources, could be worked out. We are now pursuing these ideas with our partners in the EEC, where careful and urgent study is at present being given to these problems.
    Mr. Renton: Has the right hon. Gentleman taken note of the much more aggressive attitude towards commodity stabilisation schemes shown by the Group of 77 than the attitude advanced by the Prime Minister at the Jamaica conference? Is this not a very good area for the EEC to examine, both for financing overseas sources of minerals and for using its collective consumer power in the event of expropriation by the overseas host country?
    Mr. Hattersley: No, Sir. I think that the remedy the hon. Gentleman suggests is wrong. We have all noticed the aggressive attitude adopted by some developing countries. The object of the Kingston initiative of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was to convince them that in these matters co-operation is better than confrontation. If the hon. Gentleman wants to advance that thesis, he must advance it in a way which does not run side by side with the suggestion that the developed countries—the raw material consumers—should act in an aggressive fashion. That would be altogether inappropriate.
    Mr. Tugendhat: Can the Minister say anything further about the attitude of the Government to the most interesting document produced by the Commission on the supply of raw materials to the Community, and especially to its imaginative ideas for a combination of private and State enterprise in the exploration and development of new mineral resources in the less developed countries?
    Mr. Hattersley: That document was examined at the political co-operation meeting of the EEC Council of Ministers in Dublin some weeks ago. That was a preliminary examination. The details are now being considered by individual member countries and experts. I welcomed parts of that document when I attended that meeting, not least because they confirmed the suggestions put forward by the Prime Minister in Kingston some days before.

NORTH SEA OIL
The following Questions stood upon the Order Paper:
Mr. Cryer: To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will make a statement on progress in the discharge of his responsibilities with regard to oil and energy matters.
Mr. Rost: To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster whether he will report progress on his negotiations with the oil industry on State participation.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Harold Lever): I should like, Mr. Speaker, the leave of the House to answer Questions Nos. 41 and 42.
We are having constructive discussions with a substantial number of companies which now, on any reckoning, represent over half the interests in the North Sea. Of these companies, Burmah, Deminex, Tricentrol and Blackfriars Oil have agreed in principle to 51 per cent. Government participation in their commercial oil fields. In our discussions detailed proposals for giving effect to participation are being considered.
Mr. Cryer: Is my right hon. Friend satisfied that he has obtained the best possible deal for the British people? Is he satisfied that the matters concerning the exploitation of North Sea oil have now been agreed in principle? That having been done, is he now considering transferring his outstanding responsibilities to the Secretary of State for Energy?
Mr. Lever: I am satisfied that the Government are in the process of securing—and have already to a large extent secured—an excellent deal for the British people. That deal, not unnaturally, is not incompatible with the success of those who are developing the North Sea. Secondly, I am not able to say at this stage how all the deals will conclude. Therefore, I cannot raise my hon. Friend's anticipation about my future removal to areas which will cause him less anxiety than my present responsibilities.
Mr. Rost: How does the Chancellor reconcile his efforts to nationalise 51 per cent. of the North Sea oil, at an estimated cost of approximately £1 billion of tax-
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payers' money, with the advice he gave to the Prime Minister on the need to curtail inflation and the public borrowing requirement?
Mr. Lever: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's description of my efforts—and even less the broad estimate of the cost which he attributes as likely to result from them. I therefore have no difficulty in reconciling the efforts to secure for the British people a fair share of the control of this vital national resource with our great determination—which was commented on in appropriate parts of Question Time—to deal with the problem of inflation.
Mrs. Winifred Ewing: Can we have a word from the Minister on the question of the conservation aspects of the development of the oil fields? Is the Minister aware that the EEC thinks that 180 million tons a year are appropriate, that the British Government are on record as saying that the figure of 110 million tons is the maximum, and that the Scottish National Party's view, in the best interests of Scotland's preservation, is 50 million tons a year? Does he understand that the question of preservation is not a joke to those people who live in the communities affected by the extraction of oil? Will the Minister say a word on this important question?
Mr. Lever: Happily, it is not for me to decide between the EEC Commission's view of the wise rate of exploitation of North Sea oil and the view of the Scottish National Party on the conservation of oil, and the wisdom of the respective positions of the Scottish National Party and the EEC.
Mr. Fernyhough: My right hon. Friend read out a list of the companies which he said had agreed to the State taking 51 per cent. of their shares. Does that list represent all the companies, or are there still companies with which he has to negotiate, or with which he is still negotiating but which are proving somewhat difficult?
Mr. Lever: The companies the names of which I read out are those which have so far firmly accepted in principle 51 per cent. State participation. I do not regard those which have not yet seen fit to reach such an agreement as being difficult. But it is a matter of choice.

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They are considering the Government's proposals and are discussing the various problems, as they see them, which arise. I hope to make substantial further progress steadily in this way.
Mr. Patrick Jenkin: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the question put to him by my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Rost)? If the Government are going to come forward in a few weeks with a harsh and unpalatable programme of public expenditure cuts, how can it conceivably make sense for them to lay out hundreds of millions, possibly thousands of millions, of pounds in buying out the North Sea oil companies?
Mr. Lever: The right hon. Gentleman appears not to have followed the clear explanation given by myself and other members of the Government about our purposes. We are not laying out these sums, which are torturing the fantasies of the Conservative Party and the Opposition. We are negotiating on the basis of making a contribution to the future cost of the development of the North Sea as appropriate. We would advance money promptly only where the alternative to doing so would be to hold up the further exploration and exploitation of this vital asset.
Mr. Skinner: Does my right hon. Friend agree that a number of the companies on the list which he read out have had to negotiate from a position of relative weakness rather than strength? Does he expect some of the larger, more efficient and better backed companies to agree as readily as those which he has mentioned? Will he take on board the proposition that if he is successful he might have to live by the present Cabinet maxim, which is that if any Cabinet Minister tends to carry out Labour Party policy too well he is shifted sideways or downwards?
Mr. Lever: The occupational risk of Labour and Conservative Cabinet Ministers being successful can be regarded as one of the lesser risks in both cases. However, I do not believe that sideways, upwards or downwards movements of Cabinet Ministers are directly relevant to my negotiations about the North Sea.
To answer the more serious part of my hon. Friend's question, naturally there is
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an unevenness in the response to the proposals which I made, which some companies accepted fairly readily, while some were more cautious about the problems which might be involved for them and which needed further examination.
The Government formed the view that this was not a nationalisation operation but was a participation operation to give us control of an adequate percentage of North Sea oil and to allow us to develop expertise and to put the further development of the North Sea more readily within the reach of the Government through the BNOC. That being the Government position, we did not feel the need for any compulsory powers. We believed that we could reach a fair basis with those reasonable companies which were willing to deal with us sufficiently to fulfil the Government's purpose of achieving 51 per cent. Government participation in the commercial oil fields of the North Sea. I have no reason to feel pessimistic in any way about accomplishing that purpose in due time.
Mr. Aitken: As the Chancellor of the Duchy indicated in his answer the nature of his wide-ranging powers over North Sea oil, and as we are also aware of the Paymaster-General's extensive responsibilities in the financial and taxation aspects of North Sea oil, will the right hon. Gentleman clarify for us exactly what the Secretary of State for Energy is allowed to do all day long in the matter of North Sea oil?
Mr. Lever: It is absolutely impossible to create that disunity between members of the Government Front Bench which exists between members of the Opposition Front Bench. I assure the hon. Gentleman that my duties in regard to North Sea oil are limited to being chief negotiator with the oil companies for the Government's purpose of achieving a 51 per cent. participation. My right hon. Friend the Paymaster-General has charge of the fiscal aspects of the North Sea—the petroleum revenue tax and similar fiscal aspects. If the hon. Gentleman will ponder the resulting equation, he will see that the Secretary of State for Energy has a considerable remit.
Mr. Sillars: Is my right hon. Friend aware that Scottish trade unionists will applaud his rejection of the idea put forward by the hon. Member for Moray

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and Nairn (Mrs. Ewing) on behalf of the Scottish National Party? Will he confirm that if we reduce the rate of exploration and output to 50 million tons a year we shall need fewer rigs, fewer platforms, fewer supply ships, and less engineering activity—which will mean fewer jobs for Scottish workers?
Mr. Lever: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing out in so forthright a way the consequences that would follow any effort to hamstring the reasonable development and the reasonably speedy exploitation of the North Sea. Every reduction required by the SNP or anyone else would be accompanied by a loss of indirect and direct revenue for the Scottish people and would thereby affect the considerable achievement of improving the standard of life in Scotland which has already taken place and which will continue.
Mr. Biggs-Davison: Are the Government fully satisfied that, disregarding all these ideological considerations, they have obtained as good a deal for Britain as the Norwegian Government obtained for Norway?
Mr. Lever: It is difficult to compare precisely the relevant deals achieved. The Norwegian Government have perhaps exacted greater control and a greater share of the profits in their area than is the position in our area. But there are differences in the exploration position, in the licensing terms and in many other aspects. We are negotiating as firmly and toughly as is compatible with a scrupulous respect for our obligations and the fair reward offered to the companies which matches the needs of the British people—and Scots people are included in that entity—to get their fair share of the proceeds of the North Sea oil.
Mr. Rost: In view of the totally unsatisfactory nature of that reply I beg to seek leave to raise the matter on the Adjournment at the earliest opportunity.

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS
Mr. Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. If you could, rightly, find 13 minutes for the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, how about two minutes for the Church Estate Commission?
Mr. Speaker: I would willingly find two minutes, or even more, but I had no request to do so.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITY (BUSINESS)
The Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Roy Hattersley): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a statement about business to be taken in the Council of Ministers of the European Community during July. The monthly forecast for July was deposited yesterday.
The Heads of Government of the member States will meet in Brussels on 16th and 17th July. The agenda for this meeting has not been confirmed, but it is likely that there will be discussion on commodity matters in the context of relations with developing countries, and on the prospects for dialogue between oil producers and consumers. We expect the Heads of Government to discuss stage III of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe and to exchange views on the general economic situation.
At present three meetings of the Council of Ministers are proposed for July. Finance Ministers will meet on 10th, Foreign Ministers on 15th and 16th, and Agriculture Ministers on 21st and 22nd July.
Finance Ministers are expected to carry out the second formal examination of the economic situation in the Community provided for in the convergence decision of 18th February 1974. They will also consider the Community exchange régime and work in preparation for the IMF meetings.
At the Foreign Affairs Council Ministers will make final preparations for the European Council in Brussels on 16th and 17th July. They are also expected to continue their discussion of raw materials problems in the light of preparations for the seventh special session of the United Nations General Assembly. Ministers will have before them a report on relations with Portugal and possibly the final text for formal approval of the agreement with Mexico.
Agriculture Ministers are expected to consider proposals amending the basic wine regulations and the part of the basic sugar regulations dealing with imports from ACP countries, and for the

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rationalisation of horticultural production under glass.
Mr. Eldon Griffiths: I am sure that the House is grateful for that full statement. At the meeting of the Heads of Government on 16th and 17th July, is the agenda not to contain a debate on the future evolution of the Community and its institutions? That seems to be a remarkable omission.
Secondly, I note that the Finance Ministers are to meet on 10th July. Bearing in mind the debate that took place in the House two weeks ago on the Community's proposals for dealing with economic problems of the member countries, will the British representatives at that meeting have available to them the details of the package which the Prime Minister has promised? If they do not, they will be at a disadvantage.
Thirdly, there is to be discussion on relations with Portugal at the Foreign Affairs Council. Can the House be told in advance of the Government's policies towards Portugal in respect of the EEC? Do we favour Portugal's eventual admission to the Community?
Mr. Hattersley: The Heads of Government at their meeting may well receive from Mr. Tindemans an interim account of the discussions he has had on European unity and the definition of union. That is very much a matter for him, and if that discussion takes place it will be in a rather informal atmosphere.
Even were it not put on the agenda, I do not believe that the Heads of Government could be accused of dereliction by omitting another examination of EEC institutions. The Government's view is that the EEC is much better served if it gets on with the work of the EEC rather than constantly examining its institutions and mechanisms.
On the Finance Ministers' meeting, the hon. Gentleman must not tempt me to answer questions which are well outside my province. The Secretary of State refused to do something similar earlier today and I intend to follow the path he set.
The Foreign Affairs Ministers' meeting will examine relations between the Community and Portugal. Our attitude to Portugal from within the EEC is clear and has been described many times. We
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hope that the Community can offer assistance to Portugal, especially assistance that is likely to encourage the development of democracy within Portugal. It is inherent in the Treaty of Rome that Portugal can apply for membership of the Community when the Government of Portugal and the organisation of Portuguese politics are genuinely democratic. When that happens we shall, of course, welcome an application.
Mr. David Steel: Will the Finance Ministers be doing anything to speed up the negotiations which are going on within the Community on the question of the restraint of cheap imports from the Far East?
Secondly, does his reply to the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) mean that the whole question of direct elections to the European Parliament will not be considered by the Council of Ministers except in the context of Mr. Tindemans's report in the autumn?
Mr. Hattersley: I said in my initial statement and again to the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) that the agenda for the Prime Minister's meeting is not yet fixed. If there is a predisposition to discuss direct elections I am sure that none of the Ministers present will be reluctant to do so. I cannot assure the hon. Gentleman at this moment that the subject will firmly appear on the agenda.
Discussions on textile imports from the Far East are going on within the Commission. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman an assurance that the subject will appear on any ministerial agenda next month.
Mr. Fernyhough: When the question of glasshouses is discussed, will my right hon. Friend make clear to the EEC that there is enough vandalism in this country without the Government being prepared to pay for vandalism to knock down that which they paid to put up?
Mr. Hattersley: It is not my duty to deal with the substance of this matter. As I understand it, the discussions on the rationalisation of horticulture are intended to give an opportunity to those horticultural producers who find the increase in horticultural costs so severe that they doubt their ability to continue as viable

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units, to go out of business in a way which causes them the minimum amount of hardship. I regard that as a desirable objective, as I am sure does my hon. Friend.
Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to re-examine his policy towards horticulturists in refusing to give them the subsidy allowed by the EEC? Will the right hon. Gentleman also confirm that at the Agricultural Ministers' meeting in July, Ministers will deal with the questions of milk and olive oil swindles that have been taking place in the past? Will he also confirm that the Ministers will be looking at the stock taking report of Commissioner Lardinois, and, taking decisions on that very important document concerning the forward development of the agricultural policy of the EEC? Will he also confirm that it is no good the institutions standing still? Although one does not want to take decisions in a hurry, one must move forward in the development of the institutions over the coming months. Can the right hon. Gentleman also tell us which right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite will be joining us in the European Parliament?
Mr. Hattersley: The stock taking report, which I agree is central to the future of agriculture within the Community, is now being discussed in the capitals. I doubt whether the discussions that are going on in the capitals of the Nine will have moved so quickly and made such progress for the report to be discussed fruitfully at the August Ministers' meeting. Questions of the alleged swindles and subsidies withheld are for the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
Mr. Donald Stewart: Is the Minister aware that due notice will be taken in Scotland that fishing again is not deemed of sufficient importance to appear on the agenda? Is he also aware that since the destruction of food was one of the most repugnant aspects of EEC policy, the idea of rationalisation of horticultural production under glass is lunatic in a world in which food prices are high and many are starving?
Mr. Hattersley: I can only assume—I make this interpretation as much as anything out of charity—that the hon. Gentleman does not know what is the
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intention of the raionalisation of horticultural production under glass, otherwise I do not think he would describe it in such intemperate language.
Turning to the need to discuss fishing problems, I do not deny that there are problems involved in both the Law of the Sea Conference and the EEC fisheries policy. It is important not to confuse talk with action. Our duty is to make sure that a satisfactory fisheries policy emerges from the EEC and from the Law of the Sea Conference. That may be obtained best by bilateral diplomacy rather than by my appearing in the House every month and announcing that we shall soon do something about it.
Mr. Cryer: Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that full consultation will be undertaken with the horticultural industry before any decisions are reached which apply to this country under the rationalisation of horticulture under glass scheme? What representations will be made to extend the arrangements for the ACP countries to non-associate countries? What representations are likely to be made to reduce the skimmed milk mountain?
Mr. Hattersley: Neither of the last two subjects that my hon. Friend raised will be discussed next month. On the rationalisation of horticulture, my hon. Friend the Minister of State for Agriculture will discuss any prospects as well as any decisions with the industry. Although the last two subjects are not on the agenda, my hon. Friend knows that a good deal of progress is being made, not least in the provision of assistance to Asian developing countries. Inside or outside the Council of Ministers, we shall pursue that as vigorously as we can.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: The Minister of State has informed the House that a meeting of Agricultural Ministers will take place in the latter part of July. Will he give an assurance to the House that the growing crisis in the dairy industry in this country, which could result in rationing this winter, will be on the agenda?
Mr. Hattersley: No, I cannot give an assurance of that sort, nor would it be appropriate for me to comment on a question in no way related to the business of the EEC next month.
Mr. William Hamilton: Can the Minister be more specific about what is to happen to regional policy in the EEC? I am sure he understands that this is very critical to areas such as Scotland and that that is one of the reasons why Scotland voted to stay in the EEC? Will he reassure us that what Mr. George Thomson said in the course of the Referendum campaign was that we had a lot to teach the EEC about regional policy and that that will be translated into facts when we get around the table in Europe?
Mr. Hattersley: I certainly share Mr. Thomson's judgment that we have a regional policy in this country which should commend itself to our partners within the Community. Two important things have to be said about the Community and British regional policy. First, during the renegotiations we obtained, without doubt and without any sort of controversy, the certainty that British regional policy could be applied in the way in which the British Government determine and that it would in no way be inhibited by decisions taken outside this country.
Secondly, it is now our duty to press as hard as we can and as best we can for an extension of Community-wide regional policies, many of which already benefit Great Britain and all of which, if we can extend them appropriately, will bring increased benefit to the hard-hit areas of this country.
Mr. Blaker: Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us what has happened to the Council of Development Ministers? Is it not a fact that they have not met for three or four months? Are they not faced with an important document proposing large increases in aid to the countries of South-East Asia? Should they not be considering that document?
Mr. Hattersley: There are a number of matters which the Development Ministers need to consider, but these raise difficult issues for individual member Governments. Not least is the question of the financing of any project which Development Ministers might rightly want to pursue. Therefore, it was generally agreed two or three months ago that the time was not right for such a meeting.
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I hope that such a meeting will take place quite soon, but it will not be in July.
Mr. Spearing: Will my right hon Friend be more specific about the subject of sugar in the ACP countries, due to be discussed on 21st July by the Agriculture Ministers? Secondly, does he recall that the debate which we had on the economic guidelines, since the Referendum, was on a motion to take note but that the Minister did not allow the Question to be put? Does he believe that that is a satisfactory state of affairs?
Mr. Hattersley: Questions about procedure in this House should be directed not to me but to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. By and large the House has been given the opportunity to debate all issues of substance before they go in front of the Council of Ministers. Indeed, the very issue to which my hon. Friend has referred was one on which we placed a reserve in order to give the House the opportunity to discuss that subject. Because of the tone of the debate and the contributions that were made, the Government felt able to release that reserve after the debate had taken place. Certainly we postponed our agreement until that had happened.
Mr. Peyton: As we are discussing Community business, I should like to take advantage of the right hon. Gentleman's presence—because he is always very helpful—to ask him when it is likely that an announcement will be made about which Members of the Labour Party will be attending the European Parliament?
Mr. Hattersley: An announcement will be made very shortly. However, the right hon. Gentleman knows—the decision has already been taken—that they will attend that Parliament. I have no doubt that whichever of my right hon. and hon. Friends are chosen, they will add to the galaxy of talent already there.
Mr. Peyton: Will the right hon. Gentleman translate "very shortly"?
Mr. Peter Mills: Is the Minister of State saying that there will be no chance of discussing in Brussels the very important problem of the milk industry, bearing in mind that there is a surplus in the

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Community and a shortage here and that unless something is done there will be very serious problems for the British consumer? Will he think again on that, please?
Mr. Hattersley: I take the hon. Gentleman's point. I think that there may well be opportunity to discuss that matter. I merely described what was on the form of the agenda as it stands at present. It is always the situation, on days such as these, that I must anounce the agenda as we understand it. I know that there is some discussion at present about limitations of supplies in the Community and the need to increase supplies in Great Britain. That may be the issue to which the hon. Gentleman is drawing attention. If that is an issue that my right. hon. Friend believes should be discussed, I reply that it may well be discussed. My duty, and my only ability concerning matters such as this, is to tell the hon. Gentleman of the form of items on the agenda.

MEMBERS (ACCESS BY CONSTITUENTS)
Mr. Stanley: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I should like to raise the circumstances in which a constituent of mine was yesterday unable to obtain entry at the St. Stephen's entrance to see me. The constituent concerned came up specially from my constituency by appointment. She had with her a letter of appointment signed by myself. Despite that, she was refused entry at the St. Stephen's entrance by the police officer at the head of the queue. She was asked to queue, and subsequently got entry to the Central Lobby one and a quarter hours later.
I fully appreciate the difficulties facing the police when a mass lobby is going on, but I hope that this matter will be investigated further by the Serjeant at Arms and his staff and clearer guidelines produced so that any constituent who has an appointment with a Member of this House and has written evidence of that appointment is at all times able to get access to the Central Lobby.
Mrs. Chalker: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I should like to
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support my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Mailing (Mr. Stanley), because I have encountered this matter in previous mass lobbies. I took the precaution of making appointments for a number of constituents, but restricted the number so that as many constituencies as possible could be represented in the Central Lobby yesterday. Constituents of mine were also halted for between one and one and a half hours when coming for appointments with letters in their hands. I hope that something can be done about this matter for the future.
Mr. Speaker: I am very sorry indeed if hon. Members or, indeed, their constituents have been caused inconvenience. I think that it is very occasionally that a mistake is made. This is one of the consequences of mass lobbies. Certainly we will do our best to see that constituents have access to their Members.
On the whole, I think that the authorities of the House do an extremely good job in controlling these lobbies.

CARAVAN SITES ACT 1968 (AMENDMENT)
4.2 p.m.
Mr. John Loveridge: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Caravan Sites Act 1968.
Part I of the Caravan Sites Act gave greater security to tenants on fixed sites and Part II dealt with the problems of travelling of gipsy families. My Bill deals only with Part II.
Perhaps I may explain my intentions to the House under three heads: first, what the Bill sets out to do; secondly, the reasons why it is needed to protect residents living near illegal camps; and, thirdly, how it protects the campers themselves.
First, the Bill aims to remove an anomaly. This arises because Section 10 of the Act makes certain encampments illegal in local authority areas where adequate sites have been provided for families on the move.
Section 11 was intended to ensure enforcement. It does not work. The Bill is to enable it to work as intended. It applies only in local authority areas which have been designated by the Secretary of

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State as providing adeqeuate facilities for travelling families. In these areas only it enables local authorities to obtain summonses to attend court against the owners of caravans alleged to be breaking the law so that they may answer the complaint. If the owner cannot be traced, the court may order that a notice be affixed to the caravan concerned inviting the owner to court. If he then fails to come to offer a defence, and only then, the court may try the alleged offence and, if it is found proved, order that the offending caravan be moved.
Secondly, the reason why this amendment is necessary can be demonstrated from a case in my own borough, but it affects many other areas. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) in November last year asked:
"Is the Minister aware that the Caravan Sites Act has completely failed to solve the problem of unlawful gipsy camping".—[official Report, 13th November 1974; Vol. 881. c. 398.]
These encampments may be filthy, even insanitary, and often give rise to bitter complaints and even actual fear for the health and safety of the children of many residents living nearby.
The hon. Member for Bootle (Mr. Mahon) had to call in the fire brigade to help clear up the debris from such a camp. In my constituency, an encampment in Moor Lane, Cranham, which moved away in 1973, was back again for months in 1974, breaking the law with impunity because the enforcement section could not be applied.
That section was said by the Government in June last year to provide an expeditious means by which a magistrates' court could grant an order of eviction on the offenders and their caravans. It did not and could not do so. Nor could it do so in the neighbouring constituency of the hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Williams) into whose area they moved via Romford. The same problems in 1968 caused the hon. Member for Hornchurch to support the then Bill, on which he served as a member of the Committee, and he supports this amending Bill today.
There are two main reasons why the Act does not function as intended. The first is that local council officers often
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cannot find the names of the owners on whom to serve summonses.
The London borough of Havering was among the first to provide sites to be designated and has experience of how the Act does not work. The chief executive of that borough wrote to me saying:
"Our experience is that an illegal gipsy encampment is not a fixed body of persons. Numbers of people and caravans vary from day to day."
To overcome the difficulty of finding the owners the council tried to bring a case in their absence. This was opposed and went to the High Court. On 18th July 1974 the court determined that a caravanner could not be proceeded against unless he had an opportunity to be heard. At the same time the court recognised the council's difficulty in saying that there were
"great practical difficulties for local authorities seeking to operate these provisions",
and went on,
"even if the difficulties render the machinery of this legislation ineffective"
the court must still ensure that the defendant had the opportunity to dispute the facts.
The machinery is, in fact, useless. The Bill seeks to remove some of the difficulties of enforcement for local authorities whilst at the same time preserving the right of the citizen to be heard in his own defence. It would not only protect residents from illegal camps but be helpful to travelling families themselves.
Thirdly, until the end of 1974 only 110 sites, providing for 1,635 caravans, had been provided in the kingdom even though the Government estimated that there may be 5,000 such travelling families. That is 1,500 more families than Lord Avebury estimated when he so effectively introduced his Bill as the then Member for Orpington in 1968. I am glad that my hon. Friend the present Member for Orpington supports this measure today.
If Section 11 is amended to work, councils will see the benefit that comes from providing proper sites, more sites will become available, and the need for illegal camping will grow less. More facilities and stable conditions should enable gipsy children to have a better education. This problem was raised by the hon. Members for Nottingham, West

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(Mr. English) and Hornchurch in 1968. The latter reminded the House of the Plowden Report's statement that gipsy children
"are probably the most seriously severely deprived children in this country. Most of them do not even go to school."
I know that the Government are considering the working of the Act. If they mean to amend it, I hope that they will favourably consider the proposals now put forward in the Bill.
I am grateful to hon. Members on both sides of the House who support the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. John Loveridge, Mr. Alan Lee Williams, Mr. Michael Neubert, Mr. Michael English, Mr. Simon Mahon, Mr. David Mitchell, Mr. Michael Shersby, Mr. Roger Sims and Mr. Ivor Stanbrook.

CARAVAN SITES ACT 1968 (AMENDMENT)
  CARAVAN SITES ACT 1968 (AMENDMENT)
  Mr. John Loveridge accordingly presented a Bill to amend the Caravan Sites Act 1968: and the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon 11th July and to be printed [Bill 184].

SCOTTISH DEVELOPMENT AGENCY (No. 2) BILL [Lords]
Order for Second Reading read.
4.10 p.m.
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. William Ross): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Mr. Alick Buchanan-Smith: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Because of the Government's handling of business such as this, the Bill raises a particular problem in that it completed its stages in another place only yesterday and the Bill, as amended by another place, and certainly with the amendments that were made in the course of yesterday afternoon, coming from another place, was available in the Vote Office only after 12 o'clock today. Hon. Members are put under some difficulty when a Bill as important as this one is to be debated in the House but is made available only some four hours in advance of the debate actually starting. I would be grateful, Mr. Speaker, if you would consider that point and give your opinion on it.
Mr. Douglas Crawford: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. While I am not supporting the Government, I would point out that it was the Conservatives who held up the Bill in the first place.
Mr. Ross: I believe an explanation is due. The Bill was printed ten and a half weeks ago and the main amendments were made not yesterday but very much earlier. I am very surprised if the hon. Gentleman was not aware of the few amendments that were made.
Mr. John Peyton: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. A certain natural curiosity leads me to wonder what on earth the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State would have said had the positions been reversed and a substantially amended Bill come from another place at midday with no opportunity for detailed study, and apart from the substance of the matter there is just the question of courtesy. What I am now complaining about—and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will pass it on to his colleague—is that the House of Commons is constantly treated to a process of discourtesy and disregard which would

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never have been accepted by the Labour Party had they been in Opposition.
Mr. Ross: I do not know whether the shadow Leader of the House is aware that the Bill could have been considered in relation to its principle a long time ago and further considered in relation to Second Reading by the Scottish Grand Committee——
Mr. T. G. D. Galbraith: Why the Scottish Grand Committee?
Mr. Ross: It could have been considered there but was blocked by hon. Gentlemen opposite, and the hon. Gentleman who shouts is an expert at blocking.
Mr. Peyton: Further to that point, Mr. Speaker. The Opposition are under no obligation whatever to dance to the Government's tune, and the fact that the Opposition find it objectionable that the matter should go to the Scottish Grand Committee is simply no excuse for the Government's disgraceful conduct.
Mr. Speaker: I have listened to these exchanges with great interest but they are nothing to do with the Chair.
Mr. Ross: The Bill seeks to bring to the whole of Scotland the benefits of a new executive body—the Scottish Development Agency—charged with furthering the development of Scotland's economy and improving its environment. The Bill gives the agency substantial financial resources and wide powers for carrying out these tasks. It is surprising, therefore, that there should be a history of blocking and destruction in respect of this important Bill.
It is not in the form in which we intended it to be discussed in this House. I regret any inconvenience due to hon. Members not being up to date on the latest points in relation to some amendments made in another place. Certain vital powers which are fundamental to the entire concept of the agency have been removed as a result of the misguided action of the noble Friends of hon. Members opposite in another place. I would never have thought that the other place was the best example of democracy but the House may be assured that we shall restore these powers in full so that the
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agency can play the rôle which we designed for it.
The Bill is one of historic significance to Scotland. It is the first to confer on a Secretary of State for Scotland substantial powers in relation to Scottish industry. Together with the executive responsibility for selective industrial assistance, which I assume next Tuesday, taking over from the Department of Industry, this means a major direct responsibility for jobs in Scotland, the first time a Secretary of State for Scotland has had this power.
There is no doubt that the current economic scene in Scotland is sombre but it is not one of unrelieved gloom. Unemployment has been rising progressively over the years and now 4·7 per cent. of our workers are unemployed, and the figures of short-time working, redundancies and job vacancies are causing concern. Continuing inflation, by eroding the export competitiveness of Scottish industry, could jeopardise future employment. Of course, these difficulties are not peculiar to Scotland. They reflect the difficulties which all Western industrialised nations have faced over the past two years, and especially the problems of the British economy, with which Scotland's prosperity is intimately bound up.
The reassuring aspect of the current Scottish situation is that Scotland is proving more resilient to today's economic difficulties than the rest of Britain or countries like France or West Germany. In the past we used to be hit first and hardest in any recession. Today unemployment has risen here more slowly than elsewhere. In the early 1960s Scotland had an unemployment rate which was more than double that of the British average. If that situation still prevailed today we should now be experiencing unemployment figures of over 8 per cent. That is why I am so angry that the Bill has been held up.
In the mid-1960s we were losing as many as 45,000 people each year by net emigration. The most recent figures show a net gain of population. That is something to be noted and gives an indication that the people of Scotland have more confidence in Scotland now than they had in the past. The activity associated with North Sea oil development has been a major force underlying the improving

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trend. It has created directly or indirectly some 40,000 jobs in Scotland. These jobs have all come about in advance of our receiving any oil and result from the massive public and private investment which has been injected into Scotland to get the oil ashore. But much of the credit also lies with the vigorous regional policies which have been pursued by successive United Kingdom Governments over a longer period, extending generous investment inducements to industry throughout Scotland and creating a modern infrastructure.
We still have a long way to go, however, before Scotland is able to offer the range and quality of jobs and the living environment needed for all who want to make their homes in Scotland. We need to grasp all the opportunities available to us and to spread their benefits more widely throughout Scotland. There are more opportunities today because of the oil development. There are continuing problems in the rural areas, but, above all, our older towns and cities, especially of Clydeside, lack the jobs and quality of life which nowadays people are entitled to expect. This is why we need the agency with adequate powers and resources to bring to the development of Scotland.
The Scottish Development Agency marks the creation of a uniquely Scottish approach to industrial development in Scotland. Policies to create jobs must continue to be based on a strong national policy, because only this can ensure that jobs are diverted from the more prosperous regions to Scotland and other areas in need of employment. Scotland has gained considerable benefits from traditional regional policies. Anyone who knows of the changes that have taken place in Fife and Lanarkshire, with the disappearance from some areas of entire coalmines and the bringing in of modern industries, must give credit to these past traditional policies. We do not intend to dismantle them. We strengthened them last year by doubling the regional employment premium and making the whole of Scotland a development area.
Many people in Scotland, however, have felt over the years that we could benefit more from the existing system if we had decision-making machinery which would enable us to identify and seek out the types of industrial development most
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likely to prosper in Scotland. Also, a more direct approach is needed if we are to transform and modernise the structure of Scotland's older industries and help home-based Scottish industry to develop. After all, only one job in five in Scotland's manufacturing sector is provided by firms which have come into Scotland since the war. The other four-fifths come from Scotland's indigenous industries, many of them small and badly structured.
Attention to this sector is just as vital. Transforming an old industrial structure such as that of West Central Scotland is a monumentally difficult task. We must not underestimate it. The owners of Scottish industry—past or present—must bear their share of the responsibility for the weakened state of many of our older industries today. Too often they failed to plough back profits into new plant and machinery at the right time and were unwilling to take the risk of expansion.
As a result, Scottish industry has not been in a strong position to resist the pressures of wider market forces. Too frequently individual industrial concerns—British or international—have rationalised out of existence what they call marginal Scottish plants to promote the greater profitability of their organisation as a whole. The overall result has been a substantial loss of jobs and industrial capacity in Scotland.
Obviously, the world does not owe Scotland a living. Completely uncompetitive industries cannot be supported indefinitely. But there have certainly been too many missed opportunities.
This is where the SDA can come in. What we feel is needed is a body whose main concern is to keep and create as many jobs in Scotland as possible—not just to make the fastest and biggest profits. It will have to take risks.
The SDA will have this motivation and the powers needed to step in and attempt to establish a viable and free-standing Scottish concern where jobs might otherwise be lost altogether. This power to involve itself directly in industry is perhaps the most fundamental new element in the entire concept of the SDA, and one which has the enthusiastic support of Scotland's workers—and we believe many people in management.
Through the misguided action of the Opposition in another place, the Bill

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as it stands denies to the agency the full powers needed to perform this rôle. That action shows the extent to which the Opposition are out of touch with the feelings and aspirations of the people of Scotland. I repeat the undertakings I gave earlier that we shall restore to the full the powers which have been removed in another place.
The SDA will not have an exclusively industrial remit. It is charged not simply with building factories and creating jobs but also with removing past dereliction and undertaking imaginative schemes to reshape and improve the environment of whole areas, making them attractive and pleasant places in which to live and work.
The combination of these two tasks in the remit of a single agency is a novel one. It is also what Scotland needs. We have to tackle quickly and in a coordinated fashion the economic and environmental decay which spoils the whole way of life of too many of Scotland's workers and stands in the way of attracting new work and new life to our older towns and cities. The resources which the agency will spend on improving the environment will pay dividends.
It will be able to undertake the whole process of redevelopment from clearing dereliction to providing factories and attracting the jobs to fill them. We have seen from past experience how building new roads, new houses and new towns has done much to attract industry and workpeople to Scotland. The agency will be applying these lessons to our older industrial communities. It will work particularly closely with local authorities to ensure that its projects are fully in accord with the needs of the community. We have already discussed this rôle with the local authorities and they have assured us of their full co-operation in these tasks. The discussions will continue.
I turn to the main provisions in the Bill. Clause 1 empowers me to appoint a chairman and between six and 12 other members to the agency from backgrounds which I consider relevant to its functions, and in particular, industry, banking, accounting and finance, trade unions, local government and environmental matters. I am also empowered to appoint the first chief executive of the agency in consultation with the chairman. This will
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enable this vital appointment to be filled without necessarily waiting for the agency to be fully established. But the chief executive will always be the employee of the agency and all subsequent appointments to this post will be filled by the agency with my approval.
When I have appointed the chairman designate of the agency—and I would like to be able to do so within the next few weeks—I shall invite to serve with him a number of members designate to form an organising committee to plan in advance for the establishment of the agency. I do not want to waste any time. The remaining members of the agency I shall appoint at a later date. The formation of an organising committee will ensure the least possible delay in getting the agency into action. It will be the organising committee's task to decide on the structure for the agency. The agency will be absorbing the work of two existing organisations—the Scottish Industrial Estates Corporation and the Small Industries Council for Rural Areas of Scotland.
I shall charge the organising committee to pay most particular attention to the interests of all the people at present employed in them. All our consultations so far indicate that the staff of the Estates Corporation and the Small Industries Council take great heart from the fact that they will be joining a new and expanding organisation with a remit—and the resources—to do a bigger and better job than they have been able to do in the past. This is certainly the right approach and I think the staff of the two organisations need have no fear about the change. I shall also ensure that the organising committee fully consults them on the shape of the agency's staff structure.
Clause 2, which caused some trouble in another place, specifies the objects, functions and general powers of the agency. The chief functions are providing finance for industrial undertakings, providing and managing industrial estates, developing and improving the environment and bringing derelict land into use. The clause as emasculated by the Opposition in another place now lacks the agency's vital function of establishing and carrying on undertakings by itself and in conjunction with private industry, and the corresponding power to form companies. We shall put that right.

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Clause 4 enables me to give the agency both general and specific directions as to the discharge of its functions. We have no intention of tying up the agency with unnecessary controls. No doubt we shall get complaints both ways, as we have had in the past. Some will say that we are not giving the agency enough freedom while others will say that we are not controlling it sufficiently. I have been through it all with respect to another Bill dealing with the northern parts of Scotland. I can give all the facts and figures about those who have criticisms to make. One lot balanced out the other.
We shall allow it the maximum degree of initiative and independence that is consistent with the nature of its functions. But it is proper that in the last resort I should be able to ensure that its priorities are the right ones and in keeping with the Government's general strategy towards development.
Clause 5 enables me to direct the agency to exercise in particular cases the functions of regional selective assistance under Section 7 of the Industry Act. These are the functions for which I become responsible next Tuesday. The agency will not be given the burdensome task of handling applications for selective assistance but I shall be able to use it, with the applicant company's consent, where I think its expertise will be of value in monitoring the Government's stake in a company which has received special help.
I attach the greatest importance to developing a close working relationship between SDA and the staff of what will now be my Glasgow office. It will be open to the agency to propose schemes of combined assistance where an element of subsidised help as well as agency finance appears justified.
Clause 6 enables the agency to perform the functions of providing and managing industrial sites and premises which it will inherit from the Scottish Industrial Estates Corporation. Here it will be taking over a going concern with a proud record. As a nationalised industry it has a profitable background in financing and building up the stock of modern factories. Its staff and resources will form part of the executive effort of the agency from the outset and will enable a quick start of its work.
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Clauses 7 and 8 deal with the agency's environmental functions.
Dr. M. S. Miller: Before my right hon. Friend deletes Clause 6, will he deal with the possibility of transferring agency property if a new town has been wound up? Will there be consultations with the local authorities?
Mr. Ross: I cannot see a new town being wound up by exercise of this Bill, but I look forward to reading any discussion that takes place in Committee on that point.
I was dealing with the agency environmental functions. These will be of immense potential benefit both to the economy of Scotland and to a large proportion of our population who currently have to live and work in drab and depressing surroundings. The agency's overall responsibility for the derelict land programme, which it will exercise in the closest consultation with local authorities and in arrangement with me, will enable a single-minded effort to he made in clearing the scars of the last industrial revolution. We intend to have discussions with the regional and district authorities to ensure that we progress speedily to an expanded rate of clearance with no loss of momentum in existing programmes.
One of the great advantages of the agency is that it will be able to couple its derelict land clearance responsibilities with the powers under Clause 7 and to devise and implement schemes which go beyond the simple clearance of land, involving the creation of a completely new environment which can transform the appearance of an area while making a positive contribution to the needs of the community for jobs, commercial, recreational and cultural facilities. It will create something which will positively attract people to an area in place of conditions which are too often an eyesore and an obstacle to redevelopment.
Mr. Galbraith: Will the right hon. Gentleman explain how that will fit in with the powers of the local authorities in those areas?
Mr. Ross: If the hon. Gentleman had been listening, he would know that we have already discussed that issue. There must be co-operation and agreement with

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a local authority. There may be occasions when a local authority that is doing a good job will be able to continue as an agent for the SDA. Indeed, the agency and the authorities must work together if we are to achieve the right kind of momentum.
Clauses 9, 10 and 11 give the agency the powers in relation to land which it needs to exercise its industrial estates and environmental functions.
Clauses 12, 13 and 14, together with Schedule 2, provide for the agency's financial arrangements. It will be given an initial financial allocation of £200 million for the exercise of its functions. The Bill provides for that allocation to be raised to £300 million subject to parliamentary approval. This will save the business of introducing completely new legislation. The matter can be effected by placing the appropriate form of words on the Order Paper and having a debate in the House lasting about an hour and a half.
The sums I have mentioned are additional to the existing spending in Scotland on selective assistance, regional development grants and the regional employment premium. It is worth noting that all these matters add up to £150 million per annum. Those who seem to think that Scotland is getting a raw deal should consider what is being provided in this measure and the continuation——
Mr. Gordon Wilson Mr. Gordon Wilson (Dundee, East) rose——
Mr. Ross: Not in the middle of a sentence. I ask them to consider that the items I have mentioned add up to £150 million a year. I bear in mind the letter that was kindly sent to me by the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. Crawford) which described the SDA as a pigmy.
Mr. David Lambie: That hon. Gentleman is a Tory.
Mr. Ross: I can assure the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire that the SDA more than matches that which he wrote to me in a letter dated 30th January. That letter was written before he knew what the Bill would contain.
Mr. Gordon Wilson: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way at the end of the paragraph if not in the middle of the sentence. The right hon. Gentleman has said that additional finance might be available to the extent of £200 million, and that it might be increased to £300 million. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us what period that additional sum will cover? Is the period intended to be three years, five years, 10 years or 15 years, or will matter be left in a vague fashion with no additional information being provided?
Secondly, bearing in mind the massive oil revenue which will start flowing in now that the oil has appeared, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the amount of additional assistance given by means of the Bill will be quite insufficient to match Scotland's serious problem of growing unemployment?
Mr. Ross: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman has finished his speech. The matters that he has raised will be fully covered. If the hon. Gentleman can read, he will see that there is no time stated. If he is aware of what usually happens in relation to Bills of this nature, he will realise that when the money runs out, or looks like running out, we return to the House for more. If the hon. Gentleman has any knowledge of how moneys are provided for the SSHA and other organisations, he will appreciate the way in which provision is made. The hon. Gentleman cannot make any great point about the money having to last for ever and ever. Those who are interested in the development of Scotland will be glad to see the money used purposefully and profitably and as quickly as possible. The House will be ready to supply further moneys.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned oil revenue. We are introducing the Bill before we get a single penny from oil revenues. The hon. Gentleman should appreciate what has been done by British Governments by means of the traditional incentives of the past, amounting to over £150 million in a single year. That is only in relation to the finance that stems from the Industry Act and from REP. If the hon. Gentleman would consider those matters and then tell the people of Scotland what has been done by a British Government, I think he would be a little

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less mealy-mouthed in his nationalist propaganda.
Mr. Teddy Taylor: The Secretary of State has spelt out that £150 million is being provided by way of various forms of assistance because of action that has been taken by previous Governments and by the present Government. Will the right hon. Gentleman give us an estimate of the additional burden of taxation placed on industry by his Government?
Mr. Ross: Not in this Bill and not in this part of my speech. The moneys are additional to existing spending. As I have said, that spending goes to the industries that need it. This is a commitment to the development of Scotland's economy on a scale which is quite unprecedented.
Clause 15 provides for the transfer to the agency of the Scottish Industrial Estates Corporation and the Small Industries Council for the Rural Areas of Scotland.
Schedule 3 provides important safeguards for the staff. The transfer of the activities of the Small Industries Council will give an important rural dimension to the agency's work. It will bring the benefits of a broadly-powered development agency to those rural regions of Scotland outside the Highlands and Islands which have long advocated the resources of a body of this kind.
The valuable work which SICRAS has done in the rural areas will be combined with a rural factory building programme which the SDA will in due course inherit from the Development Commission. I am glad to say that I have had a discussion with the chairman of the Commission, Mr. Donald Chapman, a former Member of this House. Mr. Chapman wholeheartedly supports our proposals and has agreed to make himself and the services of the commission available to the agency until 1st January 1977 to ensure an orderly hand-over of duties.
There is one aspect of the agency to which the Bill does not refer. There is not one mention of it in the Bill, although one would have thought from the debates in another place that it was the Bill's core and centre. I refer to the agency's relationship with the National Enterprise Board. This is naturally a matter of great
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interest and one on which some odd notions have been flying around. The agency will in no sense be a creature of the NEB. It will be responsible to me as Secretary of State.
I am surprised that a body as august as the CBI did not realise that we never mention specifically the Secretary of State for Industry, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Secretary of State for Scotland or the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The "Secretary of State" is a hydra-headed individual. [An HON. MEMBER: "A hydra-headed monster?"] I do not know whether that is a reference to the present Secretary of State for Scotland. This body will be responsible to me. It will have its own funds and take its own decisions. These will be decisions about Scotland taken in Scotland. We envisage a close and complementary relationship between the SDA and the National Enterprise Board in Scotland.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry and I will be working out the details of that relationship and in due course we shall be issuing guidance to both sides. This will be done once the two bodies are established and are able to make their own suggestions about what the relationship should be. But the guidance will deal, among other things, with arrangements for the NEB's own functions in Scotland. This guidance will make clear that the SDA will normally be responsible for schemes concerning companies wholly or predominantly based in Scotland. Where its actions or the actions of the NEB could have an effect on employment in Scotland, the NEB would be expected to exercise its powers in full consultation with the SDA.
One point worth stressing is that there will be no rigid demarcation between a class of companies or undertakings in Scotland which are the concern of the agency and others which are to be reserved to the actions of the NEB. There is no question of the agency's activities being limited to small locally-owned companies, as some misguided comment has suggested. On the contrary, the agency will develop contacts with the whole of Scottish industry. It will be able to enter into discussion with any Scottish-based company or the management of any Scottish undertaking to see how that company or undertaking can best contribute

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to the general good of the Scottish economy. If proposals emerge from such discussions which point to action by the NEB as well as by the SDA—for example, assistance to or acquisition of an interest in holdings in England—the agency may make proposals to the NEB to that effect.
The idea of a Scottish Development Agency is not new. The Labour Party in Scotland and the Scottish Trades Union Congress have long argued the case for a Scottish-based body with direct powers to develop industry in Scotland. They have not been alone in this view. A wide range of bodies and organisations—for example, the Scottish Council (Development and Industry), the West Central Scotland Planning Team, and even some of our political parties—have all argued the case for a body with executive responsibilities. The Government have acted to make a reality of this widely shared aspiration of people in Scotland in bringing forward the proposals for the SDA. The response to our proposals, when we published them early this year in our consultation document, confirmed that. Responsible opinion from all quarters in Scotland is virtually unanimous in acknowledging the need for such a body. It ill becomes anybody who professes to have Scotland's interests at heart to seek to stultify these provisions or to delay still further the introduction of the agency.
It is just over 10 years ago since I, as Secretary of State for Scotland, introduced the Highlands and Islands Development (Scotland) Bill. I well remember the speeches made at that time. One ex-Secretary of State for Scotland said that the measure came straight from Karl Marx. I remember saying that that right hon. Gentleman's criticisms came straight from Groucho Marx. Suspicions were aroused and there was talk of nationalisation by the back door. Really! I wonder whether those people looking back on those speeches today are very proud of what they said. I am certainly proud of the Highlands and Islands Development Board and its achievement of the Scottish Development Agency. I commend the Bill to the House.
4.45 p.m.
Mr. Alick Buchanan-Smith: If the right hon.
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Gentleman the Secretary of State for Scotland is so proud of the Highlands and Islands Development Board and the Bill on that topic which he introduced into the House, he might reflect on the procedures used on that Bill. The procedure then employed meant that the Second Reading was taken on the Floor of the House, which is the proper place for such legislation to be dealt with.
The right hon. Gentleman knows that all major items of legislation, whether the Opposition vote against them or not, are normally taken on the Floor. That is the proper place for them to be dealt with. Furthermore, the Local Government (Scotland) Bill 1973 introduced by a Conservative Government—again, not voted against by the Labour Opposition—was taken on the Floor.
Mr. Douglas Henderson Mr. Douglas Henderson (Aberdeenshire, East) rose——
Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I cannot give way. I have only just begun.
The right hon. Gentleman in his remarks on the procedures to be adopted on the progress of the Bill is seeking to cover the Government's failure to manage their business timetable. He has suggested that the Bill could have been sent to the Scottish Grand Committee, where there is no possibility of its being voted down.
Mr. Ross Mr. Ross rose——
Mr. Henderson: Wait until the end of the sentence‡
Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I shall give way to the right hon. Gentleman in a moment. I was saying that this was a measure of the Government's failure to manage its business timetable, and that is why the Secretary of State sought to make his accusations.
Mr. Ross: The hon. Gentleman should know that the procedures of the House allow the Opposition to vote against a Bill even after it has been discussed in the Scottish Grand Committee. If a motion is tabled and signed by six hon. Members, the House must debate the legislation concerned and it can be voted upon in the House. Therefore, there could be two debates on such a matter.
Mr. Buchanan-Smith: Will the right hon. Gentleman say how many times he used that procedure when in Opposition? He cannot do so. The Labour Opposition never used that procedure because they faced a Government which had the courtesy to provide time for these matters to be properly debated on the Floor of the House.
Mr. Henderson: Could the hon. Gentleman explain the advantage of debating this measure on the Floor of the House when there is not one English or Welsh Member present in the Chamber?
Mr. Buchanan-Smith: The hon. Gentleman is being unfair to the right hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Thomas), who is now in the Chair, and also he has failed to observe that at the end of his bench there is another Welsh Member, the hon. Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Evans). There are also present numerous Members from other parts of the United Kingdom. On important matters such as are covered by the Bill it is surely important that they should be properly debated on the Floor of the House.
It is worth pointing out that a certain amount of delay in parliamentary proceedings is justifiable if it serves the cause of democracy. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the urgency in getting the Bill enacted so that the powers in the Bill may be exercised at the earliest opportunity. I ask him to remember two things. Of course we want to see measures that will improve the Scottish economy. It is interesting to appreciate that unemployment was already falling in Scotland and was falling under a Conservative Government.
Mr. Lambie: Nonsense.
Mr. Buchanan-Smith: The hon. Gentleman should contain himself. Although unemployment under a Labour Government is at an unprecedented high level—over 100,000—the Secretary of State sought to take credit for the fact that the general level of employment in Scotland and the job prospects in our economy were better than a number of years ago.
The right hon. Gentleman also mentioned the improvement in the figure of
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migration from Scotland. I welcome this and also the news that there is now a net gain to population in Scotland, which is a great change. The right hon. Gentleman should also reflect that this great improvement in migration took place during a period of Conservative Government. Although many basic problems still need to be tackled in Scotland, the right hon. Gentleman should not ignore the many methods available to tackle those problems if the will exists.
I remind the right hon. Gentleman that under Section 7 of the Industry Act 1972 there is power for the Government to help industry in Scotland and elsewhere. It is available to the Government at the present time if they choose to use it. Therefore one must ask whether the Secretary of State's concern to get this Bill quickly and urgently into action stems from a general desire to help industry—because general powers ale already available—or from the fact that these are powers, additional to those under Section 7 of the Industry Act 1972, enabling him to extend the degree of Government intervention into profitable industry as well as into industry which genuinely needs help.
This is the only conclusion I can reach from his statement this afternoon, when he repeated the assurance of the Minister in another place that he would restore those powers which were deleted in another place. It appears that he is simply not willing to use the powers available to him because he wants these additional and much wider powers of State intervention which are not available to him at the present time.
I am surprised at the right hon. Gentleman's confidence in thinking that he can so easily achieve these powers, after what happened this morning in Committee, when the Minister of State, Scottish Office, was left in a minority of one and defeated by the rest of the Committee. Perhaps his right hon. Friend was frightened to tell him what had happened. He may not have known. But he shows a very naïve confidence this afternoon if he thinks that he can get these powers easily. The House and everyone outside it must know that the Secretary of State simply wants this Bill in order to acquire very much wider powers of intervention than he has now.

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With regard to improvement of the environment, if the will of Government is there, and the Government are prepared to provide the money, they do not necessarily need the powers sought in the Bill. One has only to look at the Local Employment Act 1972, or to go back to the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1966, or the Countryside (Scotland) Act 1967, to see all the powers already available to the Government to help improve the environment, to do away with dereliction, and so on, in Scotland—all of these being purposes that the Opposition support. Legislation has been enacted by successive Governments under different political parties.
The truth is that if the Secretary of State wanted to do this he could; and the urgency of the introduction of this Bill is a judgment upon him, simply demonstrating that he is not prepared at the moment to give the money to local authorities to enable them to carry on with the work themselves. It makes me wonder how genuine are his protestations that after this Bill is passed the money will necessarily be available later.
I believe that the right hon. Gentleman's sense of urgency about the Bill, and his concern to get the agency into action quickly, are simply a smokescreen for his current unwillingness to provide the necessary resources, either under the Industry Act or through the various local government Acts, to enable others to do the job of improving the environment that they are able to do at the present time.
I will not let the Secretary of State get away with the belief that delaying this Bill for proper consideration is in any way denying help to industry or to local authorities in Scotland in improving the environment in which they are operating.
The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Mr. Bruce Millan): Is the right hon. Gentleman saying that it is the view of the Conservative Opposition that we do not need a Scottish Development Agency at all, or is he saying that it is an agency with rather different powers? He seems to be arguing the former.
Mr. Buchanan-Smith: Not in the least, but I wish the right hon. Gentleman would listen to what I am saying. I was
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dealing perfectly specifically at the beginning with the accusations of the Secretary of State concerning the Opposition's seeking proper debate of this very important measure, and that by its being properly debated, and proper time given to it, certain benefits were being denied to people in Scotland. My point is that, because of what is happening in this House, benefits are not being denied to the Scottish people. I want to put that on record firmly and clearly this afternoon.
Coming to the more specific provisions of the Bill, I support many of the intentions and proposals in it, either to help industry or to improve the environment in Scotland, though I question the extent of and the need for some of the powers it is sought to take. Equally, while believing that the development agency can have a useful function—I hope that if it comes into being it will perform a useful function—one is bound to reflect, at the same time, upon the establishment of another new agency to carry out many of the powers already available to central and local government.
We are kidding ourselves if we think that by the establishment of an agency we shall necessarily solve some of the problems that we are facing in Scotland at the present time. What is needed is, first, the will to solve them, and, secondly, the resources to solve them. No matter how many agencies or boards may be set up, these problems will not be solved unless the Government are prepared to have the will and to make available the resources to do so. The important point is that the powers are there at the moment, but the will and the resources have been lacking.
Dr. M. S. Miller: Would not the hon. Member agree that it is very much better and easier, and facilitates the situation no end, if potential developers can go to a central agency instead of to 10, 12 or 15 different agencies to get these things done?
Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman understands the situation fully. If there were only one agency it might be easier, and there is some argument for many of these powers being exercised by the Scottish Office itself, because people then know to whom

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they can go in order to get things done. But there is a multiplication of agencies, and this affects the conclusion of any issue more than anything else.
I have no doctrinaire opposition to the establishment of an agency in order to carry out these tasks, if it is proved to be the best way to do it and will not conflict with what has been done by other agencies and bodies of Government in other directions. There are certain circumstances in which an agency can be a good thing. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that in the course of the Committee stage we shall do all we can to improve the agency, and to make sure that it is a fit body in relation to all the other bodies with which it has to operate in carrying out its job. But unless the Government are prepared to back up this agency in many other ways, particularly with resources, I suggest that it will achieve no more than the Government have already been able to achieve or other Governments before them.
Turning to the powers of the agency, I suggest that the Secretary of State in his speech glossed over the attitude of various bodies in Scotland. He said that it has the support, for example, of the Scottish TUC, but he is absolutely wrong if he thinks that it has widespread support throughout industry.
I was surprised that the Minister in another place took particular exception to criticisms made of this agency by, for example, the Secretary of the Scottish Branch of the CBI. He interpreted what he said as part of a personal vendetta by the secretary of the CBI in Scotland against what the Government were seeking to do. The Secretary of State repeated something of that cavalier attitude towards the CBI when he said that many sections of industry gave their wholehearted support to the Government's proposals. I question that, and to support what I say I refer only to the letter which the Scottish division of the CBI circulated to all hon. Members on 15th May in the course of which it said:
"These powers are wide-ranging, ill-defined and require clarification…The safeguards on the powers of the SDA would appear to be inadequate."
Clearly the CBI has considerable doubts about its operation, and these are brought out in a letter sent by the CBI to the Minister of State, a copy of which I
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received, in which it makes clear its opposition to many parts of the Bill. Incidentally, the CBI wrote on 10th February and 14th April but received no reply. It had to write again on 2nd May summarising its points of opposition to the Bill.
That letter regrets the lack of consultation—the inadequate consultation which the Government were prepared to carry out with bodies such as the CBI, and having summarised its opposition to certain parts of the SDA, the concluding paragraph says:
"In all the circumstances we feel impelled to advocate parliamentary opposition to the Bill in principle."
The Secretary of State is wrong if be believes that the Bill has wide support in Scotland beyond his own supporters and members of the STUC. Many people in Scotland have misgivings about it. Certain purposes of the SDA are worthy of support, but some of its proposed powers give cause for concern and give rise to the opposition which I put forward to the Bill.
As originally drafted when it went to the House of Lords and as the Secretary of State proposes to alter it in its passage through this House, the Bill gives to the Government powers which are far beyond anything that any Government have had in any past industry Bill. It is here that the Scottish National Party especially shows tremendous naïvety in its approach. The Bill is simply a vehicle for greater State intervention and an extension of nationalisation. It is interesting that the SNP supports the Government, though no one should be surprised about it since it supports the Government on many matters, from Clydebank councillors to defence and other Left-wing policies. In this Bill, again we have the SNP supporting measures which are completely Socialist in their nature.
Mr. Norman Buchan: The hon. Gentleman can take this as a formal declaration that the discussions have broken down.
Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I should be interested to know what these discussions are. That intervention shows the extent of the credibility which the Press puts upon leaks from the SNP when its Members try to put round stories like that. I

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should be interested to hear what justification the SNP has for such announcements. It would be completely out of character for the Conservative Party to have talks with the second Socialist Party of Scotland, and certainly I would not be a party to any such talks.
I was about to deal with the powers which the House of Lords deleted and which the Secretary of State intends to put back into the Bill in the course of its passage through this House. Here I come to the fundamental difference between the two sides of the House—the Labour Government and the SNP on the one hand, and the Conservative Party on the other—in their attitudes towards and policies for industry.
I can show the contrast best by comparing the proposals in this Bill with the 1972 Industry Act, which my party introduced when in Government, and indeed also in the creature of the previous Labour Government, the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation. In both we find a fundamentally different attitude towards industry from that in this Bill.
In both the IRC and in the kind of intervention which takes places under the 1972 Act, compared with the kind of intervention envisaged in this Bill, we see a totally different approach to the problems of industry and a different attitude towards industry.
Under the 1972 Act, intervention is seen basically in two forms. It is seen first as a rescue operation for a firm which has got itself into trouble, especially if it is important to the national economy and if State intervention is necessary for the security of jobs. The other way in which intervention may properly take place, as laid down in the 1972 Act, is where a pump-priming operation is necessary to help an industry in difficulty get back again on to the road of profitability. Basically, therefore, it is seen as a short-term rescue operation or as a pump-priming operation to help an industry to be profitable once again. All this is written carefully into the 1972 Industry Act. What is more, those powers are to be used only in the last resort. When all other methods have failed to help an industry, State intervention may take place.
Once an industry is back on its feet, there is an obligation on the Government
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to dispose of their interest in it, as was the case with the Labour Government's Industrial Reorganisation Corporation. The function of the IRC was to invest in a firm in order to help it and then to sell off its investment and turn round its resources so that it was then able to go on to help another industry or firm if required.
This concept of a rescue or pump-priming operation is in complete contrast to what the Government propose in this Bill, which is simply a licence for indiscriminate Government intervention without limit of time for the furtherance of political ends. It is simply to extend the power of the State and of the Government. It is required for that alone.
Intervention proposals of this kind embodied in a Bill without any limit of time, give rise to a great deal of worry in industry and in the CBI. We have the predicament into which other firms are placed because of the subsequent unfair competition which can result from this form of intervention. This is an important matter. The Secretary of State was critical of Scottish industry and said that the record of certain private industries was not good in terms of investment and so on. That may be so. But I ask the right hon. Gentleman to reflect on some of the reasons for that bad performance. The fault may lie with the Government, who have been creating conditions in which industry is unable to prosper.
The Government wrap up their policies towards industry in a package which looks attractive. They say, "We will help you if you are in difficulty, and we will help you to expand." But, by means of other policies, they create the difficulties which cause firms to go to them seeking help in the first place. Then the Government turn round and say, "We told you so. Private industry has failed."
I ask the Secretary of State to realise—he should also reflect that the cause of that failure may be within the Government's control—that the way to deal with it is to get to the root cause and to deal with the Government's economic policies rather than the cosmetics of rescue operations and State intervention.
It is in that respect that I see the biggest difference between the approach of the Conservative Party and the approach of

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the Government and the Scottish Nationalist Party, because they are seeking to intervene in industry simply for the sake of intervening and of extending the power of the State. That is my main criticism of the Government and it is for that reason that the powers that they are giving to the SDA are wrong and should be opposed.
Mr. Buchan: If the hon. Gentleman is sustaining the line of argument that the purpose and aim of such a development is in order to increase the power of Government, would he not consider tabling an amendment to ensure that workers in any establishment have full control over any moneys given? This would remove governmental control and give it back to the people.
Mr. Buchanan-Smith: We all know of the hon. Gentleman's idiosyncratic views on intervention in industry. When we deal with the industrial democracy sections of the Bill, we shall look forward to hearing what he has to say.
I should like to turn to two other aspects whch give me and people in Scotland cause for concern. The first is the relationship of the Scottish Development Agency with the National Enterprise Board. The Secretary of State was, to some extent, sensitive to this because he remarked upon it and tried to reassure the House that there would be no problems of demarcation between these two bodies. However, these bodies give me cause for a certain amount of worry because there has been some mixed and double thinking by the Government.
In paragraph 6 of the consultative document which the Secretary of State produced in January this year he states quite categorically that
"The SDA will in no sense be simply a Scottish 'arm' of the National Enterprise Board. As an independent body, responsible to the Secretary of State for Scotland, it will operate its industrial powers in a distinctive fashion best designed to meet Scottish needs."
The Secretary of State repeated that statement this afternoon.
Paragraph 5 of that document states categorically that
"the Scottish Development Agency would carry out in Scotland appropriate functions of the National Enterprise Board."
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No wonder there is confusion when statements of that nature are to be found in neighbouring paragraphs of the consultative document. They create an element of confusion in people's minds.
I should like to refer to the speech of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) when the Industry Bill was debated in Committee on 4th March. As reported at column 18 he made it absolutely clear that the writ of the NEB does run to Scotland—and throughout the whole of the United Kingdom.
Throughout the debates in the House of Lords the Minister of State went to considerable lengths to try to distinguish the different functions of the National Enterprise Board and the Scottish Development Agency. In the Second Reading debate on 15th March and on Report on 24th May he tried to spell out the differences between the functions of the two bodies in Scotland. In another place on 24th June the Minister of State said:
"The point is that there will be no rigid demarcation between some companies or undertakings in Scotland which are the concern of the Agency and others which are reserved to the NEB."
That is simply confusing.
The Minister of State then referred to the guidelines, to which the Secretary of State has referred. He said:
"On the subject of the guidelines, my statement is fairly lengthy, perhaps not necessarily easy to take in completely"—[Official Report, House of Lords; 24th June 1975 Vol. 361, c. 1298–99.]
It is not easy to take in completely. I only hope that too many people are not too easily taken in by it.
In the House of Lords the Minister of State merely compounded the confusion that existed between these two bodies about the powers they are to exercise. In some respects the SDA is to have the power, and in other respects the NEB is to have the power. This simply adds to the confusion of industry in Scotland about how these powers are to work in the end. In Committee we shall require more specific guidelines from the Secretary of State about where the NEB finishes and the SDA starts, otherwise industry in Scotland will not know to whom it should go if it needs help.
I turn to the subject of finance. The Secretary of State was less than fair to the House when he gave an indication of

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the amount of money that should be spent. I sympathise with the point put to him by the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Wilson) about precisely what expenditure this body should have. The limit is £200 million. I am surprised that the Secretary of State was not prepared to give a better indication of the period of time over which this amount of money will be available.
In a Press statement issued by the Scottish Office on 31st January he indicated that the time scale would be five years—in other words, of the order of £40 million a year for five years. I see that the right hon. Gentleman is shaking his head. If he has changed his mind since then, perhaps he would give the House the benefit of his change of mind. He stated these figures quite clearly in the Press notice.
Mr. Crawford: Will the hon. Gentleman tell the House how much money his party would like the SDA to be given?
Mr. Buchanan-Smith: It is the Government who are in power and the Government who have to answer these points. The hon. Gentleman should know that. I am waiting to hear what the Government have to say on this.
I have taken these figures from the right hon. Gentleman's Press statement and he is talking about £40 million a year, from which running expenses of about £3½ million have to be deducted. Against this has to be set the sum of £15 million to £16 million which is already being spent by agencies which the SDA will take over. This leaves a net sum of about £20 million a year which is additional money for Scottish industry. I have done my arithmetic on the best information that is available. Perhaps when the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of State replies he will deal with this matter.
Welcome as the figure of £20 million a year is—and I am glad to see money being spent in Scotland on regenerating industry and helping the environment—I caution the House that this is a much smaller sum than the Government would like people in Scotland to think they are spending. The saving of £15 million to £16 million a year—the sum of money that is being subsumed by the Scottish Development Agency—is being spent on existing pro-
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grammes, and it would be subject to increases, because these agencies are committed to programmes at present, and to increases in money terms as a result of inflation. Therefore, with inflation running as it is at present, at about 25 per cent., the money being spent, although it is £15 million currently, would rise over the next year to about £20 million.
Yet what is absolutely clear from the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum to the Bill is that the limit set to expenditure under this Bill is in financial terms and not real terms. The money that would be spent were this body not to come into being would be increasing in money terms, whereas the actual money that the Secretary of State will be spending is absolutely fixed in money terms. Therefore, the net amount of money in real terms which will be available is likely to be very much less than the Secretary of State has sought to make out either in this debate or in speeches he has made outside the House.
There are many other points in the Bill to which I should like to refer, but I am sure that many of my hon. Friends will raise them during the debate. We shall certainly return to them in Committee.
In conclusion, while additional money and additional resources to help industry and the environment in Scotland are things that we welcome, and things that will be welcomed generally in Scotland, it is only right to question the actual working and the powers of the SDA itself. If, on the one hand—and here I answer specifically the point put to me by the Minister of State—it is needed to provide a new drive for industrial development and an improvement in the environment, the concept of an agency may well be justified. But, on the other hand, we are bound to question the powers given to the agency.
It is not a matter of simply letting oneself be taken in by the honeyed words of the Secretary of State. The powers of this agency are the powers of the NEB extended to Scotland. What we are seeing is the extension of Socialism in Scotland for Socialism's sake. I ask people in Scotland not to be kidded by what the Government are doing.
Secondly, with the multiplicity of agencies—we shall have the SDA, the BNOC, the NEB and, in the Highland

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area, the HIDB—we are running into the danger of getting into a massive bureaucratic muddle which is the creation of the present Government.
That is why I recommend my right hon. and hon. Friends to vote against the Bill tonight.
5.23 p.m.
Mr. Peter Doig: I welcome the Bill because I believe that it will go a long way towards helping to solve what is and has been the main problem in Scotland for many years—unemployment. In Dundee at present we are facing a difficult period. It is a difficult period when compared with other Labour-controlled periods. If one compares it with the Tory-controlled periods, one can appreciate that it is quite a prosperous period. It depends on what it is compared with.
I also welcome the Bill because, as has been said repeatedly, when Britain's regulations are applied to Scotland they do not always work out as well as would special regulations for Scotland. Therefore, I welcome the Bill as giving special regulations for Scotland and the power to deal with Scotland as a separate community, in the sense of dealing with the problem in the way that has been advocated by hon. Members of the Scottish National Party in the past, who have said—it was a well-known phrase even before most of them came to the House—that if England catches a chill, Scotland gets pneumonia. That is the sort of situation we want to be able to prevent. The Bill will enable the Secretary of State for Scotland to do just that. I therefore welcome it for that reason.
I come now to one of the problems that has bothered my area for a very long time. There have been periods when we have had possibly record high unemployment—almost 30 per cent. of the working population unemployed in the 1920s and about 45 per cent. unemployed in the 1930s. We in our area know what high unemployment means. Fortunately, we have not had anything like that for a long time. However, we have had it in the past, and it his always been a bogy to people in the Dundee area.
We succeeded in solving this problem when the first post-war Labour Government passed the Distribution of Industries
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Act, which allowed financial inducements to be given to areas of very high unemployment in order to solve their problems. Dundee was one of the first areas to benefit from this policy. We reduced unemployment of between 30,000 and 40,000 to virtually full employment when we had under 2,000 unemployed in the City of Dundee. That is how successful that policy was. We have never gone back to such high levels of unemployment, although under the Tories we have gone as high as 24,000 fairly recently, in 1972. That was for a short period, but it just shows that the latent danger is still there, not far under the surface. We want to be able to deal with it.
The reason why we solved the problem in the first place was that we in the Dundee area were allowed to give the highest financial inducements that it was possible to give in Britain. On that basis of fair competition we were able to attract industry to our area on a scale that was almost unbelievable at that time. But what has happened since then? We have had very high unemployment in certain other parts of Britain, notably around the Glasgow area. Special development areas were introduced, and they received a higher priority and higher financial inducements than those which we could give in Dundee to attract new industry.
The problem started with the closure of mines. Special development area status was given to fairly small pockets but then it was spread to the entire Glasgow area, and that was a very different matter. The result was that we found for the first time that we were starting to lose out again. We were losing our because we could not give the top financial inducements that could be given by other areas which were serious competitors. Unemployment again became a problem.
From that time onwards, under successive Governments, we have repeatedly petitioned various Ministers in order to get Dundee back on to the top grade for financial inducements. We have tried to get special development area status. We have been told by Ministers under successive Tory Governments that in fact it made very little difference. It is interesting to note that we had a meeting this week with our Minister of State, who told us almost the same thing—that it makes very little difference.

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That is what Ministers say at meetings, but let us see what they say when talking dispassionately from a distance and in letters. One of the Ministers who has said this is the right hon. Member for Knutsford (Mr. Davies) when he was in charge of the Department responsible for these grants. He refused to allow us special development area status and stressed that it was a very minimal advantage, being a grant of 22 per cent. as against 20 per cent. In a letter to the clerk to the Tayside Development Authority the right hon. Gentleman said:
"Among other considerations I have to take into account the fact that extending the Special Development Areas is likely to deprive the existing Areas of some of the mobile jobs available."
The right hon. Gentleman considered that this status was effective, even if it was a marginal difference. He went on to say:
"If SDA incentives are a crucial factor I should have thought it made sense for those concerned to look at the extensive areas of Scotland where jobs are also urgently needed and such incentives are given."
What this meant was that when we were complaining about unemployment in Dundee and saying that this marginal difference made the difference between our getting jobs and not getting them, the right hon. Gentleman told us—in a letter; not at a meeting—that we should say "We do not need these jobs, and you should redirect them to Glasgow because they have the top priority through their special development area status". That is what in effect he was saying. One can imagine the difficulties of me going back to Dundee and telling that to the unemployed. That is what he wanted.
We heard the same story this week from the Minister of State—that it makes very little difference. But this marginal difference is very important, as the previous Minister spelled out in his reply to me and the Dundee corporation. It makes a difference and if we were granted that status we would be very happy.
This fund is to be administered in Scotland on a Scottish basis. Now the whole of Scotland is either a development or a special development area. No longer do we have grey areas or other types of area. I am asking that, now that the Government have this glorious
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opportunity, they should change the situation and give the same incentives to every part of Scotland. They consider that this enhanced status makes it only a marginal difference anyway. I do not think it will cause hardship to allow all areas to compete on a fair and equal basis and that is all that we in the Dundee area are asking. If we can have that, we are quite confident that the natural attractions of our area—good trade union relations and labour relations, a good climate, a large number of golf courses, and so on—will bring industry to our area.
Mr. Donald Stewart: I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. I am following with interest his excellent "commercial" for the Dundee area. On the face of it, it would seem fair to extend the system over the whole of Scotland, but what does he think of the effect on an area such as mine where there is an unemployment rate of 16 per cent. and high freight rates? What would happen to us or even to the West of Scotland.
Mr. Doig: Is the hon. Member's area a special development area?
Mr. Stewart Mr. Stewart indicated assent.
Mr. Doig: It is and it has this marginal difference, but even with it, because of the natural disadvantages, the area cannot attract industry. I am not particularly concerned about the hon. Member's area or the ex-mining areas which will take only a very small number of jobs. I am concerned about competition from other industrial areas in Scotland and elsewhere. That is a different proposition and that is what I am complaining about.
If the Government want to readjust the system to help isolated pockets, which would have no overall effect on Scotland, I would not object. I object to a highly industrialised area having an advantage over another such area which, over a period of years, has had consistently high unemployment. There have been one or two occasions in history when unemployment in the Glasgow area has been higher than that in Dundee, but there have been many occasions when the opposite has been the case.

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It has been said many times that Glasgow is the No. 1 industrial area in Scotland, and Dundee has always claimed to come second. I am not sure that that is strictly true. There is probably more industry around Edinburgh than Dundee. We are not worried about competition from the Orkneys and Shetlands or any of the other small parts. We are concerned about our main competitor—Glasgow.
The Labour Government set up a study of the Tayside area and decided that it was one of three in Britain and the only one in Scotland that was ripe for rapid industrial expansion. We have the offices, the ground, the sites, the labour force and everything required for this rapid expansion. We are asking the Government to implement what they foresaw for Tayside and to allow us to compete on equal terms with other large industrial areas in the country. If we can compete on equal terms I am certain that we can hold our own and expand considerably to the benefit of the whole of Scotland.
It is bad for Scotland that all our industry should be centred in one area. It is argued that industry and offices should be moved away from London, which is the most overcrowded part of Britain, but what is the point of sending it to Glasgow which is the most overcrowded part of Scotland?
We must not set up one industrial area of colossal size. Instead we must develop the existing industrial areas which can easily be expanded, and the classic case at the moment is Tayside. I urge the Government fully to consider this matter when they start to use the Bill.
5.37 p.m.
Mr. Donald Stewart: I hope that the hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) will excuse me if I do not continue his very eloquent plea on behalf of his area. No doubt the Government will take his comments into account in due course. My party welcomes the principle behind the Bill. We shall seek to amend certain provisions during the Bill's progress and on other matters we shall at least require clarification.
We agree that the Bill is an effort to do something to repair the decades, if not generations, of neglect of Scotland by successive Governments at Westminster.
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It hardly calls for the fanfare which the Secretary of State gave it today, but it is entitled to perhaps a tune on the pipes, and we welcome it as far as it goes. Scotland knows that a Bill of this kind is essential, and that makes the dragging of their feet by the Tories all the more reprehensible. The implications of the Bill for jobs in Scotland are far too serious for the kind of party politics in which the hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns (Mr. Buchanan-Smith) indulged.
One suspects that the discovery and exploitation of Scottish oil had a good deal to do with concentrating the mind of the Government in the direction of the Bill. No country capable of commanding the resources that Scotland now has could accept any delay in the provision of substantial benefits.
I will not deal with the nuts and bolts of the Bill, as I hope that one of my hon. Friends will be able to speak later in the debate, but I should like to make some observations and to ask questions which I hope will be answered in the winding-up speech.
We welcome the remit of the agency to further economic developments. It must also be a source of great satisfaction that one of its functions will be to remove the blight of the first industrial revolution on Scotland, a great deal of which still remains around the countryside. One hopes that the powers in the Bill—and we are not afraid of them in the least—will be used, together with other remedies in the hands of the Government, to see that no further blight comes along with the extraction of oil.
First, is the control of the agency to be vested in the Scottish Assembly when that body is set up? I assume that several of the functions of the Secretary of State will eventually be transferred to the Assembly. The Assembly must be given the right to decide and control the part to be played by the agency in the Scottish economy.
Secondly, is the agency to be responsible to the National Enterprise Board? We must have this matter cleared up. It would seem that the functions of the board are to be retained and administered on a wholly United Kingdom basis. We should like an assurance that the development agency will be completely autonomous on a Scottish basis.

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Thirdly, how is the Highlands and Island Development Board affected by the setting up of the development agency? The board covers a wide and underdeveloped area of Scotland, and although Highlanders and Islanders have reservations about its policies and functions, about what it has done and failed to do, there is no doubt that it has been of tremendous aid to the area of its operations. Nevertheless, those in the Highland area have some disquiet about the situation which will follow the setting up of the agency. Compared with the agency, the board's finances are miniscule. Can we be assured that the interests and operations of the agency will cover the whole of Scotland?
Mr. J. Grimond: I am much interested in this point and I wholly agree with the hon. Gentleman. May we also be assured that this will not simply lead to another layer of bureaucrats? The board is already too centralised in Inverness and is too bureaucratic.
Mr. Stewart: I fully agree with the right hon. Gentleman. The hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns referred to a multiplicity of agencies. The short cut to getting rid of that multiplicity is a Scottish Government to do the complete job.
I welcome the provisions in the Bill which will allow the agency to assist in maintaining and improving the air services in the Highland and Islands. This will not be regarded as a generous donation by the Government. In the Highlands and Islands we are entitled to reasonable public transport in frequency and costs. We pay our share in income tax to cut the deficit of British Rail. It is correct that where railways are required they should be provided, even at a loss. We think that the same principle should apply to the airways in the Highlands and Islands.
We shall support the Government to secure the setting up of the agency. The Bill is a bit of a rough diamond, but we hope to polish its corners and to send it forth as something that will be of great assistance to the people of Scotland.
5.43 p.m.
Mr. Russell Fairgrieve: It would not be proper for me to follow the hon. Member for Western Isles (Mr. Stewart) without making some comments on one or two of his remarks. We hear the continual parrot cry of neglect of Scotland by successive British Governments. That idea should be nailed once and for all. I ask the House to consider the roads, the schools, the grants to industry that have come from the British taxpayer and British industry over the past 25 years to help the people of the United Kingdom, including Scotland.
Mr. Gordon Wilson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Fairgrieve: Yes, provided that my speech is not delayed.
Mr. Wilson: Despite that advantage to the House, may I ask whether the hon. Gentleman is aware that during that period Scottish unemployment has been significantly higher than unemployment in other parts of the United Kingdom? Is he also aware that during that period there have been considerable poverty and deprivation in Scotland?
Mr. Fairgrieve: I am not aware of that.
I go on to the second point made by the hon. Member for Western Isles, the exploitation of Scottish resources, particularly oil. I remind him that we in Scotland are net importers of gas and coal. I find the whole attitude of the Scottish National Party on these matters parochial, selfish, small-minded and petty.
Now I return to the speech that I had intended to make, which will be short. I wonder why we are having this Bill at this time. The country has a £9 billion borrowing requirement. We have inflation running at a rate two to three times that of our competitors in Western Europe. What is the contribution of this Government to dealing with the serious position affecting everyone in the country? It is the Community Land Bill, the Employment Protection Bill, the Petroleum and Submarine Pipe-Lines Bill and the Industry Bill—in other words, nationalisation of land, the employer-bashing bill, and the setting up of a stupid and useless oil company and the National Enterprise Board. As a result, the House is today

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bunged up with legislation. There are too many Committees sitting, doing too much useless work, and all that we are getting as a contribution to the serious state of the country and its people is more nationalisation.
I regret that in all these measures the Labour Party has the support of the SNP for more nationalisation. In the unlikely event of the SNP's getting an independent Scotland, it will inherit Socialist legislation, but to me Scottish nationalisation is no less abhorent than British nationalisation.
What gripes me is the arrogance of politicians and the civil servants they employ, their belief that they can run industry properly. What is one of the things they are to do in this wretched Bill? It is to promote industrial democracy in undertakings under the agency's control.
In the 25 years since the war we have learnt nothing about how to run our nationalised industries. Is there any industrial democracy in the coal industry, the railway industry or the gas industry? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes."] Rubbish. There is far more industrial democracy in the private sector than in the nationalised industries. If we are a responsible House of Commons we should be trying to learn how to run our present nationalised industries properly instead of propagating another set, as we are in the Bill.
The whole Bill goes on like Alice in Wonderland, through a glass darkly. Apparently we are to reclaim land from the sea. Why not reclaim sea from the land? It is about as sensible for a development agency.
This is a bad Bill, because we already have too much legislation, too much interference. The job of Government is not one of arrogance. It is of creating the conditions in which people and industry can prosper. We do not want Government going into industry. We want Government out of industry.
5.49 p.m.
Mr. Frank McElhone: I shall not try to follow the example of the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Mr. Fairgrieve), certainly not in bringing the water into the land. I feel some concern about the
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comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig), but as he is not present I shall reserve my comments until he returns, if I happen still to be speaking at the time.
The hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns (Mr. Buchanan-Smith), speaking from the Opposition Front Bench, said that the Bill had the support of the Labour Party and some of its friends on the STUC. He cannot have read the newspapers which I have seen. He cannot have listened to people in industry and on the shop floor. This Bill will provide a greater stimulus to the Scottish economy than any Government have ever provided before.
The Bill will accomplish two powerful purposes. It will give a tremendous incentive to industry. It also looks seriously at the problem of urban dereliction, an issue which I hope to raise in the Adjournment debate next Monday evening.
In the nine months in which the Government have been in office the people living in the west of Scotland, and especially those in Glasgow, have received the promise of 6,000 defence jobs, the setting up of the BNOC, the development of offshore oil supplies administration, and the Scottish Development Agency office. Those organisations will provide a tremendous boost in job opportunities. I pay tribute to the efforts made by the Government to assist industry.
I should like to concentrate on the other aspects of the Bill which deal with the running of the city of Glasgow.
Mr. Teddy Taylor: The hon. Gentleman referred to the boost to Scottish industry of £25 million a year. Will he say from where he thinks that sum will come?
Mr. McElhone: I did not mention £25 million a year. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor) will have to do better than that. I shall give him another chance, but not just now. Anyone who has followed the progress of the planning team, the study which went into that report, and the work of the officers of the Scottish Development Department who were members of that team will understand the embryo stage of the Bill.

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We welcome the Bill because for too long the economy of Scotland, and especially in the west of that country, has been badly mixed. Too often many of out brightest and youngest people have had to travel south to obtain jobs suitable for their skills, taking their families with them. That represents a tremendous loss to Scotland over generations. However, I was delighted to hear my right hon. Friend say that there had been a net inflow of 7,000 people over the past year. That is a tremendous boost to the people of Scotland, where there is always a genuine fear that the brightest and youngest people take their skills abroad. With the establishment of the departments in Scotland and with oil coming on stream, a new, prosperous era is starting in Scotland. We are seeing the opening of a new chapter of economic history in Scotland.
I shall confine my remarks to Clause 8 of the Bill, which deals with derelict land. A tremendous boost will be provided by the moving of 6,000 defence jobs to Glasgow. Paragraph 14 of the consultative document says that the aim, as with the derelict land programme, is to recognise the special and massive task which needs to be undertaken, especially in Glasgow. The consultative document also indicates the special needs of Glasgow.
According to The Sunday Times of 8th June 1975, Baillie Dick Dynes, the leader of the Glasgow District Council Labour Group, said:
"We do have this very severe problem of multiple deprivation."
I think that is a sad fact which is well recognised.
I was disturbed to read in the Scotsman today that
"Civil Servants fear move to Glasgow."
The article says that Mr. Duncan Makie, who represents the Society of Civil Servants, said that he
"did not disguise the fact that many civil servants did not want to go to Glasgow."
He went on to express reservations about housing and many other aspects of life in the city.
Speaking with a degree of bias, I must say that anyone who lives and works in Glasgow does not want to move. It is a warm-hearted city. It compares favourably with other parts of the United
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Kingdom. However, the most difficult job is to attract people in the first instance. In the past there was an example of this in the case of the Post Office Savings Bank. We tempted people from London. When those people saw what Glasgow had to offer, they did not want to return to London.
We must recognise that the housing and other urban problems with which we are confronted today cannot be tackled overnight. I pleaded in my statements in the Press and on television for £50 million a year over 10 years. That figure is negotiable. I do not expect to see that sum being provided by the Treasury tomorrow morning. However, we are ready to put the case to the Treasury. The will exists in the city of Glasgow, but the resources with which the local authority can tackle the problem are not there.
Why do I emphasise that? Let us be honest. Civil servants in the Ministry of Defence are fighting a rearguard action not to come to Glasgow. They have threatened industrial action. They are not due to come to Glasgow until at least 1978–79. Therefore I welcome Clause 8, which will allow money to be made available to cure the urban dereliction which is prevalent in Glasgow.
Clause 8(3) states:
"the agency may dispose of the land free of charge to a local authority."
That is welcome. That provision can be used under the New Towns (Scotland) Act 1968 for open spaces as well as for industrial and housing development. I hope that Clause 8 will remain unscathed in Committee. Glasgow and Clydeside suffer from urban deprivation and slums. Such conditions have prevailed in the west of Scotland for far too long as a result of economic factors.
We realise that the solution to our problems will not be found in the and nationalism which is purveyed by members of the Scottish National Party. The solution will be found with increasing investment in the economy of Scotland and high productivity. With high investment and high productivity are to be found the high wages which are necessary to increase and sustain the standard of living which the people of Scotland should enjoy in the 1970s.
I am depressed with the report of the Department of the Environment which

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says that 115 of the 121 worst areas of Britain are to be found in Scotland, especially on Clydeside. We are not proud of that. Much of the blame for that lies with those who supported the Conservative Opposition decade after decade.
Let us be practical. I have no wish to go into Scottish economic and industrial history in detail. We must accept that homes with outside toilets were slums from the moment they were built. We have a long history of bad health, deprivation, bad housing and lack of educational facilities, which were tied up with the bad economic factors and high unemployment which prevailed in the west of Scotland.
I take issue with my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West on his comparison of the unemployment figures for Glasgow and Dundee. I think that he misunderstands the position. Glasgow has had a population of 1 million people but the population figure has fallen to 750,000. It is not overcrowded. Many people have been decanted to new towns. People come into Glasgow to work from Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire and Ayrshire. Glasgow has to be considered in a different context from Dundee. I am concerned about the unemployment in Dundee just as much as I am concerned about unemployment in Glasgow or anywhere else in the United Kingdom.
Hon. Members who represent the Scottish National Party do not solve Scotland's economic problems by making speeches and waving flags at Bannockburn. If Robert the Bruce could hear the "tartan Tory" speeches made by members of the SNP he would say, as many electors will say in the next General Election, that if we are to have Tories in power we may as well have the real ones.
It is true that many of the most able people leave the shores of Scotland to find employment. I do not wish my son, or anyone else's son, to be the next president of the Caledonian Society in Ottawa, Melbourne or anywhere else. The hon. Member for the Western Isles (Mr. Stewart) can testify that that has been the fate of many of our young people.
The Labour Government in nine months have done more to provide job opportunities than have any Government in our history. I admit that many of the job opportunities are coming to Glasgow
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because Glasgow is the fulcrum of the industrial West. We have to accept that we must attract civil servants to Glasgow, but we cannot direct labour and I hope that we shall never do that. We have to induce people to come. The knocking campaign against Glasgow which has been pursued through the media, especially in television programmes in recent years, has made people reluctant to come to Glasgow.
Glasgow has the Scottish Opera, the Scottish National Orchestra and the best art collection outside London. It has some of the best schools and good housing. We have much to offer. The image of a certain part of Glasgow that exists in some people's minds is applied to the whole of Glasgow.
I welcome the substantial investment in Scottish industry which is made available by the Bill and I also welcome the provisions which enable derelict land to be cleared for new industry. What worries me and many of my hon. Friends is the proliferation of industrial promotional agencies. They have all done a good job in the past, although they have limitations, but the fragmentation of promotional agencies does not help. If an industrialist, because of competing pressures, cannot make up his mind which part of Scotland to come to, he will go elsewhere. I am glad that the Scottish Development Agency, although it does not replace the promotional agencies, will at least draw them together and make them more effective in bringing jobs and job opportunities to Scotland.
We must accept that cross-border companies and multinational companies must in time have separate Scottish company registration. Such a provision would have made the Bill more efficient. Comments have been made about the inefficiency of nationalised industries. I am prepared to say that they have not been as accountable as they should have been, but we hope to correct that by the Industrial Democracy Bill.
I ask the Minister to ensure that there is adequate monitoring of aid to companies. There have been one or two examples of monitoring not being adequate. Plessey in the Vale of Leven obtained machinery at a low price and attempted to take it south. Only the vigilance of the work force prevented that scandal. It has been reported to me

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by a prominent trade union that Chrysler has shifted machine tools to Spain and South America and caused the production of new models to be jeopardised, especially at Linwood.
Miss Harvie Anderson: Will the hon. Gentleman tell me exactly which machine tool has been moved anywhere from my constituency?
Mr. McElhone: The trade union provided me with this information. I have to qualify that remark and say that I cannot substantiate that the removal was precisely from Linwood, although it was from Chrysler. The union has done some research and in the past its word has been sound. Such practices are nevertheless a cause for concern. We must monitor the money that goes to companies over the years to ensure that it is used in Scotland for the Scottish worker and to promote the Scottish economy.
We must also ensure that there is more research and development to enable us to take advantage of new technologies which will provide new jobs. It is not a question of labour-intensive industry against capital-intensive industry. We must have both. Concentration on capital-intensive industry leads to a low wage economy, and we must have a mixture of both.
I hope the Government realise that the primary source of new jobs is still indigenous industry. We must preserve the indigenous, entrepreneurial spirit in Scotland. If there is anything wrong in Scotland, it is that Scots have not been prepared to put their faith in Scotland. Many people involved in management and in business invest in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia and Europe.
Mr. Hamish Watt: Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that what has been wrong with Scotland is not and nationalism but and centralism?
Mr. McElhone: No. The accusation of and nationalism which I make refers to the Scottish National Party. I am now referring to the disgraceful record of Scottish industrialists and investors who invest in Europe and other parts of the world. Although that investment may have made a substantial contribu-
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tion in invisible earnings to our balance of payments position, it did nothing to help the Scottish unemployment figures.
Those people are praying for an economic miracle. They must get off their knees. They must come away from the international telephones and put their hearts, their minds and their faith in Scotland. We have the will and the skill within the work force. The need is all too evident. The Government have provided the opportunity and created the catalyst with the finance and the agency. I hope that the industrialists will take advantage of it, because it will be only then that we shall see the standard of living that is long overdue come into being in Scotland in the 1970s.
6.10 p.m.
Mr. David Steel: I find myself in rather the same position as the Leader of the Scottish National Party was a few minutes ago, because I give a cautious and possibly a temporary welcome to the Bill at this stage.
The Committee that will be considering the Bill will have the important task of trying to drag out of the Government some clarification about the precise rôle of the agency in relation to other bodies that exist at present. I believe that many improvements can be made to the Bill, but I certainly see no case for refusing the Bill a Second Reading in principle.
Some of the speeches that we have heard so far and that we shall no doubt hear later remind me—I thought that the Secretary of State made a fair point—of the speeches made during the passage of the Highlands and Islands Development (Scotland) Bill. A Conservative Member said that he had not seen such powers since those of Hitler. We can all make criticisms of the Highlands and Islands Development Board now, but there are few hon. Members who would advocate that the whole thing should be scrapped and that it was a mistake.
We should take with a pinch of salt some of the more extreme utterances about the Scottish Development Agency. If one is to criticise the Bill fundamentally, it should be on the ground that the powers of the agency are not large enough and that the rôle of the agency should be strengthened rather than weakened.

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Let us deal first with finance. The sum involved is £200 million for an unspecified period of time. I was rather entertained when the Secretary of State said that we could add another £100 million in an hour and a half. With the present rate of inflation, that may prove necessary. However, the serious point has to be made that, with the present rate of inflation, within two years one would need to raise the level to £300 million merely to keep pace with the inflation, without making any additional real resources available to the agency. One has to take into account that the financing of the agency is not over generous.
Moreover, perhaps one can criticise more the methods that are used. I have always strongly disagreed with the Scottish National Party's approach to and propaganda on "Scotland's oil" and all the rest which gives an appalling impression of Scotland to people elsewhere. However, I believe that there is a justified grievance because nowhere are the revenues from oil directly related to benefits for Scotland. I do not see why we should not have had a development corporation or agency—whatever it might be called—part of whose finance derived from a fixed percentage of revenues from the oil resources that have been discovered off Scotland. I believe that the proposal would command majority opinion in Scotland and would free the agency, when it is set up, from the direct control which, of course, it will have from the Treasury in Whitehall. That is one of the strongest criticisms that can be made of the relative weakness inherent in the Bill.
During the Committee stage it will be necessary to put back something into Clause 2 of the Bill to replace the section which was removed in the other place. I do not say that I necessarily agreed with the wording as it then stood, but unless we allow the agency to indulge in activities with others in setting up enterprises we really are saying that its power is limited to what might be termed a "glorified clean-up operation" in Scotland. That cannot make sense.
My noble friend Lord Mackie of Benshie moved in the other place at a rather late stage on Report that there should be inserted into Clause 2 the words
"establishing and carrying on jointly with experienced persons or companies industrial undertakings".—[Official Report, House of Lords, 19th June, 1975; Vol. 361, c. 1004]
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In my view that was an improvement on the Government's original wording. Lord Mackie did not press his amendment at that stage, but in support of it he said that one of the things that was wrong with Scotland was that far too many of our new industries were branches of other industries, multinational companies and so on. The result is that when there is any cutting back the first thing that goes is the branch. Therefore, there is a clear possible rôle for the agency to involve itself, particularly with younger people of real enterprise but who perhaps lack capital, in setting up new and Scottish-based industries with headquarters within Scotland.
Dr. M. S. Miller: I have been following what the hon. Gentleman has said with a great deal of interest. Does he agree, however, that one of the ways he could achieve his aim of making the development agency an effective agency is to ensure in the first instance that the chairman and the members of the agency are people who believe in what the agency sets out to do and that my right hon. Friend must be extremely careful in choosing the right people to pursue the policies which will lead to this end?
Mr. Steel: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. That is an important point. To put it bluntly, I hope that this will not be yet another body that will be used for "jobs for the boys" by which ever Secretary of State happens to be in office. Far too many public bodies in Scotland, and indeed in Great Britain as a whole, are subject to this practice. I agree that it is important that the qualifications and the enthusiasm of the people appointed must be obvious.
Secondly, I should like to see inserted in the powers of the agency, as set out in Clause 2, some reference to the rôleof the agency in rural areas as was set out in the consultative document. This is so important that it should be written into the Bill. I should like to quote from the consultative document, which says:
"Although the major rôle of the Agency will lie in the promotion of industry and in environmental regeneration in urban or semi-urban areas, the Government intend that it should also be given a clear policy remit to encourage and assist rural development where this falls within the general economic and industrial growth objectives of the Agency."
I agree with that paragraph. I believe that it should be inserted in the Bill

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because, as the Secretary of State said, the agency will have a monumental task in simply dealing with industrial dereliction of West Central Scotland. Unless the powers are specifically inserted in the legislation, I fear that the honeyed words of the consultative document will simply be forgotten and the resources diverted.
I bear in mind that the Small Industries Council is to be merged with the new organisation. One should pay tribute to the work that it has done in the past in the smaller communities in Scotland. Therefore, it is important that the agency should have a specific separate unit within it to deal with this particular problem. Otherwise I fear that the very good intentions of the consultative document will simply be smothered by the more expensive and greater work of the agency as a whole.
I hope that if we proceed with this legislation, get the agency set up and have the advisory board under the direction of the Secretary of State rather than the Secretary of State for Industry dealing with financial incentives to industry, we shall have some stability and continuity about industrial incentives for industry in development areas.
Looking back over the past 10 years—and Lord Tanlaw listed them in his speech in the other place——
Mr. William Small: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. They may have intellectual chaperones in the other place, but I believe that under our rules of order an hon. Member can quote only Government Ministers in another place.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): The hon. Gentleman is quite right. An hon. Member is allowed to paraphrase but not to quote exactly.
Mr. Steel: Mr. Deputy Speaker, you will be relieved to hear that I have no intention of quoting in detail the list that my noble Friend Lord Tanlaw gave. I merely draw attention to his excellent speech. He mentioned in detail what I intend to make a passing reference to, namely, that over the past 10 years there have been six or seven major legislative changes in the scale and type of invest-
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ment incentives to industry. The rapidity of change within such a short period of time is unsettling to industry. It makes it quite impossible to plan ahead with any confidence.
The point I am trying to make is that if the Bill becomes law and the agency is set up we must have some degree of continuity and stability in whatever investment incentive plans are produced so that the industrialists can make plans. That has not been done over the past 10 years.
The hon. Member for the Western Isles (Mr. Stewart) made a valid point about the potential duplication of bureaucracy between the Highlands and Islands Development Board and various other organisations, including the National Enterprise Board when it is set up, and the agency. The Government have been far from clear as to where the demarcation lines will be. It is important not to increase the total amount of bureaucracy more than necessary.
For example, the Development Commission set up by the Liberal Government in 1911 is happily going on and doing a good job in certain areas of the United Kingdom which have suffered from depopulation. It has done an extremely good job in the Borders. Is that body to continue unaffected by the creation of the Scottish Development Agency and the National Enterprise Board? I should hate to see it buried, because of the good work that it has done. There is no point in bringing in agency after agency designed to assist industry in different parts of the country without some rationalisation and streamlining.
Mr. William Ross: I mentioned that point specifically in my speech. I said that an arrangement had been made with the chairman, Donald Chapman. The Development Commission is continuing in co-operation with us and will give us its help until 1st January 1977 in relation to the transition.
Mr. Steel: I followed that point but perhaps not as closely as I might have done. Do I understand that the commission will cease to exist after 1977?
Mr. Ross: The hon. Gentleman knows that the commission has a United Kingdom remit. I am talking about its work

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in Scotland. There is no reason why it should not carry on elsewhere because of what we are doing in Scotland.
Mr. Steel: If that is the case, that is one element which will disappear. If similar powers are to be included in the Industry Bill, logically the commission's United Kingdom rôlewill disappear. Therefore, as I said earlier, within the Scottish Development Agency there must be a specific unit to carry on the work which the Development Commission has been doing in smaller communities.
The part of the Bill on industrial relation is important. I do not take the gloomy view taken by one or two speakers in the debate. Public industry—this is one of the failings of nationalisation as a doctrine—has been no better than private industry in terms of employee participation and industrial democracy. If there is a new determination that in future enterprises there should be a pattern of industrial partnership, my right hon. and hon. Friends and I are all for it. That will be an important provision.
I should like to know how the aid which the agency will give will be tied in with the aid which is available from the regional and social funds of the European Community. I have argued before—I am sorry that the Secretary of State has so far set his mind against this proposition—that there is a good case, particularly as the right hon. Gentleman has new powers under the Industry Bill, for the Scottish Office having a liaison office in Brussels to take direct benefit from these grants. I see no case for having to accept the facilities available from the European Commission at second hand through the post from the Department of Industry. When I was in Brussels before the referendum took place, I understood that the Commission would be agreeable to such an arrangement. I think that the Scottish Office should think again on that question.
Lastly, I come to one question touched on by the hon. Member for the Western Isles about the future political control of the agency. We are about to start a process of legislation for substantial devolution to Scotland. That devolution will make no sense unless the future control of the agency is in the hands of the elected
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body in Edinburgh, otherwise the devolution will be mere paper window dressing. There should be some indication during the passage of the Bill about the future political control of this welcome agency.
6.24 p.m.
Mr. Dennis Canavan: I think that right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree that some regeneration of the Scottish economy and industry is absolutely vital in the best interests of the Scottish people. The Bill is intended to be an instrument for that type of regeneration. I should like to think that it will be judged not on any narrow doctrinaire, political ground but on the litmus test of whether in the long term it will provide better employment opportunities for Scottish working people and their families. The Scottish Development Agency will be seen as a success or a failure on that test.
We have seen the effects of unemployment in Scotland for too long. A decade ago Scotland's unemployment figure was two and a quarter times the United Kingdom average. Although that figure has now fallen, it is still 1·3 times the United Kingdom average. There is no room for complacency when we realise that there are today over 100,000 people in Scotland without jobs. I have seen the effect of unemployment recently in my constituency with factories and mills closing down or people being put on short time.
We have seen the effect of unemployment in the past with the extent of emigration which has taken place out of Scotland. Recently the population figures have been stabilised or even increased. However, we certainly do not want a situation where working people have to pack their bags and go trekking all over the place looking for jobs. That is not my concept of a fair Socialist society. It is the job of the Government, particularly a Socialist Government, to get to grips with the economy and to bring jobs to the people instead of having the people trekking off all over the place like nomads looking for jobs.
Before putting forward any ideas for a successful regeneration of the Scottish economy, it is important to diagnose what is wrong with it and why there is a lack of industrial development in Scotland. I should like to propose two major factors. The first is the lack of Government power

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to disperse industry. There is a maldistribution of industrial development, not only in Scotland but throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. One reason is that when the private industrialist is taking a decision on where to locate industry, his main criterion is to maximise his profits. He does not think of areas of high unemployment or of social deprivation. His decision is based on maximising his profits.
Successive Governments have made attempts to try to intervene in this kind of natural laissez-faire growth process. For example, we have had development areas, special development areas, development certificates, development grants, regional employment premium, advance factories and so on. We have seen some benefits from such State intervention. For example, many people in my constituency would be out of work now had not the Labour Government brought in advance factories.
Although such measures are not perfect, we should be grateful that successive Governments have taken steps to try to locate industry in deprived areas. My constituency would have had at least one more advance factory but for another broken promise by the previous Tory Government. A few years ago the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger), who was then in charge of industry at the Scottish Office, came to interview some local government representatives in Kilsyth. The hon. Gentleman promised that, as soon as a tenant had been found for the advance factory which was near completion at that time, steps would be taken to build another advance factory. We are still waiting for it. I hope my right hon. Friend will see that that promise which was broken by the previous Tory regime is fulfilled as soon as possible after he takes over his new industrial powers on 1st July.
Mr. Hector Monro: I hope that the hon. Gentleman informed my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) that he intended to attack his integrity in the House. If not, he is showing great disrespect for an hon. Member.
Mr. Canavan: That may be one of the rules of conduct in debating societies, but I am trying to get jobs for my con-
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stituents. The hon. Member for Ayr should be here, because this matter is as vital to his constituency as to mine.
Miss Harvie Anderson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Canavan: I do not wish to give way too often, because I have been accused of speaking too long on previous occasions.
In my opinion, such governmental intervention has been inadequate and there is only one way of effectively dispersing industry. That is by being involved in the actual decision-making on the dispersal of industry, which is normally done by the owners of industry. That is why I see an extension of public enterprise, whereby the Government are involved in the ownership, in whole or in part, of industry, as absolutely vital if the Government are to have adequate powers to disperse industry.
It is significant that some of the most successful ventures in bringing jobs to Scotland have been in the public sector. One thinks, for example, of the thousands of jobs in the Civil Service and why it is that we are able to have those jobs in Scotland. It is simply because they are in the public sector. It is a great pity that the House of Lords took away that function from the Scottish Development Agency, and it will be our job to restore it in this House. [Interruption.]
Mr. Galbraith: In fairness, will not the hon. Gentleman also mention Bathgate and Linwood?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We can only have one hon. Gentleman on his feet at any one time.
Mr. Canavan: I do not need any lessons in manners, Mr. Deputy Speaker, from hon. Members opposite, and especially the hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro), who intervened from a sitting position.
The second weakness in Scottish industry, in my opinion, is lack of investment. That again is not a problem that is peculiar to Scotland. Figures were given in answer to a Question put to the Secretary of State for Industry on 9th June when the Under-Secretary of State for Industry replied:
"Investment by manufacturing industry, measured at 1970 prices, amounted to £1,975 million in 1973–74 and £2,110 million in

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1974–75. The results of the latest survey by my Department of manufacturers' investment intentions, covering calendar years, are published today and suggest that the volume of investment by manufacturing industry in 1975 could he of the order of 15 per cent. lower than in 1974."—[Official Report, 9th June, 1975, Vol. 893, c. 18–19.]
Here again we see the effect of the inadequacy of private investment.
Far too often industry is dependent on the whim of private investors, many of whom are quite capable of taking money out of industry and investing it elsewhere if they do not happen to like the particular tone of the Government in power at a particular time. Even Conservatives would admit that there is a lack of investment in industry and even some of them would be in favour of some kind of investment bank to prop up industry, which was essentially what the 1972 Act provided for. To my mind, however, it is not sufficient simply to take public money to prop up a private concern and bolster it up without some reciprocal public control. That is absolutely essential if the taxpayers' money is to be put into industry. There must be at least some element of public ownership and public control.
Instead of the Scottish Development Agency simply being some kind of free gifts scheme, it must be seen to be a means of extending public enterprise so that the Government have more influence on the location and dispersal of industry. It is a great pity to see Conservative Members repeating some of the clichés they uttered 10 years ago when the Highlands and Islands Development Bill was being debated in this House, when they tried to smear it with taunts of Marxism, and 10 years later they are coming forward with similar quotations.
The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Mr. Fairgrieve) made a very short contribution earlier when he claimed that the Government were not being very helpful on the question of industrial development. I wonder whether he thinks that his comment in the Scotsman of 26th April was very constructive when he warned Scottish business men to be careful of the implications of the proposed Scottish Development Agency Bill, the "little cousin" of the Industry Bill, and he said:
"MacBenn is not a nice little chap but a mischievous and dangerous wee rat."
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If that is the kind of verminous language used by hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition benches, it is certainly not a very constructive contribution to curing the ills of Scottish industry, British industry or any other industry.
I hope that the hon. Member might offer an apology to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy, who was at that time Secretary of State for Industry, for that terrible language. I notice that the hon. Member is demoting himself back to the back benches. Perhaps he would like to intervene.
Mr. Fairgrieve: The hon. Gentleman has quoted me absolutely correctly, except that the word I used was "brat" not "rat". It was a misprint.
Mr. Canavan: I am not sure whether that intervention excuses the hon. Gentleman's language. I still feel that it was very unconstructive, a very destructive and disgusting remark to make and most unhelpful. We also have coming into this debate on the Scottish Development Agency the SNP the neo-Tories of Scotland, like the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. Crawford), who last month was quoted in the Press as saying that Tories should have agreed to the Scottish Development Agency Bill going to the Scottish Grand Committee because the Scottish National Party would have helped to extract the Socialist part from it. This would effectively have emasculated the development agency and made it less effective in solving Scotland's problems.
The SNP also seems to have an alliance with the Scottish Confederation of British Industry in claiming that the Secretary of State for Scotland is not to be responsible for the Bill. The Secretary of the Scottish CBI claimed in the Glasgow Herald on 15th May that there was something sinister about there being no specific reference to the Secretary of State for Scotland, the reference being simply to "the Secretary of State". There is nothing sinister about it at all. That is normal practice in Scottish Bills.
It is interesting to note that the Scottish National Party Members made the same mistake when debating the Community Land Bill, when they thought that as far as Scottish land was concerned the words "Secretary of State" referred to the Secretary of State for the Environment. It did nothing of the kind. It referred to the

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Secretary of State for Scotland. The SNP has done a great disservice in trying to reduce the debate on this very important development agency to a kind of Scotland versus England battle without having any constructive alternatives of its own to offer.
I notice that the SNP's sole representative in the Lords, Lord Belhaven, did not even vote on the amendment which took out the Socialist part of the Bill. I wonder whether this silence was significant or whether he did not realise that a debate on Scottish industry was going on at that time. He and his Tory colleagues in another place may consider themselves self-styled experts on industry but their only qualification to speak for Scottish industry or the Scottish people is the fact that they happen to have been born in a noble bed. They have seen fit to try to butcher this Bill, but I hope that we in this House will see that it is restored to its former glory and that that is done by putting into it the public enterprise function and the part about industrial democracy, so that it will lead to a new era in the history of Scotland where we will have jobs and better prospects leading to better living standards for the working people and their families, a new era where, instead of man being the slave of industry, industry will be made the servant of man.
6.40 p.m.
Miss Harvie Anderson: I would like to apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to the Secretary of State for my absence earlier. If hon. Members look at the Order Paper today, pages 9323–24, they will see an extraordinary list of Committees which makes it no easier for any of us to be in two places at once.
I do not wish to refer to the speech of the hon. Member for West Stirling-shire (Mr. Canavan) except to say that, apart from his discourtesy to my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger), it would have been for the benefit of the House, had he wished to raise the subject at all, to have included in his speech the date of the then Minister's visit, the date of occupancy of the factory concerned and the date of the General Election. We would then have been presented with a much more realistic picture of what happened.
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I support what has been said by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Queen's Park (Mr. McElhone) about the proposed move to Glasgow of the Ministry of Defence. If I thought that the Bill would do anything to help this I would be an enthusiastic supporter. For reasons I will explain, I do not feel that way. It should be widely publicised that the move of the Savings Bank to the City of Glasgow has been wholly successful. Those executives who were moved, many of whom now live in my constituency, would not now exchange their lot for any alternative.
I oppose this Bill with considerable regret. If its simple aim was to make secure the employment prospects for the Scottish people, it would have the support of myself and my hon. Friends. I do not believe that it has the simple aim that I have described. I consider the Government's intentions, as expressed in the Bill to be entirely doubtful. This is a power monster and we must look at it in that way. I see the Secretary of State smiling. Maybe he does not think that it is a power monster. What we are looking at today is not the Bill as it will be used by him when enacted but what will be in the hands of any Secretary of State—the possibilities which lie within its clauses. It is to this that I take exception.
The size and scope of the Bill is something which we have to consider, together with the background against which it is set. The Bill aims to spend £300 million of public money. That is a large amount. We must first ask where that money is to come from. It is small wonder that earlier speakers have doubted whether the amount which is actually likely to be forthcoming will produce the impact which the total amount suggested might be expected to make.
We all know of the financial plight of this country. We all know that the money must come either through taxation or from borrowing. These days "borrowing" means borrowing from abroad. The Government, having no other source of income, are obliged to get the money from one or other of these sources. If the money comes from taxation, it comes from those people who are unable to invest that money at present in those very industries which it is proposed should have investment because the money is being taken away from them in taxation before they can do

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anything with it. If we do not believe that profitable industry should be allowed to make its own investment, it seems strange to imagine that this new bureaucracy, which I will describe later, will know where to place that money better than those who are running the industry.
If there were to be a good return on this money and if it meant that jobs would be maintained profitably, I would take a different view of this Bill. If, on the other hand, the money has to be borrowed, it simply adds to the inflation which is raging, out of control, and increases our £9 billion-worth of borrowing. People do not seem to realise today, least of all the Government, that borrowing of whatever kind has to be repaid sooner or later. The Government still pay lip service to a mixed economy, to the free enterprise element which contributes so much and which could contribute a great deal more than it is allowed to do at present. Yet the Government put forward measure after measure designed to ensure that free enterprise cannot work at any level.
I suggest that this Bill, being another example of the Government's approach to free enterprise, gives powers that have not yet been described in detail. I have said that it is a monster Bill because I believe that these powers are exceedingly wide. They seem to be limitless. The powers in Clause 2, for example, never stop.
I turn now to the extent of the bureaucracy which will be required to exercise and control this agency. We have recently had an extension of bureaucracy which is deplored by virtually every man and woman in the country. We are now multiplying fearfully the degree of bureaucracy under which we all live. It is more important in Scotland than in any other part of the United Kingdom. We are frightened of yet another layer of Government control. There are many people who will pay through rates or taxes or both for six separate layers of bureaucracy. The burden is something that has not been appreciated. All of this has to be paid for by the unfortunate taxpayer and ratepayer. Many people in Scotland are beginning to take a new interest in what is going on in the bureaucratic process. They will view this Bill with considerable alarm.
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In addition to these six layers of bureaucracy which will have to be paid for, there are other impositions which have already been mentioned. There is, for example, the National Enterprise Board, and the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. Steel) made a good point in connection with the EEC. Scotland has already benefited from its social fund. All of these powers, with the bureaucracy which supports them, are placed on the shoulders of the people. They will in no way be welcome. We are witnessing a continuing attack on the independence of people, personal or business. The attack is costly. If this is not a direct nationalisation measure it is certainly a hybrid. It is creeping nationalisation.
Despite the proven failure of nationalisation it still seems to hold a charm for the Government. It holds this charm—and I do not include the Secretary of State in what I am about to say—because it is attractive to many in the Labour Party since it is moving us steadily as a nation towards a totalitarian State. That may not be to the right hon. Gentleman's liking or to the liking of many Labour Members. It is, however, certainly acceptable to that powerful minority in the Labour Party which is already running the Government.
The Bill proposes additional funds for Scotland, despite the fact that there are already powers provided to do almost everything that has been openly described as becoming likely under the Bill. If the effect were likely to be for the good of Scotland and if this measure were likely to achieve profitability, our debate today would be taking a different shape. This is not so. No one looking squarely into the future could possibly support such a measure.
6.48 p.m.
Mr. Douglas Crawford: I feel a little like Pavlov's dog, having been told by Labour Members that I am a Conservative and by the Conservative Members that I am a Socialist. Lord Hughes said in another place during the debate on this Bill that Scotland's economic problems could not be solved by reliance on traditional United Kingdom methods of applying inducements and instruments of persuasion or, as Lord Polwarth put it when he was Chairman of

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the Scottish Council, the carrot and the stick.
Lord Hughes went on to say that there were too many examples of Scottish establishments and the jobs they provided having been rationalised out of existence, being merely Scottish branches of what are now British companies while what were proud and thriving independent Scottish companies have been closed down and their operations transferred south of the border. To all of this my hon. Friends would give a most fervent "Hear, hear". But the news is news that we have heard before. We would, equally fervently, ask the noble Lord where he and his party have been for the last 60 years or so, because this process of centralisation is nothing new and can be traced at least as far back as 1914, if not before.
I will bore right hon. and hon. Gentlemen by reading out some of the companies which have been taken over and which are now in difficulties—Glenfield and Kennedy, Lyle Carpets, Robertsons Jams, Marine Oil Industry Repair, Honeywell, Hoover, Caledonian Repro-graphic, Beaverbrook, Brown and Poulson, Scottish Aviation, William London and BSR. All of these companies, with the obvious exception of Hoover, which has not actually been taken over, have cut back their operations in Scotland within the last year.
For the noble Lord to say that we are suffering from companies closing down in Scotland and moving their operations to England is old hat. It is one thing for the noble Lord to diagnose an illness, it is another thing to cure it. The nature of the illness has been crying out for all of us to hear yet nothing has been done. It galls me and it grieves me to hear month after month, when Scottish unemployment remains at an unacceptably high level, representatives of the Scottish Labour Party and the General Secretary of the STUC saying that something must be done. We are sick, tired and fed up of hearing the STUC representatives saying that something must be done. Are they unable to see that the solution is staring them in the face—namely, self-government?
The Government tell us that certain things have been done. In a way I suppose that is true, but, to quote the Latin tag,
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parturient monies nascetur exiguus mus—namely, the mountains have laboured and brought forth a mouse. The fact is that the Scottish Development Agency will have to rely on the Westminster Treasury for whatever money it receives. Is this not using a nutcracker to crack a sledge, a feather duster to attack Edinburgh Castle or an aspirin to cure the industrial and social cancer? Let it be put firmly on the record that no Scottish Government would produce such a puny Bill.
The Secretary of State has said that I have called him a pygmy. If I did, I apologise, but I do not think I did. I think that my reference to "pygmy" was in my description of the Bill.
Mr. William Ross: I would not accuse the hon. Gentleman of using that kind of language when addressing me. The hon. Gentleman described the SDA as a pygmy of an organisation.
Mr. Crawford: I accept that. I have far too much respect and affection for the Secretary of State to describe him as a pygmy.
Once again, Scotland is being made subservient to the political will of Westminster. It is being made a poor second. The Secretary of State referred to the relationship between the SDA and the National Enterprise Board. The NEB legislation was drafted before this Bill, published before it and debated before it. Clearly the SDA is being made to play second fiddle to the NEB not only operationally but politically. Scotland, with industrial problems that are the largest in Western Europe, is being made the cat's-paw of the NEB and the Department of Industry.
The SNP does not want the NEB to run in Scotland for operational and political reasons. We shall table amendments in Committee to ensure that it shall exercise no power, jurisdiction or control over companies, institutions, partnerships, nationalised industries or any other industrial and commercial bodies operating in Scotland irrespective of the geographical location of the head offices or registered offices.
Mr. McElhone: Does the hon. Gentleman not realise that if we take British Leyland as an example, and the Bathgate factory in particular—I do not intend to go into the merits or demerits of that case as there are numerous other examples

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such as Chrysler—it is clear that it may well be necessary for the National Enterprise Board to give financial assistance of an overall nature? Does the hon. Gentleman not realise that that would be done after consultation with the Secretary of State for Scotland?
Mr. Crawford: I take the hon. Gentleman's point, but it was he who mentioned that it would be good to have Scottish-registered companies for certain reasons. If an organisation were established called British Leyland (Scotland) as a corporate entity, the SDA would be able to look after it without any NEB interference.
Mr. Buchan: I completely understand the hon. Gentleman's problem. He says that Scotland wants to be independent and that as an independent State it would not want to have anything south of the border affecting it. However, I cannot understand why he should reject Scottish influence and control over cross-border aspects when he is so concerned about the interests of the Scottish people. We shall not solve the problem of British Leyland by registering the company in Scotland. The Chrysler problem will not be solved by registering a certain section in Scotland. We are dealing with a unitary problem. The hon. Gentleman seems willing to let the whole of Scottish industry go to the wall before Scotland has independence rather than taking part in joint consultation south of the border.
Mr. Crawford: The hon. Gentleman knows that it is not true. It is up to the SDA to look after British Leyland and Bathgate. We do not want London to have any control over companies in Scotland, irrespective of the location of their head offices and registered offices.
In the context of the NEB, an indication of the cavalier treatment meted out to Scotland in all things was given by Lord Hughes in the debate in another place. The noble Lord said that the Industry Bill provides the NEB with corresponding powers to establish and engage in industrial undertakings throughout the United Kingdom and that no attempts had been made to remove those powers. Let me remind the noble Lord that the hon. Member for Caernarvon (Mr. Wigley) and myself attempted to ensure that the NEB would have no powers in Scotland or Wales and that Scotland
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should have a differently oriented agency. However, the noble Lord said that he is not aware of any move to ensure that the NEB does not operate in Scotland.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: As one who has week-by-week if not day-by-day relations with British Leyland and Bathgate, I am fully aware that we are faced with a complex situation. However, like it or not, the company is tied up with its United Kingdom bases.
Mr. Crawford: I think that I have passed on from that. What is important is the psychological effect on the people of Scotland, given that the SDA is to be made subservient to the NEB. Even the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce is falling into bad psychology. It referred to the NEB in a recent memorandum on the SDA as the "premier board". The SDA is not even primus inter pares.
No one has spelt out the relationship between the NEB and SDA. I ask the Government to clarify the position, and especially in the context of companies such as British Leyland, Ferranti, Scott Lithgow, Rolls-Royce, Honeywell, NCR, IBM, BNOC and BAA.
What the SNP wants is an agency with teeth and money. The teeth of the agency should operate the entire system of financial evaluation and assistance. The agency should be given responsibility for the stimulation of investment in new competitive projects, for the support of relevant research and development and for the attraction of suitable funds for investment in Scotland.
We do not necessarily see the agency as any kind of instrument for take-overs by the Government. We are concerned with development rather than ownership. We believe that it is of the utmost importance that the agency should be a single-purpose dynamic outfit unburdened by heterogeneous responsibility. I take the point of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Queen's Park that there is a real need for proper control and monitoring. I go along with him on that.
We believe that there should be less political content in the Bill and more practicality. There is a body in the Republic of Ireland—and there are similar bodies elsewhere—called the Industrial Development Authority of Ireland. It has been very successful. Of course,

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Ireland is a republic and enjoys self-government. The authority has been outstandingly successful and is of interest to Scotland.
The authority has internal offices in Donegal, Sligo, Monaghan, Galway, Athlone, Waterford, Cork and Shannon. Perhaps more importantly it has international offices in London, Paris, Cologne, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Tokyo.
That is the sort of set-up that we should have in Scotland. The SDA head office should be decentralised to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dumfries, Perth, Inverness, Hawick, Stornaway, Kirkwall, Lerwick and, of course, Kilmarnock. On an international level, it should have offices in London, Brussels, Tokyo, San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto, New York, Melbourne, Lagos, Moscow, Peking and elsewhere. I note that Labour Members are laughing, but that is the kind of SDA structure that we want to see. However, we have Lord Hughes saying that the agency might find it necessary to set up an office in some other part of the United Kingdom or overseas. It must be made clear that overseas offices are a "must" and not a "might".
In this context I draw the attention of the House to Clause 2, which describes the general purposes and functions of the agency. Some are excellent in the same way as are admonitions and exhortations that we should all get up earlier in the morning and work harder. But some are much vaguer, and we shall seek to clarify them in Committee.
Specifically the SDA should have an additional statutory duty to assist exports and to be the basis of a mixed venture capital company. Hon. Members have talked about stimulating indigenous industry but have offered no solution to that problem. In addition to the need to attract industry to Scotland from abroad, there is a need to stimulate the growth of companies in Central Scotland. Success on this score is Central Scotland's twentieth-century nine of diamonds. The only way in which the present process can be halted is by the establishment of a mixed base venture capital company.
The chairman of one of the most successful European Companies, European Enterprise Development, said recently:
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"Creation of processes and production of ideas and industries depends on men more than money, on imagination as well as on initiative. Seek out creative men with the vision of things to be done. Help breathe life into new ideas and processes and have a sensitive appreciation for creative drive."
There is a great need in Scotland for venture capital for industry. We believe that the SDA should have an arm of its organisation to deal specifically with venture capital. It could invest with pride in the entrepreneurs who, it is hoped, will make profits, and then the Government can sell their equity share to a merchant banker and those companies can grow in Scotland and provide long-lasting jobs.
All this activity needs money. We are told that the United Kingdom economy is in dire straits. But the Scottish economy is not in dire straits. We are not suffering from the English disease. If the hon. Member for Renfrewshire, West (Mr. Buchan) wants to quote export figures, I have the latest Scottish Council figures with me.
At present the Bill has a vague commitment to £200 million, raisable to £300 million. But there is no single mention of what happens when that money runs out, although the Secretary of State went some way in this regard when he said that he would still have to come back to the House for more money. That means coming back to the Treasury.
We in the SNP want a firm annual commitment to the SDA—starting, say, with £100 million in its first year of operation, rising to £300 million in the fifth year, with a review of future annual budgets beginning no later than the SDA's fourth year of operation. Furthermore, we want a separate amount of money to be allocable by the SDA to the shipbuilding industry in Scotland. We do not want that money to be administered, as at present proposed for the NEB, on a United Kingdom-wide basis.
This is the kind of SDA that any self-respecting, self-governing country should have—not the thing we now have in front of us. But I must make the point that any SDA is better than no SDA. All that the Scottish Conservatives have done by blocking the Bill—in addition to giving Labour an excuse, however lame, for holding up the creation of a devolved agency—is to block the etablishment of new jobs and new investment. I hope

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that the Scottish electorate will take that fact to heart.
There seems to have been a remarkable change of heart. On 11th December the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Sproat) asked the Secretary of State to ensure that the SDA would have as one of its main functions
"the direction of finance to north-east of Scotland to get the infrastructure under way".
Furthermore, the hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns (Mr. Buchanan-Smith) asked the Secretary of State to recognise that what was needed in Scotland was
"cash to modernise old industry and create new jobs".—[Official Report, 11th December 1974; Vol. 883, c. 501–2.]
It would appear that the Scottish Tories are now dancing to another tune especially when the hon. Member for North Augus and Mearns said today that the Conservative Party would vote against the Bill.
Let me reiterate the position of the SNP. We shall support anything that will help Scotland, in however small a way. We shall support any devolutionary measure, however small, festooned with however much public relations. We shall give our support to this Bill on its Second Reading. But in supporting the measure we give notice that in Committee we shall seek more money for the agency, more practical power and more expertise. In this context and in others we shall not take "No" for an answer.
In the same week as Scottish oil was landed at the Isle of Grain and the right hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Walker) was saying that a third of Scottish oil should be sold, the Scottish Office was telling local authorities in Scotland to cut back on their expenditure. The right hon. Member for Worcester said that Scottish oil—he called it "North Sea oil"—would be worth between £150,000 million and £350,000 million. That amount of money could keep the SDA going for a very long time indeed.
7.7 p.m.
Dr. Jeremy Bray: The hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. Crawford) made one sensible suggestion—namely, that the SDA should have powers to invest venture capital in enterprises. I was interested in the example he gave of the European Enterprise Development, but his proposals
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for the SDA were absurd. The idea of having world-wide offices scattered in towns where major European countries do not even have consulates would justify the rebuke which the right hon. Member for Renfrewshire, East (Miss Harvie Anderson) gave to the Bill—namely, that it would create an impossibly inflated bureaucracy. Perhaps the right hon. Lady has not read the memorandum to the Bill. It points out that an additional 250 to 300 staff would be required. That seems to me to be a modest number of people to carry out the duties in the Bill in view of the benefits it will bring to the Scottish economy.
The right hon. Lady also seemed to be mistaken in her view that the Bill would place a burden on the Scottish or British economy in terms of the resources that it would use. Everybody is anxious to see investment increased. Undoubtedly the bulk of funds distributed through the SDA will go into investment. There is no lack of investment funds available to firms now. It is simply that they do not, as they see it, have the opportunity to invest profitably.
The right hon. Lady also raised a question which I should like to consider relating to the ways in which the SDA can enlarge investment opportunities in Scotland. The West Central Scotland Plan has identified fairly the problems of the Scottish economy generally, but more particularly in West-Central Scotland that the problem does not so much relate to incoming or outgoing firms as to the fact that the firms there are not expanding as fast as comparable firms in other parts of Britain and Europe.
Let us take the characteristics of a typical engineering firm in which we want to see growth. Just because it has survived, it has a sound market. I am speaking of firms which may have been Queen's Award winners for exports and which serve a world-wide market. Such a firm's profitability has varied, although generally it is not high enough. It has at present limited investment plans, and it has plans for no more than maintaining its present level of employment. It is ready to expand its industrial training if somebody else will pay for it. It is ready to take Government orders. It is prepared to move cautiously into new business, but at no more than the rate of investment afforded by maintaining the present financial

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control of the company. In effect, its behaviour pattern such as to leave a stagnant and declining engineering industry. That is a pattern which the agency will seek to change.
Miss Harvie Anderson: I am interested in the hon. Gentleman's argument, but I can think of one substantial engineering firm in my constituency where there has been investment of £1½ million in an important sector. All that the firm now requires is an order. Why cannot that firm obtain an order? That is all that is needed. It has to be a large order authorised by the Government. But the Government have no money. However, if £10 million of the £300 million mentioned in the Bill were available to the firm I have in mind, it would ensure jobs for thousands of workers for many years to come.
Dr. Bray: The right hon. Lady must have in mind the firm of Babcock and Wilcox. The contribution that the SDA can make is to create opportunities for interconnected developments—developments which Babcock and Wilcox and other similar firms could undertake not on their own but only by joining with others.
John Brown Engineering has gone into a new line of business in turbo-generators, which are useful for pumping stations for big pipelines, such as the enormous one going to Russia. It cannot find a partner within the United Kingdom, let alone in Scotland, to make the pipes or to supply the steel to make the pipes. Here is an industry with long-term potential that is not being developed.
Or again, together with some of my hon. Friends, I visited ICI Grangemouth last Friday to see some very interesting work related to solvent extraction of metals. One hopes that this will lead to further chemical industry investment in Scotland, but why only the chemical industry? The metal extraction will require a great deal of engineering, consulting and contracting work, and can bring a great deal of wealth to Scotland. How can this be organised beyond the chemical industry to reach a wider sphere?
Another example is offshore engineering, which is now moving into deeper
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water, requiring new systems which are being developed. A number of Scottish firms are active in these new systems, including Yarrow and others. One hopes that it will lead to considerable expansion, but there is no indication of the scale of effort required that can build up to a powerful enough group to tackle world markets and compete with firms like Brown and Root.
How, against that background, can the SDA act? First, it must try to work with existing enterprises, leaving control in the hands of existing management if it can. I am sure that it will do this and get interesting proposals from existing enterprises, but I very much doubt, if it limits itself to that kind of operation, that it will get very far. It can also establish new enterprises. Here the process of starting up, acquiring a licence, making marketing agreements and so on is perfectly familiar.
I do not see why the SDA cannot adopt the same mode of company promotion as established company groups use, and I hope to see it starting with a number of completely new enterprises on a substantial scale. It may finally find that it needs to go into an area of activity where, frankly, the existing firms are not exploiting the opportunities that are open to them and where it has to move in with a scale of operation which eventually will not make sense to the enterprises that remain, so that eventually, in one way or another, there will be a takeover. It must be able to operate in a way which will change the management of existing enterprises which are not able to take the opportunities they have had. I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State——
Miss Harvie Anderson: I am sorry to interrupt again, but the conclusion that the hon. Member has just reached illustrates my point. The firm I mentioned in my constituency is not able to get an order from SSEB. It is Babcock and Wilcox. It is Government authority that is needed. If the Government spend in another way, money is not available in such cases. I accept what the hon. Member says. My point is that the priorities are wrong.
Dr. BrayThere is no point in building power stations if no one wants to use their electricity. The rates of growth of

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electricity demand have been very much lower than were anticipated. If the right hon. Lady wishes to explore this possibility, the obvious direction in which to look is the major electricity-consuming industries in which Scotland could invest. There are some, and I hope that the right hon. Lady will pursue this point, but not just the isolated piece of industrial development in a single power sttaion.
I very much hope that the SDA will not be left to operate without a plan. I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, who is replying to the debate, is sceptical whether a plan should be provided for the SDA. I was encouraged to hear my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, in opening the debate, say that it was necessary for the SDA to be deliberately selective. It must have a clear conception of the pattern of industrial development that it is seeking.
The plan can be provided by the SDA itself. I have no preconceptions that this must necessarily be produced in the Scottish Office. It is difficult, with a department which has not previously had industrial responsibilities, to move at once into the industrial planning field. On the other hand, there are advantages in having fresh minds and a fresh organisation. It is an open question whether the plan should come from the Scottish Office or from the SDA itself.
It will need criteria, by which I do not mean simply in terms of return on capital investment and pricing policies—the traditional nationalised industries' criteria. I mean the decision whether the money is best spent on capital- or labour-intensive projects, a subject to which my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Queen's Park (Mr. McElhone) referred. I ask my right hon. Friend to consider, for example, whether, with the money produced for the Invergordon project, it would not have been possible to produce a great many more jobs in other industries.
We need to look very carefully at the structure of the capital subsidies as well as labour subsidies, to make sure that the balance produces the highest value added, the highest income per head, within Scotland.
There was one amendment made in the House of Lords, which I hope my
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right hon. Friend will consider very carefully, pointing to a need for the SDA to consider industrial relations. There is no doubt at all that industrial relations in the United Kingdom, and in Scotland in particular, are a factor affecting the readiness of anyone, foreign or United Kingdom business men or Government, to invest. This is a view given, in my experience, not simply by German tycoons. It is a view that I hear expressed by trade union officials in my own constituency, by Labour councillors and by my own constituency party officers.
We need to be realistic about this. I very much hope that the SDA will appoint a full-time senior official to be concerned with industrial relations policy. I shall give an example of the sort of question with which he should be dealing. He should produce a standard procedure agreement and a standard wage structure which the unions have agreed to operate in enterprises coming into Scotland. It is possible—I have done it myself—to come to a procedure agreement with trade unions in advance of an enterprise being set up. It is possible to agree the principles of a wage structure. There is ample ability, within the Scottish trade union leadership, to produce such standard agreements which could be part of the package sold to encourage investment in Scotland.
I would go very much further than this myself—though I doubt whether I shall be able to persuade the Government—and say that the SDA ought to be prepared to experiment with totally different forms of industrial management. I put down an amendment to the Industry Bill in Committee which would have authorised the employees in an enterprise to opt to turn that enterprise into a workers' co-operative. I hope that the Scottish Development Agency will have the imagination to set up enterprises deliberately to operate as workers' co-operatives, if that is the wish of the employees in the enterprise. I hope that no management structure will be accepted by the SDA, for any enterprise it sets up, which has not first been fully discussed with the employees who are a part of that enterprise. These developments in industrial democracy, and this serious attack on the problems of industrial relations, are an essential part of development of industry

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in Scotland. They would, in any view, strengthen rather than weaken the Bill.
The respect in which I find the Bill limited is not the financial totals that have been prescribed. There is a Bill at present before the House, the Statutory Corporations (Financial Provisions) Bill, which, more or less at the nod of a head, is adding some £3,000 million to the funds available for public enterprises in the United Kingdom. The funds available to the SDA can readily be increased. My right hon. Friend has made this point over and over again.
I would have liked to see, not in the Bill perhaps but in a statement, a target of job creation, because it is this that will set the scale and the pace of the initial activity of the SDA. If it is setting a target such as "We think that we shall do well if we get three or four enterprises off the ground in the first year with a job creation of 1,000 in the first year and 3,000 in the second", it could be a commercial success, but it will not have very much impact on the Scottish economy. The number of jobs needed in West-Central Scotland in the next five to 10 years is 70,000 or 80,000. A substantial proportion of that must be created either directly by or under the influence of the SDA. It is that scale of activity which I have not yet heard by my right hon. Friend or the Government in general talking about in relation to this Bill.
We shall have an opportunity to pursue this further in Committee. If I may, I should like to give notice of my intention, if I am fortunate enough to serve on the Standing Commitee, to seek to write into the Bill some form of target for job creation in order to put a real spine into the implementation of the Bill.
7.21 p.m.
Mr. Hamish Gray: We have just listened to a very interesting and constructive speech by the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Dr. Bray). But, before dealing with one or two of the matters which he raised, I want to make a brief reference to the remarks to the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. Crawford). I do not take up any of the points that he made, but I wish to comment on his closing remarks in which he accused my right hon. and hon. Friends of trying to
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delay this Bill. It is already on the record and should be put on the record again, that my right hon. and hon. Friends used a perfectly reasonable parliamentary procedure in order to have this Bill debated on the Floor of the House.
The hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire went on to say that the people of Scotland would take note of these matters. Let me remind him that at this very time the people of Scotland are taking note of a great many matters. They are taking special note of the many irresponsibilities being perpetrated at different times, sometimes by members of his party.
I refer to a statement which I understand to have been made by the hon. Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Reid), who described the landing of oil from the North Sea at an English port as "an act of aggression". That is precisely the emotional appeal that members of the Scottish National Party have been trying to stir up throughout Scotland for a very long time, and, the sooner that it is nailed on this, the better. If the statement is not correct, I hope that the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire will say so.
Mr. Crawford: I cannot say whether it is correct. But the hon. Gentleman accused members of my party of stirring up emotions. We are very angry about urban deprivation in the west of Scotland and about the fact that decades of Conservative and Labour rule have left us with the highest unemployment figures in Western Europe.
Mr. Gray: I should not have given way to the hon. Gentleman. It is obvious that he is embarrassed by what I said. The people of Scotland will take note of all these matters.
Perhaps, on reflection, I might take up one point to which the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire referred. He spoke about a company in my constituency, known locally as MOIRA, which had fallen on evil days. The company has had a considerable amount of Government support. I am taking up the matter with the Department of Energy to see what can be done about it.
In terms of this Bill, it is perhaps of interest to point out—and I hope that the Secretary of State will consider carefully—that where considerable aid is given,

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there is great anxiety about forward planning in companies which are to be so assisted.
If the Secretary of State had announced that he intended to accept the Bill as it came back from the Lords, I should have looked upon the matter with an open mind because, unlike some of my hon. Friends, I do not see the dangers in the Bill that some of them see. I believe that there is much good in the Bill. But the matter to which I take the greatest exception and the reason why I cannot possibly support the Bill on Second Reading is the very fact that the Secretary of State has announced that he will put back into the Bill that part which I consider to be most obnoxious. In other words, the Secretary of State intends to reintroduce the power given to the agency to establish undertakings by itself. I do not see why it is necessary. It is not in the best interests of Scotland. I do not see how the setting up of companies or projects to be run entirely by the agency will benefit the people of Scotland.
To digress for a moment, last Saturday in my constituency I attended the naming of a very large platform for the Ninian field. The platform was built by Highland Fabricators (Brown & Root) Ltd., which is a free enterprise company. Such is the standard of labour relations that the men working for the company were able to negotiate terms which enabled them to complete the contract six weeks ahead of schedule and to gain bonuses accordingly.
The jobs which have been provided in my part of the country have been provided by private industry. They have not been provided by any nationalised undertaking or by any concern in which there is State participation. Certainly grants have been made available for the purpose, such as those which the Seccretary of State described earlier, following the policy adopted by successive Governments for the benefit of Scotland. But the companies themselves have no connection with the State, and their achievement is most commendable.
At the moment, I am serving on the Standing Committee which is considering the Petroleum and Submarine Pipe-lines Bill. We have been debating for some time the setting up of the British
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National Oil Corporation. This, again, is a proposal which the official Opposition deplore. We do not consider that it is necessary for taxpayers' money to be tied up in this way. The Government have adequate measures to get their revenue from the oil industry, as they have from any other industry, through normal taxation legislation. We do not see the need to set up such an organisation. There is no doubt that it is a form of nationalisation. The National Enterprise Board has many vast powers, but probably the powers which the Secretary of State proposes to take in this Bill relatively are as great.
There is also the problem of costs. I am a little worried by all the promises that the Government are making about sums in the region of £200 million or £300 million, not to mention the extortionate promises made by the Scottish National Party which are all made on the basis of oil and on the basis of its price either staying up or rising. I cannot imagine what the outcome will be if the price goes the other way.
Instead of the Bill which we are now considering, we could have achieved the same objects with a Scottish development fund. This, tied to oil revenues, could have directed the money in the same way to areas where it was required most.
The powers of the Secretary of State worry me a little. Certain of them are outlined in Clause 4. Among other things that says:
"After consulting with the Agency, the Secretary of State may give the Agency directions of a general or specific character as to the exercise of their functions…"
May we be given some indication of the difference between "general" and "specific" instructions? This is a matter which we have come across in our deliberations on the Petroleum and Submarine Pipe-Lines Bill, and the Secretary of State on one occasion gave us an example of a direction, but, unless he had told us, we should not have known whether it was general or specific. Is it necessary in this instance to have both types of instruction?
The Title of the Bill and the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum are very important. I do not think any hon.

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Member will disagree with that memorandum. It states:
The purpose of the Bill is to provide for the further economic development of Scotland with a special emphasis on providing, main taming and safeguarding employment and on improving the environment.
We should all heartily endorse this. We disagree on how this can best be achieved.
I welcome in particular Clause 19 which refers to air services in the Highlands and Islands. In Schedule 5 certain former Acts are repealed. Three different sections of the Highlands and Islands Development (Scotland) Act 1965 are repealed. I presume that this is because there will be no conflict of interest there. I believe that the Highlands and Islands Development Board has the power to assist air services in the Islands. Perhaps the Minister would deal with this matter when he replies.
We have the National Enterprise Board, the BNOC and now the SDA. Of the three, the SDA is certainly the lesser evil. There is certainly much good in it, but I do not know why the Secretary of State must spoil many good ideas and thoughts which appear in the Bill be re-introducing the totally obnoxious clause which was removed in another place.
I know that many of my right hon. and hon. Friends wish to take part in this debate so I shall not take up any more of the House's time. In many ways it is with regret that I cannot support the Bill on Second Reading.
7.32 p.m.
Mr. Richard Buchanan: I welcome the Bill with some enthusiasm, in contrast to its reception by the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Gray), who wishes to set up a Scottish development fund. Is not such a fund just what his hon. Friends were complaining about when they said that a development fund would simply issue doles, that there would be no monitoring and that firms which were receiving assistance would not be required to have an efficient test.
It would seem from the remarks of some Conservative Members that Scotland was booming because private enterprise was taking all the initiatives. In fact, the Secretary of State is still doling out millions of pounds under various
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Acts to help private enterprise along the road.
The right hon. Member for Renfrew-shire, East (Miss Harvie Anderson) mentioned taxation. I appreciate that taxation locally and nationally is probably getting near to saturation point. However, one of the greatest leaks as regards taxation is paying people unemployment benefit. The Bill is surely about the creation of employment and the stimulation of industry to enable the Chancellor of the Exchequer to have the money to pursue the many things that we desire in a social environment.
I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is determined to restore the provision, which was deleted from the Bill in another place, because the teeth have been drawn from the Bill. I am glad that he is seeking to reintroduce that clause.
The Bill is a means for furthering the economy of Scotland and for improving its environment. A great deal has been said about economic aspects and, therefore, I wish to direct my remarks to the environment. The environment has become a major political issue and is taking its place in the mainstream of political argument—a subject as vast as the universe itself.
Many hon. Members have experienced the kind of environment which the Bill seeks to eradicate. I welcome the multiplicity of rôles of the Bill, including the promotion of industry and industrial democracy, and the management of estates. However, the most important of these rôles is the improvement of the environment. It is a recognition of this rôle that it has been included in the statute. It has been recognised that decay on the economic front is rapidly followed by decay and dereliction in the surrounding area. One of the best features of the Bill is that something will be done to improve the environment.
In 1964 I was elected as Member of Parliament for an industrial constituency which is typical of such constituencies throughout Scotland. It is certainly typical of industrial constituencies to the north and east of Glasgow. There is not a single major industry in the whole of the East End of Glasgow. This area used to be the power-house of the West of Scotland. There is no point in Scottish National Members blaming this on the

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United Kingdom Government. It was Scotsmen and Scotswomen who did not believe in Scotland. This is why Scotland fell into decay. If we have a Scottish Government it will have t3 be different in context and personnel from the men and women who almost led Scotland to ruination in the past.
Mr. Crawford: We are blaming the situation on the fact that Scotland does not have a Government of its own.
Mr. Buchanan: Scotland had its own railways, its own steel industry and its own indigenous industries. Scotsmen let Scotland down. They did not believe in Scotland.
The consequent follow on to industrial decay in my constituency is typical. The age of the steam locomotive is past and all the supporting industries to that industry died with it. As a consequence, buildings around the factories are decaying, derelict and being pulled down. Industrialists have visited my constituency to see the finest sites in the West of Scotland. I am not raising this as a matter of propaganda. The railways were given the best sites so that transportation of people and goods would be faster. Until the steam engine was invented, the fastest speed that man could travel was what it was in the days of Julius Caesar—the speed of a galloping horse. The railways were given all the sites they wanted. These sites are now lying vacant in Springburn and in East End. An industrialist can see the decay and dereliction that exists in the old environment, and are being discouraged from investing.
Glasgow Corporation is doing a first-class job clearing these derelict sites. However, the whole scheme is spoilt by one tenement block sticking up in the midst of, perhaps, 20 or 30 acres. Something must be done about that. I hope that the Minister will take power in the Bill to ensure that sterilised sites are made available to industrialists. It is no encouragement to the industrialists if the environment surrounding the area where they want to build their factories is as bad as it is in some parts of Glasgow.
If we are to create a progressive, industrial base in Scotland it is necessary to have the right environment. This involves co-operation with the local authorities. The regional councils have a considerable
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amount of economic power invested in them. Will they still have that power or will the SDA be taking control?
My hon. Friend the Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. Canavan) referred to people who travel all over Scotland—the industrial nomads who travel long distances to their places of work. He made the important point that housing is just as important as jobs. Houses must be built close to places of work. The local authorities could do a tremendous job on this if they got the money. Glasgow corporation has published plans today for environmental improvement amounting to £8 million. It could do a magnificent job on the environment if the money were forthcoming. So much more could be done in relation to housing management. I hope that my right hon. Friend will have some influence about asking local authorities, particularly in Glasgow, to tidy up post-war housing schemes.
Another matter which worries me is the delay in processing planning applications. It seems to take a terribly long time to say "No", which seems rather ridiculous.
The situation in which I was involved in Ardersier, in the North of Scotland, gives cause for concern. Inverness has a harbour authority and Cromarty has a harbour authority. But the men who were launching the rig from Ardersier had no control over the seaway between Cromarty and Inverness. They have to go through all the paraphernalia of a public inquiry before they can get permission to clear the seaway to launch these rigs. That is ridiculous and the process should be streamlined or eliminated.
If the environment is important to the creation of a sound industrial base, so is industrial relations. I shall not try to give the trade unionists any advice. I simply mention the matter. From listening to the media and reading the newspapers, one would think that very few people do any work in West-Central Scotland. But industrial relations in Scotland generally are better than they are almost anywhere else, certainly in Europe. The prestige of the TUC and the STUC is such that, by and large, the unofficial strike, the cause of most of the dissension, usually stimulated by a small

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group of so-called International Socialists, could be contained. The STUC and the TUC will have to use their not inconsiderable power and prestige to see that the influence of these sinister wreckers is not developed in such a way as to place any of the industrial development about which we are talking in jeopardy.
My hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Dr. Bray) spoke in terms of workers' control. I was recently in Yugoslavia. We must really look at the question of self-management. It is working very efficiently there. They have something to show us. I hope that we shall pursue the extension of industrial democracy here with just a little more vigour.
With a little reservation, I welcome the Bill. The little reservation is that I would like to see a little more money involved. But the fact that the Bill is necessary at all is a trenchant condemnation of private enterprise, and particularly of the Scots in industry and commerce. A herculean task confronts the new SDA—progressing areas of potential growth, supplementing private enterprise, indulging in joint ventures with private enterprise and seeing that it has the proper plans and sets itself the proper targets, and monitoring its efficiency.
It would be tragic, however, if the SDA became a convalescent home for failures. My hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw mentioned indigenous industries. I hope that the Bill will occasionally nurse back to viability many of our indigenous industries. But where the SDA will be at its best, I hope, is in the creation of new jobs. I do not agree with my hon. Friend about targets, because if we set a target for creating so many thousand jobs and fail by 500, everyone will say that we failed to reach our target.
About 40,000 jobs have been created in the oil industry. However, for the Scots, what a catalogue of lost opportunities there is in the matter of offshore engineering. We see on television programmes about the platforms being constructed in Norway, rigs being towed across the sea and supply ships being ordered from overseas. Even the tanker that took the oil from the Argyll field down to London flew the flag of Liberia. On the subject of Scottish oil, my limited
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knowledge of geography indicates that the median line for the Argyll field is as close to England as it is to Scotland, and it is British oil. But even the undersea pipes which will pump most of the oil into Scotland came from Italy.
In short, our share of the market in offshore engineering has reached only 40 per cent. of the total and the performance of British and Scottish industry falls far short of what we are entitled to expect.
The agency is to have a chairman and not fewer than six and not more than 12 other members. I hope that the Minister will take the advice that has been offered to him today and see that the appointments to the agency are not retired civil servants or worthy trade union officials. We are looking for people with initiative and enterprise, successful people with entrepreneurial minds. Let us give them the power to do the job and let them get on with it. If they are no good, let us get rid of them. If the SDA is to succeed, it is essential that we give it the maximum degree of independence. I wish it well.
7.46 p.m.
Mr. Hector Monro: It is always a privilege to speak after the hon. Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Buchanan). He always speaks with such sincerity about Glasgow. I was particularly interested in his views on the environment, on which I shall comment later. We may have crossed swords about social democracy, but that has not been because I do not think he knows what it means, and I certainly do not do so in relation to what was removed from the Bill in another place.
I want to speak about the practicalities of the Bill in relation to industrialists who may want to come to Scotland to set up business there. Over many years I have been involved in efforts to attract industries to Dumfriesshire and I have learned a good deal during this period. I willingly pay tribute to those who have worked hard in the same area, such as the county council, the town councils and the development authority, always working under both Governments. I accept that there has been help from the present Government as there has from previous Conservative Governments.
I pay a very short but sincere tribute to the Department of Trade and Industry in Glasgow. It has played a very great

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part in the industrial development of our country over recent years—and no one more than the late chief executive there, Mr. John Warne. He should certainly go on record as one who has done a great service for Scotland.
During the period about which I am talking we were working under the Local Employment Act 1963, which initiated the advance factories, the development districts and, later, special development areas. If the hon. Member for Dumfries, West (Mr. Doig) had been present I should have discussed his views about the whole of Scotland being one special development area. On this topic I believe that there is still a very important place for incentives for those areas which really need industry, in which we have unemployment of 6 per cent., 10 per cent. or even 15 per cent., as some areas of Scotland have. They deserve an extra incentive to attract industry, over and above what is going to areas perhaps more favourable in terms of unemployment percentages. However, that is something that should be discussed in Committee, and not now.
The present system, complicated as it may seem at first sight to an industrialist, has worked well. I know that people are sometimes frustrated about the time it takes. However, they have got there in the end. Today the Secretary of State has introduced an additional system, on top of the present system. This is something on which the Minister of State should comment in winding up the debate. My original impression was that we would have the SDA and that surely the SIDO would disappear and we would not have the two systems. I still think that it is up to the right hon. Gentleman to prove more effectively than has been done so far that the suggested system will work better than what we have at present. I feel that this addition will cause confusion, certainly in the early stages.
SIDO plus the 1972 Industry Act gave emphatic control of industrial development in Scotland to the Department of Industry in Glasgow and there was close co-ordination with the development of new industry in England and Wales. This was a major step forward and I feel that this co-ordination will be lost in the splitting up of future industrial development. I have always believed that the Secretary of State should have the maxi-
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mum authority over development in Scotland, provided that the United Kingdom advantages were not lost. I have some doubts in this matter now. Most new industry coming direct to Scotland comes from England and has its first contact with the Department of Industry in London. From there is is channelled to the most appropriate location, whether in Scotland, the North-East of England or Wales.
If the NEB is the front runner in England, it will tend, if possible, to retain industry in England and not, as I should like, push industry to the North and into Scotland where it is most needed.
Mrs. Winifred Ewing: Is there not a hint of denigration in the hon. Member's remarks of the excellent work done by the Scottish Council (Development and Industry)? I speak as an elected executive member of that body. It has directed a great deal of industry to Scotland. If enterprises like that were encouraged we would not have to fear what the hon. Gentleman fears.
Mr. Monro: I am not sure whether the hon. Lady was here when I started speaking—[HON. MEMBERS: "She has only just come in."]
Mrs. Ewing: I have been here quite a long time.
Mr. Monro: I have paid compliments to many people who have played a part in bringing industry to Scotland. [HON. MEMBERS: "The hon. Lady should be here."]
Mrs. Ewing: Hon. Members should not make cheap remarks.
Mr. Monro: If the hon. Lady does not quieten down, I shall be unable to finish my speech. Of course, the Scottish Council has played a very important part in these activities, but the majority of industrial development in Scotland started following contact with the Department of Industry in London.
Are the SDA and the NEB both to set up offices in America and Europe, fighting for industry separately, or will there be a United Kingdom approach, as I should like, to channel industry to where it is mostly likely to be successful? In view of this additional complication, what is the standing of the advisory committee

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which is such an important cog in the wheel, providing loans and grants to industry under the 1972 Act? Will it be kept under SIDO and the Industry Act, or will it be taken over by the SDA?
I come now to the question of SICRAS, which has an important part to play in the rural economy of Scotland. It could have done more than it has done. Whatever the Bill says about the staff, I hope that they are quite happy to change their responsibilities to the SDA.
The SIE has been an excellent organisation and it is a pity to shut it down, even if it is being put under the wing of the SDA. It has been doing such an important and efficient job that I would have left it alone. Will the SDA set up offices in the regions of Scotland? There must be the closest contact between regional authorities and the SDA if it is to work as we hope it will.
I am not happy about the Secretary of State's remarks concerning the Development Commission. I appreciate that Mr. Donald Chapman, for whom I have the highest regard, has accepted that his responsibilities in Scotland should be taken over by the SDA. The commission has had a chequered career since 1911. It has been more active in some periods than in others and it is currently particularly active. It has been stimulated by the Scottish Office and I give it credit for that.
I was impressed by Mr. Chapman and his colleagues when they came to Dumfries and Galloway last winter and studied the plan prepared by the authority. They recently accepted that plan and proposed to build factories at Gretna and Kirk-connel. Because we are a region and I want to see harmony, I thank the commission for the factories it is to build at Galloway as well.
Under the last 12 months of Socialism, unemployment in my constituency has increased by 33 per cent. and the number is now 342 higher than a year ago. Some industries are on short time and others, such as the textile industry, are deeply concerned at the situation. We have to view the matter in the context of the 100,000 unemployed in Scotland.
The Government cannot be proud of their industrial or economic policies. I
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noted that the Secretary of State in his speech accepted responsibility for jobs in Scotland. Did he appreciate what he was saying? Did he mean that he is prepared to answer Questions in the House on unemployment?
While the Government's intentions for the SDA may be good, they have complicated a situation that industrialists coming to Scotland never find it easy to understand.
The Secretary of State has also shown that substantial resources will be required if the Bill is to be of the value that he expects. The sum of £200 million is mentioned in the Bill. It appears from the mathematics of my hon. Friends and others to mean about £20 million to £30 million a year over and above the money now coming into Scotland under the Industry Act 1972. Therefore, it is not quite the bonanza that the Secretary of State heralded when he announced the Bill some time ago.
Will the £200 million, or whatever it is be sacrosanct when the Prime Minister announces his economic package next month? Shall we learn of a cutback in the £200 million or the annual amount when the statement is made before the House rises?
If the Government have their way, the legislation will include a number of points with which we cannot agree. Another place made substantial improvements to the Bill. If the Government were prepared to leave it at that, there would be fewer objections to it.
I conclude on the matter about which the hon. Member for Springburn spoke—the environment. It is most important that we raise the standard of the environment, particularly in West-Central Scotland. We must make the area a much happier place to live in from the point of view of recreation and standard of life. But there seems to be a paradox in that, whereas the Bill encourages expenditure to that end, local authorities are having to cut back on almost anything that would come under that heading. Perhaps the Minister of State will explain just what money the local authorities can begin planning to spend in the present financial year, or even the next financial year, under this heading.
I welcome projects such as the Strathclyde Park, a major development in an

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area that was not attractive before the engineering works began about two years ago. It is well on its way to fruition. The Government might also put some resources towards the future of Hampden Park.
If the money is not available for the environmental improvements about which the Secretary of State talked, he is building castles in the air and holding out prospects of things that will not happen in Scotland in the foreseeable future. We want to see an end to slagheaps, derelict houses and areas of deprivation, but many such matters could be dealt with now without the passage of the Bill, if the money were available to local authorities, under a whole host of local government Acts and the Industry Act.
To the extent that this is an unnecessary Bill, because the powers already exist and have been working well, the Secretary of State should let well alone and restrain himself from breaking up a system that was worth improving but certainly was not ripe for abolition.
8.4 p.m.
Mr. William Hamilton: I want to say something about one or two of the speeches we have just heard, not least the last one. We gather that the Conservative Opposition will vote against the Bill not too enthusiastically, mainly because they think that the House of Lords has improved it. That was the gist of the speech of the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Gray), and the hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro) also commented to that effect. In our view, however, the House of Lords emasculated the Bill. I was glad to learn that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State intends to put it right.
If it has any justification for existing—and I doubt that—the House of Lords exists to tidy up legislation from this House, not to emasculate it. Therefore, it is right and proper for this House to tell the other place just where to go. We intend to produce the law which the electorate gave us a mandate to put on the statute book. The hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty and the right hon. Member for Renfrewshire, East (Miss Harvie Anderson) said that they were against public enterprise in principle. That is a point of view that can be understood, but it is one which we do not support and
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which cannot be sustained. The Scottish economy is weak enough, but if it were not for public enterprise it would be virtually a desert.
I give one example. The new towns are the most imaginative social experiment of public enterprise that we have seen in the post-war world. People come to this country from all over the world to see our new towns, which are an example of co-operation. After the pouring in of public money and after public planning, industry is encouraged—bribed, if one wishes so to describe it—and given incentives to develop in the new towns. They constitute one of the best examples of a second industrial revolution, combined with probably the best environmental conditions anywhere in Scotland.
My right hon. Friend the Minister of State, in an unfortunate experience this morning in the debate on the Glenrothes Statutory Instrument, had reason to comment on this aspect of the new towns. The public enterprise sectors in Scotland are the very basis of our success. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will go down in history as a revolutionary in that he will have been responsible for the introduction of both the Highlands and Islands Development Board and now this measure. I recall that when he introduced the legislation setting up the board the then Shadow Secretary of State, Michael Noble as he then was, described it as a Marxist measure. But when he saw that his constituency was omitted from the original project he sought amendments to bring it within the Marxism that was being introduced by my right hon. Friend. No doubt Tory Members will describe the Bill as a further extension of Marxism. If so I am a damned good Marxist, because I very much welcome the Bill.
I have never heard such a farrago of parochial nonsense in all my life as I heard tonight from the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. Crawford). It was the most nauseating mixture of insularity and ignorance that I have ever heard in the House. When the Scottish National Party seeks to disclaim responsibility for the activities of the Tartan Army, I accept that, but the emotive arguments used by the hon. Gentleman today were designed to whip up the kind

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of feeling that expresses itself in violence. The hon. Gentleman ended his speech in the same emotive tone, talking of Scottish oil being delivered to an English port. If that is not emotional nonsense deliberately designed to whip up hatred between people who happen to belong to one part of the United Kingdom and others who happen to be born and bred in another part, I do not know what is.
Mr. Henderson: In his remarks the hon. Gentleman is giving us a lesson in whipping up hatred and discord. It is clear that he does not understand that the Scottish National Party has always taken a constitutional view of the objectives which we wish to attain. We stand up for the rights of the Scottish people and for the right of the working people in Scotland to jobs. If the hon. Gentleman regards that as whipping up hatred, he has a distorted sense of values.
Mr. Hamilton: The hon. Gentleman said that anybody who did not have a Scottish birth certificate would have to leave Scotland if there were an independent, separate State.
Mrs. Winifred Ewing: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It may be considered that the hon. Gentleman's language was unparliamentary as he accused by hon. Friend of being a racist. If the hon. Gentleman had the chance, I wonder whether he would say that outside the Chamber. He knows that he can say that here with impunity.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Myer Galpern): The point of order was addressed to the Chair. I do not consider the contribution of the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) as in any way unparliamentary. I hope that the exchanges will not reach the stage where there is some kind of warfare between the two sides of the House.
Mr. Hamilton: I am expressing what was said outside the House.
Mrs. Ewing: Withdraw it.
Mr. Hamilton: I referred to what was said outside the Chamber by the hon. Gentleman. He is on record as having said it.
Mrs. Ewing: Where?
Mr. Hamilton: I shall provide the hon. Lady with the quotation.
I turn from that subject and refer briefly to another—
Mrs. Ewing: No wonder.
Mr. Hamilton: The hon. Lady enters and leaves the Chamber within a few moments.
Mrs. Ewing: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The chairman of the battered wives committee knows why I was in and out of this Chamber. It is unworthy of the hon. Gentleman to make that remark.
Mr. Hamilton: I was chairman of that committee, which ended its proceedings shortly after 6 p.m. I have been in the Chamber since then. The hon. Lady has been here for about 10 minutes since that time. It is now 8.10 p.m.
Mrs. Ewing: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker——
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Let us have exemplary behaviour in the House. I think that hon. Members on both sides are getting a little out of hand. The comments were fair debating points. If we continue with points of order, we shall be unable to proceed with the debate.
Mr. Hamilton: I shall now refer to the Bill.
My right hon. Friend seeks to extend public ownership. He intends to take comprehensive powers not only to extend existing public ownership but to initiate new public enterprises and public participation in existing private enterprises. I am glad of that. My right hon. Friend will have enormous powers. Those powers will be more comprehensive than have been assumed by any previous Government. The Secretary of State will be in charge of economic planning and industry in Scotland.
I should like to ask a question concerning the relationship between the Scottish Development Agency and the NED. This matter was referred to by Lord Hughes, who spoke of the drawing up of administrative rules to define the relationship between the NED and the SDA. Those rules will be adjusted from time to time in the light of experience according to circumstances. He said that

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the rules would be published in due course. It is important that the rules should be drawn up as quickly as possible. I hope that my right hon. Friend will give us some indication of the schedule he has in mind for that purpose.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Buchanan) spoke about the quality of life. I am glad that that is not an insignificant part of the provisions of the Bill and that the Bill is not exclusively an exercise to promote economic and industrial growth.
I am one of an increasing number of people who believe that growth is not necessarily good in itself. We must pay much more attention to the improvement of the quality of life rather than the quantity of goods and services which we produce. We see far too many communities in the United Kingdom enduring the scars and the sores of the rapacious first Industrial Revolution—the slum houses, the slum schools and the slum hospitals. Progress is being made to remove the worst of those evils. It has been done at public expense. We are obliged to use public money with which to remove the scars created by private enterprise. Public resources have been used to cure this privately-created evil.
I ask one question of my right hon. Friend, although he may not be able to answer it immediately. Continued reference has been made to the fact that the great bulk of the money to be made available under the Bill will be spent in the west-central area of Scotland. I understand that decision, which has been made on the basis of population and social and economic deprivation. There are good grounds for asserting that repeatedly. I hope that my right hon. Friend will give an indication of how he envisages the machinery by which the resources will be divided between the regions.
Although the Fife region has a good record in clearing dereliction, an unacceptable amount still remains to be dealt with. The National Coal Board seeks to extend its opencast operations in the Cardenden Bowhill area, which has been an eyesore for far too long. It gives the impression of arrogantly overriding the wishes and the desires of local councils and people. I do not know how that fits in with the terms of the Bill. How-
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ever, I should like my right hon. Friend to clear up that matter.
There will be an interesting debate on the Bill in Committee. Despite the absurdities of one of the Scottish National Party spokesmen, that party will evidently not oppose the principle of the Bill. We shall be interested to see what amendments are proposed by the Scottish National Party.
The Tory Opposition are opposed to the principles of the Bill, presumably because it extends public enterprise. The people of Scotland see their salvation in the extension of public enterprise because private enterprise has manifestly failed in the past 300 or 400 years.
8.20 p.m.
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) referred to the relationship between the National Enterprise Board and the Scottish Development Agency, and I too wish to touch on that subject. Some clauses of the Bill raise issues which are not clear, and I wish to mention several matters which cause concern to the Law Society of Scotland and company lawyers.
Clause 14(1)(a) provides that the SDA shall have power to acquire just under 30 per cent. of the share capital in a company at a cost of up to £2 million without the formal consent of the Secretary of State for Scotland, subject to the total limit of certain expenditure laid down in Clause 13(3). The Welsh Development Agency Bill and the Industry Bill contain similar provisions, and it would appear that these powers are cumulative and not mutually exclusive. Those powers should not be cumulative.
Will the Minister make clear, if necessary by an amendment at a later stage, that the maximum cumulative shareholding in a company by the Scottish Development Agency, the Welsh Development Agency and the National Enterprise Board will be only 30 per cent.? To put the question differently, will he ensure, again by amendment if necessary, that acquisition of share capital in a company by one of the bodies I have mentioned is mutually exclusive of the other two bodies acquiring any share capital in that company?

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There is a City code—I understand that it is a Stock Exchange booklet—which states that a shareholding of 30 per cent in a public company is equivalent to effective control of that company. Is the Minister satisfied that the clause is not in conflict with Article 7 of the EEC draft directive on general bids in relation to the acquisition of a controlling interest in a company? At an early stage the hon. Member for Fife, Central raised this topic very generally with the Government. If the Minister would give a clear indication of where the Government stand on this issue, it would be of considerable assistance.
Of perhaps greater importance is the matter of principle which arises on paragraph 19 of Schedule 1. According to that paragraph the agency is exempt from the provisions of Section 14(1) of the Prevention of Fraud (Investments) Act 1958. That Act prohibits the distribution of circulars in relation to investments subject to various exceptions, and provides that permission must be given by the Department of Trade. The provision in the Scottish Development Agency (No. 2) Bill to which I have referred would surely put the agency outwith the scope of the law. Why should the agency be exempt from the terms of the Prevention of Fraud (Investments) Act when every other firm, company and body in the country is subject to them? In short, why should the agency be given superior powers to everyone else? Does not that provision give the agency an immunity which it should not have? I shall be grateful to the Minister if he will answer these questions.
We are committed to the establishment of a Scottish Development Fund which will, obviously, have to be administered by a body or agency. The debate today concerns not whether there should be an agency but what the powers of that agency should be.
8.24 p.m.
Dr. M. S. Miller: I give an unequivocal welcome to the Bill and I am not put off by the criticism that the Bill contains another series of plans for action which will lead to alleged bureaucratic control. Whenever a civilised community wishes to take action, it is advisable to begin by planning that action in some detail, and I warmly welcome the
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opportunity to say a few words in support of this set of proposals.
I listened with a great deal of interest to the speech made by the hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns (Mr. Buchanan-Smith), but he was at least 75 years out of date in his avowed, open espousal of the laissez faire system. I have news for him. We are in a different ball game now. We are not today living in the world he was talking about.
The agency has a huge task ahead of it. I hope that what we shall hear from the Prime Minister in the next few weeks will make no difference to the Government's intentions in respect of this measure. There are enormous problems to be overcome and I cannot help but be impressed by the scope of the Bill. But in addition to a long-term solution to some of our problems, we are looking for one or two quicker results. For example, I should like the agency quickly to do something about the steel industry in Scotland and to deal with some of the problems of the multinational companies. I should like it also to monitor the money that comes to industry, sometimes to firms which very soon thereafter close down and transfer their assets to other parts of the country. The agency should have power to monitor that money.
I am happy that the relationship of the Scottish Development Agency to the National Enterprise Board will not be one of subservience and that the SDA will not be a creature of the NEB. It is to be responsible to the Secretary of State for Scotland for its funds and decisions and, in the words of the Secretary of State, decisions about Scotland will be taken in Scotland.
I should like to ask my right hon. Friend two questions about Clause 6, under which the Secretary of State is enabled to transfer to the agency the property of a new town which has been wound up under Section 36 of the New Towns (Scotland) Act 1968. My hon. Friend the Member for Fife Central (Mr. Hamilton) and other hon. Members who represent new towns may be interested in this. My first question is, when does my right hon. Friend propose to start winding up any new town in Scotland?
Secondly, when this is done, and property is transferred from the new town

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to the Scottish Development Agency, how much say will the local authority have in the transfer of the property and what will the scope of the transfer be?
I should like for a moment to refer to our friends the Scottish National Party. It is very easy to make cheap propaganda points about Scotland and its deprivation areas. I am astonished at the little boy and little girl attitudes adopted by the Scottish National Party. They pop up every now and again to make points similar to those they learned at school where the teacher gave them a list and told them that when they answered questions in examinations they must quote from the list. They raise what they believe are nice little telling points which are really tedious nonsense.
When one examines the difficulties in Scotland it must be remembered that Scotland and England did not start at the same base line, certainly not in terms of what has happened since the Industrial Revolution. One Scottish Nationalist hon. Member complains that it was because Scotland did not have its own government that Scottish industrialists let their country down. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central indicated, the fact is that the Scottish industrialists themselves let down and had no confidence in Scotland.
It is no use saying that Scotland is in its present position because it did not have its own government. Southern England did not have its own government but its industrialists did not let it down. The jibes, jeers and sneers from the Scottish National Party indicate to me as a medical man that they have a very sad inferiority complex. My advice to them is to get out of it because it will do them no good and it would do the Scottish people no good.
The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. Henderson) made a very robust speech, similar to the speeches of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith). However, with the arguments that he put forward it is no wonder that we have a Scottish National Party. If Members of the Scottish National Party had the interests of Scotland at heart I would advise them to forget their inferiority complex to stand up in the world and be counted as men and women and not as little children.
Mrs. Winifred Ewing: That is just what we are going to do.
Dr. Miller: They are plagued by this inferiority complex.
Mrs. Winifred Ewing: Rubbish.
Dr. Miller: I intervened in an hon. Member's speech to ask about the way in which the Scottish Development Agency will be controlled. This is the heart of the matter, certainly as regards its operation. As I have indicated, the Bill is good, comprehensive and contains everything that is needed. We can argue in Committee about certain niceties that have to be added about more money and so on. However, the most important aspect is how the agency will operate and be controlled and who the chairman and members of the agency will be. The chairman must not be a stooge either of this or of any other Government. As the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. Steel) indicated, it must not be a question of "jobs for the boys".
The establishment of this agency is probably the most important step that has been taken in Scotland for a long time from the industrial point of view. We have the pulling together of most of the agencies that will be used for the industrial, economic and environmental development of Scotland in the near and indeed the more distant future.
The nationalised industries are being criticised. Many Opposition Members have evinced doubts about the Bill because they do not like nationalisation. They can also point—and I do not take exception to this—to the undoubted fact that there is an element in our nationalisation so far which does not generate a feeling of great success. I would not argue about that. However, nationalisation is only the first step towards public ownership. It is not the end result. It is unfortunate that no Government since nationalisation was first implemented in respect of some industries not so long ago, has yet gone beyond the first step. One can argue about what that means. Indeed, there are many subleties and intricacies about what is meant by "public ownership"—but I repeat, nationalisation is only the first step.

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I must confess openly and unashamedly that I am not afraid of public ownership, because, in the same way as I indicated at the beginning that I thought that the hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns was 75 or 100 years out of date, I still feel that a full-bodied policy of nationalisation with a view to public ownership is the best hope for the future prosperity of Scotland.
I look forward to seeing this Bill on the statute book. I look forward to seeking some of its provisions being brought to bear on the Scottish economy as quickly as possible and to other provisions being implemented in order that the people of Scotland should live full lives unhampered and untrammelled by the stupidities which unfortunately happen to have been thrown up by some people, so that the prosperity of Scotland can be assured for a long time to come.
8.36 p.m.
Mr. Hamish Watt: In giving a warm welcome to the Bill, I am saddened by hon. Members on both sides of the House who have seen fit to use this opportunity to try to score cheap party points.
The hon. Member for East Kilbride (Dr. Miller) claimed that the Scottish National Party spoke from an inferiority complex. If being in second place in 42 seats in Scotland is an inferior position, we are delighted to be in such a situation. The fact is that the Scottish National Party is breathing down the necks of many right hon. and hon. Members and they are frightened.
I should particularly like to draw attention to Clause 2 of the Bill and the hope for Scotland that it contains. Clause 2 sees the agency providing, maintaining and safeguarding employment. That is a very laudable aim. It foresees the agency undertaking the redevelopment and improvement of the environment. It promises to bring derelict land into use and to improve its appearance. Further, the agency may do anything that is ncessary for performing its functions. That gives the agency limitless powers which can be used for the good or ill of Scotland.
No one will deny that much needs to be done to rehabilitate the derelict areas of Scotland. The unsightly coal bings
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which have for so long been an eyesore ought to be got rid of, and only a determined effort over many years to come will get rid of them.
If one takes a train journey through any region of Scotland, one soon realises how much dereliction exists and how much requires to be done. One also realises just how much land is in the hands of bodies like the National Coal Board and British Rail. If the Scottish Development Agency is to have the power to acquire and to rehabilitate that land, I trust that the House will vote it all the powers that it needs to get the job done. The landscape of Central Scotland is certainly nothing to be proud about, and any steps taken to improve it will be welcome.
The potential of much of the land about which I am talking is not high. It is perhaps suitable only for the growing of trees. For a bankrupt nation like Britain, however, every tree planted will play a small part in helping to cut down the ridiculously high bill for the import of timber, a bill which amounted to over £2,000 million last year. Provided that care is taken to have a proper blend of hard and soft woods, the appearance of the whole countryside can be greatly enhanced by forestry expansion.
Recently I had the opportunity of flying over Germany from south to north and of seeing something of the vast forest areas of that country. There in the forests below lay the real wealth of Germany. It does not have to import as much raw material as we do. Every weekend I fly from south to north of the British Isles, and I am ashamed—yes, ashamed—to see just how much land lies derelict.
The greatest single indictment of the capitalist system in this country has been the way in which capital has been used, or misused, to keep so many acres out of production. It matters not whether land is being reserved for deer shooting, grouse moor or walking. What matters is that land has been kept derelict and unproductive. I hope that the Scottish Development Agency will classify much of these deer forests and grouse moors as derelict land, will take it in hand and do something about it.
I appeal, therefore, to members of the agency, whoever they may be, to go easy on certain sections of the Act and

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go heavily on others. The Scottish Development Agency sets out to provide jobs and create wealth in Scotland, and I commend to the agency and its members the opportunity that lies in forestry for this purpose. If we can cut down that tremendous timber bill, I am quite sure that it will be commendable to do so. To save the pound we must save imports, and one of the best ways of doing that is by utilising our derelict acres to grow trees.
We are told that under the Scottish Development Agency we are to have some £2,200 million available in the next few years. I can give the House an example of one young man in the north-east of Scotland who can himself use £50 million of that money to set up a pulp mill that would do a great deal to bring jobs to Scotland and it is, after all, jobs that the Scottish Development Agency is speaking about. I particularly welcome the provision in the Bill for establishing industries to provide employment. I hope that the Scottish Development Agency will see this as its major rôle. I for one have never been able to appreciate the logic of deliberately keeping people out of work, and if the Bill has the effect of providing jobs where none exist at present it is greatly to be welcomed.
The hoary old theory that a high level of unemployment helps to prevent wage rises and encourages other workers to keep their jobs simply is not relevant in modern society and, therefore, the system must be changed. If a person cannot contribute to the current account of the nation, he should be expected to contribute to the capital account of the nation. It is to be hoped that the Scottish Development Agency, while creating employment opportunities in the accepted sense, will concentrate on improving the infrastructure of Scotland in such a way that it will provide jobs and will not seek to compete unduly with private enterprise right across the board.
I was particularly pleased to hear the Secretary of State for Scotland say that any continuation of unprofitable industry unduly prolonged was not in the country's best interest. I hope that that will be taken to heart. Going round the country as I do, one finds people asking "What the dickens are the Government going to do about unemployment?" Nobody hates an unemployed man more than his neigh-
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bour who has to leave his home early in the morning to go to work to pay taxes to keep his neighbour lying in bed. I wish that the Government would recognise this. Nobody hates the scrounger more than the man who has to pay taxes to keep somebody else who is failing to pull his weight in the community.
I welcome particularly Clause 2(2)(e) which promotes industrial democracy in the undertakings which the agency controls. As a member of a Committee of this House which has been investigating the motor vehicle industry, I cannot but be impressed by the great concern that so many workers have for the future of their jobs in that industry.
Equally, I am impressed by the sincerity and the degree of effort expended on behalf of these workers by the unions, who believe that the time has come when the worker must have a greater degree of participation in the management, not only of the industry, but of individual factories. I welcome the clause.
The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Dr. Bray) suggested that it would be wrong for the agency to establish offices overseas. I could not disagree more. So long as Scottish business is filtered through London offices and London-based agencies, Scottish business will be strangled. I look forward to the day when Scotsmen will go all over the world, backed by a Scottish Government, seeking orders for Scottish firms and work for Scottish workers.
Mr. Michael Clark Hutchison: Does the hon. Gentleman seek representation through Brussels or elsewhere?
Mr. Watt: I want the representation to be straight from the Scottish factories to wherever the customer is. This Bill contains powers which, if wrongly used, could be horrifying and stultifying for Scotland. If used properly they will be a tool that can transform and revitalise Scottish industry for generations to come.
8.47 p.m.
Mr. Norman Buchan: The hon. Member for Banff (Mr. Watt) is my favourite Scottish Nationalist Member. I was particularly pleased to hear, in his opening remarks, of his enthusiasm for his party because we all remember how, quite recently, he was a

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Conservative Party candidate. The other curious thing is that, having been a Conservative Party candidate and therefore, one would have thought, temporised the worst excesses of the SNP, he went on to say that there was nothing worse with which the Bill had to deal than the misuse of land through capital. I thought that his conversion was a double conversion. Then he said that there was nothing he hated more than unemployment—indeed, there was nothing that the man next door hated more than unemployment because he hated paying money to scroungers. He reverted to his old Conservatism.
In a short and tragic speech the hon. Member went full circle. We shall save the pound by planting trees, he said. The pound is in difficulties now. I do not know how long the hon. Member thinks it takes to grow a tree. I can tell him. It takes 40 years. Can we wait 40 years before dealing with this problem?
In another debate I said that the trouble with the Scottish Nationalist Party was not only that diagnosed by my hon. and medical Friend the Member for East Kilbride (Dr. Miller)——
Mrs. Winifred Ewing: Scottish National Party.
Mr. Buchan: I prefer to call it the Scottish Nationalist Party because having heard some of the rubbish emanating from those benches—[Interruption.]—not just from the hon. Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Reid), who is my second favourite SNP Member—I feel it is not right for it to describe itself as "National". There are many people who care for Scotland and the Scottish people a great deal more.
My hon. and medical Friend the Member for East Kilbride diagnosed an inferiority complex in the SNP. A medical colleague of his, Dr. David Stephenson, also of the SNP, has analysed a health report which was published at the weekend dealing with Scotland and particularly with the incidence of smoking, drinking and the over-consumption of sugar leading to bad dental health. Dr. Stephenson blames it all on the lack of self-government. He suggests that that leads to frustration and that frustration leads to the taking of sugar. It seems
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that we do not require a political diagnosis when we have a medical diagnosis of that sort. In fact, it is a lot of rubbish.
Perhaps the more important speech was made by the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. Crawford). The hon. Gentleman went wrong on a much more important matter. We had a lot of fun with the hon. Gentleman but he was making a serious and dangerous point. He was suggesting that it is sufficient if administration is carried out in Scotland, that it is fine if the SDA handles things but wrong if an Englishman dares to do so. That is seriously and dangerously wrong in that many of our troubles do not stop at the border. In my constituency I face the Chrysler problems. My hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) faces the cross-border problem of Bathgate. That is partly a macro-economic situation but it is a cross-border situation. Often the problem that faces a firm is in toto of a cross-border nature. It may very well be faced with a problem in Scotland that applies to other sectors in England. The solution might be found in England or it might be found in Scotland. If it is an integrated firm, a cross-border solution might be required.
I understand the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire when he is honestly saying "I wish to see an independent Scotland." That I understand, but like his hon. Friend the Member for Banff, who wants to wait 40 years before he saves the pound with the trees——
Mr. Watt Mr. Watt rose——
Mr. Buchan: I shall be with the hon. Gentleman in a moment. Just as the hon. Member for Banff is willing to wait 40 years for his trees to grow, so his hon. Friend is willing to see Scottish industry collapse rather than have the involvement of the NEB merely because it is a cross-border agency. That seems to be the height of irresponsibility. That is why I say that the hon. Gentleman's party does not deserve the title "national". It seems that it is willing to throw the well-being of the Scottish people to the dogs for the crudest of dogmas. I am interested in caring for the Scottish people. That is what I put first, not the abstraction of a thing called Scotland.
Mr. Crawford: Let us take for an example a Scottish firm which has large operations in England. Would the hon. Gentleman say that the SDA should be allowed to look after that company's operations in England as it is a cross-border company?
Mr. Watt Mr. Watt rose——
Mr. Buchan: Order.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Renfrewshire, West (Mr. Buchan) is not conducting the business of the House.
I make an appeal to hon. Members as I know that there are three hon. Members who are still anxious to take part in the debate. I think it is unfair to those Members, who are patiently waiting to be called, for their colleagues to encourage interventions.
Mr. Buchan: Mr. Deputy Speaker, I had refused several interventions but I thought it would save the time of the House if I gave way to the hon. Member for Banff. I had promised to do so. Would it now be in order for me to give way to the hon. Gentleman?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Very well.
Mr. Watt: If the hon. Gentleman cares so much for Scotland, why did he not ensure that more trees were planted when he was a Minister? If he had adopted that approach there would now be many more healthy growing trees.
Mr. Buchan: I considerably increased tree-planting in Scotland but perhaps I did not do nearly enough.
I maintain that there must be involvement between the SDA and the NEB. If the diagnosis is that the solution should be found through the NEB, it seems only right that we should do it in that way. If the SDA has a problem in Scotland which is of a cross-border nature, England should be involved. After all, we retain our say, influence and control as regards NEB policy.
The Bill seeks to deal with the same problem as that with which we tried to deal in the Highlands and Islands Development (Scotland) Bill. We required that legislation because of the failure of landlordism in the Highlands, and we require this Bill because of the failure of capitalism in Scotland and Britain. The
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legislation which we enacted was an indictment of the history of capitalism in Scotland and of every coal owner who had mines in Scotland. The fact that those coal owners were Scottish did not stop Scottish miners being exploited or the land of Scotland being desecrated. Therefore, to be "Scottish" is not enough.
I am surprised when I hear Opposition Members say that we must not allow the SDA to compete with private enterprise. In the name of heaven, why not? Private enterprise has been consistently wrong in terms of economic change ever since 1945. We have only to look at the tools and equipment which we give to our factory workers. The amount of such investment per worker in British industry is only half the figure allocated to workers in Germany, France, Belgium or Japan. That is why we cannot compete. That is also true of Scotland. Our investment per worker amounts to only a third of the sum invested per worker in the United States. This is the problem we must solve. Private industry has been unable to cope with this kind of investment both in Scotland and in England. That is why we require this Bill.
The Tories have attempted to emasculate the Bill. There are aspects of industrial democracy which we must seek to get back into its provisions, and we must also try to give greater powers to the SDA than exist at present. If we made one mistake over the Highlands and Islands Board, it was that we were too timid over the powers which we gave to that body. However, the board has done extremely well, but it has not done well enough. I hope that we shall learn from that experience and take courage—for the more courageous we are, the more response we shall get.
I am not worried about public ownership. I welcome it. I believe that too much power resides in companies. That power should be deceased—and the way to do it is to involve the community, and that will be to the community's good.
8.58 p.m.
Mr. Iain Sproat: I was interested in the dialogue which the hon. Member for Renfrewshire. West (Mr. Buchan) conducted with SNP Members. I thought he administered a fine rebuke to their absurd case.

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I am sorry that the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) has left the Chamber. [Interruption.] At least he was present for most of the afternoon, as I can testify because I waited for him to speak, which is more than can be said of the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mrs. Ewing).
Mrs. Winifred Ewing: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is there no protection for hon. Members against such attacks? I have been in the Chamber longer than the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton). Furthermore, we both served on an important Committee of the House whose proceedings went on until 6.30 this evening. This is lowering the tone of the House.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The number of points of order raised by the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mrs. Ewing) amount almost to a 10-minute speech.
Mr. Sproat: I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for mentioning the hon. Lady. I agree with the hon. Member for Fife, Central that the SNP cannot say that it believes in a straightforward, constitutional means of action and yet use language which excites non-constitutional emotions. That is what SNP members have done. They say that the landing of British oil in England is an act of aggression, that it was an act of thievery. It is that kind of emotional language which stirs the worst sort of emotions of the kind that found expression in the recent trial in Glasgow.
I wish that we had more time to pin down mis-statements. We heard from one SNP Member that Scotland has the highest unemployment rate in Western Europe. Let me tell SNP Members that the rate is not even higher than in the rest of the United Kingdom. The rate of unemployment is higher in Wales, Northern Ireland and the North of England.
We also hear statements from the SNP that oil from the Argyll field is Scottish oil, but there is no way internationally to draw boundary lines in that way. That also applies to the Josephine field. It is a farrago of hysteria and emotionalism which highlights differences, but that is the kind of emotional argument to which we are treated by the SNP. I hope
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that the people of Scotland will begin to realise it.
I support the idea of a Scottish Development Fund. I shall vote against the Bill tonight, however, not because I do not think there are many excellent parts in it but because in particular the funds that the Bill proposes to disburse could very easily be disbursed, without the extra bureaucracy, under the Industry Act 1972 among other measures. Above all, I object to the former part of Clause 2 which it is the stated intention of the Secretary of State to restore, which basically means that the Scottish Development Agency would be capable by itself of carrying on industrial undertakings. I oppose this as a totally unnecessary and damaging extension of State control. It is a damaging extension of State interference—capricious interference, in the language used by an hon. Member on the other side of the House in Committee last week. The Secretary of State said that he would himself ultimately have control of the SDA. This is precisely what we fear.
The hon. Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Buchanan), said he hoped the SDA would have the maximum independence. If it were to have it, we might find ourselves supporting it more readily. It is precisely because it will be half a commercial creature and half a political creature that we find ourselves quite unable to support it. We have had far too much experience in this country in recent years of State bodies which cannot make up their minds what is their prime aim, whether it is the return to the taxpayer on a commercial basis or the provision of jobs for the maximum number of people. The recent row between Sir Monty Finniston and the Secretary of State for Energy is a very good example of that division and conflict which we believe will hamstring the SDA in carrying out aims with which we would in certain cases agree.
We would view with very considerable concern that part of Clause 6 which allows the SDA to give rent-free accommodation in certain circumstances—the length of time being at the disposal of the Secretary of State—to the bodies or companies to which it wishes to give it. My understanding is that in certain circumstances this is possible, and in my opinion it would lead to unfair competition between

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straightforward commercial companies and those backed by the SDA. There are also a number of other matters for concern which I shall not go into in great detail now.
Industrial democracy is ill defined in the Bill as it stands. There are a number of ways in which we might support the promotion of industrial democracy. What I fear, however, in the light of the Employment Protection Bill, is that the promotion of industrial democracy simply means giving more power to the trade unions within companies. I think that the trade unions have too much power already and that the abuse of power by the trade unions is perhaps the biggest single obstacle that the country faces today. Therefore, for that reason, but primarily because I object to the extension of State control unnecessarily, I shall vote against the Bill tonight.
9.3 p.m.
Mr. Alexander Fletcher: I shall try to be brief and also not to cover the ground that has been ably covered by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Sproat) and other hon. Friends during the debate.
The Bill as presented to the House has two main functions, an industrial function and an environmental function, and it is about the latter that I should like to speak briefly. Just before doing that I point out to the Secretary of State that the main problem facing Scottish industry today is the problem facing industry throughout the United Kingdom—inflation. Soaring costs and falling orders are the problems and the nightmares facing management throughout industry in Scotland and throughout the United Kingdom.
The test of this Bill in the present serious economic climate must be whether it helps in this inflationary situation—and of course it does not. As presented to us, the Bill feeds inflation, whatever else it does. It is being introduced at rather a strange time, because it appears from all reports that the Government are becoming aware of the dangers of inflation and the havoc that it may create on the British economy. If the Prime Minister's words mean anything, apparently strong action is about to be taken on public expenditure, and that may kill the Bill before it sees the light of day.
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It is fair to say that, from the jobs and investment point of view, the Bill contains more theory than business or financial acumen, and I am afraid that it contains more political propaganda than good sense.
As I said at the beginning of my remarks, however, it is the environmental aspects of the Bill that I find more interesting, because here is what is alleged to be an attack on urban deprivation coming within weeks of the reform of local government in Scotland. It was my understanding that the reform of local government was to be the vehicle for a physical as well as an administrative improvement in local communities. I always thought that there was a hope that something would be done to ease urban deprivation. I remember hearing recently the argument that the reform of local government would be the main instrument for this. I think that a few months at least might have elapsed, before introducing the SDA to take on this job, to see whether local government was capable of doing it.
About the first letter that the right hon Gentleman received on becoming Secretary of State last year was from me begging him to postpone the reorganisation of local government and instead to look at its structure. However, it is clear that he has no faith in the ability of the new structure of local government to settle the problems of urban deprivation in Scotland and that he is looking to the SDA to tackle these environmental difficulties.
I suggest that if the Bill is intended to tackle urban deprivation in Glasgow, for example—a city where labour councils have wasted more public money than would have been necessary to regenerate all the industry in Scotland and all the deprived areas many times over—the Government should set out to do the job properly. I suggest that the way to do the job is the way that I have argued for many years, which is not by setting up the SDA as such but by putting into the district of Glasgow a development corporation to manage its financial affairs and its planning in a way aimed at giving the taxpayers and residents in Glasgow value for money for the first time ever.
But I suppose that that would be too realistic an approach for Government

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supporters. It seems that in some strange way the majorities in elections of Government supporters thrive in proportion to the amount of deprivation in their constituencies. That is one of the ironies of the Scottish political scene.
We are discussing a problem which requires much more than money for its solution. First and foremost, it requires good political management and good administrative action. It is a problem which should not be seen politically as some kind of cash option, as the Scottish National Party would try to make it by outbidding everyone else in the total to be spent of British taxpayers' money.
This Bill attempts to gloss over the real problems of Scotland and the real solutions to them. That is why I shall oppose it.
9.10 p.m.
Mr. Nicholas Fairbairn: I am sure that no hon. Member would quarrel with the two concepts behind the Bill—that we should have more money to spend on all the things we like in Scotland and that we should get everything right, improve the environment and live happily ever after. The quarrel is with the way in which this can be achieved. I am sure that all hon. Members want to achieve the same objective, and no one more than I, certainly on the Conservative benches, is more anxious to improve the environment and employment prospects in Scotland.
The question is whether the setting up of another agency which has a small amount of money is the way to do it. Hon. Members talk as if money is something that we have to squeeze out of our very rich grandmother who has plenty if only we can persuade her to give it to us. However, that is not the situation. To offer money and to set up a new bureaucracy to spend it is a sort of parliamentary fantasy.
The Bill demonstrates the twin fantasies that all we have to do is to suggest money and someone to spend it, and then we shall all live happily ever after. This time it will be this organisation—as it was the last one, the one before that and the one before that—that will cure the irremediable and resistant difficulties of Scottish industrial development.
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There is a falsehood in both those arguments. The amount of money that is forthcoming is very little. The argument that that money will be taken out of profitable industry, which then becomes less profitable and will require money to prop it up, is not a sensible one in the long run. This money will not simply be taken out of the locker of the Treasury. It will have to be provided by industry which must be sustained and kept efficient.
Maintaining employment has nothing whatever to do merely with providing immediate jobs. We must provide jobs and industries which are viable. Only in that way shall we ensure that there will be proper investment in Scottish industry. Those whose rates are increasing by 75 per cent., whose taxes are increasing and whose incomes are being destroyed by inflation will not look happily at the prospect of yet another agency being set up with more money and with its "Jack-and-the-Beanstalk" cure for all ills.
We hear a lot about democracy from Labour Members, and it is for this reason that I am against the Scottish Development Agency. A less democratic concept we cannot have. Recently we have heard a great deal about sovereignty. This House consistently passes the power, the blame and the opportunity to the executive. What will happen in this case? Although it is the Secretary of State—and I have the greatest regard for the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross)—[Interruption]—as a man, not as a Secretary of State. I am sorry that the SNP made me reduce the compliment.
Mr. William Ross: There is only one chairman of this board.
Mr. Fairbairn: There is one chairman who is chosen by the Secretary of State. The members are chosen by the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of State sets down their powers and orders, specific and otherwise. However, in fact, it is not the Secretary of State who does this; it is the extension of the bureaucracy which does it. We are handing the bureaucracy power and imagining that the bureaucracy will be able to run Scottish industry and increase Scottish employment in a manner that industry cannot and no one else can. That is

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why the agency is a particularly unwelcome concept.
Labour Members always imagine that the bureaucracy and the executive will solve everything. We have the National Enterprise Board which they believe will work wonders and fiddle about with industry in Scotland on a massive scale. We have the Scottish Development Agency which apparently will do the same. They believe that if we can only create enough bureaucrats with enough income and money, all will live happily ever after. That is the reverse of the experience of the Scottish people. The more that that has been Government practice, the less has been the success of Scottish industry. Give us the money. Give the money to the agencies which already exist. Let industries profitably go on without punishing them by setting up new agencies.
I believe that we are on a false trail, setting up more and more confusing agencies in Scotland. We shall be fettered by bureaucracy and by this great promise called the Scottish Development Agency, as if it will cure our ills. I do not believe that it will cure our ills. This is not public ownership, public participation or public anything. It excludes the public. From what is the public more excluded than a nationalised industry?
Mr. Buchan: A private industry.
Mr. Fairbairn: The hon. Gentleman may think so, but that is not so.
I believe that we are on the wrong trail. We believe in these precepts, but this method of achieving them we believe to be utterly wrong and false. It has been tried before and has failed.
9.16 p.m.
Mr. Teddy Taylor: I am sure that the whole House would wish to congratulate the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Craigton (Mr. Millan) and myself on reducing our windup speeches by a quarter of an hour to enable my hon. Friends to make such excellent speeches. However, I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that we shall repeat this experiment only if we have more constructive speeches from Labour Members and Members of the other minority parties in the House. Undoubtedly the whole weight of opinion
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in the debate has come from Conservative Members.
There have been two great mistakes in the debate which have worried me. The first of them is the acceptance or almost the advocacy by Members of some parties that the Scottish Development Agency will somehow be a miracle cure for the problems of Scotland. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Queen's Park (Mr. McElhone), in his amusing speech, said that somehow it would help solve urban deprivation. The hon. Member for East Kilbride (Dr. Miller) said that it would somehow perhaps help to give freedom for new towns. The hon. Member for Banff (Mr. Watt), in his remarkable speech, said that it would somehow bring an end to grouse moors and would get layabouts out of bed.
There is a danger that we are seeking in this agency a cure for all the ills of Scotland. I do not believe that, and that is why we shall be voting against the Bill.
A second dangerous argument was put forward by the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) in a typically nasty speech. He is always criticising people for not being here, but unfortunately whenever I want to attack him he is not present and I cannot do so. The hon. Member for Fife, Central and the hon. Members for Glasgow, Spring-burn (Mr. Buchanan), West Stirlingshire (Mr. Canavan) and Renfrewshire, West (Mr. Buchan) all said once again that we had to do something because capitalism had failed to provide jobs and industry, that everything was going wrong and that Socialism had to step in because capitalism had failed. I would agree with the hon. Member for Renfrewshire. West that industry is not investing. Investment is well down, and the outlook for jobs is pretty miserable and bad. But the hon. Gentleman should ask why that is so. Industry was investing when times were better and sensible Conservative policies were being pursued. Why is it not investing now? Why are jobs being lost and firms moving away?
The essential difference, which the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues should face, is that there is in industry now a total lack of confidence and a feeling that things are going entirely wrong. The main

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reason for that is the imposition of Socialist policies, hampering firms by taxation and restrictions, and the threat of nationalisation and all the things that go with Socialist policies. If we find something going wrong with investment, decision-making and jobs, that cannot be blamed on capitalism, which has provided so much of the wealth that profligate Socialist Governments have spent.
Mr. Buchan: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was asking me to ask myself or to answer him. The basic reasons for this is that British capitalism has invested its money almost everywhere else except in its own industry. For example, it has pursued the rapid buck by going into speculative overseas investing, and into property development, to which Centre Point is a great monument. There have been two decades of investing anywhere except in British industry, and that is the problem we have inherited.
Mr. Taylor: If the hon. Gentleman looks at those industries in which we have tried nationalisation or State intervention, he will see that that has not brought expansion of great job opportunities or added to the national wealth. It has created enormous problems.
Socialist policies, allied to international problems, have brought this country to a state in which the pound is falling daily and there is a great emergency which will call for savage measures. But some hon. Gentlemen still think that if we extend nationalisation we shall somehow make things better and better.
The Secretary of State's speech, which was a rather shaky advocacy of the Bill, contained one point that I would accept. He said that the nation was facing serious problems, and I accept that there is more uncertainty and less confidence in Scotland than ever before.
It was interesting that the one thing he did not mention, as Ministers usually do, was his inheritance. When he took over as Secretary of State he did so after three Conservative years. Unemployment was falling sharply in Scotland, the differential between the Scottish level of unemployment and that of the rest of the country had almost vanished, emigration, which had stood at 50,000 a year under
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some Labour Governments, had crumbled to just about nothing, and the wage differentials between manufacturing industry in Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom had almost disappeared.
Now unemployment is high and rising, yet we never hear demands from Labour Members that the Secretary of State should resign if unemployment exceeds 100,000. We are in a situation where the number of vacancies is falling and investment is down. It was astonishing to read in the Daily Record, from which most Labour Members seem to get most of their economic facts, that there have been 800 lay-offs in the Cromarty area in the last two weeks in the crucial oil exploration industry. Only a Socialist Government could create gloom, misery and redundancy in the oil industry in Scotland.
Mr. Harry Gourlay: If the Conservative Government did as well as the hon. Member is suggesting why do they have fewer Members in the House now than they had before the last General Election?
Mr. Taylor: One of the reasons for that is that at elections the Labour Party candidates disseminate the most scandalous and misleading facts, there is astonishing escapism from the SNP, and the Liberals say that they agree with everyone about everything.
Things are now in such a serious state that the people of Scotland are waking up to that fact——
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have admired the cut of the back of the hon. Member's coat and I have admired his haircut. I should like him now to face me and to address the Chair.
Mr. Taylor: I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was moving round gradually. I wish the Government would do the same and move round to common sense.
Everyone accepts that we face a serious problem, but what is the answer? In this case the Government are providing £200 million. They are supported by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Queen's Park and by the hon. Member for West Stirlingshire, and when I see the latter hon. Member looking happy my fears grow that there is something dangerous about a Bill. In this case the Bill provides Scotland with

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£200 million. If the Government were merely saying that Scotland has its problems and that they are to distribute £200 million in a fair and sensible way, they would not run into objections from the Scottish Conservatives, Scottish industry or the Scottish people. But that is not the proposition before us now. If the Government want to spend that money quickly for the benefit of Scotland there are plenty of ways in which they could do it.
The Secretary of State said that we needed more infrastructure. Yet we have just been told in Written Answers that the Government are cutting local government spending in 1976–77 by £45 million. Much of that was to have been spent on infrastructure. More capital spending cuts are to come. The right hon. Gentleman said that we needed to spend more on helping industry, but the 1972 Act already permits him to do that. He said that more should be spent on derelict land, but the Local Employment Acts already enable him to do that.
The only thing for which he has no powers under existing legislation is a major expansion of the public sector. That is at the root of our objections. The Secretary of State and a noble Lord in the other place have said that the Government will restore to this Bill the provisions which allow them to make a major expansion of the public sector. We believe that this is an important point of principle. We oppose it rigidly.
Other matters in connection with the money have been raised. The Secretary of State spoke about £200 million. He said that the agency can spend it when it likes, with no restrictions. Yet the Scottish Office Press Department issued a statement on behalf of the Scottish Economic Planning Department saying that the agency would spend over five years an expected £200 million, which would work out at about £40 million a year—not the gigantic £200 million of which we have heard. In the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum there is a statement that £15 million of the annual expenditure will be for work already being done by other agencies. Taking off £15 million, we are left with £25 million a year—not on my figures but on official information put out by the Scottish Office.
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In the present industrial situation, the people of Scotland are entitled to ask what amount of cash we are talking about. I am sure that the matter will have been discussed with the Treasury.
Mr. Crawford: How much would the hon. Gentleman's party give to the Scottish Development Agency?
Mr. Taylor: I will engage with no one, not even the Scottish National Party, in an auction for votes when the country faces serious problems. Unlike the Scottish Nationals, I do not believe that the best way of spending money for Scotland is extending State enterprise and nationalisation.
In an excellent speech, my right hon. Friend the Member for Renfrewshire, East (Miss Harvie Anderson) asked where the money was coming from. I asked the hon. Member for Glasgow, Queen's Park this question twice and did not receive a clear answer. The Government have no money of their own. They have no great piggy bank. In fact, their piggy bank was bust a long time ago. The only ways to get the money are by cutting spending in Scotland in other directions, by printing the money—which the Government have been doing very successfully—or by taxing private industry, taking money from successful, profitable industry and putting it directly into firms which the Government or bureaucrats choose. It is a transfer transaction.
The hon. Member for Fife, Central and others said that the Bill was right, because if State money were pouring into industry they should have control. Have they looked at the amount of taxation that industry in Britain is paying? It is paying £8 million a day into the Treasury. Only recently I saw an estimate by Professor Lawson of Manchester University that about 63 per cent. of corporate profits were being taken in taxation.
When the country faces such acute financal problems, we do not believe that it is helpful to suggest that the answer is to extend State control of industry. In this, unfortunately, we appear to be alone. For the Liberals, the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles said that he did not like the wording of Clause 2. He agrees with the general sentiment, but would like to express it differently.

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This shows the normal delightful confusion and inconsistency of the Liberal Party, which was also shown in the other place when the Liberal Peers surprisingly supported the removal of industrial democracy from this Bill but opposed it in the Welsh Bill. That is the appropriate Liberal way of supporting both sides and getting credit for it.
The Scottish Nationals are in a different situation. It is unfortunate for them, because often minority parties find people wooing them and seeking their support. Today, despite their efforts, they have both major parties seeking their enmity instead of friendship. We on the Conservative Benches do not just hurl abuse at the Scottish Nationals but point out to the people of Scotland that on all the crunch Socialist issues we have discussed in this Parliament their votes have been with the Labour Party.
Here is a clear and specific issue of the power to spend. The only new power in the Bill which is not included in existing legislation is that of spending public money on State intervention in industry. We oppose that. The Scottish National Party side with the Labour Party on this issue, as it does on other State control measures.
We have many objections to the Bill. The powers contained in it should not go unchallenged. The Minister of State will cite a host of precedents. The Bill is unique. It brings together all the most objectionable parts of other Bills affecting the freedom of the individual.
Clause 9 gives the new agency the power to acquire land compulsorily. Clause 10 gives it the right of access if it is considering the purchase of land. It has the right to walk into land in Banffshire, Ross and Cromarty or West Renfrewshire, to bore holes and to search. That applies to all land except that owned by the nationalised industries, where the approval of the Secretary of State is required.
I am worried about the Bill because it promotes a major extension of bureaucracy. Our people are not aware of the dangers to our economy from the enormous growth of bureaucracy. My right hon. Friend the Member for Renfrew-shire, East was right. I looked up some recent Answers to Questions about the growth of bureaucracy. The figures are
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frightening. On 6th May we were told that the number of workers in Britain employed in the public service was 6,500,000, which is over 26 per cent. of the working population.
The rate of increase is even more alarming. The latest indication of the rate of increase in the numbers of people employed in the public service—which includes Government, local government and the nationalised industries—shows a rate of 60,000 per year. That means about 1,000 every week. When a nation such as ours faces acute financial problems, it is appalling that the Government should seek to solve their problems by adding to the numbers employed by the State, which must be carried by the other sections of the community. The Bill will set up an agency which I believe to be unnecessary, bearing in mind the other powers available to the Secretary of State. It will create a further 253,000 jobs. That is an estimate, and I am sure that the final figure will be higher.
Our third objection to the Bill is that there is a danger of confusion arising between the job-seeking and the job-providing agencies. There will be many agencies to which people in Scottish industry can look for help. The National Enterprise Board will operate in Scotland, as will the Scottish Development Agency. The Scottish Office will exercise, in co-operation with the new body, powers under Section 7 of the Industry Act. There is also the Highlands and Islands Development Board. In view of the number of agencies already existing to give help to industry, there is a danger of people standing on each other's toes and of the agencies not enjoying that degree of co-operation for which we might hope. If we continue with this we must set up a co-ordinating agency, with a chairman, staff, a computer and a large number of public employees.
Our other major worry is that there is increasing State intervention in Scotland. It will be almost impossible for there to be fair competition with Government-supported industry. It is impossible for there to be proper and fair competition with a State-owned firm, as it will not follow the normal financial disciplines. There is nothing in the Bill which gives adequate safeguards to private industry.

577
My fear is that by attempting to save jobs and putting State money into industry we shall destroy jobs because of the unfair competition thereby created. We shall once again give more power to a non-elected body.
I hope that the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Mr. Gourlay), who joined me this morning in defeat577ing the Government on the matter of giving more powers to a non-elected body, will bear in mind that this Bill will give immense powers to a non-elected body.
The House should remember that there is an urgent problem in Scotland. If the Secretary of State has £25 million to spare there are plenty of ways it can be spent to the advantage of Scotland and its people. One way in which that could be done would be by relieving the tax burden on industry and allowing private industry to have more to spend on investment.
I will summarise our case against the Bill. First, the Bill is not needed. If cash is there to spare, it can be spent now. As the Secretary of State said, the amount of money available this year will be relatively small and larger amounts will not be available for some time. Secondly, the Bill is inevitably bureaucratic, when we should be concerned about the number of people employed in the public service. Thirdly, it will create confusion because of the multiplicity of agencies. Fourthly, we have to bear in mind the Government's pledge to restore interventionist powers in the Bill which, at a time of financial crisis, is crazy.
We do not argue that the Bill in itself will create a Marxist nightmare, but it is a further small step along the road to State Socialism. It is being brought forward at a time when the Government are contemplating—unless they are stopped by the more sensible people in their ranks—the nationalisation of shipbuilding, aircraft, oil, ports and development land. It is folly for the Government, in the light of our financial nightmare, to combat which measures will be introduced which will harm the livelihood and security of every working person in the land, to go forward in this mad way splashing money around and imposing interventionist policies. Although I believe that the Labour Party will receive
578
the nation's answer when next it faces the electors, in the meantime it is damaging the nation and the people.
Mr. Alexander Wilson: If the hon. Gentleman is so much against State intervention, why did he campaign to use public money for the private enterprise Queen's Park Football Club?
Mr. Taylor: If the hon. Gentleman has heard my recent comments on the Queen's Park Football Club, he will know that I am concerned to protect the interests of local residents.
The Government are going along the wrong road. Our only hope of making a recovery lies in the encouragement of free enterprise, the removal of unnecessary burdens and the creation of incentives to work, to save and to invest.
The final reason why we shall vote against the Bill is that we believe that the Secretary of State has failed Scotland. He has participated, however reluctantly, in imposing irresponsible Socialist policies, which are destroying the vitality and enterprise of the British nation—a plight from which before long a Conservative Government will be called upon by the people to rescue them with policies which are more realistic, more rational and more sensible than are those contained in the Bill.
9.28 p.m.
The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Mr. Bruce Millan): I shall take up a little later several matters raised by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor). I should like first to say a little about some of the general comments with which he began his speech.
I do not deny for one moment—my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State explicitly said so this afternoon—that Britain and Scotland face a difficult economic situation. But we do not intend to listen to lectures from Conservative Members when the inheritance they left us in February 1974 was a three-day working week, a disastrous decline in the Scottish housing programme, an investment situation which had declined during the whole period of Conservative Government, an unemployment situation in which for 29 consecutive months unemployment in Scotland was more than 100,000 and a North Sea Oil industry

579
which was completely out of Government control. For part of that time the hon. Member for Cathcart was a member of the Conservative Government. I do not recollect very well what the hon. Gentleman did in the Government except to keep a good deal quieter than he does at present—which was a blessing in itself.
There is fairly wide recognition in Scotland that there is a firm place for regional policy and that there are achievements to the credit of regional policy. Of course, we shall consider some of the points that were made about that aspect. For example, my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) referred to special development area status for Dundee.
Although the Government have made very considerable improvements in regional policy by doubling the regional employment premium and extending development area status to the whole of Scotland, nevertheless the traditional regional policy is not sufficient to deal with the economic problems of Scotland and there is a wide recognition that new initiatives are needed. That is why there has been a general welcome for the Bill, not only by the STUC but by the Scottish Council (Development and Industry).
I should like to say a word about the CBI in Scotland because I have been accused of being discourteous to it. The first body that I met to discuss the consultative document was the CBI in Scotland. I offered it a second meeting, which it turned down because the date was not suitable. However, the delayed meeting will take place on 30th June, next Monday. I do not accept in any way that I have not consulted the CBI and other people in Scotland. At the first meeting we had a constructive discussion, and I have no doubt that we shall have a similarly constructive meeting when we meet on Monday next.
There has been a general welcome for the Bill in Scotland and also by Members of the various parties in the House. My hon. Friends have welcomed it without any qualification. They believe, as I believe, that it is a very important step forward in the industrial regeneration of Scotland. I am glad that the Scottish National Party and the Liberal Party are also to vote for the Second Reading of the Bill.
580
I thought that the performance of the hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns (Mr. Buchanan-Smith) did not clarify the attitude of the Conservative Party to the agency. I am not sure that the hon. Member for Cathcart, who speaks extremely rapidly and with great ability to confuse the issue, clarified the matter for us either, because I am still not clear whether the Conservative Party is saying that we do not need an agency at all or that we do need an agency but a rather different one from the agency that is provided for in the Bill. I do not care very much what the Conservative view is because it is a politically discredited party in Scotland. It is a rump party that represents no coherent body of opinion or view in Scotland. I do not believe that it has a single sensible thing to say about Scotland's economy. That is evident by the way it has put forward the hon. Member for Cathcart to close the debate.
Mr. Teddy Taylor: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Millan: No, because the hon. Gentleman took some extra time.
I believe that there is a very strong case for new initiatives to be taken and for an agency of this sort.
The next point to consider is whether the right function has been given to the agency. I believe it is absolutely essential, if this agency is to be successful, that it should operate with a co-ordinated approach. We have suffered from a lack of co-ordination and a lack of coherence in dealing with many of Scotland's economic planning problems. That is why in the Bill we have given a wide range of responsibilities to the agency. That is why the agency has industrial and factory building functions. It has functions to clear up derelict areas that are unattractive to incoming industry and, for that matter, to the existing population. That is why it has the function of environmental improvement and industrial promotion. All these factors hang together and are directed towards the aim of industrial regeneration and making Scotland a more attractive place for existing and incoming industry.
I should like to mention some of those functions in turn. The industrial function is the most important because it contains the maximum amount of innovation—the new things that we are to

581
do for Scotland. We have no intention of accepting the House of Lords amendments. We shall restore to the Bill the full powers that it had when it was originally published.
On the industrial function, the distinction between what the SDA will do and what can be done under Section 7 of the Industry Act is not sufficiently well appreciated, as was clear from a number of contributions made by Opposition Members. Section 7 powers are important and will continue. From 1st July they will be the responsibility of my right hon. Friend rather than the Department of Industry.
We foresee a much more active rôle for the SDA than is possible under Section 7 powers. In a sense, Section 7 powers are passive. A problem arises, an application is made to the Government for assistance—often far too late for the Government to intervene effectively—and we find ourselves spending large sums of public money in a fairly ineffective way because there is not the right opportunity properly to assess the situation in the time available. But the SDA will have an active rôle. It will not be waiting for people to come to it for help. It will actively seek out new industrial opportunities for Scotland and put them in hand with co-operation from private industry or by itself exclusively if it believes that that is the best way to push industrial developments forward. Therefore, it will have an entrepreneurial rôle which is not possible under Section 7 of the Industry Act.
We must appreciate that this is the basic function of the SDA. Inevitably it will get involved at some time or other with "lame ducks", because we have a particular lame duck situation at present. The SDA is not primarily meant to deal with lame ducks but to look for new opportunities for the expansion of industry in Scotland. Therefore, if it is to work effectively it will have to undertake that rôle with considerable vigour.
The agency will also be involved with Section 7 assistance if directed by my right hon. Friend. Many cases will require both a Section 7 and an SDA job to be done, because they are on the borderline between one form of assistance and another.
582
We must remember that the SDA will have an active rôle in looking for new opportunities. It will be concerned with our older industries, but it will also be looking for new and expanding industry in Scotland and ensuring that it produces the maximum opportunity for the people of Scotland.
The agency will not be concerned only with attracting industry from outside. In the past we have perhaps been too concerned to bring industry into Scotland, but the real regeneration of Scottish industry will have to come from our indigenous industries which still occupy the bulk of our industrial population. Nor will the agency be concerned only with large firms. We see a special rôle for it in helping small firms.
Industrial priorities will be matters for the agency, but many opportunities in North Sea oil, engineering and so on are bound to be among the first priorities when the agency is established.
Geographically, as I have made clear on other occasions, West-Central Scotland must be the priority area for industrial development at this time. However, I fully appreciate that many other parts of Scotland—Dundee has been brought to attention dramatically in the last week or two—require a good deal of help. There is no question of the SDA being excluded from particular areas. It will help wherever help is needed, but with a bias in its initial stages—I must be frank—towards West-Central Scotland, which is our main industrial problem area at present.
Of course the other functions are clear enough, but it is not simply a take-over from the SIEC, admirable though that body has been, because we see a new impetus being given to the work of factory building and we see it again as part of the more major co-ordinating rôle for the agency. We hope, for example, that on factory building we can achieve something like a doubling of the factory building in progress at the present time. Derelict areas are very important for clearance to provide a welcoming industrial environment and also to provide better living conditions for many of our people who are at present living in a quite intolerable environment, much of it a heritage from the Industrial Revolution.

583
On questions concerning derelict areas, I have not found that local authorities resent these powers being given to the agency. They see the rôle of the agency as not supplanting their powers but providing a complement to the powers they have been given under the new local government reorganisation, and the discussions that I have had with local authorities have been absolutely amicable about this. In the first instance in any case, the agency will use many local authorities as its agents, but again there is a very strong case for an independent agency being involved in a large-scale clearance of industrial dereliction. The agency will be successful only if it manages to clear industrial dereliction faster than it has been cleared so far.
Mr. Teddy Taylor: Does the Minister stand by the statement, which appears in the Press release, that the land clearance programme will be doubled?
Mr. Millan: Yes, of course I do, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will welcome that. He does not look too happy but he appears to indicate that he will. We are grateful for small mercies.
So far as environmental improvement is concerned, may I again make clear that this is the clearance of derelict land and we have in mind a number of potential major schemes specifically related to industrial development. It is not environmental improvement for housing, for example, for which we already have powers and opportunities. It is not rural improvement, though that is very important to the Countryside Commission. It is environmental improvement related to improving the industrial environment of Scotland.
I was questioned about how the Scottish Development Agency would be organised. Most of these matters are really for the agency itself but it will not be able to operate effectively—to pick up one particular point—without offices in more than one part of Scotland. That is not a matter for me or the Government to lay down. It is something that will come naturally through the development of the agency's work. The agency will be subject to the guidance and direction of the Secretary of State for Scotland. Taken with the Section 7 powers, it will
584
place unprecedented industrial powers in the hands of my right hon. Friend so that decision-making about industry in Scotland will be seen to be, and will be, quite squarely in the hands of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland. I am not going to say what the position will be under the Assembly. That is a matter to be considered in the context of devolution. The whole question of trade and industry powers is being looked at in the context of devolution and we shall be making proposals in due course, but I have nothing to say on that at the moment.
I was asked about the Highlands and Islands Development Board. I met the board and it was perfectly happy with the Scottish Development Agency and saw no difficulty in making arrangements for the division of responsibility between the board and the agency. In the vast majority of cases the agency will not interfere in matters strictly within the present competence of the board, and the board and I saw no difficulty in that or in the arrangements we are making with the Development Commission or the Small Industries Council for Rural Areas of Scotland. I consider that on all these matters we have had a great welcome from the bodies concerned.
Mr. David Steel: The hon. Gentleman passed over the question of devolution with such speed that it must have taken his breath away. Surely the Government have a view on what will be the future rôle of the agency in the context of devolution.
Mr. Millan: Of course I have a view. It will all be disclosed in good time.
Mr. Donald Stewart Mr. Donald Stewart rose—
Mr. Millan: I cannot, with respect, give way now. The views of the Government on this subject will not be disclosed at five minutes to 10 o'clock this evening.
The financial powers in the Bill provide for £200 million rising to £300 million. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor) kept reading a Press release of January which dealt with the consultative document. He has not noticed that between the time when the consultative document was published and the appearance of the Bill we increased

585
the overall finance of the agency from £200 million to £300 million. That explains his puzzlement about the figures.
There is no time limit in the Bill. There is no question of saying that it will have to last for five, four or three years. It will last for as long as the agency has an effective job to do, and in my view there will be no difficulty in persuading the House when the time comes, if the agency does an effective job, as I believe it will, to vote it additional powers. The important thing is that we have enough money in the Bill at the moment to give the agency an excellent start and to enable it to make a major impact on the various functions to be given to it.
I was asked about the relationship between the National Enterprise Board and the agency. Those who have read the Bill and compared it with the Industry Bill in terms of the small print will see that although there are differences in wording the powers in this Bill are almost exactly the same on the industrial side as the powers in the Industry Bill for the NEB. There is no question of the agency being in any way subsidiary or subservient to the NEB. A number of hon. Members, particularly members of the Scottish National Party, were rather disappointed that there was no mention of the NEB in the Bill. They had hoped that there would be such a mention which could be interpreted as giving the board authority over the agency.
That is not the situation. When we are dealing with predominantly as well as exclusively Scottish problems the proper body will be the agency, with consultation where necessary with the NEB, in exactly the same way as, when the NEB is dealing with a predominantly English situation but one which has implications for
Scotland, it will consult the SDA. Those who worry about the NEB having power to come into Scotland might look at Clause 2(3), which will give the agency equal power to go into England whenever that is necessary for the proper functioning of the agency.
The rules which will determine the relationship between the NEB and the SDA will be published, as will the rules about financial guidelines and the rest. We do not intend to do things in secret. We want to make clear the basis on which the industry will operate.
This is a major Bill of great importance for the industrial development of Scotland, which is why I am genuinely disappointed that the Conservative Party has opposed it. We are establishing here a powerful body which has a great potential for the industrial good of Scotland. It will not perform miracles. It will not solve Scotland's industrial problems overnight. No one has ever claimed that. But it will make a major impact on those problems.
I want to launch it with the maximum co-operation from all sides of Scottish industry. I believe we can do that. I believe that we can get the agency working quickly, in the autumn of this year. We in Scotland have suffered too much in recent years from a lack of self-confidence in our industrial will and our industrial ability. We see the agency as one of the means of re-establishing that self-confidence and setting Scotland right in the industrial field. I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put, That the Bill be read a Second time:—
The House divided: Ayes 295, Noes 224.

Division No. 246.]

AYES

[10.0 p.m.

Abse, Leo

Booth, Albert

Castle, Rt Hon Barbara

Allaun, Frank

Boothroyd, Miss Betty

Clemitson, Ivor

Anderson, Donald

Bottomley, Rt Hon Arthur

Cocks, Michael (Bristol S)

Archer, Peter

Boyden, James (Bish Auck)

Cohen, Stanley

Armstrong, Ernest

Bradley, Tom

Coleman, Donald

Ashley, Jack

Bray, Dr Jeremy

Concannon, J. D.

Ashton, Joe

Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)

Conlan, Bernard

Atkins, Ronald (Preston N)

Brown, Ronald (Hackney S)

Cook, Robin F. (Edin C)

Atkinson, Norman

Buchan, Norman

Corbett, Robin

Bagier, Gordon A. T.

Buchanan, Richard

Craigen, J. M. (Maryhill)

Bain, Mrs Margaret

Butler, Mrs Joyce (Wood Green)

Crawford, Douglas

Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)

Callaghan, Jim (Middleton & P)

Crawshaw, Richard

Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (Heywood)

Campbell, Ian

Cronin, John

Bean, R. E.

Canavan, Dennis

Crosland, Rt Hon Anthony

Beith, A. J.

Cant, R. B.

Cryer, Bob

Bennett, Andrew (Stockport N)

Carmichael, Neil

Cunningham, Dr J. (Whiteh)

Bidwell, Sydney

Carter, Ray

Dalyell, Tam

Blenkinsop, Arthur

Carter-Jones, Lewis

Davidson, Arthur

Davies, Bryan (Enfield N)

Kaufman, Gerald

Roper, John

Davies, Denzil (Llanelli)

Kelley, Richard

Rose, Paul B.

Davies, Ifor (Gower)

Kerr, Russell

Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

Davis, Clinton (Hackney C)

Kilroy-Silk, Robert

Ross, Rt Hon W. (Kilmarnock)

Deakins, Eric

Kinnock, Neil

Rowlands, Ted

Dean, Joseph (Leeds W)

Lambie, David

Ryman, John

de Freitas, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

Lamborn, Harry

Sandelson, Neville

Delargy, Hugh

Lamond James

Sedgemore, Brian

Dell, Rt Hon Edmund

Leadbitter, Ted

Selby, Harry

Dempsey, James

Lestor, Miss Joan (Eton & Slough)

Shaw, Arnold (Ilford South)

Doig, Peter

Lever, Rt Hon Harold

Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-u-Lyne)

Dormand, J. D.

Lewis, Arthur (Newham N)

Shore, Rt Hon Peter

Douglas-Mann, Bruce

Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

Short, Rt Hon E. (Newcastle C)

Duffy, A. E. P.

Lipton, Marcus

Short, Mrs Renée (Wolv NE)

Dunn, James A.

Litterick, Tom

Silkin, Rt Hon John (Deptford)

Dunnett, Jack

Lomas, Kenneth

Silkin, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)

Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth

Loyden, Eddie

Sillars, James

Edelman, Maurice

Luard, Evan

Silverman, Julius

Edwards, Robert (Wolv SE)

Lyon, Alexander (York)

Skinner, Dennis

Ellis, Tom (Wrexham)

Lyons, Edward (Bradford W)

Small, William

English, Michael

Mabon, Dr J. Dickson

Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)

Evans, Gwynfor (Carmarthen)

McCartney, Hugh

Smith, John (N Lanarkshire)

Evans, Ioan (Aberdare)

MacCormick, Iain

Snape, Peter

Evans, John (Newton)

McElhone, Frank

Spearing, Nigel

Ewing, Harry (Stirling)

MacFarquhar, Roderick

Spriggs, Leslie

Ewing, Mrs Winifred (Moray)

McGuire, Michael (Ince)

Stallard, A. W.

Faulds, Andrew

Mackenzie, Gregor

Steel, David (Roxburgh)

Fernyhough, Rt Hon E.

Mackintosh, John P.

Stewart, Donald (Western Isles)

Flannery, Martin

McMillan, Tom (Glasgow C)

Stewart, Rt Hon M. (Fulham)

Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)

McNamara, Kevin

Stott, Roger

Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

Madden, Max

Strang, Gavin

Ford, Ben

Magee, Bryan

Strauss, Rt Hon G. R.

Forrester, John

Mahon, Simon

Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley

Fowler, Gerald (The Wrekin)

Marks, Kenneth

Swain, Thomas

Freeson, Reginald

Marquand, David

Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)

Freud, Clement

Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)

Garrett, John (Norwich S)

Mason, Rt Hon Roy

Thomas, Mike (Newcastle E)

Garrett, W. E. (Wallsend)

Maynard, Miss Joan

Thomas, Ron (Bristol NW)

Gilbert, Dr John

Meacher, Michael

Thompson, George

Golding, John

Mellish, Rt Hon Robert

Tierney, Sydney

Gould, Bryan

Mendelson, John

Tinn, James

Gourlay, Harry

Mikardo, Ian

Tomlinson, John

Graham, Ted

Millan, Bruce

Tomney, Frank

Grant, George (Morpeth)

Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)

Torney, Tom

Grimond, Rt Hon J.

Mitchell, R. C. (Soton, Itchen)

Tuck, Raphael

Grocott, Bruce

Molloy, William

Urwin, T. W.

Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)

Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)

Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.

Hardy, Peter

Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)

Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne V)

Harper, Joseph

Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

Wainwright, Richard (Colne V)

Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)

Moyle, Roland

Walden, Brian (B'ham, L'dyw'd)

Hart, Rt Hon Judith

Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick

Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

Hatton, Frank

Murray, Rt Hon Ronald King

Walker, Terry (Kingswood)

Hayman, Mrs Helene

Newens, Stanley

Ward, Michael

Healey, Rt Hon Denis

Noble, Mike

Watkins, David

Heffer, Eric S.

Oakes, Gordon

Watkinson, John

Henderson, Douglas

O'Malley, Rt Hon Brian

Watt, Hamish

Hooley, Frank

Orbach, Maurice

Weetch, Ken

Hooson, Emlyn

Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

Weitzman, David

Horam, John

Ovenden, John

Wellbeloved, James

Howells, Geraint (Cardigan)

Owen, Dr David

Welsh, Andrew

Hoyle, Doug (Nelson)

Padley, Walter

White, Frank R. (Bury)

Huckfield, Les

Palmer, Arthur

White, James (Pollok)

Hughes, Rt Hon C. (Anglesey)

Park, George

Whitehead, Phillip

Hughes, Mark (Durham)

Parker, John

Whitlock, William

Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

Parry, Robert

Wigley, Dafydd

Hughes, Roy (Newport)

Pavitt, Laurie

Willey, Rt Hon Frederick

Hunter, Adam

Peart, Rt Hon Fred

Irvine, Rt Hon Sir A. (Edge Hill)

Pendry, Tom

Williams, Alan (Swansea W)

Irving, Rt Hon S. (Dartford)

Penhaligon, David

Williams, Alan Lee (Hornch'ch)

Jackson, Colin (Brighouse)

Phipps, Dr Colin

Williams, W. T. (Warrington)

Janner, Greville

Prescott, John

Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)

Jay, Rt Hon Douglas

Price, William (Rugby)

Wilson, Gordon (Dundee E)

Jeger, Mrs Lena

Radice, Giles

Wilson, William (Coventry SE)

Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)

Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn (Leeds S)

Wise, Mrs Audrey

Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Stechford)

Reid, George

Woodall, Alec

John, Brynmor

Richardson, Miss Jo

Woof, Robert

Johnson, James (Hull West)

Richardson, Miss Jo

Wrigglesworth, Ian

Johnson, Walter (Derby S)

Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

Young, David (Bolton E)

Jones, Alec (Rhondda)

Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)

Jones, Barry (East Flint)

Robertson, John (Paisley)

TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

Jones, Dan (Burnley)

Roderick, Caerwyn

Mr. John Ellis and

Judd, Frank

Rodgers, George (Chorley)

Mr. James Hamilton

588

589

NOES

Adley, Robert

Hall-Davis, A. G. F.

Morrison, Hon Peter (Chester)

Aitken, Jonathan

Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)

Mudd, David

Alison, Michael

Hampson, Dr Keith

Neave, Airey

Amery, Rt Hon Julian

Hannam, John

Nelson, Anthony

Arnold, Tom

Harrison, Col Sir Harwood (Eye)

Neubert, Michael

Atkins, Rt Hon H. (Spelthorne)

Harvie Anderson, Rt Hon Miss

Newton, Tony

Awdry, Daniel

Hastings, Stephen

Onslow, Cranley

Baker Kenneth

Havers, Sir Michael

Oppenheim, Mrs Sally

Bell, Ronald

Hawkins, Paul

Osborn, John

Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torbay)

Hayhoe, Barney

Page, Rt Hon R. Graham (Crosby)

Bennett, Dr Reginald (Fareham)

Heseltine, Michael

Pattie, Geoffrey

Benyon, W.

Higgins Terence L.

Percival, Ian

Berry, Hon Anthony

Holland, Philip

Prior, Rt Hon James

Biffen, John

Hordern, Peter

Raison, Timothy

Biggs-Davison, John

Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

Rathbone, Tim

Boscawen, Hon Robert

Howell, David (Guildford)

Rawlinson, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Bowden, A. (Brighton, Kemptown)

Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)

Rees, Peter (Dover & Deal)

Boyson, Dr Rhodes (Brent)

Hunt, John

Rees-Davies, W. R.

Brittan, Leon

Hurd, Douglas

Renton, Rt Hon Sir D. (Hunts)

Brotherton, Michael

Hutchison, Michael Clark

Renton, Tim (Mid-Sussex)

Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)

Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)

Ridsdale, Julian

Bryan, Sir Paul

Irving, Charles (Cheltenham)

Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey

Buchanan-Smith, Alick

James, David

Roberts, Michael (Cardiff NW)

Bulmer, Esmond

Jenkin, Rt Hon P. (Wanst'd & W'df'd)

Roberts, Wyn (Conway)

Burden, F. A.

Jessel, Toby

Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)

Carlisle, Mark

Johnson Smith, G. (E Grinstead)

Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)

Carr, Rt Hon Robert

Jones, Arthur (Daventry)

Rost, Peter (SE Derbyshire)

Chalker, Mrs Lynda

Jopling, Michael

Royle, Sir Anthony

Clark, Alan (Plymouth, Sutton)

Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

Sainsbury, Tim

Clark, William (Croydon S)

Kaberry, Sir Donald

St. John-Stevas, Norman

Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine

Scott, Nicholas

Clegg, Walter

Kershaw, Anthony

Scott-Hopkins, James

Cockcroft, John

Kimball, Marcus

Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

Cooke, Robert (Bristol W)

King, Evelyn (South Dorset)

Shelton, William (Streatham)

Cope, John

King, Tom (Bridgwater)

Shersby, Michael

Cordis, John H.

Kitson, Sir Timothy

Silvester, Fred

Cormack, Patrick

Knight, Mrs Jill

Sims, Roger

Corrie, John

Knox, David

Sinclair, Sir George

Costain, A. P.

Lamont, Norman

Skeet, T. H. H.

Crouch, David

Lane, David

Smith, Dudley (Warwick)

Crowder, F. P.

Langford-Holt, Sir John

Speed, Keith

Dean, Paul (N Somerset)

Latham, Michael (Melton)

Spence, John

Dodsworth, Geoffrey

Lawrence, Ivan

Spicer, Michael (S Worcester)

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Lawson, Nigel

Sproat, Iain

Drayson, Burnaby

Le Marchant, Spencer

Stainton, Keith

Durant, Tony

Lester, Jim (Beeston)

Stanbrook, Ivor

Eden, Rt Hon Sir John

Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)

Stanley, John

Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)

Lloyd, Ian

Steen, Anthony (Wavertree)

Elliott, Sir William

McAdden, Sir Stephen

Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)

Emery, Peter

McCrindle, Robert

Stokes, John

Fairbairn, Nicholas

Macfarlane, Neil

Stradling Thomas, J.

Farr, John

MacGregor, John

Tapsell, Peter

Fell, Anthony

McNair-Wilson, M. (Newbury)

Taylor, R. (Croydon NW)

Finsberg, Geoffrey

McNair-Wllson, P. (New Forest)

Taylor, Teddy (Cathcart)

Fisher, Sir Nigel

Madel, David

Tebbit, Norman

Fletcher, Alex (Edinburgh N)

Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

Temple-Morris, Peter

Fookes, Miss Janet

Marten, Neil

Thomas, Rt Hon P. (Hendon S)

Fowler, Norman (Sutton C'f'd)

Mates, Michael

Townsend, Cyril D.

Fry, Peter

Mather, Carol

Trotter, Neville

Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.

Maude, Angus

Tugendhat, Christopher

Gardiner, George (Reigate)

Mawby, Ray

van Straubenzee, W. R.

Gardner, Edward (S Fylde)

Mayhew, Patrick

Vaughan, Dr Gerard

Gilmour, Rt Hon Ian (Chesham)

Meyer, Sir Anthony

Viggers, Peter

Gilmour, Sir John (East Fife)

Miller, Hal (Bromsgrove)

Walker-Smith, Rt Hon Sir Derek

Glyn, Dr Alan

Mills, Peter

Wall, Patrick

Godber, Rt Hon Joseph

Miscampbell, Norman

Walters, Dennis

Goodlad, Alastair

Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)

Warren, Kenneth

Gorst, John

Moate, Roger

Weatherill, Bernard

Gow, Ian (Eastbourne)

Monro, Hector

Wells, John

Gower, Sir Raymond (Barry)

Montgomery, Fergus

Winterton, Nicholas

Grant, Anthony (Harrow C)

Moore, John (Croydon C)

Young, Sir G. (Ealing, Acton)

Gray, Hamish

More, Jasper (Ludlow)

Younger, Hon George

Grieve, Percy

Morgan, Geraint

Grist, Ian

Morgan-Giles, Rear-Admiral

TELLERS FOR THE NOES

Grylls, Michael

Morris, Michael (Northampton S)

Mr. Adam Butler and

Hall, Sir John

Morrison, Charles (Devizes)

Mr. Russell Fairgrieve.

Question accordingly agreed to.
Bill read a Second time.
Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).

SCOTTISH DEVELOPMENT AGENCY (No. 2) BILL [Lords]

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
  Ordered.
  That, at this day's Sitting, the Diseases of Animals Bill [Lords], the Industrial and Pro-
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  vident Societies Bill [Lords], the Motion relating to Ways and Means (Disallowance of losses (capital gains tax and corporation tax)) and the Motion relating to Procedure (Use of Trustee Savings Banks by Solicitors) may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Coleman.]

SCOTTISH DEVELOPMENT AGENCY (No. 2) [MONEY]
Queen's Recommendation having been signified—
Motion made and Question proposed:
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to establish a Scottish Development Agency; to provide for the appointment by the Secretary of State of a Scottish Industrial Development Advisory Board; to make provision for assistance in connection with air services serving the Highlands and Islands; and for connected purposes, it is expedient to authorise—
(1) subject to the prescribed limit—

(a) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of the expenses of the Secretary of State in making payments to the Scottish Development Agency;

(b) the payment out of the National Loans Fund of sums required for making loans to the Scottish Development Agency;

(c) the payment out of the Consolidated Fund of sums required for fulfilling any guarantee given by the Treasury in respect of sums borrowed by that Agency;

and in this paragraph of this Resolution "the prescribed limit" means the limit of £300 million imposed by the said Act of the present Session on the aggregate amount outstanding, otherwise than by way of interest, in respect of—

(i) the general external borrowing (as defined in the Act) of the Scottish Development Agency and their wholly owned subsidiaries;

(ii) sums issued by the Treasury in fulfilment of guarantees in respect of sums borrowed by the Agency from a person other than the Secretary of State;

(iii) sums paid to the Agency by the Secretary of State less repayments to the Secretary of State by the Agency (other than payments made by the Agency in consideration of receiving public dividend capital) and less sums paid in respect of the administrative expenses of the Agency; and

(iv) loans guaranteed by the Agency otherwise than in the exercise of powers conferred on the Secretary of State by section 7 of the Industry Act 1972 and exercisable by the Agency by virtue of the said Act of the present Session and loans guaranteed by a wholly owned subsidiary of the Agency;

(2) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any expenses of the Secretary of State incurred by him in consequence of any provision of the said Act of the present Sessioc—

(a) enabling him to assist persons providing or proposing to provide air services serving the Highlands and Islands; and

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(b) enabling him to pay compensation in respect of the loss of office of any person who suffers such loss in consequence of the said Act;

(3) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any administrative expenses of the Secretary of State incurred by him in consequence of any provision of the said Act.
And that it is expedient to authorise any payment into the Consolidated Fund or the National Loans Fund under the said Act of the present Session.—[Mr. Coleman.]
10.14 p.m.
Mr. Hector Monro: We have listened to the Minister of State, Scottish Office, indicating that money is no object at all, but we are in the midst of a major financial crisis and it is up to the Government to tell us a little more about where the finance is coming from and about how it is to be spent.
I am very keen indeed that money should be spent wisely in the creation of jobs and the promotion of industry in Scotland, but we are talking in terms of £300 million, and the Minister of State, in winding up, disowned, perhaps, his Press hand out of January that the money would be spent over five years.
It is only right that the Treasury Minister who will reply to this debate should give some indication of how much per year is likely to be spent, certainly in the initial two years. I agree that it is impossible to say what will happen in the future, but the Government must have some idea of the amount of money that will be spent in the coming year and the year after.
Also in terms of the Money Resolution I think that it would be beneficial to the House to know some of the breakdown of the money which is to be provided to air services in Scotland. How much is to go to Logan Air and how much to British Airways? I wish both services well, but in my view the House is entitled to know how the money is to be spent and where it is going in relation to the air services mentioned in the Money Resolution.
Finally, from my point of view, the House would like to know a little more about the cross-entry arrangement between Section 7 of the Industry Act 1972 and the powers of the SDA. How much

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money do the Government expect will be transferred in the first year from work which might be done under Section 7 of the Industry Act to the SDA? This will give the Committee some help in knowing the apportionment of the money under the 1972 Act.
Overall, we have had extraordinarily little information from the Government in relation to the Money Resolution, especially about where the money is to come from and how it is to be spent. Earlier, I asked whether the money was sacrosanct in relation to the package deal which the Prime Minister has promised next month. If we pass this Money Resolution of £300 million, are we likely to find it cut to £200 million or £100 million next month under the economic crisis proposals?
I believe that we are entitled to more information, and that is what I seek.
10.17 p.m.
Mr. Nicholas Fairbairn: We are discussing a Money Resolution which is an endless commitment. We start with £300 million, and the Minister of State announced proudly that he had increased it from £200 million to £300 million as if it were coming out of his own pocket.
Secondly, we are asked to authorise the payment of money provided under any provision of this legislation. Under Clause 5, the commitment is bottomless. The agency may borrow, lend, hire, sell and do anything else that it wishes, and the Secretary of State must repay it. That is outside the £300 million of the first requirement.
The third matter is that of expenditure. A number of questions seem to arise from the absurd explanatory notes in the Bill. We are to have an additional 250 to 300 persons. It is said that the administrative expenses of the agency are difficult to estimate with precision—I am sure that they are—but that they may build up to a level of about £3·5 million per annum. Will that be the expense of employing 205 to 300 people? What is more, does the figure take any account of inflation? If so, what is the estimate for the year with which we are dealing, and what is the estimate five years hence? It is misleading the House to ask it to approve an annual sum of £3·5 million,
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with inflation as it is, as if that will be the figure for five or eight years to come.
The Minister of State would like to give the impression that all the money will be spent immediately. He said that there was enough money to give the agency a good start, as if it were a present being given to a child going to school. We are entitled to know from where the money is to come. Will it be raised from taxes? Will it be raised from rates? Will it be printed? Will it be raised in Scotland, in England or even in Northern Ireland? How is it to be raised?
Mr. James Hamilton (Vice-Chamberlain of the Household): From rich people like the hon. and learned Gentleman.
Mr. Fairbairn: I am infinitely richer than the hon. Gentleman in all qualities except money.
Every day the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister tell us that we must cut the commitment which this House makes to expenditure, especially undescribed expenditure. It is all very well to talk in terms of £300 million. We have the expenses, and we have the commitment under Clause 5, which is bottomless.
Every night this House is asked to approve further expenditure. That is national deception and national schizophrenia. I should like the Treasury to answer these questions. What will be the estimated extra borrowing requirement of Parliament, how far has inflation been taken into account in expenditure and commitments, and what proposals are there for raising this sum of money? If the Treasury does not answer these questions, it is pretending that it gives by night and threatens to take away by day.
10.21 p.m.
Mr. Gordon Wilson: I should like to follow up comments made during the preceding debate on whether this sum is adequate in view of the grievous needs of Scotland at present.
The hon. and learned Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Mr. Fairbairn) asked where this money would come from. The intention is, as can be seen from the Money Resolution, to take

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it from the Consolidated Fund or the National Loans Fund. However, it is equally clear to those of us who have read the Petroleum and Submarine Pipe-Lines Bill that excesses on the oil account will be paid into the Consolidated Fund.
Therefore, we may well find—and this is accepted by all hon. Members—that even if there is no nexus, a large percentage of these funds will come from the revenues that will accrue from the development of oil in the North Sea. If this is so, we should examine the allowance for the agency in a more generous fashion than has been suggested so far. For example, I shall take a period of 10 years and assume that the agency started from its full commitment. We could find in the region of about £400 million or £500 million during that 10-year period, provided that the Secretary of State came back to Parliament for more funds.
To put the situation into perspective, by the early 1980's the Government's estimates of revenues from the Scottish sector of the North Sea will be in the region of £3,000 million. Therefore, the Government could be more generous.
I ask for an assurance from the Government that there is no intention of using other cut-backs, which may be announced during the budgetry statement which has been promised by the Prime Minister in two or three weeks' time, because already there are rumours that Govan shipbuilders are being put under pressure not to spend on modernisation and re-equipment the £20 million that had been promised to them over that period.
Therefore, if it is the Government's intention, on the one hand, to subtract from existing assistance to industry in Scotland and, on the other hand, to give assistance in the form of this Money Resolution, we may be dealing with a net situation where savings are being made on other essential and necessary forms of investment in Scotland in order to give an appearance of being generous.
The overall situation indicates that, far from Scotland being generously treated by the Government, we shall get back only a small sum of what is really and truly ours. I, therefore, ask the Government to reconsider the terms of the Money Resolution and to consider allowing an
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amendment to be tabled in Committee to increase the sum.
10.23 p.m.
Mr. Nigel Lawson: My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Mr. Fairbairn) and my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro)—who initiated this debate on the Money Resolution—have clone the House a service in the best tradition of Scottish good housekeeping.
It is intolerable that the Government should expect that a Money Resolution involving considerably more than £300 million should go through on the nod. This is intolerable at any time, but, above all, at a time when we are, as everyone knows, in the gravest economic crisis and when the amount of the Government's official borrowing requirement of £9,000 million—and the public sector borrowing requirement is likely to be considerably more than that—is, in the Chancellor's own admission, one of the major elements in our crisis, with which he knows he has to deal. Yet here we have a further £300 million plus, which the Government expected to go through on the nod.
I am glad that the Secretary of State for Scotland is present, not merely because this is obviously an important measure affecting Scotland but also because he, in his time, has questioned Money Resolutions and I am sure that he would agree that that is a proper thing for the House of Commons to do. Incidentally, I am also glad to see the newly-appointed Minister of State at the Treasury, the hon. Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies). I hope that he will be replying to the debate on behalf of the Treasury. If not, I certainly hope that we shall have a Treasury Minister replying. It would be an intolerable affront to the House if no Treasury Minister replied to the debate, especially with the vast sums of money involved.
I should like to raise one or two matters and ask some questions. First, as has been pointed out, there is nothing that says how much is to be spent in providing the air services serving the Highlands and Islands. Indeed, there is just the bland statement in the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum to the Bill that
"It is not possible to provide an estimate of expenditure to be incurred under Clause 19"—

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which is the Clause at issue—
"since this will be a matter for negotiation."
That is not good enough. We must be given some idea of the limit and of how much will be involved. I cannot for a moment believe that the Treasury has given a blank cheque for this measure. Therefore the House should be told what is involved.
Secondly, we must know how much of the £300 million will fall in the current financial year, 1975–76. This will have an effect on the public sector borrowing requirements in this year of crisis. We must have this information.
We should also like an estimate for the following financial year, the year in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has said that public expenditure cuts are to be introduced, 1976–77. If the Chancellor can look ahead for cuts in that year, we can also be told what the expenditure is expected to be in that year on the SDA. But certainly we must know what expenditure on the agency will be in the current financial year.
Again, the £300 million does not include any interest payments. Interest payments, at this time of inflation and with interest rates at an almost usurious level, are a very substantial sum. The Government should say how much they expect to fall due in interest payments and, indeed, to whom these payments are to be made. Schedule 2 of the Bill, which is the main part relating to the Money Resolution, states:
"For the purposes of the exercise of any of their functions, the Agency may borrow money from the Secretary of State and may, with the consent of the Secretary of State given with the approval of the Treasury, borrow money, whether in sterling or otherwise, from any other person or body, whether in the United Kingdom or elsewhere."
How much of the money is to be borrowed within the United Kingdom on the gilt-edged market, and how much is to be borrowed from overseas? Our overseas indebtedness is already another major factor in our crisis. Confidence in sterling is low. That must be accepted on all sides of the House. Confidence in the pound is reducing. How much of this money will be borrowed from the Arabs or whoever else it is overseas who is lending us money at present, and lending
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it to sustain Socialist follies of one kind or another?
How much is the interest charge? Interest at 15 per cent. on £300 million is about £45 million a year. A great deal of money is involved. Interest payments are qiute over and above the £300 million which is the prescribed limit in the Money Resolution.
We need to be told a great deal more about the administrative costs. What are they and how are they to be divided between wages and salaries and other expenses, such as rents for office buildings, and so on? This may be a small amount compared with the £300 million we have been talking about, but we all know that there is an enormous amount of waste in the public sector, and one of the main ways in which we shall deal with this economic crisis is by cutting out that waste in a range of small ways. Control of the proliferation of administration is one. When control of this sort of expenditure is totally lost, the cost escalates and the problem of inflation grows. I hope that we shall have the benefit of a Treasury Minister to answer these important questions.
10.32 p.m.
Mr. David Howell: It was a good idea to have this short debate on the cost of this proposal and I am sure that Ministers will be the first to agree that it is important in these critical times to cast an eye over the finances and the cash and resource costs of major new projects. Whether we agree with them or not we all have a responsibility in these critical times to study carefully the spending of sums of this kind.
We are dealing here with £300 million which is a substantial sum. It must be found from somewhere—from the taxpayer, from the saver, or, and I hope that this will not be the case, from the printing presses. I hope that a Treasury Minister will explain that this last course will not be adopted.
My hon. Friends have raised important points and I am only sorry that Labour back benchers have not entered into the debate because the money will have to come from somewhere. It will have to come from cutting other programmes. It is a part of the Parliamentary process that we need to strengthen to hear the views of hon. Members about their priorities. If

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they want money spent on the SDA which schemes do they want the Government to cut to provide the cash? We have not heard from Labour Members on that point. They have had a busy day debating the Bill, of course. Perhaps they think that £300 million is not important.
Mr. Frank Hooley: The highest priority for this country is the encouragement of industrial investment, and that is precisely what the Bill seeks to do.
Mr. Howell: Some would say that the bar to industrial investment is the high rate of inflation. That comes from excessive Government spending and high pay, and that could prove to be a circular argument.
It is important to follow up one or two of the questions which have been posed about finances. The Bill proposes a figure of £200 million to start with. That sum would have been approved on the nod but for our desire to debate it. A further £100 million is to be approved by the affirmative resolution procedure. The Secretary of State confirmed, I think with some pride, that this was a 1½hours procedure, and that timescale works out at £66 million an hour, or a little over £1 million a minute as the rate at which the Government hope the House will approve the expenditure.
There must be some clarity, too, on the pace at which it is planned that this expenditure should be "unfolded". This is serious because it is critical for the public sector deficit and the public sector borrowing requirement that we should know just how much of that expenditure will be incurred in year one. The Press release, which the Minister of State said was no longer relevant to the situation that the Government now foresaw, mentioned a period of 5 years which means £40 million a year for the £200 million. The Secretary of State, in brisk form, said that he wanted the money used up as quickly as possible. Presumably that means that if he could find the outlets for it he would like the whole £300 million to be pushed through in the current financial year. If that is so it makes a considerable difference to the Government's finances and to the very fine balance which the Chancellor is trying to strike on the public sector deficit.
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We are so near the precipice that the tolerances are very fine. If we are suddenly to have an additional £300 million. or £260 million on top of the £40 million originally envisaged—if that is what was envisaged—pushed up into this year, it is an important consideration. We want to know exactly what the spread will be.
The Minister of State said that he wanted the money to last as long as the agency had an effective job to do, which sounds more like the even-spread approach. If the Secretary of State's view prevails, and the cry will be "Spend the money as quickly as possible", that is a serious matter from the point of view of public finances.
We need to know the strategy—if such precision is possible—because it has important implications for the overall borrowing requirement at a critical time, when inflation is through the roof and our finances are in a sadly deteriorated condition.
My hon. Friend asked how much would be borrowed from abroad. The agency has powers under the appropriate schedule to borrow from abroad. We shall be grateful if the Minister will tell us how the borrowing will be organised, and whether it will be carried out under the procedures authorised in the previous Finance Act, which included a new section governing statutory corporations' overseas borrowings. Are the procedures to be those governed by that section, or will there be different procedures?
Descending from those vast figures, which are very important, to the small ones, I agree with my hon. Friends that the House should do more than just to glance at the considerable figure of £3½ million a year for running the agency's office or offices. That figure is presumably in today's pounds and will be much more when they come into existence. The sum of £3½ million is a great deal for running an office or offices. It is a great deal if there are 750 persons involved. Even if every man, woman and boy in the office were paid £60 a week, that would not come to anywhere near £3½ million. It is nearer £2¼ million, leaving £1¼ million for the rental and other expenses.
If the money covers 250–300 people, we are dealing with substantial sums. At £60 a week, 300 would cost £900,000.

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If they were paid the same as we are paid—£90 a week—the total would be £1,350,000, leaving over £2 million for the rental and other matters. This seems to be office planning on a very generous scale. It may be peanuts compared with the £200 million, but if we multiply this approach to office expenses by the whole bureaucracy of Government we have our problem on the plate before us. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer could get a grip of excess administrative costs of the kind we are talking about here, many of his difficulties would be removed, together with some of the furrows on his brow.
We must know where that odd £1 million or £2 million is going in this office operation, how many extra people will be in the office, what that figure of £3,500,000 represents, and whether it is in some future projection of money terms or in 1974 survey prices. These are important matters. They are not just candle ends. If we can get these issues right we shall yet save our public finances and enable the economy to proceed without making all the drastic expenditure cuts—though we are bound to have some—which Labour Members fear very much.
If we cannot get these things right, if we let this sort of money through on the nod without serious analysis, if we let this sort of administrative expense through without careful examination, we shall be winking the green light for a further slide in the whole of our public finances, and for further increases in the astronomical borrowing requirement. It is now officially running at £9 billion, in 1975 pounds, but is probably much higher. Many people think that it will be £12 billion or £13 billion before we are through. We are winking the green light for a further agonising round of increased inflation, lower investment, lower profits and fewer jobs for the people of Scotland. It is important that the facts should be correctly put. May we have some answers?
10.40 p.m.
Mr. James Sillars: The carping reluctance of the approach of the Conservative Party to the Bill and the money to be provided with which to back the Scottish Development Agency will not go unnoticed in Scotland.
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It is remarkable that three technical monetary questions should have been asked by a member of the Conservative Party. When we asked questions about the amount of money to be committed by the Conservative Government under the Industry Act 1972 we were told that that amount depended on how successful we were in attracting investment. We were told that the more investment there was the more grants and expenditure there would be. There was an open cheque attitude to investment under the Industry Act 1972.
Tht £300 million allocated to the Scottish Development Agency is not enough. If the Scottish Development Agency spends up to the limt of £300 million in the first two years of its life it will be a highly successful operation. The Government will be able to claim an enormous investment success in the rehabilitation of land north of the border. We shall have proved our case for further Government assistance. I am happy to agree with the prescribed limit of £300 million.
There has been no mention by the Opposition of the fact that this is a year of crisis for the working people of Scotland. A financial crisis faces the country. The unemployed, their families and the young people pouring out of schools on to a labour market which is already severely depressed face a time of crisis. They look to the Government for action. The Money Resolution will enable the Government to take adequately backed action in the next two years.
The Opposition complained that no Government supporters seemed to be concerned about the amounts to be spent. That is why I speak. When the Minister makes a decision on the voluntary timetable I hope that he will bear in mind that the Tory Party has had a fair crack of the whip. In the other place, for which there are no elections, the Scottish Tories are better represented than in any other part of the Palace of Westminster. Those Tories have knocked our Bill about a considerable amount. Will the Minister discuss with the Leader of the House, the Chief Whip, and through the usual channels, the possibility of a generous, timetable motion being introduced so that the Bill becomes law and the £300 million is spent on employment in Scotland?
10.43 p.m.
The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Mr. Bruce Millan): I should first like to answer the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Sillars) as it is relevant to the amount of money which we shall be able to spend this year. We are anxious to put this Bill on to the statute book at the earliest possible date. We shall be taking steps to achieve that end. I know that we will have the support not only of my hon. Friends but also of the people of Scotland. However, there may be a few dissenters here and there. We can deal with them when we come to them. We shall put this Bill on to the statute book as soon as possible. However, until we do so it is impossible for me to give figures for one year.
The Bill was drafted on the basis that we would provide an amount—not an annual amount. The amount has no time limit attached to it. The amount which may be spent in the current year will depend on when we can establish the agency and how successful it is in its early stages in identifying useful ways of spending the money which is available to it. As we proceed along that road we shall give the information to the House in the usual way. I cannot now say how much is likely to be spent in the current year. It is provided for in the Government's public expenditure calculations.
Mr. Lawson: I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman said that. As a sum has been provided for in the Government's calculations for this year, why will he not reveal to the House what that sum is?
Mr. Millan: For the simple reason that it is impossible to make the calculation at present. If the hon. Gentleman—who I know follows these matters with great care—will look at the public expenditure White Papers, he will see that there is always a fairly generous amount allowed for developments that may take place during the year, contingencies and so on. We are not entering into this undertaking lightly, with no idea of the financial consequences and with no regard for the difficult public expenditure considerations we face in the current year. This is public expenditure which is specifically directed towards maintaining and expanding, and therefore improving, the productive capacity of
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Scotland. It is not, as the hon. Gentleman seems to suggest, public money which will be wasted. To suggest that is to misread what we are trying to do.
Similarly, I am unable to provide a breakdown between the various functions of the agency and say that so much of the £300 million will be spent on one and so much on another function. Again, we have specifically and deliberately drawn the expenditure limits in a way which does not provide for a division of the expenditure. We want to allow the agency the maximum flexibility in determining its priorities and the emphasis it puts at any time on one or other of its functions. It follows from what I said in winding up the Second Reading debate that it is a primary purpose of the Government to provide maximum flexibility, so that a co-ordinated approach to Scotland's industrial problems can be made by the agency.
As to where the money will come from, it is never the practice of a Money Resolution to hypothecate particular revenues to particular expenditure. There is nothing peculiar about this Money Resolution, which is in the standard form. In paragraph 1(a) we use the standard formula of authorising—
"the payment out of money provided by Parliament"
Hon. Gentlemen will have the opportunity to cast an eagle eye over the Estimates when they come along and we look forward, when we debate them, to hearing other illuminating remarks, for example from the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson), about the Scottish Development Agency.
Similarly, paragraph 1(b) refers to:
"the payment out of the National Loans Fund",
and paragraph 1(c) to:
"the payment out of the Consolidated Fund".
Those are the sources which are always described in Money Resolutions, and in that respect this Money Resolution is no different from any other.
Mr. Lawson: I give the right hon. Gentleman credit for reading well. The Money Resolution is cast in the conventional form but the purpose of the debate is for the House to be given a little more information than is contained in the Money Resolution.
Mr. Millan: I might just be able to do that if the hon. Gentleman will allow me to develop my speech.
The hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro) mentioned air services. There is a special reason why I do not want to put a figure on that sum of money in the current year. We are dealing with one company—Loganair—and not with British Airways. We have decided that no subsidies will be paid to British Airways. A proposal is under discussion at the moment and there is a figure in mind, but it is considered inappropriate and lacking in proper regard for the need to preserve the public purse to put a figure in the Explanatory Memorandum. If these negotiations are completed—as I hope they will be—within a week or two, I shall be happy to give the figure. The hon. Gentleman will realise that in the middle of the negotiations it would have been inappropriate for us to include in the Money Resolution a figure which Loganair would have been able to identify immediately as the figure we had in mind. That would have been prejudicial to the negotiations.
I am sorry that I am unable to give that figure, but I hope to be able to give it soon with other details of the services that we intend to subsidise. The House will know that last week I gave certain information about Shetland internal services in answer to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond).
I was asked about inflation and whether the figures were at current rates. They are. The Explanatory and Financial Memorandum follows the normal pattern. It is never the practice under any Government in any legislation to allow for future inflation. The figures in the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum are expressed at rates which pertain at the time that the Bill is published. It is obvious that if there is a continuation of a high rate of inflation the money under this or any other Bill will run out sooner than expected. I should not hide that fact. It is an ineluctable consequence.
I was asked about the staff. The figures are given on page v of the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum. The total is expected to reach 750. However, we must remember that a fair number of
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staff, about 470, are already employed by the Scottish Industrial Estates Corporation and by the Small Industries Council for the Rural Areas of Scotland. Therefore, the additional numbers will be quite limited.
I confirm that the figure of £3½ million is not just for the additional persons. It takes account of the present expenditure for the SIEC and the SICRAS. If we take account of the SIEC and SICRAS current administrative expenditure and of the administrative expenditure for the extra 250 to 300 people, it will be seen that £3½ million is a fair estimate of what the administrative expenses are likely to be.
I confirm that the £300 million does not include interest payments. Those are specifically excluded in Clause 13 where the £300 million is mentioned. The agency is rather different from the NEB in this regard, because, whilst having an industrial rôle which is analogous to the rôle of the NEB, it will have an environmental and factory-building rôle, and so on, which will not be subject to the same financial targets guidelines as the specifically industrial rôle, which is not meant to be run at pub-lice expense, but to pay its way. We are dealing not with assistance to industry so much as an entrepreneurial function which is meant to pay its way. That makes it difficult to define the financial guidlines on which the agency will work. When we publish these guidlines, as we will, it will be seen that we shall fix additional targets for the different functions of the SDA as to whether they should be self-financing or money which cannot, in the short term at least, provide a normal financial return.
A decision will have to be taken at some time as to how much of the borrowing of the agency might be done by public dividend capital. That will make a difference to interest payments, and so on.
Mr. Lawson: These are important aspects of the situation which the Minister is considering and I hope he will give more information later. In the meantime, can he give some rough indication of how the £300 million is broken down between that which is expected to produce a commercial rate of return and that which is not, and what is the kind of commercial rate of return on the

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tranche which is expected to produce one?
Mr. Millan: We shall tell the House later, but it is too early to do that. The hon. Member for Blaby will appreciate that before introducing guidelines we have to discuss this with the agency. If his hon. Friends from Scottish constituencies would stop obstructing the Bill, we might get it through and could then give those answers, but we are at present prevented from doing so because of the obstructive tactics of his hon. Friends.
The other matter the hon. Gentleman raised was overseas borrowing, and this is provided for under Schedule 2 of the Bill. I can confirm that it will be done under the normal arrangements, because if the hon. Member looks at Schedule 2(3) he will find that borrowing powers are subject to the consent of the Secretary of State, given with the approval of the Treasury. Therefore I can say that, as with other public agencies, it will be subject to whatever guidance, guidelines, or constraints operate at the time.
There will be no special arrangement as I understand the position; but, if I am wrong, I will provide an alternative answer in due course. The borrowing will come under the normal provisions, as I understand it, for public agency borrowing and those are under the ultimate control of the Treasury, as we would all accept.
The question of North Sea oil which has been raised is not provided for in the Money Resolution. Perhaps I did not say so in my Second Reading speech, but I should have said that there will be no hypothecation of North Sea oil revenues to the development agency.
I have answered most of these points and I know that the House is anxious to approve this necessary money which will yield such a magnificent return for the people of Scotland through the agency.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to establish a Scottish Development Agency; to provide for the appointment by the Secretary of State of a Scottish Industrial Development Advisory Board; to make provision for assistance in connection
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with air services serving the Highlands and Islands; and for connected purposes, it is expedient to authorise—
(1) subject to the prescribed limit—

(a) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of the expenses of the Secretary of State in making payment., to the Scottish Development Agency;

(b) the payment out of the National Loans Fund of sums required for making loans to the Scottish Development Agency;

(c) the payment out of the Consolidated Fund of sums required for fulfilling any guarantee given by the Treasury in respect of sums borrowed by that Agency;

and in this paragraph of this Resolution "the prescribed limit" means the limit of £300 million imposed by the said Act of the present Session on the aggregate amount outstanding, otherwise than by way of interest, in respect of—

(i) the general external borrowing (as defined in the Act) of the Scottish Development Agency and their wholly owned subsidiaries;

(ii) sums issued by the Treasury in fulfilment of guarantees in respect of sums borrowed by the Agency from a person other than the Secretary of State;

(iii) sums paid to the Agency by the Secretary of State less repayments to the Secretary of State by the Agency (other than payments made by the Agency in consideration of receiving public dividend capital) and less sums paid in respect of the administrative expenses of the Agency; and

(iv) loans guaranteed by the Agency otherwise than in the exercise of powers conferred on the Secretary of State by section 7 of the Industry Act 1972 and exercisable by the Agency by virtue of the said Act of the present Session and loans guaranteed by a wholly owned subsidiary of the Agency;

(2) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any expenses of the Secre tary of State incurred by him in consequence of any provision of the said Act of the present Session—

(a) enabling him to assist persons providing or proposing to provide air services serving the Highlands and Islands; and

(b) enabling him to pay compensation in respect of the loss of office of any person who suffers such loss in consequence of the said Act;

(3) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any administrative expenses of the Secretary of State incurred by him in consequence of any provision pit the said Act.
And that it is expedient to authorise any payment into the Consolidated Fund or the National Loans Fund under the said Act of the present Session

DISEASES OF ANIMALS BILL
[Lords]
Not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
10.59 p.m.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Gavin Strang)I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
It has been gratifying to see the favourable response to this measure here and in the other place. I believe that that is confirmation that the Bill speaks for itself and I do not propose to take up the time of the House on this occasion.
The length of a Bill is no guide to its importance. In this case the House has recognised that the Bill meets a vital need—that of maintaining up-to-date defences against the scourge of animal diseases from abroad. I understand that hon. Members wish to raise a number of points, and with your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall be happy to answer them at the end of the debate.
11.0 p.m.
Mr. Robert Hicks: As the Minister has implied, the Opposition welcome this Bill. That has been evident during its passage, because we have not sought in any way to obstruct its progress. We recognise the need to support the Government on animal health matters of this kind. Animal health is probably one of the most non-political subjects that this House considers. It is also one of the most technical.
There are two aspects I want to raise tonight which have been raised at earlier stages. I make no apology for bringing them up once more. The first concerns psittacosis. Considerable discussion has already taken place about whether this disease is endemic. If it is, clearly it represents an increased threat to our poultry industry. I am aware that this Bill is aimed at updating the provisions of the Diseases of Animals Act 1950, which relates to the import of animals, birds and "other things".
The Minister will be aware that the importation of parrots has caused considerable concern to poultry farmers since the import ban was removed by order in 1967. It is only right that we
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should again ask the Minister what the current stance is on this. We are anxious that the Minister should give priority to detecting and dealing with such diseases.
In addition there is the other aspect of psittacosis which manifests itself in the potential risk to human beings. The figures show that in each of the past five years on average two persons per year have died from this disease. In Committee we rather let the Minister off the hook, as he will recognise, because later that day he was to answer a Written Question tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Hawkins) on this subject. In that answer the Minister said that he had reviewed the matter and had also taken the views of his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services. He went on:
"While controls are not considered justified on human health grounds alone, a review of the disease risks to poultry posed by unrestricted imports of psittacines and other captive birds gives cause for concern. I am therefore considering the form and timing of appropriate import controls and I shall be consulting the trade and other interests."—[Official Report, 11th June 1975; Vol. 893, c. 190.]
Clearly in the light of this answer we will want to hear tonight whether we are likely to know the outcome of these inquiries and what form the appropriate import controls will take. Is the Minister thinking in terms of a ban? If there is not a total ban, what are the alternatives? I believe that we are justified in seeking clarification, because we interpret that not all is at one between the Departments that are involved. We should like clarification of the Minister's intentions.
Next, I turn to rabies. We accept that the Government have acted in respect of the Rabies Act 1974. That Act provides them with the various provisions which we hope will enable them to take the necessary measures should this disaster again come to these islands. However, we should like the Minister's assurance that he is satisfied that he has all the powers that the Government require. After all, we know that rabies is extending westwards across the continent of North-West Europe. That has given cause for considerable public concern. We would join with the Ministry in expressing the view that it is necessary to

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maintain the campaign to draw the attention of the public to the full implications if rabies were again to be found in the United Kingdom.
Will the Minister give an assurance that strict policing policies are taking place at airports and on ferries? If ever the statement that prevention is better than cure were relevant it is in this particular instance. That must be so given the potential threat and the implications that would be involved if rabies were again to break out in these islands. We seek further clarification, further explanation and the required assurance as regard psittacosis and rabies.
11.8 p.m.
Mr. Paul Hawkins: I welcome the Bill as has my hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin (Mr. Hicks). I do so particularly as we are told there will be no significant effect on public service manpower. But without extra manpower at the ports, how strict will be the controls that can be carried out over these dangerous diseases which can be imported? How much money will the work, as outlined, cost in a full year?
I now turn to the importation of psittacines. It was the death of a farm worker in my constituency that brought the matter to my notice. We must recognise the danger that they bring not only to human beings but to the whole of our poultry population. As the Minister has found, there is undoubtedly a tie-up with a virulent form of poultry fowl pest. The death of the farm worker's wife and the illness of many of his family worried both the NUAW organiser in my constituency, Mr. Jack Boddy, and the farmer, Mr. Ted Wootton. The Minister was kind enough to receive them with myself at a long and interesting discussion with his officials. We came away with a good impression of the way in which he understood the seriousness of the case.
It was a long time before the matter came to a head, but finally my Question on importation was answered. I have two supplementary questions to ask. First, why did the Secretary of State for Social Services not consider controls justified on human health grounds? If the right hon. Lady was serious about the matter and the Ministry of Agriculture considered that there was a reason for controls, the answer to my Question would have been
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worded differently. It would have combined the two matters and said that because of the joint effect it was agreed that action should be taken. I wish to know why the right hon. Lady took up the position she did.
Secondly, I should like to ask whether this means beyond a peradventure that at some time in the future there will be import controls on these birds? If so, how long does the Minister expect it will be before he is able to put these controls into effect? I am grateful to the Minister for having answer my Question, but I should like further clarification on those two points.
I wish to turn to the subject of rabies, which is undoubtedly a most horrifying disease which can affect animals and humans. I believe that there is no cure whatever for it and it seems that it has been spreading from the Polish corridor gradually across Europe as far as the French coastline opposite this country. How close to the coastline has it now reached? How much co-operation is there with the French authorities in finding out how they are endeavouring to control the situation? Is there constant co-operation and visits to the French veterinary headquarters to try to find out what can be done from our side to prevent the importation of any animal which might bring this disease into this country?
I wish to ask about extra precautions being taken at ports and airports. I should like to see a publicity film made on this topic screened as a warning to those who love to smuggle in pets. I believe that would be of immense benefit. People seem to be far more concerned about the welfare of animals in this country than about the welfare of human beings. There is no doubt that these matters hit the headlines and occasions on which Members of Parliament are lobbied are, nine times out of ten, connected with animals. I certainly consider that a film on the subject would bring the truth of the matter home to those who are likely to smuggle in a small dog and thereby risk the lives of thousands of pets throughout the country. If the message was rubbed home in that way, we might be able to avoid the importation of certain animals.
I congratulate the Minister on having brought forward this Bill and on the steps

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he is taking concerning the importation of psittacines. I hope that he will have every power behind his elbow to prevent this dread scourge of rabies invading the land.
11.16 p.m.
Mr. Mark Hughes: I apologise for not having been able to be present at the previous discussions on this Bill. Matters such as the Finance Bill happened to coincide.
I welcome the Bill wholeheartedly and wish only to ask the Minister a number of pertinent questions. He will recollect the time we spent on the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill some years ago on the question of zöonosis, and what worries me first and foremost is how far, in legislating about the transmission of animal diseases, we are satisfactorily dealing with the problem of those diseases which are transmissible from animal to man.
In reading the Bill there appears to me to be a lacuna—I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me—between the rôle of his Department, with its highly-skilled veterinary staff, and the rôle of the Department of Health and Social Security and its highly-skilled staff. This gap between the rôles of two excellent Departments could give rise to risks to the population of this country, and I want to give a warning about them.
I have in mind not the highly specific psittacosis problem mentioned by the hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Hawkins) but the whole problem of ornithosis, with which the House is well acquainted. The Minister knows very well that there is some evidence—it may at the moment by ephemeral, it may not be proved beyond peradventure—that high concentrations of turkeys, hens, and so on, can lead to a risk to those involved in their maintenance and care. It crosses the line between a veterinary condition, which is the proper function of the Minister's Department, and a medical condition, which is the proper function of the Department of Health and Social Security.
I am not certain how the Bill affects the importation of poultry eggs or day-old chicks where there is no evidence that they are possessed of a disease which is damaging or disadvantageous to poultry. If it clearly damages poultry there are powers provided, but I am not certain
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that the Bill protects the poultry keeper or the poultry dresser in the factory. There is a gap, enabling the importation of day-old chicks which would totally satisfy the provisions of the Bill and which would not involve the disease of animals as defined by it yet such animals could carry a risk of disease to the human beings handling them, which I would find unacceptable. It seems that there is this gap.
Let me take this another stage and refer to what is probably the most prevalent cause of human discomfort that we have, which is salmonella. This Bill does not seem to cope with the problem of the transferance of salmonella from animals to humans. It is not classified as an animal disease. Yet the risk that the dairy man, shepherd, or whoever it may be who is dealing with these animals, could infect his family with salmonella is high. It may not be fatal, though unfortunately it can be on occasion. But it is a most unpleasant, nasty business, and it does not seem to be covered in the Bill because we are dealing too specifically with diseases of animals and assuming that man is not an animal. What worries me about the Bill is that, because of departmentalising in Whitehall, we classify animals as non-human and humans as non-animal. The two never get together, and the problems of these zoonotic conditions are not dealt with properly.
In general, I welcome the Bill. But, having read the discussion in another place and on Second Reading and in Committee in this House, I regret that this area was not aired more fully.
I turn to the problem of bees. I know that my hon. Friend has a keen interest in bee-keeping, and perhaps I should declare my own interest in that I am a very amateur bee-keeper.
A number of fertilised queen bees are imported. Those queen bees of themselves may be totally free from disease. It is only when they have been released into a colony that the presence of disease can be known. It is only when their eggs, their grubs and their progeny emerge that the presence of the disease can ever be discovered.
Even after a careful reading of
"other things, whether animate or inanimate",

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it does not appear that it covers the unborn progeny of the imported "thing". If we import fertilised queen bees from Israel, Italy or from wherever we are in the habit of importing them, they may bring into the country a disease which is both spreadable and vicious. I cannot see how the point can be covered by
"fish, reptiles, crustaceans and other cold-blooded creatures not falling within paragraph (a) or paragraph (b) above".
I cannot see how the unproduced eggs of a fertilised queen bee are covered by the provisions of the Bill.
Mr. Michael Ward: Is my hon. Friend suggesting that queen bees are imported solo, without attendant worker bees? The advice of the Ministry is that, when bees are imported, a worker bee sample should be sent away for examination to check whether there is any evidence of either American or European foul brood. I think that the American variety is the most common.
Mr. Hughes: I am more than happy to respond to my hon. Friend's intervention. I deal with the specific problem of foul brood. It is the practice to put any imported queen bee in a separate container, with a number of worker bees in a distinct container alongside so that the worker bees can be analysed to see whether they are afflicted with either American or European common foul brood. This is a relatively simple process, but there are a number of specifically commercial queen bees, particularly in Israel where there is a breed of queen bees that have an inherent characteristic of non-swarming. The practice is to import them without the worker bees.
It has not been realistic so far to test that group of queen bees because there are no worker bees. Bees of an imported sample are not the progeny of the queen, they are the progeny of the hive.
There seems to be a technical difficulty in the drafting of the Bill and it may extend to more than just bees. There may be fertilised females of a number of species who are disease-free themselves, but whose progeny may carry the risk of disease.
I welcome the Bill wholeheartedly, but there are two or three areas of difficulty.
11.27 p.m.
Mr. Geraint Howells: We have learned a great deal from the two hon. Members who spoke immediately preceding me. Both raised important issues and it has been an interesting debate so far.
I congratulate the Government on introducing the Bill as a matter of urgency. Much can be done to help the agriculture industry and its various sectors.
I am in favour of clauses 1 to 5. Their provisions are necessary if we are to safeguard our interests at home and abroad. I have had meetings with the chief executive officer of the National Farmers' Union at Aberystwyth, Mr. Evan Lewis, a number of branches of the union and farmers interested in animal diseases. All union leaders and the majority of farmers accept the Bill as a necessity if we are to improve our control of every type of disease.
There are one or two points on which I should like clarification. Now that we are full members of the EEC, have we a common policy to cover diseases of animals? In the late 1960s, we had a foot-and-mouth epidemic that cost us millions of pounds. Now we have a slaughtering policy, while the EEC has a vaccination policy. In future, will there be a slaughtering policy in the EEC or will we have to accept their vaccination policy? That is one matter which worries me.
Then there is another problem facing sheep farmers in Britain. Scab is on the increase once again, in many parts of the South of England and coming up to the Midlands. I wonder whether now is the opportune time to reintroduce compulsory dipping in Britain to safeguard the sheep industry.
I should also like to ask the Minister about the problem of thea nimal vis-à-vis the human being. Many people, particularly vets, have suffered from the disease brucellosis. In Britain we vaccinate our cattle with S19. I am wondering whether that is the policy within the rest of the EEC, and whether we can agree over a period upon a common policy of injecting all cattle with S19.
The Government's policy is to expand home food production. If we believe that we should try to conquer inflation,

619
it is our duty to take every precaution to safeguard our stock from any sort of disease entering Britain from any part of the world. It has been proved in the past that many millions of pounds have been lost to the agriculture industry because we did not have enough control over imports. We on the Liberal bench recognise the need to support the Government on animal health and welfare grounds and to make sure that the agriculture industry plays its part by accepting the revised provisions in relation to diseases of animals, which in the long run will be beneficial to all concerned.
11.32 p.m.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: The hon. Member for Durham (Mr. Hughes) raised some fascinating matters. I hope that the Minister will deal with them adequately and fully. As the contribution of the hon. Member for Durham went on, I was reminded of the poem about the walrus and the carpenter, because the content of what he was saying became curiouser and curiouser.
I join my hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin (Mr. Hicks) and my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Hawkins) in welcoming the Bill and hoping that it has a speedy passage on to the statute book.
I want to direct my remarks entirely to the disease of rabies. I did this in Committee and I wish to do so again tonight. Rabies is a horrific, terrible disease. Its effect upon man is quite unbelievable. I certainly go along with what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South-West. Perhaps the Government could get a film made of the effects of this disease. I am sure that it would make anyone tempted to smuggle in an animal from the Continent think twice about what he was doing.
I direct my remarks to rabies because in recent weeks a number of people have drawn to my attention—perhaps even boasted of it—the fact that they have gone to the Continent and brought back an animal and got it into Britain terribly easily, the animal being concealed in a shopping bag, under a false seat in a car, in a false-bottomed car boot, or whatever. These animals could well have been in contact with animals infected by rabies,
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and they could bring that disease to Britain.
Will the Minister clearly indicate whether there will be sufficient officers to inspect all vehicles and all people that will be travelling to and from the continent of Europe? In recent years the number of movements to and from the Continent has increased dramatically, not only commercial movements but the movement of people going on holidays and visits. I hope that sufficient inspectors will be available to ensure that their presence is a deterrent to people who are tempted to bring animals into Britain without putting those animals through the necessary quarantine period.
This is a very serious matter. Rabies is sweeping across Western Europe. I believe that a number of cases have already been reported in the Pas de Calais and it is calculated that the disease will have reached the Channel ports before 1980. That obviously poses a serious threat to this country. I was to some extent reassured by the answer that the Minister gave in Committee, but I hope that he will be a little more forthcoming this evening and will indicate clearly that he is confident that there will be enough inspectors to deter people who might be tempted, perhaps for what they believe to be the best of reasons, to bring animals into the country without them going through the necessary quarantine period.
11.36 p.m.
Mr. John Farr: I welcome the Bill and congratulate the Government on proceeding with it. I should like to echo the queries of my hon. Friends on whether there will be enough vets to staff what would appear to be an increased number of duties. I am well aware that the Explanatory Memorandum of the Bill says
"The Bill will have no significant effect on public service manpower."
However, judging from the duties which will be promulgated, by order, under the 12 headings in Schedule 1, they will certainly not have fewer duties, and they might actually have more. That assessment is based on the assumption that there will be no outbreaks of particularly nasty animal diseases such as hit this country from time to time, and which put a considerable strain on the State

621
veterinary services which, to put it mildly, are not exactly overmanned anyway.
Have the vets been consulted on the Bill? I imagine that they have. If so we should welcome an indication from the Minister of the view the vets have put forward. Do they regard the Bill as workable with no addition to their existing manpower?
The Bill gives the vets enough to do without having to cope with an outbreak of some animal disease. Who are we to assume that there will not be one of the periodic outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease or swine fever?
Hon. Members have referred to rabies. An outbreak of this disease began on the Franco-German border and is moving westwards or north-westwards at a rate of 20 or 30 miles per year. It is expected to be at the Channel coast before 1980. It can be carried by rats and bats and all sorts of other animals as well as by human beings. It is difficult to think of an animal which cannot carry it. If the disease continues to approach the Channel coast at its present rate it would seem that the State veterinary staff will have to be doubled or trebled by the deadline of 1980 or before in order to make even more rigorous and meticulous checks than operate today.
I would not query increased expenditure on that subject. I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm that the Bill is slightly misleading where it says that there will be no additional public expenditure in this respect. More public money should be spent in this direction and I hope that the Minister will say that not a penny will be spared in the fight against rabies.
The vets are busy in other ways. For example, in the West and South-West the Ministry vets are trying to control the spread of bovine tuberculosis. They have taken steps in certain parts to eliminate the badgers that normally live there. I have no doubt that the Minister will soon be reporting to the House on the success or failure of those experiments. If they fail, and if bovine tuberculosis becomes more prevalent in those areas, and perhaps spreads outwards, that may mean yet another demand on the State veterinary service.
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Clause 1(3) refers to an order dealing with animals which
"are brought into Great Britain in such circumstances that they are not imported, within the meaning of this Act".
I take it to refer to animals in transit. If so, what is the position of the many passengers who pass through London Airport every day, travelling between countries on the African continent and, for instance, the United States, and who spend up to 12 or 24 hours in transit? What is the position of an animal in transit with its owner, passing through Britain from a part of the world where rabies is indigenous? Does the Bill give the Government the necessary power to make sure that this traffic is banned?
We are placing too much at risk if we permit animals to come into London Airport, if only for a short stay of an hour or two in the in-transit lounge, if they come from an area where rabies is suspected. The very least that I hope the Bill will do is to ensure that such animals are subject to veterinary inspection on arrival, and are not allowed to proceed if they are found to have any contagious or unpleasant disease.
I welcome the Bill, and am glad that the Government have introduced it.
11.44 p.m.
Mr. Strang: I am glad that once again the Bill has been shown to have all-party support. It was welcomed from the Opposition Front Bench, and the hon. Member for Cardigan (Mr. Howells) welcomed it on behalf of the Liberals. I am particularly glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Durham (Mr. Hughes) was able to take part in our discussions and give the Bill his general blessing. I shall deal as expeditiously as possible, with the points raised.
The hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Hicks) and the hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Hawkins) raised the subject of psittacosis. I received a deputation consisting of the hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West and his constituents. I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's kind words about our meeting. As a result of that meeting the Government set up a review. This is an important matter and a number of interests are involved. The culmination of that review was the Written Answer which I

623
gave shortly after we last discussed the matter.
The hon. Member for Bodmin mentioned the position of the Department of Health and Social Security. There is no division with the Department. There was no intention to indicate that in the reply. We explained that the Department took the view that controls could not be justified on health grounds. There would be other claims for bans and controls on other diseases if it was accepted by the Department that there was justification for controls on health grounds.
The decision was taken on the basis of the problems of human health and the health of agriculture and poultry. On the basis of those considerations the Government decided that it would be right to introduce import controls. That is an important step. Hon. Members will want us to carry out full discussions with the trade, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and other interested bodies. It is our intention to introduce these controls. The discussions now taking place will be completed by the summer. The order will be prepared by the late summer, and the intention is that it will come into force within a few months. There are a number of way of doing that. We are thinking in terms of issuing licences and of quarantine to be paid for by the importers of all birds brought into the country. That is important as that procedure was not followed previously. I expect hon. Members to be more than satisfied at the urgency with which we are tackling this important matter.
My hon. Friend the Member for Durham (Mr. Hughes) raised a number of points. I emphasise that there is no running conflict on these matters between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Social Security. The Ministry of Agriculture is responsible for animal and poultry health. The Department of Health and Social Security is responsible for human health. I appreciate that there are areas where the interests of both Departments are involved. However, there is close consultation and co-operation between us on matters of mutual concern. Speaking on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture, I cannot accept responsibility for human health matters, which fall within the remit of the Department of Health and
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Social Security. My hon. Friend referred to the importation of live animals. I assure him that positively all imported live poultry is quarantined under the present legislation.
Mr. Mark Hughes: Will my hon. Friend confirm that that applies to day-old chicks and eggs?
Mr. Strang: I will write to my hon. Friend about eggs and the questions he raised about bees, and the wider point. My hon. Friend did less than justice to himself when he described himself as a rather amateur bee-keeper. It is apparent to all hon. Members present that he has immense expertise and knowledge of these matters. He asked several specialised questions, and the best way to do justice to those questions is for me to write to him.
The hon. Member for Cardigan referred to sheep scab. National dipping is not required at present, but a dipping area has been designated in the southwest.
The hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) mentioned several matters, some of which he had raised previously. In answer to him and to the hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) on the question of manpower, may I say that our first defence is Customs, and our veterinary officers provide the backup here. They are available for consultation with Customs on any animals that are considered to have been illegally landed. Although there is no additional manpower requirement for the purpose of implementing the Bill, we attach the highest importance to increasing the number of State veterinary officers.
When the Labour Government took over, our saddest inheritance in the Ministry of Agriculture was the position of the State Veterinary Service. There was a deplorable gap between the establishment and the number of vets in service. We are doing everything possible to recruit vets to get the number up to establishment as soon as possible. The salary relationship between the State sector and the private sector of the veterinary profession has never been better as a result of recent awards. Furthermore, the vets appreciate that we are doing everything we can to improve the job specification and the career prospects within the State

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Veterinary Service. I attach the highest importance to this, and we are tackling the matter with vigour and urgency.
I should like to take up the points made by a number of hon. Members about the important matter of rabies. I share the concern which has been expressed about the dangers from rabies. It was because of the urgent need to bring our defences against rabies up to date that the Rabies Act was passed last year to implement the recommendations in the Waterhouse Committee's report. The enabling powers in the Rabies Act have been implemented in two orders which came into operation in February. One of those orders deals with improved import controls and the other provides for comprehensive control measures to deal with outbreaks should they occur in Great Britain. It is for this reason that the Bill does not deal specifically with rabies, but brings up to date the general provisions covering the importation of animals and poultry and all potential carriers of animal diseases.
The new powers relating to rabies have been the subject of sustained publicity through the Press, radio and television. It is worth congratulating those people who have been directly concerned with seeking to maximise the publicity in the media for the measures which we are taking to bring home to the general public the urgency and importance of this matter. Anyone who saw the piece in The Times in May, read the feature piece in the Reader's Digest and heard and saw interviews on radio and television about this matter in recent months will appreciate the results that we have secured from issuing Press releases and efforts to get what might be described as free publicity for this important matter.
In addition, we have produced posters and leaflets. Appropriate multi-langauge posters have been distributed to airports and ports. These give graphic warning of the embargo on importing rabies susceptible animals without prior issue of an import licence requiring quarantine, and they carry a message in 13 different languages advising travellers of the importation regulations and the very serious penalties for breaches of them. Such penalties include up to one year's imprisonment or an unlimited fine or both, together with the possible destruc-
626
tion of the animal illegally landed if no safe provisions can be made for it.
In addition to these posters, which are on display at airports, ports, ferries and at appropriate foreign exit points, other posters are on display at Crown post offices, veterinary surgeries and similar places.
I assure hon. Members that we attach great importance to maximising our defences against this threat. We will continue to be vigilant, to do what we can to make the public more aware of the situation, and to tighten up our lines of defence.
We can all recall instances in the past when we suffered such a scourge of animal disease from abroad. They have not been many. But now, in addition to what might be called the conventional disease risks, we have the problems posed by rapid air transport. A disease in the Far East today can be on our doorstep tomorrow. We know, too, that it could be transmitted by any one of innumerable possible carriers, animate and inanimate. This is the remorseless, growing threat to our livestock industry. For a hundred years our animal health legislation has been developed with the rationale that prevention is better than cure. I commend the Bill to the House as a measure worthy of its predecessors.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, without amendment.

INDUSTRIAL AND PROVIDENT SOCIETIES BILL [Lords]
Not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
INDUSTRIAL AND PROVIDENT SOCIETIES BILL [Lords]
  Clause 3

    CONSTRUCTION, CITATION, AMENDMENT, COMMENCEMENT AND EXTENT
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the right hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Sir G. Howe).
    12.1 a.m.
    Mr. Peter Hordem: I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 3, line 9, leave out
    'but does not extend to Northern Ireland'.

    627
    The Minister of State who will be answering this debate is aware that we had a passage at the end of Committee stage when we inquired about Northern Ireland anti why the provisions of the Bill, with which we are quite content, did not apply to Northern Ireland. In the passage to which I refer the then Financial Secretary, now Minister for Transport, said:
    "I am advised that the authorities in Northern Ireland are looking at this matter. It would be premature for me to say whether concrete proposals will be brought forward, and, if so, within what time span. I understand that the situation is being looked at. En the present—what we must hope to be—temporary state of affairs in Northern Ireland legislative functions are being exercised by the House. In the past, legislation of this kind was reseved to Stormont."—[Official Report, Standing Committee B, 10th June, 1975, c. 24.]
    It was our supposition, on reading the Bill, that the reason Northern Ireland had been left out of consideration was that the Northern Ireland authorities would be bringing forward their own proposals so that the agricultural cooperatives which this Bill particularly affects would have the same benefits as those agricultural and other co-operatives here. The purpose of the amendment is to find out from the Government when they propose to include the citizens of Northern Ireland within the ambit of the Bill.
    The Minister of State, Treasury (Mr. Denzil Davies): May I first congratulate the hon. Members for Horsham and Crawley (Mr. Hordern) and his hon. Friends on their ingenuity in getting an amendment on Report stage to a Bill not amended in Committee. This is not always normal procedure.
    The hon. Member has asked me to comment on why the Bill excludes Northern Ireland. There is no sinister reason. This Bill, as the hon. Member knows, seeks to amend the Industrial and Provident Societies Act, 1965 which is the parent Act. That Act does not refer to Northern Ireland and he would therefore agree, I think, that it would not be appropriate in this Bill, which seeks to to extend it to Northern Ireland when amend the Act which relates to Britain, the parent Act does not.
    628
    The position in Northern Ireland is dealt with by their legislation, the Industrial and Provident Societies Act (Northern Ireland) 1969. The proper procedure for amending that Act would be through the constitution and procedures relating to Northern Ireland. At present the way to amend that Act in relation to Northern Ireland would be by Order in Council laid in draft before both Houses.
    I can give an assurance that it is the intention of the Northern Ireland Department, in the near future, to place an order in draft before both Houses, and that order will be subject to Affirmative Resolution in both Houses, so that there will be an opportunity in both Houses to debate the order. It will deal, it is hoped, mainly with the same provisions as this Bill. In other words, it will increase the limits in respect of Northern Ireland, as they are increased by this Bill.
    It is hoped that the order regarding Northern Ireland—there may be some slight variation dealing with specific Northern Ireland matters—will be laid in the near future and will bring the position there into line with the provisions for Britain, if this Bill gets a Third Reading tonight.
    I hope that that satisfies the hon. Member and that he will appreciate that there is no reason other than the constitutional one why it would not be appropriate to deal with the position in this Bill.
    In view of that assurance, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the amendment and that soon there will be an order dealing with Northern Ireland.
    Mr. Hordern: I believe that this is the Minister of State's maiden speech at the Dispatch Box and from the Conservative benches we offer him our warm congratulations. We hope that we shall see him on many occasions. We have no doubt that we shall. In view of his lucid explanation, which we are happy to accept, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Bill read the Third time and passed, without amendment.

    CONSTRUCTION, CITATION, AMENDMENT, COMMENCEMENT AND EXTENT

      DISALLOWANCE OF LOSSES (CAPITAL GAINS TAX AND CORPORATION TAX)
      Resolved,
      That provision may be made for disallowing losses attributable to transactions within paragraph 15(2) of Schedule 7 to the Finance Act 1965.—[Mr. Denzil Davies.]

      TRUSTEE SAVINGS BANKS
      Ordered,
      That, notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the practice of the House relating to the matters which may be included in Finance Bills, any Finance Bill of the present Session may include provision for making 'bank' in the Solicitors Act 1974 include a trustee savings bank.—[Mr. Denzil Davies.]

      ADJOURNMENT
      Motion made and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Miss Boothroyd.]

CHILDREN (STERILISATION)
12.6 a.m.
Mr. Frank Hooley: Problems concerning sexual relations bearing on children and family responsibilities are highly emotive and arouse a good deal of public concern, as witness the recent controversies on such subjects as rape and abortion. It is natural that this should be so, since reproduction is the basic biological phenomenon and affects the survival of the whole species, quite apart from the emotional and social overtones of sexual relations between men and women.
Sterilisation is as sensitive an issue in this area as any other since it arouses arguments about the individual's rights, doctors' rights, patients' rights, responsibilities of society at large and, of course, of this Legislature. The subject becomes peculiarly difficult and poignant when the sterilisation of a young child is under consideration.
So far the law has had nothing to say about sterilisation of children. For abortion, there are legal grounds laid down in the 1967 Act but there is no
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statute law governing sterilisation, although under the Family Law Reform Act 1969 a parent's consent is necessary before any operation of any kind can be carried out on a child under the age of 16. Under the same Act sexual maturity could in some contexts outweigh the need for a parent's consent.
But the law has an indirect effect. Any doctor carrying out a sterilisation operation on a child, even with the parent's consent, could lay himself or herself open to an action for damages if the girl as an adult were subsequently to sue for being deprived of the chance of bearing children. This in itself could not remedy her condition of sterility, which might have damaging emotional or psychological consequences for her personality and inhibit the prospect of a satisfying marriage. There is in a sense a legal remedy if at a subsequent stage she were able to satisfy the court that the original operation had been unjustified or unnecessary.
As the situation stands, the protection of a child held by doctors to be too young to take her own decision lies partly in the hands of the parents—and I will return to that—but more in the medical profession's code of conduct and the individual doctor's reluctance to perform an unnecessary operation. There is apparently no way in which lay professionals, even administrators in the Department of Health and Social Security, can challenge the absolute autonomy of a doctor's clinical decision if the doctor chooses to disregard their views.
As far as I know, the doctor is under no obligation to seek the views of professional workers in other spheres, such as psychologists, especially qualified teachers or other persons who may be concerned with the child's welfare or education. This situation can clearly raise serious moral and legal dilemmas for any doctor faced with the decision whether to operate on the reproductive organs of a child too young or mentally incompetent to decide for herself.
The matter can be even more complicated because in some cases—and I have in mind one which has recently aroused particular public concern—there may even be a serious clash of medical opinion about the need for or the desirability of an operation of this kind. One doctor may claim that there might be a high

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chance of the girl, if she ever became pregnant, producing an abnormal child. Another distinguished surgeon might equally claim that the chances of the girl producing a physically normal baby would be very good so far as it is possible to foresee.
Similarly there could be a clash of medical opinion whether the girl's condition was hereditary and whether sterilisation could be of any real value. In a recent case Professor Walter Bodmer, Professor of Genetics at Oxford University, was quoted as saying:
"Even if Sotos Syndrome were inherited—and that is a matter for doubt—it is a hopeless task to attempt to eliminate such conditions from the population by sterilisation of those who suffer from them. It would have virtually no effect in reducing the frequency of the condition in the population. This is because the number of people who manifest the condition is so small compared with the number of carriers who pass it on to their children but who are perfectly normal themselves."
There is the question whether there is any ethical justification for eugenic sterilisation—namely, what has sometimes been called genetic engineering. Dr. Cederic Carter, Director of the Genetics Unit of the Medical Research Council, is quoted as saying:
"I would say there is no genetic justification for sterilising a girl of this age."
That is the age of 11 years. He continues:
"I cannot think of a case where it would be justified. I would advise anyone to wait until the girl was old enough to give her own consent."
If doctors themselves disagree, what about the rights of parents? That is clearly a matter of the greatest importance. Just as clinical freedom is intended for the benefit of the patient and not the doctor, so parents' rights are unchallenged only up to a certain point. The parent obviously is not allowed to batter or ill-treat a child without exposing himself or herself to legal reprisals. It could be argued that to sterilise a young child, even with parental consent, is an infringement of the fundamental human rights of the child itself which society should not permit under any conditions. Emphatically in my view no child should be sterilised because her offspring might at some future date be an inconvenient burden to society. The criterion must be the well-being of the child.
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I believe that there is one point on which everyone—and I am sure this includes my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Health and Social Security—will agree—namely, that a decision to carry out an operation of this nature on a child raises serious and fundamental questions of human rights and public policy and has fairly wide ramifications. For example, what attitude should we take in regard to a child who may be so mentally subnormal as never to be likely to be in a position to give or withhold consent on the basis of a clear understanding of what was proposed?
Secondly, there is the question of a child who may be in the care of a public authority because the child has lost its parents or because the authority has been given power to take the child from the normal parents by court order. In that case should the public authority have the right to pronounce on a question of sterilisation vis-à-vis the judgment of the doctor or doctors?
Thirdly, there is the jealously guarded principle of the clinical freedom of the individual doctor to decide what he judges to be the best interests of his patient.
Fourthly, if society permits or allows to go by default sterilisation in the case of one form of abnormality, what about other diseases or other forms of abnormality, such an spinabifida, mongolism and so on? Where is the boundary to be drawn and who should be permitted to draw it?
My own inclination—this is a personal opinion—is that the sterilisation of a child under age 16 should be prohibited by law and that it might be convenient that a provision to this effect should be incorporated in the Children Bill which is now before Parliament. That would be a possible way of accomplishing the legal prohibition if the House felt that this was necessary——
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): Order. I would remind the hon. Gentleman that he is not permitted in an Adjournment debate to seek legislation.
Mr. Hooley: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for bringing that fact to my attention. In making my

633
remarks I was in no way calling in question the good faith of doctors who in certain cases may believe that sterilisation is necessary, nor am I in any way questioning their professional integrity. But I base my proposition first on the basic human rights of the individual child and, secondly, on my faith in the advancement of medical and natural science to solve problems of this kind in a scientific way without exposing children to damage or danger which might inadvertently be caused if sterilisation were permitted without any adequate safeguard.
12.13 a.m.
The Minister of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Dr. David Owen): I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Hooley) for raising the wider question of sterilisation of a child under 16. He is naturally concerned about the particular case of the girl of 11 in Sheffield about whom so much concern has been expressed. As he knows, an application has been made for her to become a ward of court and that matter will be considered on 8th July by Mrs. Justice Heilbron. It would not serve the interests of that hearing—although I am in no way trying to say that the matter is sub judice—if I were to go into that case in great detail at this moment. That may be a matter for another time.
It is interesting how the ward of court procedure has been used in this case. Any person, including a body corporate or public corporation, may make an application under the rules of court to make a minor a ward of court. The officers of the court will usually satisfy themselves that such a person has a proper duty to or interest in the minor as to warrant the making of such an application. That application has the effect that the minor becomes a ward of court immediately, but if no further steps are taken in the matter that application and that status of the minor lapse after 21 days. If, however, the appropriate further steps are taken within that period, the minor remains a ward of court until such time as a registrar or judge has had the opportunity to consider the matter in the light of all the available evidence and to make some permanent order in the matter.
634
In certain circumstances the minor is the proper defendant to the application but, being a minor, cannot represent himself and, where there is a parental dispute or there may be no parents, is in any case unlikely to have the means to enable him to do so. In those circumstances the Official Solicitor is invited to act as guardian of the minor for the purposes of the application and the hearing, and if he accepts nobody in those circumstances would suggest that the interests of the minor would not be more than adequately looked after.
The procedure used in this case is a method of trying to ensure that some way can be found for the hearing of possibly an alternative case as representing the best interests of the minor.
I share the great anxiety expressed by my hon. Friend—an anxiety which has been widely expressed—about the sterilisation of children. It raises profound moral and ethical issues to which there are no easy answers.
My hon. Friend said he felt that such a thing should be prohibited by law. It would make it easier if I were able to tell him and the House that there were no grounds for carrying out the procedure on a young child of, say, 15 or younger. But I am advised that I cannot.
There are what I would call "no argument cases" where sterilisation would be necessary. The treatment for a cancerous growth of the pelvis requiring pelvic clearance will inevitably include the sterilisation of the girl. A cancerous growth of the genital organs of a boy will require equally drastic treatment. Though rare, it can affect youngsters of this age group.
There are more controversial situations, such as the pregnant child of normal intelligence. It is a sad reflection on our society that several thousand children under 16 become pregnant every year. There will very occasionally be among them a girl for whom the completion of a pregnancy at any stage of her life would carry grave risks for her health or even the risk of death. For such a girl, termination of pregnancy would be justified in law, and the girl might be advised to be sterilised at the same time.

635
There will also be again very occasionally a girl whose family is subject to a severe genetic condition, and who might not wish to bear a child which could eventually suffer from that condition The arguments for sterilisation in such a case will have to be balanced, but they may be very strong. But it is not possible, I believe, to lay down hard and fast rules. Each case must be looked at on its own facts and the facts considered bearing in mind what is known about the illness at the present time and the state of genetics. What is thought today to be fatal or incurable may not always be so.
There is always the risk that a child who is sterilised when her pregnancy is terminated may come to regret her decision. I am assuming that, where the child is of normal intelligence, a decision of this importance would never be made without her consent after the position had been explained to her in detail. To act otherwise would be hard to defend if the child were 15 or 16, and we are increasingly coming to a situation where a child is often asked about these things and is consulted.
There is another category—the vulnerable girl who has reached puberty. There are also a number of girls who are mentally subnormal and sexually vulnerable. If there are indications of hereditary abnormalities in her family, and if she is unable or unwilling to use an IUD or oral contraceptive, in such a case, it is possible to consider whether sterilisation would be in her best interests because of the problem of obtaining her consent in the full sense of that term. The consideration can become urgent if the girl is already pregnant and termination is contemplated, but I readily accept that these cases are much more arguable.
We ought not to think of this problem wholly in terms of girls. I mentioned the possibility of cancer in boys. The statistical information seems to suggest that there have been some vasectomy operations on boys under 16.
What I think is necessary—and this case in my hon. Friend's constituency has raised it very considerably—is that we should know more facts. The statistics on sterilisation are not comprehensive, but what is available has been collected from
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regional health authorities. We have already been told that in one region the sterilisations carried out on children under 16 were, for 1973, one boy and no girls, and for 1974 three boys and no girls. Another region has reported none in either year of either sex. Figures from only two of the 14 regions cannot be given any statistical significance for the country as a whole, but I shall be looking into this.
We are also examining the Hospital Activity Analysis (In Patients). We are trying to break down from that which cases would come under the classification of sterilisation. However, these figures include those cases in which sterilisation resulted from the operation of hysterectomy which may have been performed at the time of the abortion as a life-saving procedure. It means that the statistical base from which to disseminate this information is not very full.
Having done this, we then have to question some of the issues which my hon. Friend raised. I shall not go into matters involving legislation. Indeed, I should be out of order if I were to do so. But there is a Select Committee of this House which at the moment is reviewing the medical termination of pregnancy. It may be more appropriate to consider this matter when that Committee makes its proposals.
This case has highlighted the fact that there is no obligation for more than one doctor to be involved in the decision, whereas we make it an obligation in a termination of pregnancy that two doctors are involved. In my judgment, it would be most unwise for one doctor to make such a decision.
My hon. Friend referred to the more difficult problem, especially when taking into account social grounds in making a decision, about the consultation of other professional bodies. We have to recognise that, in a much more interdependent decision making process which generally health care has become, there is a need to involve other professions. The final responsibility will always have to rest with the medical profession, but the medical profession is not alone in making that sort of judgment.
I have already indicated to my hon. Friend that there is a lot to be said for adopting the case conference approach in

637
procedures of this kind, bringing in all the relevant professional opinions. At times, they would be educational, psychological and psychiatric specialities. At other times, it would be a geneticist or a specialist in cancer. I am sure that the House would feel that the decision to sterilise a child was of such moment that it should not be made without all the available information from as wide and from as specialised an information base as we could possibly establish.
Although these are rare cases, they raise such profound issues that we ought to ask ourselves whether we should consider a code of practice. It may be that the professions concerned would welcome such a code. It is not an easy situation for a doctor to find himself having to make such a decision, often in a blaze of publicity.
Then we have to ask ourselves whether a code of practice, if adopted, should be reinforced by law and whether there are legislative safeguards that we should invoke. In effect, we are seeing in this case the invocation of an existing legislative procedure. It is the ward of court procedure. But is there some ground for having further legal safeguards?
However, I must tell my hon. Friend that I think that it would be very difficult to lay down any strict criteria which would have a universal application. Each case will be different. Each case will involve different considerations. But what has come out of this one case has made me convinced that we should now look at this issue. I undertake to my hon. Friend to look at this, taking account of all the professional opinion available to me, and to inform him and the House of the conclusions that we reach. It may take a few months to do. We shall not have the statistical information for some time, and I should welcome the views of my hon. Friend and of the professional bodies on the subject.
638
There is a need for further thought about this issue. As I say, the one thing that I cannot promise now—and I hope that I have convinced my hon. Friend that it would be wrong to do so—is to prohibit sterilisation by law. Regrettably, there will be circumstances when the sterilisation of a child under the age of 16 will be necessary. What we have a duty to do is to ensure that those decisions, when they are made, are made in a manner which will be acceptable to public opinion as a whole.
That is not to say we should challenge the right of doctors to make their own clinical judgment, but we should ask them to see that their clinical judgment is part of an overall professional judgment and to weigh the opinions of others when they form their view in many of these cases.
I have not mentioned the views of the parents. That is a sine qua non. It would be impossible to conduct such an operation without the agreement of the parents, other than in the most exceptional circumstances. In the whole question of legislation and attitudes towards children, we know that we cannot always assume that the views of the parents are necessarily in the best interests of the child. They are in the vast majority of cases, but there are times when the public duty and our social duty is to ensure that the interests of the child are given a fair hearing—and that may not always come only by listening to the views of the professions or the parents.
In that spirit, I should like to assure my hon. Friend that I am taking this issue very seriously and looking at it deeply. I hope to reach some conclusions in the next few months.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes to One o'clock.

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  Estate Duty (Works of Art)
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  Benefits (Taxation)
  Benefits (Taxation)
WALES
  M4 (Notices)
  M4 (Notices)
  National Eisteddfod (Pavilion)
  National Eisteddfod (Pavilion)
  Offshore Oil
  Offshore Oil
  Land Use
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  Traffic Signs
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  Welsh Language
  Welsh Language

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Oxford.
His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales—Singly took the Oath.

ABORTIONS AND CONSULTANTS' APPOINTMENTS
Baroness MASHAM of ILTON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the memorandum concerning the appointment of consultants recently sent to regional medical officers is intended to discriminate against those who have objections to the termination of pregnancy on grounds of religious belief or conviction of conscience.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: No, my Lords. The intention of the Chief Medical Officer's letter, the terms of which were agreed with the profession, was to distinguish those few situations where the services for the termination of pregnancy, within the terms of current legislation, could not be provided unless when appointing a new consultant to a particular post it was filled by a consultant prepared to take part in the service. The procedure is also designed to help those who have objections to the termination of pregnancy on grounds of religious belief or conviction of conscience in that when they apply for posts in other situations there will now be no need to question them about their willingness to take part in terminations of pregnancy.
Baroness MASHAM of ILTON: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that reply, may I ask him whether in the future there will be a place in the National Health Service for practising Roman Catholic doctors who want to
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practise obstetrics, gynaecology and anaesthetics?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, there is at the present moment a place for them; there has been for years. This is merely concerned with the termination of pregnancy. Apart from that, there will always be a place for such doctors with such skills.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that the very issue of termination of pregnancy, which he described as a "few situations", raises very delicate issues of freedom of conscience? Would he not agree that one of the tests of a free society is absolute freedom of conscience and respect for religious belief?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, that is precisely why the Chief Medical Officer of Health has issued a memorandum, pointing out that when recruiting people for such positions a job specification must be set out so that they can see what the job involves.
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: My Lords, will my noble friend inquire into the efficiency of the public relations services of the Department of Health and Social Security? Is he aware that this circular was issued on 19th February last, and it appears that not until 4th June had the Evening News discovered its existence and it then came out with a completely misleading headline? Is he also aware that as recently as 7th June a Mr. Roche of the Guild of Catholic doctors wrote a letter to The Times, again under a misunderstanding? Will my noble friend kindly publish the terms of the circular of 19th February in the Official Report, so that we can all see exactly what it says?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, speaking from memory, I believe that the memorandum has been in the Library of your Lordships' House for some time.
Lord ABERDARE: My Lords, are these matters which raise difficult questions of conscience not better left to the discretion of the local appointing committee, rather than to any central directive from the Department of Health?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I think that there is a responsibility on

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the Department of Health to give guidance to the various bodies who are going to appoint any consultants, especially when a certain appointment may involve them in some question of conscience. This is all the memorandum has done. It was agreed that it should be issued and the content was agreed by the profession itself.
Lord PANNELL: My Lords, is it not a fact that during the passing of the 1967 Act the other place went to great pains to write in conscience clauses on this matter, and that the profession has very well known the position ever since then? It did not lack advocates in the other House. Might I just underline that idea, bearing in mind that so many abortions have to take place?
Several Noble Lords: Order, Order!
Lord PANNELL: I know my noble friends' interest in this subject, but is it not a fact that while minorities have rights the majority must govern?
The Lord Bishop of LEICESTER: My Lords, while the Minister takes time to meditate on that last contribution may I ask a rather simple question? Is the effective meaning of the new directive that no gynaecologist who cannot perform abortions will ever be able to obtain a senior position in any gynaecological unit?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the effective purpose of the memorandum is to ensure that consultants know what a job involves. They can then decide whether or not they are going to apply. The second point I want to make is that if they applied it would be assumed that they had no objection to undertaking those tasks. Therefore, they are not likely to be asked what their religious views are.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, the noble Lord will be aware that this subject has given rise to concern among many people of widely differing views. He described the cases as "few ". Could he be a little more explicit? In how many cases, proportionately, does he consider that a person with religious or conscientious views opposed to conducting these operations will be excluded by their consciences from applying for the posts?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I do not want to correct the noble and learned Lord, but I do not think I made any statement about there being a "few ". I think that that was said by the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: No, my Lords, I think it was in the Answer.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I beg your Lordships' pardon. I do not want to have to say again that the noble and learned Lord is always right. My understanding is that since the letter was sent out on 19th February the Department has been informed that there were four such instances. This would be a small proportion of the estimated 30 to 35 appointments which are normally made in anaesthetics, obstetrics and gynaecology in a four-months period.
Lord SEGAL: My Lords, why was this memorandum sent specifically to regional medical officers and what role are they intended to play in its implementation?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I imagine for the reason that the Regional Health Authorities will have to authorise the making of such appointments, and use their position to ensure that those who will be involved in them see that a job specification is sent out with the form of application.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, is the Minister aware that, with the best will in the world, he has not been able to clarify the position completely this afternoon? Will he be available to see a number of noble Lords and noble Baronesses who would like to discuss these matters with him in order to obtain greater clarification?
Lords WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I am always at the service of your Lordships' House.
Lord SEGAL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord to be more specific? Was it intended that regional medical officers should be instructed to call on certain doctors to discuss with them the whole position?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I do not know the exact procedure and,

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therefore, it would be unwise for me to make any comment.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree—
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, this is a matter which deeply concerns the House. But I would remind your Lordships that we have already spent more than eight minutes on this Question, and we have 38 speakers in your Lordships' House this afternoon and two more Questions to come.

ANNUAL PAY NEGOTIATIONS
2.45 p.m.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: 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 agreement exists between the Government, CBI and TUC on what constitutes the end of the annual cycle of pay negotiations.
The MINISTER of STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (Lord Hughes): My Lords, the annual pay round is traditionally regarded as ending in the summer, but it has never been necessary to agree a precise date.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: My Lords, is it not now important to establish publicly when the new annual round of pay negotiations begins so that a reduced percentage increase can be the aim of settlements without any group thinking it has been left behind? Should this not be related to the expected new Government economic measures, and can the noble Lord tell us when in the next five weeks these measures are to be announced?
Lord HUGHES: My Lords, pay negotiations of course take place through-
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out the year, but there is a short period during the summer and following the union conferences when few major negotiations take place, and this is usually regarded as the watershed between pay rounds. That is approximately the month of July. As for the second part of the noble Lord's supplementary question, I do not think I can add anything to what has been stated by my right honourable friends during the last two days.
Lord BLYTON: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that there must be continuous applications for wage increases if the CBI refuses to agree to the statutory control of prices? How can we expect workers to accept wage restraint if there is no statutory control of prices?
Lord HUGHES: My Lords, meetings have been taking place between the TUC and the CBI. They met last Tuesday, and I understand that they met again yesterday to discuss these problems. The Government welcome any such exchange of views which complement their own discussions with both of these bodies, and we await the outcome of their discussions with interest.
Lord LLOYD of KILGERRAN: My Lords, would it not be helpful if the negotiations of the kind envisaged in this Question included not only the parties mentioned in the Question but the leaders of the Liberal and Conservative Parties?
Lord HUGHES: My Lords, that is altogether a different question, and it is not for me to pronounce judgment on such a wide-ranging, matter.
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, is the Minister aware that that supplementary question from the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, comes ill from the Liberal Party, when yesterday in another place they tried to reintroduce a statutory incomes policy?
Lord HUGHES: My Lords, it is not for me to question the motives of the Liberal Party.

DIVIDENDS: MAXIMUM PERMISSIBLE LIMIT
2.49 p.m.
Lord BALFOUR of INCHRYE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will consider raising the present maximum permissible limit of dividend distribution in the interests of unit trust investors and stockholders, many of whom are small investors dependent on pension funds or investment income for their livelihood and bearing in mind that most other sections of the community, including industrial workers and Government administrators, have had, or are in process of obtaining, substantial increased payments to meet rising inflation costs.
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, when the Government took Office the permissible annual increase in dividends was 5 per cent. Last July my right honourable friend raised it to 12½ per cent. and promised a comprehensive review this year. In connection with that review a factual report from the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Incomes and Wealth is expected next month. My right honourable friend will certainly take into account the issues raised by the noble Lord as well as other issues.
Lord BALFOUR of INCHRYE: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that answer.

VOLUNTARY SERVICE IN THE COMMUNITY
2.49 p.m.
Lord WINDLESHAM Lord WINDLESHAM rose to call attention to the continuing need for voluntary service in the community and to the valuable contribution made by voluntary agencies in supplementing the statutory services; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Motion which we are to debate today has been on the Order Paper for over two months. Since I put it down, we have had the referendum on the European Community and we have seen the storm
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clouds of the economic crisis closing in at a frightening rate. I must confess that there have been moments in the past two months when I wondered whether, at a time like this, a debate on voluntary service in the community can be justified in terms of topicality and relevance. But I believe that it would be a mistake to pass up the opportunity which these debates in your Lordships' House offer every Wednesday to call attention to a wide range of matters which are of continuing and underlying importance.
After all, we might remind ourselves that politics is not made up just of the high points, of the excitements, of the great events and of the reaction of Government and Parliament to them. Beneath the surface life goes on all the time; often hum-drum and relatively unspectacular, yet influenced in so many ways by a multiplicity of different public policies and actions. Moreover, some of these policies and actions are far more susceptible to our own control and our own decisions than are the dominant issues of the day which command an almost obsessive interest and attention.
Debates of this kind also enable Peers who have a special knowledge and expertise to contribute to the public discussion, not so much from the standpoint of their political opinions or their Party allegiance, but on the basis of their own firsthand knowledge and commitment. Today the whole House particularly values the fact that the Prince of Wales is to take part, and we look forward to his speech with the keenest anticipation.
My Lords, we are also fortunate that two other Members of your Lordships' House, who are particularly well qualified to speak on this subject, have chosen today for the occasion of their maiden speeches. The noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, who has served with distinction in so many public capacities, is currently chairman of a committee reviewing the role and function of voluntary organisations, while my noble friend Lady Pike, for many years well known as an active and successful Member of another place, now presides over all the activities of the Women's Royal Voluntary Service. In this office she is the heir to the late Lady Reading, who was regarded with much affection and much esteem in this House, and we shall listen with close attention to what my noble

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friend and the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, have to say.
It is over three years since we last debated voluntary social service and the conditions necessary for its success. At that time, in February 1972, I was the member of the Government given the responsibility by the then Prime Minister, Mr. Heath, of co-ordinating the interests of various Departments of Government and the voluntary movement. In that task I received great help and support from my noble friend Lord Jellicoe. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, who is to speak for the present Administration in our debate today, has inherited the responsibility that I had in the previous Administration, and I shall therefore want to put some questions to him as the spokesman for the Government. The Motion for debate refers to the
"… need for voluntary service in the community."
The wording is deliberately general, as I hope that we can cover both the contribution that can be made by the individual volunteer—very often working within the framework of the statutory social services—as well as the work of voluntary organisations. There is a very large number of voluntary organisations—some registered charities, others not. They vary enormously in size and in structure, as well as in their aims and in the ways in which they seek to realise their aims. But, my Lords, virtually every voluntary organisation shares at present one thing in common—the threat of actual or pending financial crisis.
From inquiries I have made in preparing for today's debate—and I wish to acknowledge the assistance I have had in this connection from the National Council of Social Service—the general picture that has emerged is of overheads increasing at an alarming rate. The costs of heat, light, postage, telephone, as well as general administrative expenses, which are all unavoidable necessities in running any organisation, large or small, have escalated. In addition, staffs, who are very often paid at rates well below what their skills would command in the market, have had to receive some increases in salary in order to help them counter the sharp increase in the cost of living.
Simultaneously, income has been standing still or has been decreasing. In many
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cases income from donations, from covenants, and from commerce and industry, has declined, while grants from central and local government have not been able to compensate for this decline. Foundations and the major grant-making trusts have seen the value of their investments fall, sometimes dramatically. Consequently they have had to cut back on the very valuable grants they make to voluntary organisations. What, my Lords, are the consequences of this economic adversity, if we accept it as such, and I think there will not be many noble Lords who are to speak in the debate today who do not share this feeling of financial crisis?
First, the extent of certain services is being reduced. At a time when there is mounting public concern about battered babies, for example, it is little short of tragic that the NSPCC should have had to reduce its number of inspectors by 20 in the current year, while a further 20 will have gone by the middle of next year. The Spastics Society, known to many of your Lordships as one of the largest voluntary organisations in Britain, has, it is reported, been running into losses, possibly amounting to £500,000 this year, with the result that fewer children will be able to go to spastic day centres and residential homes. The Helping Hand organisation, which provides hostels for drug addicts and alcoholics has, I understand, had to lay off approximately 50 per cent. of its staff, while over the voluntary movement as a whole many staff vacancies are being left unfilled, and new developments—the life blood of dynamic organisations—are being curtailed.
Voluntary organisations which are concerned with the unpopular cases, such as the welfare of ex-offenders, and those doing novel and sometimes unconventional forms of work, are especially vulnerable. I shall not continue with this catalogue. I wanted to give some specific examples, not merely to generalise, and I have chosen a few from those which are familiar to me personally. But no doubt other noble Lords who are to speak in the debate will be able to comment on the basis of their own knowledge of the various organisations with which they may have a particular connection.
What can be done, my Lords? If we know and value the voluntary movement,

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if we regard it, as I do, not merely as a desirable adjunct to the statutory social services, but as an integral part of the way in which social needs in this country are most effectively perceived and met, what can be done to help voluntary organisations to keep afloat in the face of the apparently irreversible tide of inflation? I say at once—and no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, and his colleagues in the Government will be relieved to hear this—that I do not believe that the answer lies in a substantial increase in Government grants. I do not want to see any reduction in Government support for the voluntary movement which, in general, is still on a modest scale; still less in the activities of the Voluntary Services Unit, in which I have a certain paternal interest. But to suggest additional public expenditure at a time like this would be plainly unrealistic. I would, however, urge the Government to avoid taking any steps which would have the effect, even unintentionally, of weakening the voluntary movement still further.
This is not the occasion to debate the pros and cons of the Community Land Bill. It is a measure now before another place which is controversial between the Parties, and the occasion to debate it will arise in this House in due course. But a consequence of that Bill, as it is drafted at present, would be to penalise those charities which own land or buildings. It is often only by selling land which is adjacent to buildings, thus realising the development value, that organisations can afford to modernise their premises; or perhaps by selling an old and unsuitable headquarters building in London and using the proceeds to pay for a new purpose-built headquarters outside London. I have a long list of actual examples which I shall not inflict on the House now, but I ask the Minister to get together with his colleagues in the Department of the Environment, and to do so as a matter of urgency, in order to review the representations for exemption that have already been made by the Churches and by the voluntary organisations at official level.
Before I continue with this line of argument—and I wish to develop it for a few moments longer—I should stress that arguing for special treatment of charities in no way sets a precedent. Indeed, the exact opposite is the case. For
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more than a century it has been a well-established principle that charities, acting as they do for the public benefit, should be relieved of taxation on their capital and on their income. Thus charities are exempt today, as they have been for many years, from paying income tax, corporation tax, capital gains tax and capital transfer tax.
But as taxation becomes more and more complicated, the traditional position of the charities becomes harder and harder to protect. The second way in which the Government could help the voluntary organisations would be by making a positive and determined effort to try to resolve the argument which has been going on for two years or more now about the position of charities in relation to value added tax. I accept that both Parties have a responsibility here. The representations were initially made when my right honourable friends in another place and my noble friends in this House were in Government before February 1974; but let it now be for the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and his colleagues to come forward and take the credit for breaking this deadlock in a way that would benefit at any rate the majority of those voluntary organisations which are registered charities.
I know that there are difficulties in the field of definition and difficulties of classification and administration, but I do not believe, having looked into this argument over the last few weeks, that there are any real difficulties of principle. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, who has a particular responsibility for co-ordinating the Government's interests across the board will, I hope, in the light of this debate look again at this issue and meet with the Customs and Excise and officials of the Treasury and see whether a measure of much needed relief can be granted from VAT.
My Lords, I sense that it is the wish of the House that the opening speakers in this debate should be brief. The subject is a wide one—deliberately wide, as I have indicated—but I think that we shall complement each other's contributions instead of repeating them if we limit ourselves to picking out a few particular aspects rather than trying to cover the whole field. But I do not want to end what I have to say without referring to the opportunities for service

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by individual volunteers. What I have said so far has referred more to the voluntary organisations. There are many practical difficulties about integrating individual voluntary workers into existing services which are staffed mainly by professionals.
Volunteers are often regarded as unreliable, as inadequately skilled, as a cheap form of labour and sometimes, I am afraid, even as an unwanted nuisance by hard-pressed professionals. Yet with tenacity, backed by a reliable organisation, the reservoir of potential voluntary helpers that still exists in spite of everything can be tapped. The employment of volunteers in the hospital service—a development greatly encouraged by the King's Fund in its early stages—is a shining example of what can be done. The noble Lord, Lord Hayter, who is chairman of the King's Fund and who has been associated with it for many years, is to speak later and this is a theme that he will be able to develop further.
The Volunteer Centre, which was set up with Government support in 1973, is now developing into a useful agency to encourage wider opportunities for individual volunteers and also for voluntary agencies and community groups. Only this week, on Monday, the Centre has published an interesting report, and a timely one, entitled Bargain or Barricade? which is a review of the employment of voluntary workers or voluntary agencies by the social services departments of local authorities. This report will be a valuable guide for people working in the field and it contains practical examples of the good and bad use of volunteers. But the conclusion is that, overall, the social services departments, still partly recovering from the consequences of local government reorganisation, are not doing enough to involve the community in their activities.
My Lords, here once again at local level is one other area in which there is room for action, and action now. There is no possible reason other than lethargy for not acting in these fields, and acting now, in a way to encourage wider voluntary service in the community. This is nothing to do with inflation. In the local authority field it is much more a matter of altering the attitudes of paid workers
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and of those who have a responsibility to provide a service to the public. The name of the late Richard Crossman has been much in the news recently; and I was reading what I think must have been his last public lecture delivered at Oxford in March 1973. He said that towards the end of his life he had come to realise the vast significance of the voluntary movement; and he concluded by saying:
"… our community will only recover from its present social sickness by giving the suppressed altruism of millions the means of continuous expression in community service."
My Lords, I find that a profound statement and a true one. It is not profitable to spend too much time analysing the motives or the backgrounds of volunteers. Why some people come forward while others do not is seldom easy to comprehend, and never wise to judge. Since all human beings are creatures of mixed motives, that is hardly surprising. But at a time when idealism has fallen out of fashion, when as a nation we seem to have become more proficient at knocking down than setting up, it is worth reminding ourselves that fundamentally it is still idealism, each man's answer to his own highest conceptions, that moves people, as it always has, to give service to their fellow men. That I believe is the theme that should be behind our debate today. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

EEC COUNCIL OF MINISTERS
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, it may be a convenient moment for me to say that a Statement is being made in another place today about the business to be taken in the EEC Council of Ministers during July. With the leave of the House, I will, as usual, arrange for the Statement to be made available in the Official Report.
Following is the Statement referred to:
" With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a Statement about business to be taken in the Council of Ministers of the European Community during July. The monthly forecast for July was deposited yesterday.
"The Heads of Government of the Member States will meet in Brussels on 16th to 17th July. The agenda for this meeting has not been confirmed, but it is likely that there will be discussion on commodity matters in the context of relations with developing countries, and on the prospects for dialogue between oil

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producers and consumers. We expect the Heads of Government to discuss stage III of the conference on security and co-operation in Europe and to exchange views on the general economic situation.
" At present 3 meetings of the Council of Ministers are proposed for July. Finance Ministers will meet on 10th; Foreign Ministers on 15th and 16th and Agriculture Ministers on 21st and 22nd July.
" Finance Ministers are expected to carry out the second formal examination of the economic situation in the Community provided for in the convergence decision of 18th February 1974. They will also consider the Community exchange regime and work in preparation for the IMF meetings.
" At the Foreign Affairs Council Ministers will make final preparations for the European Council in Brussels on 16th to 17th July. They are also expected to continue their discussion of raw materials problems in the light of preparations for the seventh special session of the UN General Assembly. Ministers will have before them a report on relations with Portugal and possibly the final text for formal approval of the agreement with Mexico. Agriculture Ministers are expected to consider proposals amending the basic wine regulations and the part of the basic sugar regulations dealing with imports from ACP countries, and for the rationalisation of horticultural production under glass."

VOLUNTARY SERVICE IN THE COMMUNITY
3.10 p.m.
Lord BEAUMONT of WHITLEY: My Lords, this is a crucial moment for the whole of what I may call the welfare world. This debate is about voluntary bodies, but as we have heard from Lord Windlesham's speech, I do not think we can entirely separate the voluntary sector from the statutory sector. We must be talking in terms of what they can do together. In fact over-compartmentalisation, as shown in the recent report of which the noble Lord made mention, is one of the real drawbacks to the work in this field. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, did not succumb to any temptation to remove this debate from the Order Paper, because in the last resort the problems which are now falling very heavily on the voluntary movement are to a very large extent the result of inflation; and as one of the Houses of Legislature of this Realm we have a responsibility for this in varying degrees, each and every one, and therefore we have a responsibility to cope with
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the results and the hardship which may ensue.
The noble Lord, Lord Trend, in a very interesting review of Lord Windlesham's recent book Politics in Practice, said last week in The Times Literary Supplement:
" It is not easy to organise compassion ".
It seems to me that this is what this debate is about. It is particularly less easy to organise compassion in a moment when a very great many people are frightened, and a great many people are on the retreat. That is why, as is evident from the list of speakers, we are all extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for opening this debate, particularly from his long and specialist experience in this field.
It is not inapposite that I should be one of two old Gordonstoun boys to take part in this debate—in fact I am only sorry that my noble kinsman, Lord Gainford, who has in the past had a certain amount to say on this subject, is not speaking today to make it three. Not least of the influences of Kurt Hahns on British education was a renewed emphasis on service as part of education, not just service in the rather more old-fashioned sense of training people for service, but of trying to see education and a school as part of the community and working within that community—an ideal which, unfortunately, for various local reasons, was realised better at Salem than it was at Gordonstoun, but reasons which are pertinent to this debate on which I should like to touch briefly later.
We are going through a period of appalling financial stringency. We know that there will be less money available in grants from central Government and from local government. We know that there will be less funds coming from private sources for charities than there are already. There is probably no one in your Lordships' House who has not had to cut down on what they give to charity over the past year. There will be less work by volunteers, not because they are lacking in good will, but because the incidental expenses which previously were often absorbed, such as postage and travel, now become matters to be seriously considered. Already people are having to count the pennies. This is a moment when one can only hope that the priorities are right, because in the cutbacks which

1399
undoubtedly are going to happen it is too easy to cut the wrong things or cut indiscriminately, not leaving the growth points for later.
What then are the matters which the Treasury, the Government Departments, the Social Service Departments and individual charities must have before them in this difficult time? The most important thing, which the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has already mentioned, is a real sense of partnership between the public and private world, between the statutory and the voluntary. On the statutory side it is widely accepted by the overwhelming majority of citizens that people should not have to depend for the basis of life, their education and health, and ordinary living standards, on their ability, on the one hand, to grab for themselves, or, on the other hand, on what is doled out to them in private charity. Over a period of time over the whole of Western Europe people have voted overwhelmingly for a Welfare State whose business it is to look after the basic needs of the citizen—and indeed any Government would have failed if they were unable to do that. But it is equally accepted that the State cannot and should not do all. The State and local government, even at their best, can be clumsy, insensitive and wasteful. On the other hand, the work of individuals also has drawbacks. It may be equally inefficient. It may be too often dominated by the use of charity as "do gooding "for the idea of the deserving poor.
I was brought up in an atmosphere in which it was taken for granted that one had a real duty for giving service and charity towards those less fortunate than oneself. It was not until I became much older that I realised how that tradition, even if it was operated sensitively, could cause immense resentment on the part of those who had to depend on such a charitable donation. In this House we have noble Lords who have seen each side of the coin, those who have worked hard and given generously to charity out of their wealth; but, also, there are those who have lived among the poor at difficult times and know how demoralising it can be to be dependent on private charity. More and more Members of this House see both sides of the coin and realise that the two have to be held in
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tension. The growth of voluntary bodies or societies is the key way of bridging this, particularly if the voluntary societies can be deeply rooted, possibly through their branches, in the communities in which they work, and less and less dominated by the big national committees sitting in London. Unfortunately, there is still a certain amount of disturbance in the partnership between the statutory and the voluntary stemming from ideological grounds. There are local authorities who do not help the volunteer at all, feeling that they should do everything themselves; Gateshead, Barnsley, Rotherham, Nelson and Featherstone. On the other side, there are those who refuse to finance or assist any services which volunteers are giving, feeling that volunteers must do it all where they will, such as North Yorkshire, the Wyre district, and others. I think it is most unfortunate that there are still parts of Britain where this partnership is bedevilled by the ideological stance.
If we have this co-operation, what are the priorities for immediate action? First, there must be more sense in funding and greater continuity. Even in a period of real restraint, there should be roll forward grants so that people can count ahead in respect of what they are to get. I believe they should be indexed, as indeed a great many things should be indexed. We should not necessarily give more in real money. It is possible in a moment of real financial stringency that we should have to index and roll forward on a decreasing basis, maybe 5 per cent. per year. One of the points which I am hoping to establish is that there is considerable waste and overlap, and considerable slack which can be taken up if we have the will. There must be some continuity and a looking forward.
Secondly, let us have selectivity in cuts. There is a dreadful doctrine, particularly rampant in the Treasury, that everyone must be seen to pull in his belt equally. This is absolute nonsense. There are bodies which, if you cut them at all, you destroy; there are bodies which have slack and which can quite easily be cut a certain amount. There must be a scale of priorities. There are two kinds of body which I would put high on the list of priorities. First, there are the unpopular charities. We all know that there is a scale of charitable sex appeal and that

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very low on it are the rehabilitation of prisoners, of alcoholics and of drug addicts, homosexual counselling and other such matters. Later in the debate, my noble friend Lord Kimberley will be touching on one or two of these matters, which could, quite literally, immediately go to the wall in a period of stringency, and they must be protected.
The second priority is those bodies in which a little money goes a very long way. We must look to see where £1 buys only £1 worth of goods, and where it buys £10 or £15 worth of goods. There are some situations where a little priming goes a long way, and they should have priority. There must also be real economy and a doing away with waste and duplication. The noble Lord, Lord Bowden, spoke recently—I think in your Lordships' House—about the firm discipline that there is on scientific research if one knows there is only a certain amount of money. There are undoubtedly welfare bodies, both statutory and voluntary, which have more money than is really good for them. My heart did not exactly bleed when reading in the Sunday Times last Sunday a statement by an officer of the Citizens' Advice Bureaux in the Midlands that, "We are having to be very stringent in everything we do. At Birmingham they are down to the level of writing on both sides of the paper ". Big deal, my Lords.
One way of saving is by greater co-operation between the voluntary and the statutory sides. For instance, there are plenty of places in the country where school buses do nothing except the morning and evening runs, and they could be employed much more imaginatively for all kinds of welfare work. The working together of the two sides can make for really constructive ventures. I would point here to the recent co-operation between the Committee for the Advancement of State Education in Haringey and Haringey Council, with their production of an A to Z of everything to do with education and educational rights and duties, which they have distributed to every household in the borough with a child at school. Then there are those schemes which combine cost-effectiveness with greater humanity, such as moving people out of institutions into community care; ideas which have had wide currency over a period of time
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and which have recently been stated with admirable clarity by Nicholas Stacey, the Director of Social Services in Kent. These are some of the immediate ways in which co-operation can work and which can save money and resources.
Before I sit down, there are one or two points which I should like to make about the way forward. Although we have an immediate crisis which must be ever present in the mind of every Member of your Lordships' House, none the less we must look ahead to a new deal for voluntary services. First, there is the real importance of establishing welfare work within the community, to be operated as far as possible by members of the community and not imposed by a rather anonymous local body, or by a big committee working in London. This is what I meant by comparing the work which Kurt Hahn did at Salem and at Gordonstoun, because the house and the village at Salem were already there and he went into a situation where Prince Max of Baden was already the landlord and the whole thing was part of the community. It worked much better than it did by importing a public school into a fairly remote Scottish village. The idea was right in both cases, but you cannot impose outside bodies on a community. It takes years to work and it is much better to encourage the community itself to grow its own welfare points.
Secondly, there is the possiblity of using the talents and enthusiasm of youth even more than we do now. I do not by any means rule out the possibility—and I emphasise that I do not speak as a Party man and this is not necessarily Party policy—that in the future we may think it right that all people should be asked to do national service for the welfare of the country over a period of time. I know that there are tremendous difficulties about this, and I do not think that the immediate result would be worth while. But what would be worth while afterwards is the fact that you would have a whole world of adults all of whom had spent some of their time helping others in the welfare world.
That leads into my third and penultimate point; that is, the training and use of more para-professional people. We already have very good established examples of this in ambulance men and in aids in schools. But there is always

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a slightly reactionary attitude by professionals to the use of these people—a perfectly understandable caution that professional standards may be lowered. I am sure that this is the way forward, but we need many more people helping in their different spheres and having different training.
Fourthly and lastly, we must not fall into the temptation of thinking that compassion is something which necessarily and naturally occurs to everybody in equal proportions. As the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has said, we are all different and it is difficult to judge why some people help and some do not. But teachers, psychologists and people who study the social services know that there are ways of educating and training people in empathy, that priceless gift which is still not very common of being able to think yourself into the position of other people, to realise not only the obvious hardships and difficulties but the less obvious ones as well. If we are to have a humane society this is something on which we must concentrate in the education of the generations to come. It is not easy to organise compassion, and unorganised compassion can often be almost worse than useless. In this difficult period of time, and in the better future which we hope will come, we must all determine to organise compassion with the greatest possible diligence and care.
3.29 p.m.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, the House is both honoured and delighted that the noble Prince, the Prince of Wales is to take part in this debate and we look forward to hearing him this afternoon. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Windlesham for introducing this debate. The subject is important, and the problems of voluntary organisations are urgent. My noble friend speaks with knowledge and experience as the founder of the Voluntary Services Unit, which is now in the Home Office, but which when he was a Minister was in the Civil Service Department. It is an organisation which has done much good.
There are surely two paradoxes about the role of statutory services and voluntary organisations. The first is that the richer the country the greater the demand for the highest quality of educational and
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social services of all kinds, and, on the whole, the better those services are. The second is that the better and the greater the extent of the statutory services, the greater is the need for voluntary organisations. Many people have believed that at some undefined point in time voluntary organisations and volunteers—not the same as the organisations but equally important—will wither away. Not only is this not the case, but it ought not to be the case. Over 70 per cent. of the voluntary organisations have been founded since 1940.
The value of our debate today is that it draws attention to the need for voluntary organisations and their plight. It gives us an opportunity to debate their role in society and what their future functions should be. It is impossible to talk about such organisations without being immediately aware of their number and variety. The most casual glance at the Charities Digest shows this. The reason must be their manifold functions covering, as they do, nearly all aspects of life: social services, education, religion, sport, drama, the environment—the list is endless.
I shall talk mostly about those voluntary organisations which are social services, but in so doing I should not want it to be thought that I am unaware or unappreciative of the work of the thousands of other voluntary organisations. I think particularly of those concerned with the environment, ranging from the great national societies such as the National Trust and the Council for the Protection of Rural England, to the 2,000 or more local amenity and conservation societies which have sprung up all over the country to meet particular needs. All of us who value the beauty of our countryside and the splendour of our architectural heritage should be grateful for their work.
In the past voluntary organisations were wholly responsible for most social services and, indeed, some still are. Most, however, have had their original functions taken over by the statutory services, and the fact is that the higher the standard of service offered by the statutory services, the more is a gap in those services felt. No longer is society prepared to say of welfare that food and shelter are enough. Democracy demands that each individual has the opportunity

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to fulfil himself and that he should not be disadvantaged because of handicaps which are no fault of his own. Voluntary organisations, therefore, offer specialist services and are repositories of specialist knowledge. Unlike the statutory services, which must work within a legal framework, voluntary organisations can pioneer, experiment and take risks. They can carry out research and at the same time offer services outside the statutory services. One example is Dr. Barnardo's who help with children formerly in their care over the age of 18.
Many voluntary organisations work in areas in which the State and local government do little or nothing. I can think of work done for the single homeless, alcoholics, discharged prisoners and drug addicts—all of whom, if not the undeserving poor, are certainly the unpopular poor. Furthermore, some voluntary organisations challenge authority and act as pressure groups. They thus provide a service and at the same time criticise the other services which are provided. They must be immediately responsive to the needs of those whom they seek to help. If, for example, a tenants' association does not help the tenants, then without doubt it will disappear. There is, thus, accountability downwards to the community: a democratic ideal.
Voluntary organisations, thus, speak for minority groups. They supplement statutory services; they offer an element of choice; and, together with the statutory services, each acts as a spur to the other in the provision of better services. To make the case for strengthening our voluntary organisations is to seek support for a vital partner of the statutory services, and not a rival. In much of their work the standards of the statutory services are so high that we are unrealistically critical when we hear of a terrible failure. We need both the statutory services and the voluntary ones, and we need the impatience and daring of the voluntary organisations to complement and goad the statutory services.
I speak for a Party which believes not only in the importance of the individual but in the importance of the variety of organisations and institutions within society. Voluntary organisations are united only in offering services for a diver-
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sity of human needs. Working with them and with the statutory services, are volunteers. Voluntary work, for the reasons I have given, is important in itself; but it is also important for what it gives to the individuals who take part in it. Volunteers have often been castigated as "patronising do-gooders ". I prefer to adapt the words of, I believe, Professor Titmuss, who defined voluntary work as, "the gift relationship". There are, in fact, many people who want to give of their time, their thought and, indeed, to give themselves, to others. In so doing, at their best, they seek to fulfil the Commandment: "Love thy neighbour" and to do so without counting the cost. It is surely desirable today to encourage this spirit of altruism, this desire to do something for humanity without the expectation of reward. And often it is only the volunteer who can redress a grievance of an individual or family, because he or she can challenge authority at all levels. Certainly the great interest and enthusiasm of the young in voluntary work is one of the most encouraging signs of our times.
In their work, volunteers also educate public opinion because they believe passionately in what they are doing. "Do as I do" is always so much better than "do as I say ". To illustrate this point, when I was on a local planning committee, there were a number of occasions when an organisation put in an application for the change of use for a house, from a residence to a hostel, for example, for alcoholics. Immediately all the neighbours would object, along the lines of: "Of course, we think this is a very good idea, but this is the wrong place for such a hostel ". The fears of the public are far more likely to be allayed by the members of a voluntary organisation explaining the need, than by attempts of town hall officials or local councillors to do so.
Above all, voluntary organisations stand, as it were, on one side of the "Great Divide "—as individuals, against the collectivism of the State. As the State and local government grow steadily more powerful, the voice of the individual and of the minority group is needed all the more. So, too, is the specialist service and the service offering an element of choice. Indeed, both the State and local government have, to an extent, recognised this,

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either by establishing voluntary organisations in conjunction with the State—bodies such as the Consumer Councils—or by encouraging public participation in decision-making at local level. The tragedy and the challenge of today is that both statutory services and voluntary organisations are despertately short of money, and both are hit by inflation. The inevitable cuts in statutory services illustrate with devastating clarity the social cost of inflation and its effect on those least able to help themselves. Some of the smaller voluntary organisations have already ceased to exist and the larger ones have begun to cut back on the services they provide. They will have to do so even more drastically in the near future. My noble friend Lord Windlesham referred to another instance of this.
That being so, I should like to make some suggestions for helping the voluntary organisations and concerning the criteria for assessing their needs. The first question to be asked at a time of difficulty is: What else can volunteers do? I believe it has been estimated that, at some time, one in four members of the population take part in voluntary work. At any rate, the number of volunteers is so large that there seem to be no definitive figures on the subject. I should like to ask how many of the proposals of the Aves Report have been implemented. This was, so far as I know, the last and most comprehensive report on voluntary services, and among its suggestions was one that there should be a liaison officer or organiser with senior status within each local authority and hospital to organise the volunteers. I am not suggesting they can take the place of the professionals, but volunteers have the time, have reduced the case load of the professional social worker, can act as auxiliaries and are not expensive. Indeed, I believe that voluntary organisations are frequently far more cost effective than statutory services.
May we not, too, consider new ways in which volunteers could work with central Government—for example, within the Supplementary Benefits Commission. The need for grant aid from both central and local government to voluntary organisations is urgent. I do not wish now to speak of the amount that should be given but rather to say something about the administration of it. As I understand
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it, urban aid ranks for a 50 per cent. Government grant. It is often matched by a similar local authority grant. However, the central grant is usually given in about September when it is too late for the local authority to put a sum in its estimates, for the local authority must do so early on in the calendar year. Only the voluntary organisation suffers from this uncertainty, and any paid employees will not know whether or not the organisation can afford to keep them on. In these circumstances, voluntary organisations find it very difficult to plan ahead. Surely this is a matter of administration that could be put right.
A number of other administrative arrangements have been drawn to my attention. I wonder whether it would be possible for the Government to look at the unrealistically high standards which are sometimes imposed on voluntary organisations for fire precautions and standards of hygiene. No one wants to endanger life or health but some standards can, I think, at least be questioned, because they become so very expensive that they threaten altogether the existence of the organisation. The uneven level of charitable rate relief among the newly reorganised local authorities is another subject of worry and one that has been raised with me. There are, indeed, many others, but I will not take up the time of the House. Many will, no doubt, be raised by other speakers, but if they are not perhaps I may write to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, about them.
Lastly, I should like to say something about the criteria that should be applied in assessing grants and to suggest four—first, that there must be no overlapping between voluntary organisations and the statutory services; secondly, that they should work in partnership together; thirdly, that they should offer a high quality of service; and lastly the question should always be asked, which organisation is the most cost effective way of giving the service?
My Lords, I hope that the Government recognise the acute difficulties which are facing voluntary organisations today. Individuals can and must do all that they can by way of self-help, but in our complex society much help can only come from the Government and it can come as much by what they do not do as by what

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they can do. Current legislation, taxation and inflation are between them destroying the basis of voluntary organisations. I hope that the Government will think again on some of the issues, particularly those affecting voluntary organisations in the Community Land Bill and other matters relating to Value Added Tax, for voluntary organisations are far too important to us all to be lost.
3.43 p.m.
The MINISTER of STATE, HOME OFFICE (Lord Harris of Greenwich): My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has provided us with this opportunity this afternoon to discuss the work of the voluntary agencies. It is particularly appropriate that it was the noble Lord who launched our debate today, given his own close involvement in this area of policy and the very notable contribution which he made when he was carrying the same Ministerial responsibility as I do now, at least in terms of the Voluntary Services Unit. The noble Lord asked two questions relating to the Community Land Bill and value added tax, and the noble Baroness raised the same questions. I am sure that they will both forgive me if I deal with those questions in my closing speech this evening rather than now.
I think that the whole House will agree, if only on the basis of the speeches which have been made today, that this debate is taking place at a time when many voluntary organisations are facing a profoundly serious situation. A great deal of the debate today will inevitably revolve around this central problem, so if I may I will turn to it at once.
The present alarmingly high level of inflation inevitably played havoc with the finances of the voluntary organisations. Funds have become increasingly tight while demands have become even greater. In the present serious national economic situation, the Government themselves are under the clearest obligation to limit public expenditure, so I cannot pretend that there is any possibility of the Government making up the shortfall in voluntary funds which will be an inevitable result of inflation and the consequent pressure upon private companies and individuals. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for having made it clear when he opened our debate that he was
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not suggesting any increase in the level of Government assistance to the voluntary organisations, although—
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, I very nearly put this question to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham. When the noble Lord says that one cannot think of an increase, does he mean an increase in real terms?
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: My Lords, indeed I do. My noble friend has anticipated the point I was about to come to. In fact, at the moment the situation is that the assistance given by the Government in real terms is greater than at any time since the Government themselves considered that they had a responsibility for assisting the voluntary sector. Indeed, I mean just what my noble friend has indicated, although inevitably at a time like the present all sectors of Government expenditure have to be consistently reviewed.
The most I can say in the context of the present national economic difficulties with which we are confronted is that priority will be given to existing commitments and that every effort will be made to save voluntary organisations doing work of high social priority which would be stopped if no further funds could be found. This will inevitably mean that there will be little or no room for growth or development. There will be little or no room for new initiatives.
The prospect which I am setting out is clearly bleak. We must accept the fact that at least for the time being there are no extra resources to meet growing needs. In such a situation, I would suggest that the most effective way in which central Government can assist the voluntary agencies is by enabling them to put existing resources to the best possible use and helping them to find ways of economising without necessarily cutting their services. We can also help by improving communications between the voluntary sector and Government and by trying to secure a general awareness of the problems facing voluntary organisations.
Of course, there are some—although we shall certainly not hear from them in our debate today—who would argue that we are all in some danger of making too much fuss about this problem; that with the development of the modern Welfare State there is now far less need for

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voluntary service. I am bound to say that I find this a singularly foolish view. First, it denies the existence of the splendid spirit of idealism that binds the voluntary movement together—a movement consisting of thousands of widely diverse organisations yet with one central objective of relieving the problems and anxieties, and sometimes the pain and anguish, of many millions of our fellow citizens.
There is a second reason why those who sometimes mock the voluntary movement are wrong. There has not been a time—certainly not since the last war—when our statutory services have been under more intense pressure. If the lifeline provided by many dedicated volunteers were cut, many of our most underprivileged people would be the first to suffer. Even if we had the resources—which we most certainly do not—a society in which all human needs were met by the State would be an absurdity. Imagine every child who cannot button his own coat having a statutory worker to do it for him; or every old person who cannot shovel his own coal having a statutory worker to make up his fire; or every household invalid having a statutory companion every hour of the day.
Each of these examples is of a service which in normal circumstances will be provided by a relative, a friend or a neighbour. At the other end of the spectrum are those services which require special skills or resources which most relatives, friends and neighbours would not have and which, therefore, are provided by the State. But in between there is a great grey area where relatives, friends, and neighbours are either nonexistent or else do not have the necessary skills or resources. It is here that the contribution of the voluntary services is essential, to identify needs, to provide individual care, and to demonstrate, from time to time, the point at which individual skills and resources are not sufficient, even when organised to a high degree, and it is necessary for the State to intervene.
What should be—and indeed this question has already been asked—the relationship between the voluntary and the statutory services? The noble Baroness, Lady Young, raised this point in her speech. Ideally it should be a partnership. This
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can perhaps be well illustrated by recent disasters which have shown, in tragic circumstances, how well statutory and voluntary services work together. Moorgate was an obvious example of this. Even more recently, there was the Devil's Bridge coach crash on 27th May, when 32 people were killed and 14 injured. Here the police force, the fire service and the ambulance service worked together to carry out the necessary rescue action, to provide immediate attention for the victims, and to begin identification and notification of victims' families. But it was voluntary agencies such as the WRVS, St. John's Ambulance Brigade, Rotary and Round Table, which made it possible for bereaved relatives to be taken to hospitals; for them to be advised on legal and personal matters, transport and accommodation; and for the victims' families to be cared for until alternative arrangements could be made for them. The statutory and the voluntary services each had a clear role; they were complementary, not exclusive, and together they could ensure that both the immediate and the long term needs of the people concerned were met.
I should like now to discuss how the Government are attempting to assist voluntary organisations in carrying out their work. Perhaps I should say this first. When we talk of voluntary service, we sometimes tend to think in terms of the well-known organisations, such as the WRVS, the Red Cross, and the NSPCC. But at its most basic level, voluntary service means help on an individual basis, and the voluntary organisations of course consist of numbers of individuals who have joined together in a common cause. This is the single most important resource available to the voluntary services—people. And the greatest need at the present time is to match supply and demand; to be able to channel the efforts of those who are willing and able to help in the direction of those who need their help.
This is clearly something which ultimately can be done only at local level. But the Government are trying in several ways to encourage the more effective use of what are usually referred to as "unattached" volunteers. With the help of the National Council of Social Service, Government funds have been used to establish a volunteer bureaux develop-

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ment officer, (and I know that the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, was closely involved in this) with responsibility for encouraging and advising on the establishment of volunteer bureaux throughout the country. As a result of the work of that officer, and with the co-operation of local authorities and local councils of voluntary service, there are now 130 volunteer bureaux in the United Kingdom.
These provide a wide network of information for would-be volunteers as well as matching supply and demand in their own areas. By advising volunteers of the opportunities open to them, the bureaux are saving individual organisations both time and money and enabling them to make use of many people who might otherwise have stifled their impulse to serve because they did not know where to go. It is not enough to recognise that there are many would-be volunteers and set up volunteer bureaux to help them. If the total resources of the community are to be used efficiently, the volunteers must have a worth while job to do. Shortly after the appointment of the volunteer bureaux development officer, the Volunteer Centre was opened, with a large amount of Government support, to give effect to some of the recommendations of the Aves report (to which the noble Baroness referred) on the work of the volunteer worker in the Social Services.
The centre was established to promote current developments in volunteering and to foster the development of new opportunities for individual volunteers, community groups, and voluntary organisations. It is concerned with research into community development, with advice for those involved in the training of volunteers, and with the relationship between volunteers and the statutory Health, Social, and Probation Services.
Those of your Lordships who have seen the recent Volunteer Centre publication Bargain or Barricade—to which the noble Lord referred, and a copy of which I have arranged to be put in the Library—will, I think, appreciate how valuable the work of the centre is in helping the statutory and voluntary services to recognise each other's problems and co-operate to provide solutions.
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A comparatively recent development in the field of voluntary service has been the growth of community groups which, instead of concentrating on specific services, aim to help the community to meet its own needs in a variety of different ways. Although these community groups in fact differ considerably from the traditional voluntary services they meet a very real need and often play a supportive role which enables people to be self-sufficient who would otherwise have to rely upon statutory services. Because they are locally based, these community groups are not directly the concern of central Government, but some of them have received Government assistance through the urban aid programme. And the Government are helping to provide a more general support through their substantial financial assistance to the Young Volunteer Force Foundation.
A new Young Volunteer Force venture, which is being fully funded by the Government, is the establishment of two area resource centres, which are intended to provide central support services, committee rooms, information and advice, for all the neighbouring small community groups. Although the urban aid programme is an important source of funds at local level, local voluntary services would normally look to local rather than central Government for support. Local circumstances in fact vary so greatly that priorities must, in general, be decided on the spot. The Government have, however, reminded local authorities of the need to take the contribution of the voluntary services into account when deciding on their own allocation of resources. I hope that Government discussions with the local authority associations may indicate ways in which local voluntary organisations may be helped without placing too great a burden on already severely strained local resources. In the present national economic situation it would be wholly wrong to attempt to impose new burdens on local authorities.
Many local voluntary services have experienced considerable difficulties—and this was a point touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Young—because of recent local government re-organisation. Local councils of voluntary service are helping both the local authorities and the voluntary organisations to adjust to the new

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situation. The position is particularly difficult in the new metropolitan counties. In Greater Manchester and in Merseyside grants from the Joseph Rowntree Memorial Trust and the Gulbenkian Trusts have been of considerable assistance. The Government have now made money available for the appointment of a development officer in each of the other metropolitan counties, so that this work may be pursued there, too.
As a general rule, central Government must concentrate support on financing central headquarters administration. This may sound rather unglamorous and certainly very humdrum. But without efficient headquarters administration many initiatives at local level would just not get off the ground. We are all well aware of the magnificent contribution made by the WRVS, the National Council of Social Services and community service volunteers. These and many other national bodies receive substantial Government support for this purpose. But there are other and perhaps more important ways of helping than by the direct provision of funds.
The most significant development in central Government help to the voluntary sector in the last few years has been the establishment of the Voluntary Services Unit, now situated in the Home Office. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary takes a close personal interest in the work of the unit, and I am responsible, as I hinted at the outset of this debate, for its day-to-day activities. The primary role of the Voluntary Services Unit is to co-ordinate the response of central Government Departments to the voluntary services. For this purpose each Department with an interest in the voluntary services has appointed a liaison officer who co-operates closely with the Voluntary Services Unit in ensuring that departmental policies do not disregard the voluntary sector. The liaison officers have regular meetings at which information and advice on all aspects of voluntary work as it affects central Government is exchanged.
My Lords, the unit's second function is to help voluntary organisations to find their way around Whitehall, and to provide them with as much general assistance as possible. The unit identifies appropriate contacts in the various Government Departments, and offers advice on how
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best to make applications for funds and on alternative ways of dealing with problems. On a more general level, the Voluntary Services Unit organises informal discussions and has held two seminars primarily for voluntary organisations, one on Management and Common Services in Voluntary Organisations and once, more recently and more topically, on Financing the Voluntary Sector. These brought together many people involved in the voluntary services, local government, and related professions who might otherwise never have met and exchanged ideas. Plans for a third similar seminar are already in hand. The unit's third function is to stimulate the use of volunteers where it seems appropriate to do so at central level and to encourage co-operation between voluntary bodies. Most of the work I have already mentioned in relation to the volunteer bureau development officer, the Volunteer Centre, YVFF and so on, is funded through the Voluntary Services Unit.
I should like to give one or two examples of some of our other recent decisions. A grant has, for instance, recently been given to the organisation Fair Play for Children to enable all the various bodies concerned with children's play to try to co-ordinate their activities so that duplication and waste of resources can be avoided. Another grant has been made to the Young Volunteer Organisers Resources Unit attached to the National Youth Bureau, with the specific task of encouraging the use of young volunteers throughout the country. Other grants have been given to Outset, which uses young volunteers in tasks for local authorities, and the Family First Trust, which makes imaginative and co-operative use of volunteers, and of those subject to community service orders in helping homeless families.
I realise that many voluntary agencies, when asked to consider co-operating with others in the same field—and this point has already been touched on this afternoon—fear a loss of independence and individuality. But that is not the experience of those who have done so. To give a particular example, the National Youth Bureau now undertakes all the printing required by the National Association of Youth Clubs. This saves the National Association of Youth Clubs a considerable amount of money, brings

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the National Youth Bureau extra income, and, perhaps even more important, ensures that the two organisations keep in constant touch and know of each other's activities. Arrangements of this kind do not challenge the independence of any organisation. But in present conditions they are obviously of the greatest benefit. The fourth role of the unit is to make grants to voluntary organisations or projects, where the work spans the interests of a number of Departments without there being an obvious lead department.
The Voluntary Service Unit budget serves a useful purpose not only in enabling organisations which previously went to make one central application for funds but also in helping smaller, more unconventional projects which might otherwise fall between several stools. It is perhaps sufficient to indicate the range of Voluntary Service Unit interests by saying that as well as providing support for major bodies such as the WRVS, the NCSS, and YVFF, grants go to such widely diverse interests as the Romany Guild and Gingerbread.
I hope that what I have said indicates the importance the Government attach to the voluntary services. They have a senior Cabinet Minister as their spokesman and a unique unit in Whitehall to cater for their needs. Nevertheless, as I have already indicated, the Government recognise that the voluntary movement is now facing some of the most formidable problems it has experienced in its history. We are determined to do all we can to help. But it would be absurd for me to pretend that the Government can solve the problems of the voluntary services, or even do more than affect them at the margin. It is only the voluntary services themselves who, with the support of the public, can ultimately ensure their own future by adapting themselves to the present situation.
I have great faith in the spirit which has enabled the voluntary services to grow in strength over the years. I am convinced that this spirit is as strong as ever. The voluntary movement has always been prepared to fight its way through the most forbidding problems because it has recognised that without its efforts, many of our most deprived fellow citizens, would suffer great hardship. It has been that spirit, that deter-
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mination, which has gone to make this country, with all its present daunting problems, one of the most civilised and compassionate societies in the world.
4.7 p.m.
The PRINCE of WALES: My Lords, I cannot imagine that during the course of this debate there will be many of you who will dispute the continuing need for voluntary service to the community—in one way or another. The fact that voluntary service is still given, and is apparently still necessary, in an increasingly egalitarian welfare society may seem something of a paradox. And yet one must take into account the very real desire on the part of all sorts of people to give service to other human beings without thought of any remuneration or particular recognition for themselves. This is increasingly the case nowadays, with so many more young people becoming involved in voluntary, and indeed professional, social work.
It is interesting to note that the majority of bodies engaged in the provision of social services accept the desirability—even the necessity—of using voluntary help to supplement their services and to fill those gaps that inevitably occur. In the evidence submitted by the Association of Social Workers to a committee set up by the National Council of Social Services and the National Institute for Social Work Training, it was said that,
"those members who had already had considerable experience of using volunteers in their work were sure that much could be done to extend their use; others were not so certain."
It is worth bearing in mind, too, that the attitude of central Government Departments with major responsibilities for the personal social services is one of encouragement and appreciation of the present and future place of voluntary work in these services. It is sometimes the case that voluntary workers are able to bring a more personal and sympathetic approach to those they work with than is possible for some of the professionals. I say "sometimes" because obviously it is a ridiculous generalisation to assume that only volunteers are human beings, while the trained social worker is somehow a slightly less than human cog in a rather bureaucratic machine.
I know there are in this House many experts far better qualified than I who will

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be speaking in the debate today. Therefore, I should like to concentrate on one aspect of service which has attracted my interest for some time, and that involves younger people. Being still young enough myself to remember, I think I can safely say that as adolescents most people have excess energy to spare and need adventure, excitement and a challenge of one sort or another. Reading the history of the First World War (and even of the Second) it has always intrigued me to discover that so many young men were caught up in the emotional and almost chivalrous excitement of a new war and all the chances it provided for adventure and glory in the service of one's country. All that desire for glory and adventure was so tragically and bloodily consumed in two World Wars with the deaths of whole generations we could ill afford to lose. Those who survived learned a great deal, grew up extremely quickly, and, one can only imagine, became wiser and more reasonable men.
One of the arguments I have often heard in favour of National Service—and, incidentally, of its re-introduction—was that it gave young people a taste of discipline when they most needed it, and also a taste of adventure, if they were lucky. The point I am getting at is not that National Service should be re-introduced—there is no reasonable or logical justification for a start—but that somehow we ought to be thinking in terms of re-creating some of the challenges of war within a peacetime situation, so that adolescents in particular can discover themselves and their individual capabilities through the challenge of adventure and hardship. It seems to me that the problems we suffer from in society, as a result of violence, mugging and general anti-social behaviour on the part of younger people, are partly due to a lack of outlets into which pent-up energy and frustration and a desire for adventure can be properly channelled.
In so-called primitive societies, the potentially awkward phase of adolescence is overcome at puberty, when the young boys are required to prove that they have become men by performing various tests and initiation ceremonies. Through these they become more responsible members of the tribe and are treated accordingly by their elders. Dr.
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Kurt Hahn, the founder of my old school, and also that of the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont—and here I must be careful not to give the impression that it is an old boys' reunion—did not exactly require Gordonstoun boys to undergo initiation ceremonies upon reaching puberty, but he believed that a boy must challenge himself and discover his own level of endurance and will power. He also believed in the acquisition of self-knowledge (and thereby self-discipline) through service to others in challenging circumstances. My experience was that this worked surprisingly well, which is one of the reasons why I am so keen that other people should be able to experience it.
Of course, you cannot eliminate all the problem that arise, but so often you would find at Gordonstoun that the most difficult and unco-operative of boys underwent an astonishing transformation once they were absorbed into the more exciting and adventurous world of such things as the Coastguards, or the Fire Service, or the Mountain Rescue Service, or the Surf Life Saving Society—where you could actually perform a useful function to the community, but could do so only by subordinating any selfish attitudes to the overall requirements of the team. People therefore discovered what responsibility and self-discipline meant. It did not necessarily mean being a "goody-goody" and always obeying the rules, but in a life-saving situation it involved a high degree of commonsense, courage and teamwork, often thought to be beyond the capacity of young people.
I am always astonished by the amount of rot talked about Gordonstoun and the careless use of ancient clichés used to describe it. It was only tough in the sense that it demanded more of you as an individual than most other schools did—either mentally or physically. I am lucky in that I believe it taught me a great deal about myself and my own abilities and disabilities. It taught me to accept challenges and take the initiative. Why else do you think I am brave enough to stand up before your Lordships now?
I am brave enough to do so, because I believe very strongly that many more young people should be given the opportunity to find adventure and excitement through voluntary service and by

1421
organising themselves after an initial period of assistance and training from an outside organiser. I know of a young people's organisation on the South coast of England, which specialises in inshore rescue work in the Solent and surrounding areas. The boys who comprise this rescue body are an outstanding example of what can be achieved with a group of young people who have found fulfilment and excitement in the very demanding field of sea rescue, where they have earned the praise and unqualified admiration of the Coastguard and of thousands of yachtsmen. Some people may say that it is wrong to allow young boys to take a boat out in rough conditions, but, as long as adequate precautions are taken to guard against unnecessary and irresponsible risks, there can be no more rewarding or educative experience for anyone. I must here pay a tribute to the work of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and at the same time urge them to be aware (as I am sure they are) of the desirability of involving as many young poeple as possible in their front line operations and recruiting their enthusiasm and sense of adventure.
I would hope, too, that in due course many more schools, for instance, situated near the coast in suitable areas, could supplement the local statutory services (after suitable training) by themselves operating such things as rescue boats. This kind of activity, as I am sure your Lordships know, is carried out most successfully by the United World Colleges of the Atlantic—and especially at St. Donat's Castle in South Wales—where the pupils themselves have operated rescue services for several years with immense skill and professionalism. This sort of activity is obviously dependent upon funds—which, as we all know, are extremely limited for voluntary organisations and schools—being made available, but I have already been pursuing an idea which has attempted in a very small way to help what one might call the more alienated sections of young people (who might otherwise tend to drift into forms of anti-social behaviour and delinquency) to organise themselves with limited financial or technical assistance to undertake the more imaginative sort of schemes. I have so often felt that given the right incentives (and, indeed, materials or equipment) many more
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young people could become involved in helpful work for the community had they but the chance and the interest.
I have decided to establish experimental schemes with the aid of a committee in areas with which I have a titular connection, and so far the response in each part of the country has been extraordinarily encouraging. It is obvious that many young people—and particularly those who are often categorised as among the most impossible and the most difficult—are only too keen to become involved in useful or imaginative schemes, but they lack the funds or the necessary equipment. Once an impetus has been provided, it is most heartening to see how it is continued and developed by the young people themselves. It is also heartening to discover how comparatively successful has been the scheme adopted recently by the Home Office for the treatment of offenders through community service rather than imprisonment, borstal or probation. Investigation has shown that in several cases the ex-offender continued voluntary service beyond the termination of the court order.
I know that there are many organisations which have for long made great use of young people's enthusiasm and ability—organisations like the Red Cross, or St. John Ambulance Brigade, about which I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Caccia, will be speaking shortly, or the Royal Life Saving Society, where the Life Guard Corps is essentially a service for young people. But there are others which have been slow to realise the role young people can play—especially in an age when people seem to grow up so much more rapidly than before. Many private schools have also failed to appreciate the value of their facilities to young and old alike during the holidays when they are not normally required. I can understand that there are many problems involved, but I do not believe they are so insurmountable as to prevent any sensible consideration of the suggestion.
I think that one of the factors of overriding importance in this debate is the recognition that voluntary service is as beneficial to the volunteer as one hopes it is to the recipients of that service. To be frank, it is quite simply "good for the soul". Voluntary service is an essential element in any society that calls

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itself civilised. It is in many ways a measure of people's concern for each other as human beings and the only way in which concern, compassion, a sense of duty or service can be properly expressed. Therefore, it seems to me that, in a sense, the Government have a duty to ensure that as many people as possible are able to offer themselves for voluntary service in a wide range of fields, particularly by making helpful concessions (financial or otherwise)—as the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has already emphasised—in order to enable organisations to continue to provide those enormously valuable services to the community which we should never allow ourselves to take for granted.
4.21 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of LEICESTER: My Lords, pity the poor Prelate who has to plod his pedestrian course after a dashing clear round such as we have had from the noble Prince. We are deeply honoured at the contribution he makes to our counsels. This afternoon he has brought a breath of the sea and mountain air to reinvigorate us on this summer afternoon.
I was glad to respond to the invitation of the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, to say a few words in this debate. We are glad to have him taking a leading part in one of our debates again, and I was only sorry to have to tell him that an engagement in the later evening would set a limit to how long I should be able to stay in your Lordships' House. I know, too, that the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, is showing an equal interest in this important field. I read with admiration the question and answer article that he had written in the Health and Social Service Journal in the early part of this month. I could not help noticing that, like all Government spokesmen of whatever Party, he had to stress how much was already being done and how very hard it would be to do anything else. But all government is carried on by a dialogue between those who see visions and those who have to deal with hard facts as they know them. Even if many of the answers he has given to specific proposals at present have to be in the negative, we believe that we are nevertheless sowing seeds in this debate which may bear fruit in later months or years.
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I begin by feeling that more is being done about voluntary work and voluntary service than ever before. We have already had many examples mentioned this afternoon: the Voluntary Services Unit now in the Home Office; the Volunteer Centre now at Berkhamsted, and the practice which is growing rapidly to my certain knowledge of local authorities appointing liaison officers to act as links between the statutory services and the voluntary organisations. It is widely understood now that the voluntary services are not so much supplementary to the statutory services as complementary. They can provide something which it is hard for the statutory services to provide in quite the same way. No one suggests that statutory servants are lacking in humanity, but in the very nature of their work they have to define their task very strictly and accurately. That is part of their professional expertise, and compared with that position the volunteer, or the servant of a voluntary agency, is rather more free to define his work as it goes along.
We are grateful too for the measure of financial assistance which is greater than it has been before, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said in his speech. I give one example known to me. In my own City of Leicester there was a new venture started for drug addicts and other youthful drop-outs. We were able to lend them a disused vicarage for a number of years, but in the end, with the aid of a grant from the urban aid scheme, they have been equipped with a new and adequate building and will be able to go forward in the future from strength to strength. I shall come to some requests to the Government at the end of my speech, but I should like to begin by recognising what is already being done and not letting it be thought that all these efforts are unappreciated.
I see voluntary service in three tiers. The first of them I mention only briefly but lest it should be forgotten; that is, that the Churches have played for centuries an important part in this field. Not many clergy would describe themselves as voluntary social workers, but I shall, in fact, using the old language on Sunday next, tell my new clergymen that it is their duty to seek for the sick, poor and indigent people of the parish, so that they may be relieved by the

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alms of the parishioners or others. That is rather antiquated nowadays, but we still say it as a reminder of the past. But the clergy and the Churches have continued to be organisers of voluntary social work to a very important degree. Lest you should think that this is just old hat, and old clerical hat, I hold in my hand the report that reached me only this week about social care in the diocese of Chelmsford. It is a most comprehensive document covering family care, voluntary care, housing care, and almost every aspect of voluntary service that can be provided.
Secondly, there are what I call the long-established charities and philanthropic agencies. When so many new things are developing it is important that we should not forget the continuing task and service of the old charities—and I do not hesitate to use that word. It is a pity that it ever became a word clouded by unhappy associations. It is a beautiful word. I think of all those great charities founded roughly 100 years ago for the blind, for the deaf, for the handicapped, for unsupported mothers, and unwanted children, and all the rest of these fairly easily definable groups. Many of them, of course, now receive important support either from central or local government, but do not let us be so fascinated by new developments that we forget those who have born the burden and heat of the day and still continue to do so to the very great benefit of those whom they try to help.
I imagine that behind this debate and at the back of the minds of most of us there is what one might call the new voluntary movement, the movement that has seen a great burgeoning of all kinds of new experiments by groups, societies and individuals to pioneer new forms of human and social service to those in need or to their neighbours. I can illustrate this from my City of Leicester because this city has been chosen by the Volunteer Centre as the scene of a particular inquiry into voluntary social service, particularly into residential care, and I have had the privilege of discussing these matters with some of those from the Volunteer Centre engaged in that inquiry.
Perhaps I should begin by mentioning that we have, as many cities now have, a Council of Voluntary Service. Until a
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short time ago that was called the Council of Social Service but the stress on the voluntary principle has led to the replacement of the word "social" by the word "voluntary ", and that is not without significance. One of its activities is to carry on a volunteer bureau, about which we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich: and I thought that your Lordships might like to hear briefly what it looks like at the other end. I have studied carefully the statistics of the Leicester volunteer bureau for its first full year of activity. I find that 66 agencies applied to the bureau for volunteer help and that about 600 persons applied to it for opportunities to serve in one way or another. Of those 600, it was able to place about 300 in firm voluntary appointments. I was interested in the kind of people who applied. Housewives led the field, quickly followed by students, and then by girls and boys still at school. Of the girls and boys, the girls greatly outnumbered the boys, and if there is any sex discrimination there I can only say it is self-imposed because there is no reason why the boys should not be equally as useful as the girls.
The age groups concerned were led by those between 20 and 30, although there were plenty younger and some very much older, including some aged over 70 who were still ready and anxious to do a hand's turn for their neighbours. They were drafted into all the usual voluntary services—helping in hospitals, working with the Red Cross, going to the WRVS, and some to an interesting project in Leicester called the Home Start Scheme which is a kind of variant of the Family Service Unit and which is endeavouring to help young mothers, particularly in the very earliest days of their family life. We must be careful as this becomes more and more organised that it does not lose that note of spontaneity and originality that is the hallmark of the best kind of voluntary work.
A word about another form of voluntary service; that is, what I call community self-help. a subject which has been touched on in several speeches today. I see great possibilities in this. Ever since the Seebohm Report we have been aware of this articulation of a new possibility that even urban streets might

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develop a kind of coherence and belonging together, producing something like the neighbourly care which is quite common in our older villages. That is splendid. Also splendid is the use by the statutory services of these local groups in discovering need, and in channelling help in the area from those who are able to give it for the benefit of those who particularly need it.
However, I should not be honest if I did not say that there comes a point at which I think this so-called community self-help may take an unhealthy turn, and that is when it develops into the stirring up of a complaining spirit. I have no use for that. There is a phrase in the Psalms which describes a happy city as a city with no complaining in its streets. We want to be very careful before we foster, almost artificially, a spirit of complaint and grumbling about many things that probably are being done about as well as they can be done in all the circumstances.
Reference has already been made to the financial straits in which ninny voluntary organisations find themselves. The controller of a well-known charity, the Soldiers', Sailors' and Airmen's Families Association, summed this up recently in a few pungent words when he said:
" Rising costs, penal taxation, shrinking donations and insensitive legislation continue to diminish, if not extinguish, the invaluable contributions an institution like ours can make."
I do not necessarily subscribe entirely to that kind of desperately pessimistic view. I think that all voluntary agencies and voluntary service depend on a kind of inner spring of thought for others which will in the end find its way through its difficulties. But, of course, we ask the Government to look with as kindly an eye as possible on any concessions that can be made in order to make the pathway of those who wish to serve others as easy as it can be made.
It would be unrealistic to expect voluntary service to be entirely shielded from the impact of inflation. That would be an unreasonable and, indeed, an unfair demand to make. But minor difficulties could be looked at, as for example in the field of provision for sport and recreation. The greatly increased charges
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that are being made by local authorities for the hiring of sports stadia might be looked at and possibly some of the impact of VAT might be considered. The details I leave to those more competent than I; but I accept tae assurance of the Minister that the Government have this cause very much at heart, and I feel that in the coming months and years we may see fruits of this debate far in advance of anything concrete that can be formally stated today.
4.39 p.m.
Lord WOLFENDEN: My Lords, it is with all proper diffidence that I rise this afternoon to address your Lordships' House for the first time. I rely implicitly, and indeed explicitly, on the charity and forbearance which your Lordships are accustomed to afford to inexperienced and blundering novices. I hope that it will not be thought presumptuous if I beg to be allowed to add my thanks to those already expressed to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for having initiated this debate and for the thoughtful and eloquent way in which he did so. It was my happy privilege to be in the chair of an annual general meeting of the National Council of Social Service two years ago when, on the basis of his ministerial experience at the Home Office, the noble Lord gave us an address which reflected his deep concern for this area of our national life.
My concern this afternoon is simply to dot a few i's and cross a few t's. As has been already mentioned, I have for some months been chairman of a committee charged to review the role and function of the voluntary organisations over the next 25 years. This committee is not an official one set up by the Government. It is not a Royal Commission. It is not even a Departmental committee on the same basis as the one over which I presided some 20 years ago in a rather different sphere of human activity. This present committee was established, and is financed, by two of the great charitable Trusts of this country, the Joseph Rowntree Memorial Trust and the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, of which I was until lately chairman.
The joint purpose of the two Trusts is easily stated, though perhaps not quite so easily accomplished. We have now had in this country for some 30 years

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what, for brevity, we call the Welfare State, which includes statutory provision in many fields where previously the only provision had come from voluntary agencies. It seemed to the two Trusts that about now was an opportune time to look at the whole business of the relations between voluntary organisations, on the one hand, and the statutory services on the other. There is no question—on this point I wish to be emphatic—of any assumed antecedent rivalry or competition, still less antagonism, between the voluntary organisations and the State. The simple question is how these various forms of provision can most comprehensively and most effectively be mobilised to meet the needs of everybody who lives in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. My colleagues on the committee and I have no concern with dogma, or doctrine, or ideology. We are concerned simply that each of us and each of our fellow citizens should live the fullest possible life, with the fewest possible of what a great 19th century political philosopher called "hindrances" to the good life.
In a properly brief contribution to this debate it is inevitable that I should over-simplify. Your Lordships are well aware of the work done in this country, over decades and centuries, by volunteers and voluntary agencies. It has been an essential strand woven into the fabric of our national life. As I have read the evidence submitted to this committee of mine by the voluntary organisations themselves—and I have now read just on 200 such documents—I have been struck by four things, and I beg your Lordships' indulgence to mention each of them, each in three or four sentences only.
The first is the extent to which there is still room in our society for pioneering or trail-blazing groups. This fact, if I may paradoxically put it so, is greatly to the credit of our Welfare State or welfare society. As needs are discerned and met other new needs become apparent. As the minimum provision is increased, new areas where provision ought to be made are revealed. As the level of the universal floor, to put it so, is raised, the bare minimum becomes increasingly unacceptable.
Secondly—and perhaps this is in the long run more important—there is a noticeable change over the years in the
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nature of the individual persons who come forward as the agents in these voluntary activities. We are no longer talking about the Victorian squire's wife, with her basketful of goodies. We are not talking exclusively about those public-spirited wives whose social position (and whose husbands' income) has enabled them in the past to make a contribution which nobody should decry. Without them the voluntary organisations could never have carried on. But as they are being more and more constrained by economic forces from giving of their time and energy—and, my Lords, make no mistake about it, they are increasingly constrained in time as well as in money—their places are being taken in quite different contexts, as has been recorded already this afternoon, by the young. We are now talking about teenage boys and girls, still at school or employed as office workers or mechanics, who give up their evenings to paint a lonely widow's bedroom or who, as I know from my own experience, give up two weeks of their annual holiday to go to camp, either in this country or abroad, with their physically handicapped contemporaries.
Thirdly, we have to recognise the growth of groups which have been brought into existence for self help, or, as I should prefer to call it, mutual aid and support. I am thinking of the almost fantastic growth of organisations, self-originated and largely self-supported for, for instance, one-parent families. They have special needs—needs which it is admittedly difficult for legislation to meet, since legislation is bound to be in general terms and these needs may well be specific, individual and idiosyncratic.
My fourth and last point, my Lords, leads me to a remarkable characteristic of the majority of voluntary organisations in this country; namely—if I can get the word out right—their specificity. Very often there seem to be in existence two or more organisations which from the outside seem to have remarkably similar objectives. Why, it is asked, cannot they amalgamate, or at least share common services and headquarters expenses? Indeed, this is one of the points about which my committee is thinking rather hard. But the subscribing British public shows splendidly British independence in the objectives which it will support. It

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is not enough to provide eventide homes for the elderly. Those elderly must be Catholics, or Bishops, or Baptists, or Lancastrians, if the subscriptions are to come in.
My Lords, there are dozens of other questions and problems which arise in the relations of the voluntary organisations with each other and of any one of them with the statutory services. I have briefly mentioned only a few, and I have no doubt that before this debate ends many others will have been brought to your Lordships' attention. Fundamentally, as the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, so eloquently said, the question is as simple as this: do we or do we not want to see the voluntary principle maintained in this country; not, as we all appreciate, in opposition to or in competition with, the statutory services as provided by legislation, but as a strand, or at least a thread, without which our national life would be the poorer? For my part, I have no doubt whatever that we want to see it maintained, strengthened, augmented, revivified. Times and circumstances change, and the voluntary contribution is changing and will change in its areas of application, in the individuals who provide it and in their changing appreciation of the needs which are there to be met. If this element disappeared and became no more than a matter for the patronising attention of the social historians, our whole society would be lamentably the poorer.
4.50 p.m.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, it is a privilege to take part in debates supporting the principle of voluntary action, particularly in this debate which was so well initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham. We have listened to many outstanding speeches, and naturally that if His Royal Highness, Prince Charles, drew our special attention, not only because of his eminence but because, speaking for most of us, he is so much younger, which gives him a kind of advantage. He made an altogether delightful and thoughtful speech which will provide widespread inspiration. He paid a glowing, moving tribute to Gordonstoun as the best of schools. His old Gordonstoun colleague has had to retire from the scene, so at the moment
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he is, I believe, although I may be wrong, the only representative in our midst of this great school.
I do not doubt the virtues attributed to Gordonstoun by his Royal Highness, but he selected, perhaps not quite seriously, the courage which has taught him, and enabled him, to address the House. He is such a gifted speaker that I do not think it needed much courage—and I think of the people who went to my old school and the brazen way in which they addressed the House. It is an arguable matter whether those who address the House most often are necessarily a credit to the training of their old school. But, with that one exception, I think everything he said was altogether admirable.
It is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden. The House showed at once that they recognised that he is not only a tremendous public servant, which they all knew, but a fine speaker, which was known to many of us, and we shall all want to hear from him again frequently. I understand that he is now deeply involved in an inquiry on a subject which is less lurid than the one with which his name will be forever associated.
I speak as someone who has himself been associated with one particular issue. It is not perhaps quite the issue with which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is associated—climbing Everest, which is cleanliness itself. But if you imagine someone stretched on a psychiatrist's couch and they say the word "Wolfenden ", there would be only one reaction, and, in my case, it would be one no less pleasing. I find that as time passes people forget which side they were one. They cannot remember whether the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, was in favour of homosexualism or against it, and whether I was in favour—nobody will guess! Leaving aside these frivolous aspects of the matter, I join the well-merited applause which was gained by the noble Lord.
I am to be followed by the noble Baroness, Lady Pike, who herself has followed the late Lady Reading who occupied a unique position in this House and of course elsewhere. No one did more for voluntary service in her time. She initiated many voluntary steps which

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were then followed by the State. It was the noble Lady who gave a chance in voluntary action to a friend of so many of us here, Mr. Jack Profumo, who, after 12 years in voluntary action has been recently, and so rightly, honoured. That is one of the many services which the noble Lady rendered to voluntary action.
It fell to my lot 26 years ago, when I was a rising Minister (I never rose very much beyond that point, but I was what was then called a "rising Minister ") to make a long speech in this House, one of 46 minutes. But no Minister today, I am glad to say, will speak more than a third of that time. They were more leisured days. It was a long speech in which I declared the Government's support for the principle of voluntary action. In those days, 1949, Conservatives on the whole were not sure that they liked the Welfare State. When I raised that very point in that debate it was repudiated. Looking back, my answer was a shade equivocal; but that was the attitude of Conservatives in those days. On the Labour side, there was much suspicion about the principle voluntary action.
The noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, referred to those ladies who distributed bags of goodies. That voluntary action was remarked upon by many of my dear colleagues on the Labour Benches, and I was called on by Herbert Morrison and others to make a statement. I will not repeat it now, except for one sentence which was rather good and better than I could now provide. "We are convinced," I said on behalf of the Government—and it was an important moment—" that voluntary associations have rendered, are rendering and must be encouraged to continue to render, great and indispensable service to the community." On behalf of the Government in 1949 I said that; and I believe it is fair to say that that is the spirit in which the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, spoke today.
What are the main advantages of voluntary as compared to statutory action? They have been so well set out by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden. I will not run over them at length, and if anyone wonders whether I am incapable of expressisng them, let them look up my speech of 1949. However, I will take them from the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden. They can hardly be put better. But
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there were several points of his which I should like to underline which have linked up with my own activity in recent years. He talked of innovation and experiment—which I believe is certainly very important for the reasons which he explained—but also that voluntary action finds it easier than statutory action to serve the purposes of or give expression to the vocation of a religious minority.
He picked out Catholics and Bishops, perhaps bearing in mind the speaker who had preceded him and the one who was to follow. At any rate, he referred to Catholics and Bishops as being roughly on the same footing. If we had any Catholic Bishops there I suppose they would count as double! He referred to these minorities. That is true. Voluntary action finds it easier than statutory action to serve the purposes of a minority, whether a religious minority or a minority distinguished by handicap, colour or by allegiance to a trade union.
Take the National Society fur the Mentally Handicapped, of which I was once chairman, and now so well and perhaps better presided over by the noble Lord, Lord Segal, who is to speak later. Quite a proportion of its members have no personal or family connection with mental handicap. Nevertheless the noble Lord the chairman of the National Society would agree that its tremendous dedication springs from the unquenchable love of the parents for their handicapped children. That is a case where the inspiration of a large group supplies the driving force. That society, certainly today, does not obtain any State help or seek it.
Moving to a different field, I refer to a much newer and smaller society, which is part of a large category, the Melting Pot. From its early days I have been a patron. It was started not long ago by West Indians in Brixton. It is a society of West Indians for West Indians in that part of the world. White men, including myself and others, give what help they can. The society is receiving generous assistance from the Urban Aid and the VSU under the Ministerial authority of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich. Whenever I pay a compliment to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, I may be asked whether I have a vested interest and the answer is, "Yes". When the question arises who is to supply money it turns out that it

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has to be answered by the noble Lord. No one who has any knowledge of the young black people in Brixton, in many cases illiterate, unemployed—and although I say "young black men "I mean young black women also—adrift from home and living on the verge of crime, can doubt that here is a situation where the blacks can help the blacks in a special way. There are services which can be rendered there which cannot be rendered by the whites, although they can help in various ways.
In the same way when some of us started the New Horizon youth centre, which I know will appeal to His Royal Highness, a centre in Soho for young people with problems, many of them drug addicts, homeless, alienated from society, it was very much in my mind—and I was one of the founders and am now the chairman—that this was a way in which the young could help the young. Since then we have expanded to the point of dealing with 2,000 young people in a year. Our social workers, some of them trained and some untrained, now number about 10. We have tried to keep their age down to something like the age of the young people whom are are trying to help. It is an experiment in that sense; it is a new idea—someone else may have had it elsewhere, but I have not heard of it.
We have been able to win the confidence of the local authorities. One of the problems now is that you do not get the confidence or support of the public bodies until you have made headway; and it is difficult to make headway until you get support and financial support from somewhere. Now we are combining with four similar groups, one of them led by the noble Lord, Lord Soper, to seek help from the central authority. Once again, that turned out to be the noble Lord, Lord Harris. That is what we are doing. Five bodies are coming together.
It has been brought out in this debate how important it is that voluntary bodies should combine to cut out waste. It is right that the central authorities should insist on that. In the past, undoubtedly, charities wasted a lot of money and there was too much jealousy between them. One cannot repeat too often that voluntary action is and should be supplementary to statutory action. The noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, said it; and it
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was said by others. It is a supplement to statutory action and not a substitute for it. It is not an excuse for any failure of the public authorities to cover essential needs.
My Lords, about 20 years ago, I and others initiated the society called the New Bridge for helping ex-prisoners. It has made good progress since then. We get some help and about a third of our funds come from the central authority. There are no prizes given for guessing who is the central authority. It is the noble Lord, Lord Harris. That is the result of a good many years' work, of initiative, of pioneering work, in the face of a good deal of discouragement. In passing, I may say that in the beginning we were disliked by everybody. The other voluntary bodies thought that we were a reflection on their existence. In fact, the Home Office (I believe, or so I heard) said that we were a gang of homosexuals trying to help homosexuals. When it was pointed out to the Home Office, or whoever it was who said it, that I had eight children, it was said that that was just a cover. So, my Lords, you see that the way of the pioneer in voluntary action is hard, but one survives; and here we are getting a grant from the noble Lord, Lord Harris.
The point that I want to bring out is that those who have been concerned in that and in other societies in trying to help ex-prisoners have been the most active in demanding that there should be a State service. There has not been in the minds of the people concerned with prisoners any conflict between improving the voluntary and improving the State service. Now there is a probation and aftercare service which did not exist when we began. But one thing on which there is total agreement between the State officials and the probation and aftercare service officers and the people working in the voluntary field is that much more help is required all round. The total provision is pitifully small; but there is no conflict, and need not be any conflict in that field at all.
Let me, in drawing to a close, deal with one topic only. Where is the money to come from? I am not going into any detail, I have chosen to use up my ration of time discussing problems that have come to my notice and of course anything I have been concerned with is just

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a drop in the ocean of the national effort. But where is the money to come from? In the early days in the last century, the money, the finance for charitable work, came either from benefactors, well-to-do people, or from mutual aid. Fifty years or so ago, I started social work in the East End of London in what was then the Eton Manor Club started—typically of benefactors—by Old Etonians. There I did what was called social work. I played rugger, soccer, went in for athletics and when I was tired played netball or table tennis. That was the social work in which so many public school people began their social life.
On the other hand, the first paid job that I ever had when I left Oxford was with the Workers' Educational Association when the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, and I, worked shoulder to shoulder. I am sure he will agree that you could not get a stronger example of mutual help in those days. The tutors may not have conferred any benefit on the pupils; but the pupils were emphatic in believing that they conferred a benefit on the tutors. It was a spirit of mutual help and endeavour. You had what you might call the paternal benevolence and mutual help.
In recent years, charitable workers have depended more on trusts and companies. They are now feeling the breeze and it is difficult, or relatively difficult, to raise money from companies compared with what has been in the past. So we look more and more to Government; and, in turn, the Government and the local authorities are hard pressed also. I am not going to spend much longer, because each must take up only so much time in discussing exactly how the Government might help more.
My Lords, I very much appreciate the spirit in which the noble Lord spoke. I know that it is difficult for him in financial times like this but if he can be a little more positive, a little more forthcoming, at the end of the day, then that will be very gratifying. I end by raising my voice in unison with all those who have spoken and who are to speak who recognise the gravity of our financial problems in this country. I assure them that there could be nothing more urgent than this issue of how to help the voluntary bodies to serve the nation.
5.8 p.m.
Baroness PIKE: My Lords, in asking your Lordships' indulgence on this occasion, I am conscious of the fact that it is now nearly a year since I had the privilege of being admitted to your Lordships' House and that during that period I have been a very infrequent attender at the debates in this Chamber. I make no excuse for this; but I am going to do better in future. In the last 12 months, since I had the privilege of becoming the national chairman of the Woman's Royal Voluntary Service, I have been spending all my time and energies in getting to know the Service I represent and in letting them get to know me.
In another place when one makes a maiden speech one has the privilege of paying tribute to the service and work of one's predecessor in the community. It must be very rare in your Lordships' House to have that privilege as I have it today. The late Lady Swanborough, who founded and fashioned the WRVS—Stella Reading as she preferred to be known—made a unique contribution to the development of social service in the community. History will record the strength and power of her leadership, the humanity of her vision and the powers of her persuasion and of her organisation. She built up a Crown service which was born in 1938 to meet the unknown problems of total war and has lived on to meet the ever-changing demands and problems of present day society and which can claim to be growing in strength and in scope, serving as we do some 30 different aspects of social work in the community. I expect our work for the meals-on-wheels service is the one for which we are known best, although it is only one aspect of our work. We started it in wartime and we have been gaining in numbers ever since that time. Last year we carried 13,800,000 meals. This year the number will be greater, representing an increase of 14·9 per cent. over 1972 and 1973. I say this to show how the service is growing. Equally, it is an example of how the more you do in the community, the more you uncover what needs to be done. Voluntary work, as has been said, is not only about meeting the needs of people, important though that is.
In the week in which she died Lady Reading circulated, and sent to many of

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your Lordships, a small book called Voluntary Service. In that she said:
" Voluntary Service is recognised in Great Britain as an integral part of the life of the nation, as an integral part of the character of the individual and of intrinsic worth. There can be no doubt that Voluntary Service in out communities is a powerful strand for good in the national character. "
Trying to strengthen that strand for those working in voluntary organisations sometimes seems an almost overwhelming task. That is why we are so grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, who opened this debate, for the work he did when he was in Government, and which is being done now with the Volunteer Unit.
Many references have been made to the work of the Volunteer Unit in the Home Office. We should not forget that it ensures that the case for the voluntary services has a direct voice in the Cabinet. This is of immense value at the present time. We have been talking about money. Sometimes I feel I have not talked about anything else in the past year since I became chairman of the WRVS. But I do not want to talk today about fund raising, about the necessity for good management, maximising our resources and good administration. These are things we all accept. But volunteering is something which is very personal and very individual. Some present-day taxation is putting an almost intolerable strain on some of the individual volunteers working in our different projects. Take, for example, VAT in a hospital canteen, shop or trolley going through the corridors of our great hospitals. There the women who are pushing that hospital trolley have not only to think of the problems of the welfare work they are doing, not only to sustain the enthusiasm to do that work, but they have to become grass roots accountants as well. This puts a great strain on them. There are three main categories of goods on each shop trolley. These involve the keeping of six different and separate categories of tax records. Surely, we can have some simplification here.
Then there is the car mileage aspect. Many of us work under different categories in this respect. There is the meals-on-wheels rate, the hospital car rate, the rate if you are a local councillor. We should try to work out with the motoring
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organisations a minimum rate in consultation, taking into account all the necessary costs and expenses, making certain that there is adequate cover for the use of that car but no material gain in using it, so we can have one standard rate throughout our voluntary work. Many people work under different systems. I know of an individual in my organisation who uses her car first of all to do her ordinary WRVS work covering thousands of miles at 4p a mile. She then carries meals-on-wheels at 6p a mile. She does hospital car service work at 7·1p a mile, and with the rest of her time she does her local council work at 9p a mile. This really is absurd if we look at it in general terms.
There is also the problem of the relationship with the professionally trained social worker. I do not want to go too far into this point, but we all know that more and more young people are coming into this profession and are doing magnificent work; and we need them and all their services. It is our responsibility, as volunteers, to build up an understanding and a trusting relationship with them. It is our responsibility, as volunteer organisations, to make certain that we so inform and train our people that we can build up this relationship. Nevertheless, it is important that the knowledge and understanding of the potential of the volunteer is part of the basic training on their side. Too often it is left to the voluntary organisations, who are already under stress, who are already undermanned, to try to carry out that knowledge and that training. I believe it must be part of their basic training because, as many of your Lordships have said, a great many new schemes, new ideas and new works are emerging in our voluntary services and organisations. The older, more established organisations are trying as well to use new initiatives; all the time there are young groups growing up. I have an interest to declare here as I am not only chairman of the Women's Royal Voluntary Service, but I have the great privilege of being chairman of the Executive Committee of the Community Service Volunteers, a group of young people who I think play a unique part in community involvement, an organisation which gives a unique social apprenticeship to young people involved in community work.

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I should like to read out one of the schemes which they are carrying out at the present time.
" CSVs are acting as ' peripatetic house-mothers ' on behalf of the Social Services Departments of Camden and Oxfordshire. This role entails their calling at the home of a family where one parent (or even both) is/are missing, getting the children their breakfast, seeing them off to school: and then being there when they come back from school, giving them their tea, seeing that they do their homework, and leaving food in the oven for their evening meal. In this way they preserve the family as a unit and prevent the children having to be taken into residential care. "
That is good in itself, and must be good in itself. But, on the financial side, we calculate that the cost of keeping one child for a week in a residential home is £75, and the cost of keeping three children is £225. I hope your Lordships can do this arithmetic—I have checked the figures! Three children maintained in residential care for a year cost £11,700. The cost of one CSV volunteer for a year is £700. Apart from the contribution to the community, the saving for the ratepayer in this situation could be £11,000 a year.
I have tried to show some of the practical ways in which I believe we can look for help from Central Government and some of the practical ways in which we can get help from the Voluntary Services Unit. Some of your Lordships will know of John Gardner, an American who did a tremendous amount of work in America, particularly in the 'sixties. He said in his book No Easy Victory and in his American Godkin lecture in 1969:
" One of the reasons people interested in improving society never quite come to grips with the central issue, is that they are preoccupied with specific evils that must be corrected. I don't blame them, so am I. But the result is that each reformer comes to his task with a little bundle of desired changes. The implication is that if the appropriate reforms are carried through and the defect corrected, Society will be wholly satisfactory and the work of the reformer done. "
We all know that not to be true. The task is to evolve an understanding that will sustain a society, capable of continuing change, continuing responsiveness and continuing renewal.
This concept must be at the heart of what we mean by the voluntary principle. Most of us agree that the voluntary principle is wholly good. The problem
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is how to translate that into concrete terms, how to make certain that that voluntary principle is reflecting the changes in society and in society's concept of what it is right and proper to provide—what level of service, what standard of service, what type of service, what type of provision which it is right and proper to make in the community as a whole.
This point was well made in a letter in The Times. It is rather a long letter and I hope I shall not quote any of it out of context. On Thursday, 29th May, Mr. Isserlis of the Centre for Studies in Social Policy, said:
" The social needs and problems of the country are not only those of the poor and the sick and similarly disadvantaged groups—important though such groups may have to be in terms of priorities. The social health of the country may well call for saving as well as spending. The social collapse of the country—if it comes—will come from hyperinflation and not from inadequate welfare provision. The social recovery and development of the country must rest not only on what is provided at public expense for particular individuals and classes but also on what is done or not done—in ways that may not always involve much spending at all—to help or hinder enterprise, thrift, economic development, good labour relations, private self-reliance, mutual help, citizen responsibility, public amenity and decency, and the rule of law. "
Citizen responsibility is surely what we are talking about this afternoon. What better way—probably the only way—to build up responsibility than to face people with the demands in society and with the constraints on resources in society? This is surely the best way of building up responsibility in our society.
So the task of the voluntary organisations, as I see it, is to try to enable all classes, all types, all age groups, all interest groups, those who want to join an established organisation such as mine, or those who do not want to join (and why should they), people of all kinds to give of their time, however small it may be. The great danger at the present time must be that more and more people's ability to give is being confined by their material resources. This is something which we must not let inflation do to us. We must ensure that nobody is inhibited from giving social and voluntary service in the community, because of lack of material resources.

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This is a tremendous challenge to a voluntary organisation such as ours. We must maximise our resources as efficiently as we can. We are asking self-discipline from those people who come to help us, but we ourselves must share a tremendous responsibility. We must share our administrative and organisational machinery and make certain that we use it to the full. Where young people come in, they should be able to use our administrative machinery without any cost or any effort to themselves. We must try to get rid of any sense of possessive competitiveness and so on. We get a tremendous reward from voluntary service—a tremendous strength from doing it. The real strength is not just in demonstrating that we are a caring and compassionate community. The real strength is in building up the influence and strength of our own country.
5.23 p.m.
Lord CACCIA: My Lords, as the first speaker after the noble Baroness may I tell her how greatly we welcome this opportunity of hearing from her, and if we may have that opportunity again before too long it will be a privilege. The noble Earl, Lord Longford, spoke of the presence in our midst for many years of the late Lady Reading and her voice, personality and authority will linger in the memories of many of us. It is only right and fitting that she should now have a successor of the character of the noble Baroness, who will be able to sneak with the same practicality and authority as the late Lady Reading. If it were not inelegant to say so, it is not a chip off the old block which we have, but the old block itself.
May I also say a word about my old friend Lord Wolfenden who also made his maiden speech today. It is very difficult to say anything about an old friend for which he will forgive you afterwards. So perhaps I may restrict myself to saying how welcome it is to hear in this Chamber his clarity of thought, conciseness of speech and his mastery of enunciation. We shall look forward to hearing from him on many occasions in future without any specificity about it.
My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, opened this debate he suggested that for brevity's sake as many of
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us who could speak on a particular topic as illustrative of the wider theme should do so rather than trying to cover the whole waterfront. So may I instantly express an interest, or rather a concern, as the principal official of St. John and its two foundations—the ambulance in this country and in the Commonwealth for the teaching and practice of first aid and the Eye Hospital in Jerusalem. We are also closely hound up with the work done by the Red Cross. Indeed, I have the honour to be the present Chairman of a Joint Committee of St. John and the Red Cross for the war disabled. But I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Hylton-Foster, is to speak about the Red Cross so I shall stick strictly to the work of St. John.
May I say at this point how greatly I welcome what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, about the organisation in the Government and in the country for trying to knit together the work of all the different voluntary services through the Voluntary Services Unit and, as the noble Earl, Lord Long-ford, has said, through the presence in the Cabinet of somebody with responsibility in this field. That is the organisational part of it and it is enormously welcome to all voluntary agencies. The other half, of course, is the financial and other support which voluntary agencies can expect from the State at a time of financial stringency which we recognise as clearly as the noble Lord himself.
If he will allow me, I shall not take him on the broad front of the things that could be helpful, which we have just heard about; a general cutting in taxation, for instance, VAT; a review of transport and various charges of that kind, and so on. I will simply give illustrative points from the outlook of a particular voluntary agency, St. John in this country, with regard to first aid.
I shall take as the first point the help which the Government can continue to give in schools in emphasising the importance which schools should attach to all boys and girls learning some elements of first aid. I know that they already have a wide number of subjects which nowadays they are forced to try to master, but it is a point of citizenship that they should also be able to look after themselves to a certain degree and thereby take some of the strain off the Health

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Service. It is rather ridiculous that even a professor should have to ring up a doctor because he has a nose bleed or has burnt his finger and does not know what to do. He should have learned that at an early stage of his career, at school. As most accidents happen in the home, it is surely a potent argument for what the Government are already trying to do, and I hope they will press forward with ensuring that all boys and girls in schools have some element of knowledge of first aid. That is one of the ways in which the Government could help.
There is another. Recent legislation is contained in the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 which in conjunction with earlier Acts places a greater demand for first aid training in industry. Indeed, there are penalties, up to the closure of plants, when it is found that the Act has not been complied with. This carries with it a demand for instruction of people in how to avoid these accidents. Where is this instruction to come from? Clearly the Health Service could hardly be asked to undertake this extra burden. Also, I think it is right that the State should, and does, turn to the voluntary services to help to carry out such tasks which are helpful not only to the individual, but to the country at large, considering the very great number of man-hours lost in industry through accidents.
Do we wish, particularly at this point, to ask for a subvention, so that we could provide this extra tuition? Not directly, my Lords; but I would say, indirectly, because we have in hand a research project, FACT, which is an attempt to establish as a fact that there would be a reduction in working days lost through accidents, not only in the factories but in the streets and in our homes, if people involved had a knowledge of first aid. St. John is doing this project in conjunction with the University of Aston. The Canadians have done something similar in Canada. But, of course, such a project needs financial support and that is the smaller kind of financial support that even in these difficult times I should have thought the Government, having passed the 1974 Factory Act, might consider making available.
Apart from the teaching of first aid and the issue of over 200,000 first aid certificates every year, the St. John
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Ambulance Brigade, including cadets and nursing sisters, does annually about 4 million hours of public duty. These hours are done by individuals at football matches, horse events, demonstrations, pop festivals and the like, up and down the country. They are organised on a community basis, which is something for which the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, was pressing. In the course of these public duties there is naturally great opportunity for what the noble Prince was urging; namely, enterprise, excitement and adventure for the young. To give your Lordships a single example; recently in Belfast after a bomb explosion the military were investigating the rubble around the scene of the blast not only looking for casualties but also to check whether more explosions might ensue. Two young cadets walking down the streets said to the soldiers: "We are first-aiders ". The soldiers then said:" Here are some first-aid kits: if you are first-alders, you had better get busy and do what you can ". And they did. This is the kind of thing that the young do, not only among the bombs and blasts of Northern Ireland, but on the roads of this country. We must remember that although most accidents happen in the home, the next largest number of accidents take place in the streets and on the roads of our country. So there is plenty of scope for that kind of adventure; and, in addition, there is something of the kind to which the noble Prince referred; namely, mountain rescue work which is done with the aid and support of St. John in Scotland.
If we do these things despite taxation and despite the strain imposed by inflation, I think at that point we are entitled to draw attention to the fact that we have not asked for extra funds for these things. But when we do make requests for support for a research project such as FACT, we would hope that the Government would take into account the other services which are already being given by the organisation at no strain to the Exchequer and at no strain to the people engaged in the statutory services.
I do not wish to keep the House very much longer on the work of St. John in this country; but perhaps I might also mention our Eye Hospital in Jerusalem, which is tangible evidence of our care and concern outside this country for the

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needy of the underdeveloped world. This hospital was built and maintained by this country, with the support of other countries in the Commonwealth, together with the American Society. So far we have managed to maintain it with surgeons coming from Australia and the United States as well as from this country. Of course, the running costs are very high, and here we meet another problem with Government. Regardless of Party, Governments are keen to support new projects but reluctant to support those already existing. I would ask Her Majesty's Government only whether they would think again in this case. In present circumstances, the inflation rate in Israel is higher even than in this country and therefore it must be doubtful whether voluntary societies alone, and ours in particular, can continue to support the running costs of such a hospital, which this year, having taken into account ail the donations given from the Commonwealth and the United States on capital account, will be of the order of £300,000. Next year it will be more.
I would sum up by saying that we understand the Government's difficulty about finance. We welcome the organisation which they have set up to try to see that the various voluntary societies are knit together and that together they will complement—it has been said, rightly, "complement" and not "supplement "—what is being done already by the statutory services. However, we would think it right to ask that, when requests are made, the Government should say:" We will look at this first on its merits as a project ", and then, if they are doubtful whether they can find the money for it in present circumstances, to say to themselves: "Yes, but we ought also to take into account the great sums of money and the enormous amount of individual effort being put forward by the members of this, that or the other society, and try to meet their request with the compassion we think they have deserved. "Perhaps I might repeat again here that by St. John alone 4 million hours of individual service have been given in one year throughout the country.
5.38 p.m.
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: My Lords, three of the most notable speeches so far today have come from
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Members of your Lordships' House whose varied and heavy duties prevent their addressing your Lordships very frequently. That is a great pity, because the maiden speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Pike, and of the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, and the semi-maiden speech of His Royal Highness have all contributed a refreshing note, delivered in a refreshing way, to your Lordships' House.
Many of us remember the noble Baroness, Lady Pike, in another place. Her interest in social matters goes back far beyond her recent important appointment. It is a special pleasure to hear her today making her maiden speech on a subject on which she is so well qualified to contribute to this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, is a native of my former constituency—a local boy long since made good—and I certainly associate myself with the compliment which has just been paid to his clarity of mind and enunciation, and, I would add, his salty wit. There was a touch of salt in some of his remarks which I thoroughly enjoyed.
The noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, is now doing the job that I wanted done 10 years ago. When I was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster I badly wanted this kind of inquiry to be embarked upon, but the National Council of Social Service and other important bodies were not ready for it. Much has happened in 10 years. I am not a bit surprised that this task is now thought to be due for attention and no-one is more suited to it than the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden. He will have under review some matters which badly need careful but critical examination. I refer to fund raising methods for one, and to management weaknesses and deficiencies for another.
I am bound to say that I find slightly unacceptable the emotional titles which are still retained by some of our charities. They are not in keeping with our present attitude towards disablement and sickness. I wish no harm at all to any voluntary organisation, but when a voluntary body calls itself "The Home for Incurables ", I question it. When another body calls itself, "Action for the Crippled Child" I question that, too. Nevertheless, I know that there is a great deal involved in fund raising and that voluntary bodies have to employ, perhaps

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unfortunately, many devices and methods of presentation which more resemble the advertising media than the appeal of a charitable or voluntary organisation.
I know the difficulties. I think that for the first time under one roof I secured the attendance of all the voluntary bodies concerned with the homeless, the drifters. A debate which is to follow later this evening is on that same subject. It did not hang together. One could not keep them together, even though I was able to suggest to them that if only there were some basis of co-operation the Government of the day might provide money for the capital expenditure which they found most difficult to raise. Many voluntary organisations may overcome the difficulties of their current expenditure, but it is extremely difficult for them to raise money for capital expenditure. These are the disappointments of work in this field, and I have no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, will encounter a number of them. Recently, I came across a body which started with a considerable grant from a charitable organisation, and yet all the money which it was collecting was being spent upon collecting more money and administration. That kind of thing should not pass unnoticed.
Nothing has been said this afternoon about those voluntary bodies which are concerned with the welfare of animals. Probably, it is not within the terms of reference of our debate, although the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, mentioned environmental voluntary effort and conservation societies. I shall not dwell this afternoon on the subject of animals. However, it is a little difficult to discuss voluntary effort in this country, and ignore the enormous amount of effort and money which is being devoted to animal welfare. One cannot brush off the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals when one is talking about voluntary effort in this country.
A kind of general blessing has been given to voluntary effort—that it is good in itself; that it has a moral basis; that it is idealistic; that it does good. Not a word should be said against it. We want more of it. There are still so many gaps to fill and so many who wish to come forward to render some service to their fellow citizens. I subscribe to a great deal
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of that, although I think that we must not blind ourselves to some of the challenges that are being thrown up by voluntary effort in one field or another. I shall be raising questions on voluntary service which concern me—and, if I may say so, it will be one of the few challenges which has been made so far this afternoon. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that almost everything which is now done by the State in matters of social welfare and social service was first done by voluntary action. This is an irrefutable fact and I believe that it provides all voluntary effort with a certificate of exemption from irresponsible criticism. Nevertheless, we wish to examine the value of what we are doing in certain fields, why we are doing it, and what is the significance of this action in the social structure of the community.
May I refer to voluntary service by young people? The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, referred to the Young Volunteer Force Foundation, of which I was the first chairman, and I was ably and devotedly served by Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, who is now the Speaker of the House of Commons, and Mr. Jo Grimond as my co-trustees. We had the task of launching this organisation, getting it on its way and trying to find the opportunities which it was thought we should provide for young people to take voluntary action and make some contribution to what society needed. This concept of a Young Volunteer Force Foundation derived from a report of a committee of the National Council of Social Service—called, I believe, the Carpenter Committee—which recommended that this kind of work should be done under the umbrella of the established organisation of the National Council itself. This recommendation was firmly rejected by the young people whom we consulted and whose co-operation we needed to launch this project. They did not want to have anything to do with the established organisation; they wanted a new one and largely to run it themselves; they wanted to have their head; they were against the established order of voluntary and charitable effort; they wanted something quite different.
It was sponsored originally with a considerable amount of Government money, but it had to raise a great deal of its own. From their Ministerial experience

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the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, will both remember having to examine the course and progress of this body and having to conduct a kind of running audit of what we were about, what we were achieving and how it was going. It was new, it was an adventure. It has proved successful but it met with many difficulties.
The ideal was to involve uncommitted young people, who did not want to have anything to do with the youth clubs and other established forms of voluntary effort for young people. They wanted a wide range of activities and we found them where they were perhaps most needed—in the large urban areas. Ours was what I would call a grass roots movement. We tried to involve the youth of working people, and believe me, my Lords, this is much more difficult than involving the youth of middle class people. On the whole, the working class is not fond of charitable effort. From the point of view of working people, it has an unhappy part in our social history. "Charity" is a dirty word among working people and that is why we call it "voluntary effort ". It was the patronage of the poor by the better off, and one has to be careful about the psychology.
We set up our centres in large urban areas with the consent and support of local authorities, and we went about recruiting hundreds of young people who could undertake activities of various kinds. We found that these young people wanted to do what Beveridge suggested in his 1948 book Voluntary Action should be the concept of voluntary action. Your Lordships will remember that Beveridge wanted to raise voluntary action above its practical details. He wanted it to be a contribution to democracy, a distinguishing mark of a free society and our volunteers became involved with, and critical of, the social environment in which they were called upon to work. Collective action brought about articulate comment, criticism and even protest and this became our major problem; one might say the revolt of young people against what they saw and the environment within which they were asked to work. Local councillors did not like being told about the mismanagement of local affairs.
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There was one town where our volunteers made a social appraisal of the town which was so devastating, so critical, that the whole urban district council rose up in anger and almost banished us overnight. We had more than one storm of that kind, because, as I have said, these young people were not just dispensing social service; they were becoming politically aware of the conditions under which they were giving that service. These young people perhaps saw more of the roots of discontent, hardship and unhappiness than many of the councillors themselves. I am afraid that many of our volunteers challenged the Establishment, and we discovered, apart from their critical attitude towards social conditions, that if one could involve them physically and emotionally and enable them to translate their values into action there was nothing more selfless and noble to be seen in social life. It was really moving. Of course it was sometimes tiresome for those in authority.
If we put this in a wider perspective, the first question I would ask is whether voluntary service of this kind among young people is primarily for their benefit or for the benefit of the community. Is it a social service or a youth development enterprise? Is the use of the services of young people in this way somewhat misplaced? I believe that, as it turned out, the social need was not the underlying purpose of what we were doing. Although we were filling gaps in other people's lives, the volunteers were making good something missing from their own lives, and I have asked myself a number of times whether the gaps in the lives of young people should be filled in this way. Is this the only way? Where does this work and experience fit into the development of adolescent life? Some of it undoubtedly does.
We hear a great deal about adventure, but the boys and girls whom I am talking about have no access to the kind of adventure that His Royal Highness was talking about. I am afraid we must admit that the opportunity for adventure is to a large extent based on an opportunity which is not given to the great mass of the families of working class people. They cannot go off to the Coast Guards; they cannot have the same opportunity for adventure as more privileged young

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people. Again, is it right that we should ask young people to make good the mistakes and failures of the old? As chairman of the Young Volunteer Force Foundation, I used to say that I did not want all these young people mixing porridge for old age pensioners, or doing little else than mending their window sashes or putting washers on their taps. That did not seem to me to be the field of work in which young volunteers should be engaged. The young have their own lives to live, and it is not right to turn them back on the social problems which they have done nothing to create and can, unfortunately, do so little to relieve.
Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord—
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: I thought, therefore, that young people should be fitted for the challenges they have to meet and—
Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS: My Lords, may I—
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: Does the noble Lord mind? I am taking rather more time than I should. I have already spent 19 minutes.
Lord GEORGE-BROWN: Mis-spent.
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: I am sorry, my Lords, but I must press on. We were constantly directing the efforts of the young volunteers into channels which they wanted to explore, and we felt that what they wanted to explore was perhaps of greater importance to us than discovering in the abstract a social need. We have to face the fact that many of our young people have become more separated and alienated from their elders than was the case in past generations. Parents are rejected, the conventions are flouted. We have vandalism, violence, protest. Are these all part of the war being waged on the older generation? Youth is now demanding more of life, and is also demanding change. There is a kind of earthquake tremor under the foundations of society. They do not accept what has been laid down by people who have gone before.
The truth is that in my lifetime this country has never known what to do about its young people. Three generations of young people were asked to
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volunteer or were conscripted for war. I had no problems. At 17 years of age I was in the Army. At 17 years and eight months I was in France. I came back, but a million did not. I came back at the age of 22 and my youth had been taken care of. In 1939, the youth of another generation was also taken care of. We have now been free of the threat of major war for close on 30 years. We are in the middle of the second postwar generation of young people who are showing that there is much that they are not prepared to accept. I wonder whether, in our system of education and in the preparation for work, we have fully understood the need to have a closer rhythm of development in the life of the young than we offer at the present moment.
Basically, our attitude towards young people is what it was when I was young in the early part of the century—you go to school; you leave school; you go to work and, when you have worked long enough, you retire and are on pension, and that is it. Many young people are separated by our system of formal education from the realities, values and opportunities of work. After all, the nation is going to rely on work; it is not all leisure or adventure. We have to make work more enjoyable to the young, but we must also make it more enjoyable for all people if we are ever to get on top of our economic difficulties. At present, there is a great tendency to shy away from work as being too unpleasant and irksome. We look for diversions. We demand of the nation more money for leisure and for enjoyment.
I read in the newspaper tonight that the new Minister of Education is thinking of releasing some of the more rebellious spirits in the last term of school, to let them go somewhere because they are a nuisance in the classroom. In reality, they have finished their education, at least at the school, and they want to go. But what will become of them? Who will take care of them? We let them go out of the school gates and say, "Goodbye". Except for the Youth Employment Service, which is doing such splendid work, the training schemes are all too few. These young people go off the school register and on to the unemployment register. We have to explain, when we look at the figures periodically, that so many tens of thou-

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sands of our school-leavers are unemployed. What an humiliation to a young boy or girl to go from being a pupil to being unemployed! Is that all we can think of? In many cases there is no employment immediately available, but our training facilities for young people are pitiful compared with some other countries.
In my view, more should be done to establish a partnership between education and preparation for productive work. It was envisaged in the 1944 Education Act, and is to be found on a modified basis in day release schemes at the present time. What I have been saying may appear to be the reverse of voluntary service by young people. It is not intended to be that. Nobody could have put more work or more enthusiasm into the YVF than I. In present conditions, as in the past, it has a very important contribution to make towards the formation of the character and range of interest and the desire for service of young people. I wish that a great deal of this could be put into preparation for productive work. I do not think that voluntary services should be used as an outlet for the energies and frustrations of the young, when the real remedy lies elsewhere. We have to keep a balance and bear this in mind when praising, as we are are entitled to do, the services rendered voluntarily by young people. Finally, my Lords, perhaps we are not being fair to them by engaging their activities in this way. Are we sure we understand that the rhythm of their lives is very important, and that the intervention of conventions in school and work, and the separation of the two, is perhaps more damaging than we realise?
Lord FORBES: My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, sits down, may I ask him whether he would agree with me that boys from working class homes can join the Scouts and get adventure? Can they not take part in adventure playgrounds? The noble Lord was trying to make out that boys from working-class homes cannot get adventure, and I cannot understand that.
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: My Lords, I have sat down, and I do not want to detain your Lordships a moment longer. But adventure playgrounds are
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not the same kind of adventure that we heard about earlier this afternoon.
6.5 p.m.
Lord HAYTER: My Lords, at the risk of returning to the subject under discussion, which was so ably put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, I should like your Lordships to cast your minds back a week or so to the film shown on television about the life and loves of an earlier Prince of Wales. Your Lordships may remember that at the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, Gladstone said to the Prince of Wales, "And how is your hospital fund?" The Prince of Wales said, "It is £200,000 ", to which Gladstone replied, "That is the best thing that has come out of the Diamond Jubilee ". I am glad to be able to tell your Lordships that that Fund is now 100 times as big. At the invitation of the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, may I concentrate on the help we try to give to volunteers, putting aside the staff college that we run and the grants we make. It is a curiosity that in this debate no one has defined what is a "volunteer ". I imagine one has to bring two things to the definition: first, that he is working in his own time, and secondly that he is unpaid.
There are four types of volunteers we try to help. The first are those in the field, and they are the salt of the earth. In the King's Fund, with our charter in front of us, we have to indulge in a certain amount of sophistry, because it is the King's Fund for the Hospitals of London. But, as chairman, I am clear in my own mind that people are more important than patients. In a sense, to have a patient in a hospital—and noble Lords will appreciate what I mean—is a confession of failure. We must keep the patients out of the hospitals. Let them come in if they have to, and then we try to ensure that the volunteers can fulfil a variety of personal needs which are not met by the hospital staff. It would be tactless to say that this increases the staff/ patient ratio. The trade unions connected with hospitals would not like that phrase at all, but it is true to say we increase the number of people caring for the patient. One thing we must remember—and those of your Lordships who have been in hospital will remember this—is that one is an isolated person, because the whole of the hospital team,

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even including the cooks, are mixed up with one's illness. It is often the case that the patient in hospital regards the volunteer as being the one person bringing normality to the bedside. I am the first to agree that there is a need for education. We want disciplined amateurs in this sphere.
Then there is the second type of volunteer who, in the minds of some people is perhaps the most important—the person in the self-help organisation. Possibly these people are the most worthy of all. There is the Spinal Injuries Association, Combat Huntington's Chorea, Colostomy Welfare Group—but your Lordships will know enough about it without my having to explain. If a person is subject to one of these specialised diseases, what a comfort it must be to find that he is not the only one in that situation, that there are people who have been through the same trouble who have, in the end, come out with their full life, in moderation. But the trouble at this moment with this particular organisation is that inflation has cut their income, and inflation has increased their needs. It should be commended to all community health councils that they should look to the self-help organisation in their own areas as having one of the most important claims on their interests.
The third type of volunteer, and extremely numerous, is the League of Friends of Hospitals. It sounds funny but when the King's Fund met the National Health Service as it came into being in the 'forties, it was thought at the time that the King's Fund would have nothing more to do; there would be no more grants for hospitals, because everything would be found in the National Health Service. Of course we were wrong, and we are still wrong today. The League of Friends are people who devote their expertise to raising money to help in hospitals. I have little doubt that some of them, I hope more and more, are members of the community health councils. This is work which the King's Fund has taken very much to its heart in present circumstances.
The ignorance which exists about community health councils is quite extraordinary. We made a small survey in a large city in the Midlands, and only 19 out of 94 people had ever heard of community health councils, and of those only
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7 had a rough idea of what it did, the other 12 saying it was a variety of things like keeping the streets clean, and setting up family planning clinics. Perhaps this is not surprising, because people do not think about these things until they are ill. However, if we are to make a success of the councils, the Government must play their part, associated with the King's Fund in one particular instance, in bringing to bear all we can to ensure that their minds are thinking along the lines they should.
The fourth kind of volunteer comprises those mixed up in the charitable organisations, those we have been talking about today, and even those like the King's Fund, which has many committees. Those committees would not be such a success if people did not in their own time devote a lot of energy to seeing that they really work.
I have a feeling, which I should express, that there are tendencies today in the organisational life of this country which seem to point to a reversal to the sort of bureaucratic set-up that existed in the 18th century. I shall never get over the abolition of the management committees in the reorganisation of the Health Service, in what we now know as the "dirty grey book ". What is interesting about it is that it was not the fault of one Government—if" fault" is the right word—but of two. Perhaps we shall one day read a book on how it really came about that that service was so disorganised that we are only just beginning to get over the shock. I would hazard a guess that perhaps there was an element in the Civil Service who felt that the new set-up was more advantageous than the last one.
If I may give another example on the same theme—and I apologise for going slightly off at a tangent—I was once on a body called the British National Export Council, another voluntary organisation so far as I was concerned because I certainly was not paid; that was abolished. I remember a noble Lord who sits on the other side coming to make this announcement. This organisation, made up of partly paid people and partly of volunteers, was told all of a sudden that the work it had been doing was no longer wanted. I know that several of us were very upset indeed. It is a matter of great regret that cut off from so much of the voluntary work are those people who were making

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what I think was generally considered to be a worthwhile contribution.
So I end with four questions in my mind. The first one is, are volunteers in hospitals really welcome? It is very easy to say, "Of course they are "; but there have been tendencies in the past—I am glad to say that these are disappearing—for the trade union element, for all the reasons you can think of, naturally to regard with a certain amount of dismay the number of volunteers coming into the hospitals, particularly if they were not educated amateurs. This I indicated at the beginning of my speech.
Secondly, will a determined effort be made to bring the community health councils back to their original aim? In those hospitals just round the corner in your own area there is no longer that management committee; there is only this team, and, sniping from the sidelines, these community health councils, the very people who at one time were on management committees and sharing the responsibility for the hospital. The only promise that I would make is that in conjunction with the Department we in the King's Fund will do our best to bring to the community health councils all the expertise possible to help them make up their minds as to the best efforts they can make in the Health Service as it stands today.
Thirdly, I hope the Government will not blow hot and cold on voluntary committees which help them in their work. Those special self-help organisations that I have spoken about seem to me to be something which have a special need, and I hope in a variety of ways they will get the help they want. Lastly, I would merely say that there is this commitment, so far as I and my colleagues in the King's Fund are concerned, with this very long history of over 70 years of working with the Department in a peculiarly British way; we can do things on behalf of the Department which in the long run can be of great benefit to us all.
Baroness WARD of NORTH TYNESIDE: My Lords, would the noble Lord allow me to intervene for one moment? Could he say whether the King's Fund, which is such a wonderful organisation, can now be used outside the area which was originally covered by the King's
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Fund, in other parts of the country? I have always felt that this limitation was a great disadvantage, for instance, to my part of the country. I wonder whether it is now extending over a much wider field.
Lord HAYTER: My Lords, I must give a truthful answer to that, even if it bounces back on me at a later stage in King's Fund circles. The truth is that the King's Fund is for hospitals in London, and its counterpart is the Nuffield Provincial Hospital Trust; they make grants in different ways but on a similar scale. But we have interpreted our remit in a very wide way, and in our staff college we train administrators for the whole of the country. We also have conferences of doctors and administrators from all over Europe, Australia and New Zealand, because, perhaps with a little bit of sophistry, we feel that this can only do what we want it to do and that is to help the hospitals of London. We are as all-embracing as we can be. But please do not raise too many legal complications on that issue!
I was just about to say that the King's Fund looks very carefully into the future. It tries to reorientate itself to meet the changing conditions. I think it is one of the organisations which the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has in mind, which need encouragement and which I hope are doing good work.
6.18 p.m.
Lord HYLTON: My Lords, I should like to try to say something today on behalf of the mentally handicapped. I do so in no way as an expert, and in fact as a complete beginner. But I think it important that someone should speak on behalf of the mentally handicapped, if only because they do not have the advantage which the physically handicapped possess of having eloquent spokesmen in your Lordships' House on the Mobile Bench.
I would preface my remarks by recalling an incident that happened to me last year in France. After an interval of eight years, I again met two mentally handicapped friends. I was not expecting to be recognised, but to my intense surprise I was immediately greeted. I should add that during those eight years I had added a beard, and that our original

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acquaintanceship had lasted only about three weeks. This made me reflect and wonder who really is normal and who really is handicapped. It makes me ask the question: why did this incident happen at all? I think the answer is that those two men had lived for 10 years in a community where handicapped and non-handicapped share their life and their work, and this is a very stimulating experience.
It sometimes happens that many of the normal barriers, the barriers one expects between the "we" and the "they", the helpers and the helped, are broken down in such a setting; broken down perhaps by the action of faith, hope and charity. In that kind of setting the handicapped and the non-handicaped call forth a deep response, from each other. The name of this particular community is l'arche, which is a French word meaning literally a masonry arch, but also has connotations, for example, of Noah's Ark, and of the Ark of the Covenant—perhaps both the Old and the New Covenant. I had the privilege of acting as cook for about a week in 1964 when this community was just beginning with two handicapped people and four or five others. Since then, three very large communities have grown up in France, and there are now houses running on l'arche lines in no less than eight countries, and the Continents of America and Africa, and India are represented as well as England and Scotland.
I come now to the needs of the mentally handicapped in Britain. Voluntary bodies have been pioneering in this field for a long time, and I am quite sure that they will go on pioneering. My noble friend Lord Grenfell cast considerable light on this in a debate in your Lordship's House in 1972 when he mentioned rural training, living and working communities in this country. The previous year Command Paper No. 4683, Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped, had pointed out that there are three times as many mentally handicapped people over fifteen years of age as there are under fifteen, and pointed out also that there are tens of thousands of mentally handicapped people living in subnormality hospitals who could be discharged tomorrow if only there were suitable places for them to live with appropriate degrees of care and support.
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My noble friend Lady Loudoun elicited earlier this year the information that some 8,000 mentally handicapped children are now in hospital who receive little or no education. I believe that there is a Government programme to try to cope with this situation which will provide some 250 places per year. How one wishes that that programme could be multiplied, because most of these children will have become adults before their turn will have arrived in so limited a programme as we have at the moment.
It may perhaps be said that since 1971 Governments of all Parties have made strides, have progressed, in providing adult training centres and hostels for mentally handicapped. I welcome this, but does it cope with the backlog that we have already, and cope at a time when about one child in every thousand of those now being born may suffer some degree of mental handicap? There is—and I say this because I live only one mile from an adult training centre—some uncertainty as to the exact purpose of these places. Is their purpose to train people for jobs in the outside world, or is it rather to provide occupation on fairly simple contract work? At the present time many adult training centres are understaffed, and all will be subject to the financial pressures and squeezes which affect all local authorities. I hope that even in this rather difficult situation the temptation will be resisted of concentrating only, or in large part, on the occupational side and the contract work side, and that the training for normal work in the community, or normal work in sheltered workshops, will be given adequate priority. I think that almost all adult training centres could use more volunteers. Most of them have good links with the local branch of the Mentally Handicapped Children's Society, but there are many other voluntary and community societies, organisations, groups, who could be involved in what the statutory adult training centres are doing.
This is the broad picture: that on the one hand there is a great unmet, unsatisfied need of mentally handicapped people; and on the other hand there are pioneering efforts of voluntary bodies to try to do something about it. To give a few examples, the National Mentally Handicapped Children's Society has

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already been mentioned in this debate, but I am very much struck and attracted by what they have done both at Slough in the field of industrial training and at Lufton Manor near Yeovil in the field of training for farming and horticulture. Then there is the varied work of the 400 local branches of the National Society, and of the other bodies involved in providing residential communities for the handicapped and sheltered workshops for the handicapped. Recently a new umbrella body has been formed called The Campaign for the Mentally Handicapped with the object of educating and informing the general public and of striving to secure justice for the mentally handicapped.
It may well be that in the present economic and financial situation there is very little chance of getting at all quickly adequate and comprehensive statutory services for the mentally handicapped, and that is why I would urge Her Majesty's Government to bring together essential Government Departments. health authorities at all levels, and local authorities specifically, in order to help the existing voluntary agencies. This help need not, and should not, be only financial. There is great need for encouragement and partnership of all the three levels of government with voluntary agencies. This kind of partnership can touch on such matters as staff training, and the secondment of personnel in both directions in the use of premises and transport. If that is done, I am convinced that whatever public funds are spent for the benefit of the mentally handicapped will achieve maximum value for money. If we can have this greater degree of co-operation, the mentally handicapped will benefit enormously, and great steps will be taken to remove the stigma of mental handicap which unfortunately has not yet been entirely dispelled.
6.30 p.m.
The Earl of KIMBERLEY: My Lords, I must crave your Lordships' indulgence and in particular that of the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, because due to a long-standing engagement I shall have to leave before the end of the debate. We have listened this afternoon to some fine speeches covering a wide spectrum of the voluntary community services. I shall speak briefly on one
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aspect of these services; that is, the regional councils on alcoholism, which are just one of a group of many charitable organisations which, as we all know, are today in dire straits. I do not have to repeat that we are immersed in a grave and severe financial crisis and it may well seem wrong now to talk about possibly increasing Government grant aid to some of these community services. But before we accept this fact we must look at the other side of the coin, and look at it objectively. We have to get our priorities right. Priorities, of course, come in many different orders and sequences; it depends on the point of view of the individual as to whether they are the social services, voluntary services, schools, defence, roads or nationalisation. I have even been told that the Community Land Bill would involve 12,000 additional civil servants and cost about £58 million a year.
Many of your Lordships will know that the problem of alcoholism and problem drinking in this country has increased very rapidly in the last few years. In 1972, for example, there were five regional councils whereas today there are 15. These councils are purely information and advisory centres designed to give help and succour as necessary and they are run entirely voluntarily. However, they, like many other of the voluntary community services, rely entirely on Government grant aid, on the local authorities and on charity; but unfortunately this type of charity does not have the public or popular or universal appeal of, for example, the Royal Lifeboat Institution, the Red Cross or even Lord Caccia's St. John's and other well-known charitable organisations. Government grants are minimal and the local authority grants are usually even less than minimal. There is also usually a complete lack of co-operation between the regional councils and the local authorities.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, said that local people did not want to know about "undesirable" charities and I am afraid she is right. The noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, said recently:
" We would provide the money if it were physically possible to have the co-operation of local authorities. "
This is the crux of the matter. The local authorities do not want to help; they do not want to know about what they consider are unpleasant matters. It would,

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however, be far more costly for the social services and the Area Health Authorities to provide adequate services for the sufferers and their families without the aid of the voluntary societies. For example, the cost of one full-time official, trained and expert in the field of alcoholism and problem drinking, would pay for the training of 20 to 25 voluntary counsellors.
It is alas true today that voluntary societies compete in the open market with statutory bodies for professional workers to obtain the best results, and their inability to do this considerably lowers their cost-effectiveness. I therefore feel that it must be the duty of statutory funding bodies to try to help guarantee the salaries of voluntary societies which have been accepted for Government grant aid. My noble friend Lord Beaumont of Whitley said that grant aid should have some continuity and I wholeheartedly agree with him on this; because, otherwise, it is bad both for morale and for these services if the professional workers in the voluntary fields permanently have to worry about safeguarding their salaries in the high cost-inflation days in which we live. When grants are made to voluntary societies, and particularly to those societies which find it difficult to raise money—as I said, because they are unfashionable or "unchic", or because they appear to support unpopular causes such as alcoholism and problem drinking, where unfortunately still there is a totally unnecessary stigma attached and widespread public ignorance of the nature of the problem—the statutory bodies should, or I would even say must, make some adequate allowance for present-day inflation.
As the founder president of the Cornwall Council on Alcoholism, I can state categorically that £100 was originally given by the local health authority and that still, in 1975, that amount is the same. There are, I agree, some slightly more fortunate councils in England which have had a slight increase, one rising by as much as 15 per cent. Perhaps some noble Lords feel that the regional councils should be nationalised or taken over by statutory workers; but I hope I have shown that this would lead to a large decrease in cost-effectiveness. Let it not be forgotten that there is usually a much greater willingness among sufferers from
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the illness of alcoholism and among problem drinkers to go to a voluntary counselling service for help rather than to go to what appears to them, quite wrongly I admit, to be the frightening image of authority.
6.38 p.m.
Baroness WHITE: My Lords, as I appear just past the midway point in the long list of speakers for this debate, I will endeavour to reduce the average length of speeches so far and will therefore confine myself briefly to two subjects. I have been constrained to speak in this debate because I have the honour to be the chairman of the International Committee of the National Council for Social Service and I feel that the international aspect has hardly been touched on so far. We have connections all over the world with others who are concerned with voluntary social service, but naturally enough in the last year or two we have been concentrating very much on relationships with our partners in the European Economic Community.
We were not sure, of course, what the position of the United Kingdom would be or which way the referendum might ultimately go, but we felt that it was incumbent on us to make certain so far as possible that those concerned with voluntary social work in this country should be informed and should keep themselves informed of the kind of organisations with which we would be in partnership in the other European countries. To this end, in the last 18 months we have held about a dozen seminars in different parts of the country, including Northern Ireland, and we also had one by invitation in Dublin, so that we could be appraised of the kind of organisation, often very different, to be found among the other Members of the Community. We have also opened a Europe desk here in London, and I mention this so that if voluntary organisations wish to be put in touch with or obtain information about comparable organisations in Europe, we would be glad to try to help them.
As a counterpart to this, we also have a representative in Brussels—a very intelligent, personable young woman—who keeps in touch with the work going on in the Community and alerts us to developments there of which we should have knowledge. Naturally our resources are

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by no means unlimited, but it might be helpful to Members of your Lordships' House who are connected with various forms of voluntary work in this country, to know that there is a fairly easy channel, if your own organisation is not international, whereby you can at least obtain information. We have a bulletin issued monthly entitled Look Europe. It is a very readable document which stresses the developments taking place in social work in the countries of the various members of the Community.
My Lords, I wish to keep to my pledge to be brief, and so I shall not go into the further ramifications of international work in this field. But I must say that since I took on this responsibility I have found it extremely interesting to note how strong is the voluntary aspect of social work in our country compared with many other countries. Even the Scandinavian countries, for example—with which we so often feel akin in these matters—have far less voluntary work in the sense in which we would understand it than we have in this country. I was astonished a little while ago, while in Stockholm and Copenhagen, to find that the secretaries of the Councils of Social Service there were both civil servants. We work as closely as possible with the Departments concerned in this country, and while we have observers from them at the meetings of the executive committee of the National Council of Social Service, we should not expect to be administered by a Government Department.
Having touched on the international aspect of this subject, I wish to say a word or two on a question which has been the theme song of many speeches in the debate; that is, finance. Unfortunately, I was not able to be present when the opening speeches were made. I particularly regret that, but I was engaged in other public work on the important but rather odoriferous subject of waste management. I am sure that reference has been made to the very great difficulties in which the voluntary organisations find themselves at present. I greatly hope that we shall be able to find ways through the problem, partly by economising and reorganising ourselves where necessary. But I also hope that those who have hitherto been contributing to charitable
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organisations—even if they are under some stringency themselves—will not cut off such aid, because it can be so infinitely damaging if one has to stop in midstream because an expected source of help is not forthcoming.
My noble friend Lord Longford referred to a debate held in this House, as he said, almost 26 years ago to the day, and it happened that over the weekend I read the report of that debate, in which there were some very distinguished speakers, including the late Lord Samuel, the late Lord Nathan and the late Lord Beveridge. An interesting suggestion was made in that debate by which the funds of the voluntary organisations might be supplemented through no cost to anybody. Two propositions were put forward in that debate and I have been unable, in the couple of days since the weekend, to do sufficient research to discover whether they were ever seriously discussed and, if so, with what result. The National Council of Social Service appears to have no knowledge of the history of this matter. One suggestion was that when persons die intestate and there are no recipients of their estates, the money should not go into the Treasury, but should be put into a common good fund and the proceeds devoted to sustaining various charitable and voluntary organisations. They would benefit from it at no real cost to the State, because the money would not be the State's to start with.
Another suggestion was that banks which hold accounts of persons who, for one reason or another, vanish, and who, after a certain period, one could reasonably presume were not likely to turn up to claim their money, could arrange for this money to be put into such a fund. I thought this an ingenious idea. There could perhaps be an arrangement whereby if the person concerned did reappear, any of his money which had been absorbed into the fund could be repaid to him. I believe that these two ideas are not altogether far-fetched and that there would be a certain equity in them I should he greatlly interested to know whether they were ever pursued and whether any approaches were ever made after that very distinguished debate, so long ago, to, for example, the clearing banks to see whether some such scheme could be worked out.

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There is in existence a charities aid foundation which is independent of, but under the general aegis of, the National Council of Social Service, to which general donations can be made and distributed to appropriate voluntary organisations. This is a very suitable recipient of gifts from private persons, or from industry. Such people, or such industries, may not necessarily wish to favour particular charitable work, but they may recognise that they should observe the principle of making gifts to voluntary work or charitable organisations, without necessarily wanting to involve themselves directly in any particular organisation.
I greatly hope that the feeling against charity, which I understand only too well and which was referred to by my noble friend Lord Houghton of Sowerby, could become more and more transformed into a concern for voluntary work. I read in several publications recently criticism of, and complaints about, organised workers in this country. It was stated that they are not conspicuous for their concern with, or contributions to, voluntary work. There have been many suggestions that there should possibly be a voluntary levy for charitable purposes. This has never caught on. But I should have thought that, with the changing attitude which has been occurring, particularly among the younger generation, and in the light of the many self-help organisations which have developed in the last decade or so, perhaps the younger generation of organised workers and trade unionists might feel more in sympathy with the need for supporting many of these organisations. The only field in which I have ever experienced any support from trade unions is a very important one—adult education—which is not one of the areas of voluntary effort where it is easy to obtain money. My noble friend Lord Houghton spoke of animal welfare, and I should have thought that that is the easiest of all. It is far easier to get money for cats, dogs and birds than it is to get money for human beings. I did not feel quite as sympathetic towards my noble friend on that point as he might have hoped.
I was very pleased that we had a maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, because we are awaiting the results of the survey he is undertaking,
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and we very much hope that it may produce some constructive ideas. I should mention another survey in which I am very much interested—into charity law—which is being undertaken by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman. Certain charities which find themselves greatly restricted by some aspects of the present law on charities could be affected very significantly by this survey.
I hope that out of this debate we shall find ways of improving the position of the organisations, which are so multifarious that one hardly knows where to begin and end when speaking about them. But they are organisations on which a great deal of the quality of our national and community life depends, and therefore I am particularly glad that today we have had this opportunity to discuss them.
6.50 p.m.
Baroness HYLTON-FOSTER: My Lords, starting with the assumption that there is a need for voluntary services in the community, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for choosing this moment to draw our attention to the need to keep them going, despite the grave economic problems facing the country today. The importance of the subject is emphasised by the two excellent maiden speeches which we have had from the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pike. I am certain that we shall listen attentively to them when they speak again.
I turn briefly to some of the problems facing voluntary organisations. I must declare an interest in the Red Cross of which I have the honour to be chairman of the London branch and a member of the national council. I wish to draw attention to three main problems—inflation and how it affects charities, taxation and the established voluntary organisations, of which a number are represented here today. First, I shall deal with inflation, which inevitably increases the cost of organising voluntary service to keep it at the level of efficiency necessary to make it a practical means of supporting the State services. Inflation increases volunteers' expenses, especially those of travelling. It also increases the costs of running services on an agency basis, probably for the local authority.

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In the past volunteers have often paid their own expenses. Inflation and taxation now make this impossible. They discourage the young, whom we all want to gather in after they have left school, as was mentioned by the noble Prince this afternoon. Services run on an agency basis are largely dependent on local authority grants. There is great anxiety at the moment lest these are no longer forthcoming. It is generally accepted that voluntary societies can run these services more economically than the local authority. I am sure we all need to be reassured that those who require these services will not now be neglected. This problem was highlighted in paragraph 73 of the Local Review of Charities in the Report of the Charity Commissioners 1974, and also in the Home Office Voluntary Service Seminar Report on financing the voluntary sector (paragraph 20F).
Secondly, taxation is also a major problem. The imposition of VAT has severely affected both nationwide and international voluntary organisations, particularly those giving service like our sister organisation, St. John, and my own, the Red Cross. The financial effect is serious enough, but the administrative implications are worse. What is more, it is a disincentive to charities to have a turnover of more than £5,000 in order to be able to increase their activities, because if they should they would then be liable to VAT.
Another burden falls upon those who have to work out the different rates of VAT on aids to handicapped people, which has to be paid on aids that are not zero-rated, and also on replacements in medical loan depots, unless they are individually applied for with a doctor's certificate. This requirement was laid down in Statutory Instrument 821/1974. My Lords, are charities being used as tax collectors for the Government? I should like to ask the Government whether the Charity Commissioners consider that tax collecting is a charitable purpose? I wish now to refer to community land reform, which will be a crippling tax for charities and will inevitably mean a reduction in services, as land and property have been regarded as an investment. I will not labour the point, because it was mentioned earlier. And, of course, capi-
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tal transfer tax is likely to have a considerable adverse effect in the long term on charitable income obtained from legacies.
I come to what I call the established voluntary societies versus the rest. Governments always say they are committed to the voluntary sector, but I often wonder whether they realise how much they rely on the experienced charitable organisations with traditions and standards to maintain, whose own volunteer members provide the service which is so often done on behalf of the local authority. The importance of preparation and training for the job was illustrated in the Indo-China war by the Save the Children Fund team, by the Scottish Red Cross team who stayed there to the bitter end; and also, so far as the Red Cross is concerned, in the Moorgate tube station disaster which was mentioned earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich.
On that occasion, 25 Red Cross volunteers arrived within half an hour of being called out by Inspector Fisher—who I am sure we are all delighted was knighted in the last New Year's Honours for his excellent work in that terrible disaster—and remained on duty in shifts to the end. They worked there with the WRVS and the Salvation Army. Their job was the difficult one of taking relatives to the mortuary until it was impossible to get the bodies there, because they were either decapitated or too decomposed. They then cared for the relatives, and late in the evening dealt with their welfare problems—because it will be recognised that the statutory services have limited hours. After 5 or 5.30 p.m. they have left and therefore, in their absence voluntary societies have a big part to play.
There has been a general recognition by successive Governments of the value to the State of the voluntary charitable movement, because it relieves the State of many of the functions which it would otherwise be forced to provide. I should like to see recognition by the Government of the need to provide facilities and opportunities for training in hospital wards and emergency and accident departments throughout the country, so that when the need arises the Red Cross, for instance, can continue to function as an emergency organisation by providing competent volunteers with knowledge

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and experience in the basic nursing, welfare and first-aid procedures and can be well equipped when the time comes. In emergencies there is no time to learn. Those who volunteer do so as their contribution to society, and not to do somebody out of a job.
The noble Lord, Lord Caccia, mentioned first-aid in industry, which is important. In London we are running several courses a week and are limited only by the expense of training the instructors. During the bombing episode we were training many peple in emergency aid, so that people could look after themselves. Voluntary organisations exist fundamentally to discover those who fall outside the net of the statutory services. When she was addressing the Coventry Social Services conference last year, the Secretary of State emphasised the shortage of manpower and the need for trained personnel. Therefore, I hope that the Government will take all these factors into consideration, so that the voluntary organisations which work with what I would call the modern type of volunteer can continue to fill the gaps as and when they arise.
7.1 p.m.
Lord GORE-BOOTH: My Lords, this has been an intensely British occasion. What I was expecting to happen has happened. The noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, advocated animals before I got round to advocating children. Another thing which was quite British happened. I was doing a careful count and I think that the first speaker to use the word "abroad" was the 10th speaker on the list. The noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, in a splendid maiden speech, has talked about "abroad". I shall do so, but I would first declare a direct interest on this subject on two counts: first, as chairman of the Disaster Emergency Committee and, also, as chairman of the Save the Children Fund.
In that latter connection, may I say what I delight it is whenever the noble Prince addresses us in this House. And in that connection, may I also express in this House my gratitude to his sister, Her Royal Highness, Princess Anne. She is not just the President of the Save the Children Fund, but an active and very much involved President, to whom we are very grateful. The Disaster Emergency Committee—in case any noble
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Lord should be unaware of it—is a committee of the Heads of five leading charities who work internationally: the Red Cross, Oxfam, Christian Aid and its Catholic ally, Cafod, and War on Want, as well as the Save the Children Fund. I mention it because it has a moral in respect of the organisation of voluntary agencies. This group comes together spontaneously when there is a disaster of international gravity which would be deserving of and likely to get the sympathy of the British people. Within if not hours certainly a day or two it has access to television, and the enormous sums of money that the British people hand in on occasions when there is a real need come pouring in to that famous address PO Box No. 999.
I mention this in terms of organisation because the voluntary agencies are sometimes reproached for their rather miscellaneous nature and alleged inability to co-operate or to keep out of each other's way. It is in the nature of voluntary effort that it should have its untidinesses, but this activity shows that one can co-ordinate spontaneously in a way—and I pick up a cue from the noble Lord, Lord Hayter—that would be resisted if one was compelled to co-ordinate. I think that the voluntary agencies, in this respect, have something of a duty to co-ordinate spontaneously. I give an example from my own experience. We have an excellent relationship with our friends of the NSPCC because when we come across a case which seems to be theirs, we hand it to them and they do the same to us when a case involves play groups, one of our specialities. Across the board, we all ought to be doing it—perhaps more of it and perhaps more quickly. But it is the right process, and a process which the Government, or anyone giving money, have a certain right to demand of the voluntary agencies.
Going over quickly some of the points not wholly dealt with, I should like to say a word about taxation. In that context I was grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Pike, for the expert contribution which she made to this debate in her maiden speech and particularly to say how much we on these Benches appreciate the remarks she made about Lady Reading. Lady Reading was a familiar and intimate member of this group; we all have vivid memories of her and it is a delight

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to be reminded of her. The noble Baroness spoke about the disadvantage of the various forms of taxation with which we find ourselves dealing. She concentrated in one of her statistics on mileage, but it also applies to taxation itself. She said that you have to have a nest of accountants somewhere when you are dealing with this matter, but the money would be spent more advantageously than in hiring them to look after your taxation problems. Some of our activities are called "exempt", some "chargeable", others are subject to VAT, in part probably rather than in whole, and some of them, like my present speech, are zero-rated! This is not a way in which voluntary agencies should be asked to spend their time and money. I hope that the Government will have another look at this, because while it takes time to tidy up it is not humanly impossible.
I make one suggestion on taxation to the noble Lord, Lord Harris. He is aware, and anyone who has worked in Government is aware, that one of the things that the Treasury hates to do, or any financial authority, is to make available the same sum of money for operation "B" which is a slight adaptation of an operation which we shall call "A". Obviously, you must not move money across to divergent operations; but at the slightest sign of adaptation down comes the veto, "No—it is not the same thing. You cannot have the money that you were getting for this operation before it was adapted. "That can be unreasonable, because as the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, made clear, so much voluntary work has been essentially pioneering and still is. In the course of pioneering, you emphasise changes because changes there must be. Then you find yourself up against this piece of bureaucracy, and that is the thing which should be eased. I hope that, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, attaches "Greenwich" to his name, he will be able to introduce a little latitude in this matter.
I have spoken already about pioneering and I would emphasise it again. I should like also to deal with a point which bothered some critics of the voluntary agencies; notably, Mr. Nightingale in his authoritative book on the subject,
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A Question of Doctrine. He seemed to feel that the agencies ought not to act as the agencies of Government. The argument may be that if you once act as an agency of the Government, you become beholden to the Government not just in operation but in policy. If one would apply that criterion, many thousands of Nigerians who are alive today would be dead, because the Save The Children Fund became the agency for relieving and helping the children for the British Government during a large proportion of the Nigerian civil war. It was only because we were ready to do that, and the Government were ready to trust us, that these people are alive today. My argument would be—and it may be a closed argument by now, but it is worth mentioning—that if you have a robust Board or Committee in charge of your operation, you can decide before accepting Government money whether or not you are getting it on terms which are tolerable. And traditionally voluntary agencies will take an extremely honest line on issues of that kind. So my comment would be this: that it would be a bad principle to adopt that you cannot act as an agency of Government, but that you must make sure in doing so that the terms on which you accept are those suitable and give you release if Government policy changes in ways that your organisation will not accept.
My Lords, those are a few points which I have mentioned, because in essence they have not been raised before. I think we should feel grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, not simply for launching a humanitarian debate or a review. Although we are dealing with affliction, with disease and want it is a cheerful debate because we are debating about good, enterprising people who are trying to improve this world, be it ever so little. If the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, is unhappy about youth and distrusts our offers of adventure, I should like him to look at some of the organisations with whom I deal anywhere from Belfast to Bangladesh, because there is the adventure of youth. If the noble Lord saw young people working in a club in Devonport or a young nursing sister working on a boat on a river in Bangladesh, he would see the adventure of helping other people. Perhaps that is the great adventure of life. Because that is

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so, I can assure your Lordships—and perhaps I do not need to do so—that once you get involved in this activity it is something you never want to leave. For that reason, your Lordships' House should wish well all the great efforts which the voluntary agencies are making to make the world a little better for a large number of people.
7.11 p.m.
Lord FORBES: My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Windlesham for introducing this Motion. I think it may rightly be said that the need for voluntary service is absolutely paramount for the simple reason that it brings out character in young people; it brings out the best in older people, and costs the country little. Because of its great impact on young people, I want to make a small attempt to follow the noble Prince, Prince Charles, in what he said concerning voluntary service and young people.
Contrary to what many would think, young people today have a great idealism for which they are constantly probing for an outlet. Often when they cannot find any natural outlet young people turn to undesirable ways of fulfilling their desires. Then comes the tragedy of life, when young people take the wrong turning and cannot get back again on to the right road. It is tragic when there are not sufficient openings in voluntary service for young people who are full of vitality and enthusiasm. The critical time is when young people, having finished their academic studies, want to try out their idealism and make their mark as adults before starting a career. It was in this field that National Service played such a vital rôle. Countless people today look back with a feeling of satisfaction and gratitude that they were able to serve Monarch and country by doing National Service, even though at the time many probably kicked against the traces and thought they were wasting valuable years of their lives. Today we have voluntary service, but not National Service—more the pity!—for there is real need for some form of service to the nation so that young people do not grow up with self uppermost in their minds.
Young people, above all must be made to feel they are needed and not that they are trying to squeeze in somewhere. It
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should be made clear to them that they are being welcomed with open arms to do a vital task. It is also essential that those involved in voluntary service are convinced they are doing a worth while job. In short, the vitality of youth must be harnessed for the good of the country, and that is best done through voluntary service, as by doing this their characters will be developed, and they will learn to stand on their feet.
In the so-called underdeveloped countries life is often primitive compared with our Western way of life, and people survive mainly by their own efforts. In doing so, they lack what we today consider to be the necessities of life, yet they have something which many in the Western World will not have—happiness When people live unsophisticated, down to earth and close to nature lives, a form of voluntary service and voluntary restraint is all part of the daily life and is different from our highly sophisticated life where, ironically, too much has been done for us by the State. Initiative has been squashed by countless rules, regulations and laws, so in the end many people are tempted to sit back and wait for the State to do everything. This tends to hold back voluntary service.
The country cannot thrive unless people pull together for the good of the whole community. Today, it is only too evident that certain elements are not working for the country as a whole. The concept of voluntary service, self-discipline and voluntary restraint no longer comes naturally to all. The concept of voluntary service and self-discipline must be brought back. I believe that self-discipline, doing what is right and not taking the easy way out, is necessary if democracy is to work. If this is to be done, voluntary service must be encouraged wherever possible. It is by doing voluntary service that young people learn self-discipline.
Governments can help over voluntary service. The role of Government is not too demanding but highly important. Voluntary service should not be beholden to Government. The hands of the voluntary organisations must not be tied; they must be free. Direct Government help should be in the form of priming the pump to get an organisation started. Having primed the pump, the country will reap the reward of the small initial investment, because thereafter the work will be done

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by enthusiastic voluntary workers and leaders, many of whom are unpaid and give up their valuable spare time to keep the wheels turning.
Government should also help indirectly over training of leaders for voluntary service. While on the subject of leaders, may I say it is imperative that the leaders chosen for training should be men and women, boys and girls, of the highest quality. It is they who set the tone and the pace. The youth of today are every bit as good as their predecessors, and the forces for good are immense. What is needed is that these forces should be made use of, and for that we need leadership—something often sadly lacking in the country today. It is a sad state of affairs that young boys waiting to join the Scout movement are prevented from doing so by the lack of leaders. Leaders must be found. Once again I must stress that quality is far more important than quantity.
I believe Government might help in another way. They might consider a scheme which is, I understand, practised in America, whereby members of registered voluntary organisations get tax relief on expenses incurred in connection with their voluntary work. That is small recognition but, none the less, much appreciated by those who give so much in the interest of others. Anyway, it would be a small price for the country to pay. Happily, there is great encouragement from the Church. The Church is playing an important role in connection with voluntary service. This is as it should be, because voluntary service is surely part of the Christian way of life. I hesitate to suggest that if the Church went out even more into the field of voluntary service its ranks would swell, and the new active recruits would be mainly young people whom the Church cannot do without.
May I touch on another highly important aspect of voluntary service, the international side? Nobody can doubt that the work of Her Majesty's Ministers and diplomats would be easier if the people of different countries understood each other and each other's problems better. Voluntary service can play a big part here. Voluntary service is not confined to this country. There
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is the organisation Voluntary Service Overseas which does a splendid job is many parts of the world. In addition, many voluntary organisations like the Scouts encourage boys in the movement to travel overseas. Today, the United Kingdom's Scout movement sends some 5,000 boys to other countries, and fully 5,000 foreign boys come to this country each year. Each boy goes overseas as an ambassador of his country, and with few exceptions they are spendid down-to-earth ambassadors. This two-way traffic is greatly to be encouraged. Cheap travel concessions would do much to help and to swell the numbers.
Leisure hours for many are getting longer, though not for executives. Because of this young people, with all their vitality, must be given opportunities to let off steam in good healthy ways, instead of resorting to crime, violence and vandalism. It is here that the National Playing Fields Association has a vital role to play in helping to provide grass-roots facilities for sport and recreation in the form of a back-up to the Sports Council, which is entrusted with the task of helping to provide the major sporting and recreational facilities in the country. In the National Playing Fields Association we have not only vast encouragement but also continuous positive action from our most energetic President, the noble Duke, the Duke of Edinburgh, who sets us all such a fine example not only in sportsmanship but also in his concern for young people. We are most grateful for his leadership.
My Lords, it is imperative that the new local authorities recognise the importance of sport and recreation for the wellbeing of our country by giving young people the opportunity to develop along the right lines, both in body and in mind. All too often, local authorities let sport and recreation slip to near the bottom of their priority lists. This tendency must be reversed. Help can quite easily be given to sports clubs by making the present 50 per cent. rate relief mandatory instead of discretionary. This is the year of local government reorganisation in Scotland. The new local authorities must not only accept responsibility for sport and recreation, but in these difficult financial times they must ensure that sport and recreation do not descend in the priority list, because the future of our country depends on the

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youth of today. It depends on their physical and mental wellbeing and, above all, on their character—all vastly more important than material wellbeing.
People today are desperately trying to grasp something to unite the country. If we do not have National Service, I hope that the Government will encourage voluntary service which gives tone and quality to life and enriches the community as a whole. The future of our country depends on people—our youth. Voluntary service can make them. Young people must be encouraged to take part and, above all, opportunities must be within their grasp.
7.26 p.m.
Baroness STEWART of ALVECHURCH: My Lords, may I first say that I will be very brief. I should like to express my appreciation of the speeches made by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pike. I am sure that we all hope to hear from them again on many other occasions. We would all agree that significant changes have taken place in the social services during the last few years. One change is the far greater co-operation between the voluntary and the statutory services; another is the emphasis on helping people to help themselves, rather than merely helping them; and the third,—and to me most important of all—is the greater recognition of human rights and human dignity.
This debate recalls for an experience of my student days when I was training as a social worker. I was sent to visit girls and young women who were expecting babies, and I was asked to look at their marriage lines. I did not very much like the idea and I resolved the problem by putting a tick in the appropriate place without asking the question. The result was unusual pressure on what I called in those days the "married beds" in the local hospital. Of course that could not happen today. One of the great social problems today is loneliness and isolation, and this problem has probably been aggravated by our greater recognition of human rights.
For example, we trust our general practitioners, our doctors, not to reveal the confidences placed in them, although it might be very helpful if social workers knew about them. We do not feel that
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it is possible to open the front door of a near neighbour and look in because we have not seen him for a month or two, and fear that he may be ill or dead. We feel that his home is his castle, and everybody else in the street will feel the same. As we all know, occasionally there are tragedies that might have been averted. Equally, of course, the police cannot just walk in; they have to have a warrant. There are more problems of that kind today than we have had in our history.
I have been wondering whether we could persuade the Government and my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich to initiate and, to some extent guide an investigation into this problem, perhaps through the media of tenants' associations and wardens of blocks of flats. Indeed, many streets in the country nowadays have wardens. Perhaps 100 of them could co-operate in an investigation into the problem of how we can help our neighbours who are suffering from loneliness and isolation, which we all understand but in which, happily, we are not all involved. If an inquiry could be directed by one or two full-time people, much co-operation would be offered to them by the ordinary people. If we do not get the views of ordinary people as to how we can help them and their neighbours, we shall not get very far. If I may say so to my noble friend Lord Harris, we hope that there will be progress in that field in the not very distant future.
7.30 p.m.
Baroness MASHAM of ILTON: My Lords. I also should like to congratulate the two very experienced maiden speakers and to thank the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for introducing this debate, because all over the country voluntary agencies have been hard hit by inflation—and almost every speaker today has mentioned this point. If this debate does nothing else, I hope it will give encouragement to thousands of dedicated people who are serving their community in many different ways through their voluntary service. It is essential in these difficult days, when some agencies feel they are being strangled, that morale is kept up. If this drops too low, it is easy to give up the unequal struggle.
I should like particularly to thank the noble Prince for his contribution, stressing youth. If for one moment I might substitute Gordonstoun for borstal, I

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should like to do so. Even when young people have drifted into delinquency, they have proved time and time again that they can do excellent voluntary work. At one borstal, the volunteer lads were named "the blue angels ", so successful were they in their efforts to help the local community. It is opportunity that is needed. I do not think that, even if they have the opportunity, many parents would want to send their children away to face the rigours of boarding school. They have not the choice if the courts send young offenders to borstal; but, knowing both systems, I can assure your Lordships that boarding school is far tougher!
I, like the noble Baroness, Lady Hylton-Foster, am a member of the Red Cross; but the noble Baroness belongs to London while my area is totally different, being the vast rural acres of North Yorkshire. I am connected also with several other voluntary agencies and therefore must declare an interest in this debate. The WRVS have a great advantage over many voluntary agencies, because they are able to offer members repayment of their expenses, and are reimbursed for such payments by the Government. My Red Cross members have long distances to cover, and many villages are now cut off from public transport. When we pay our members' expenses, we have to find the funds. There is definitely a dropping off of many of the younger and more active members, because present economic factors are forcing wives to go out and do paid work in order to supplement family incomes and keep up their living standards.
Many Red Cross workers do numerous duties to help to implement, as regards the provision of welfare services, Section 2 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act. They do especially valuable work in providing escorts for disabled people and running holiday homes for handicapped adults and children. Many local authorities do not have their own transport for the disabled, but the Red Cross often do, and in this way they can do more than just supplement the statutory services; they provide them. Many local authorities have cut their grants or have altogether stopped them. One co-ordinating body which has suffered because of this is the Yorkshire Council of Social Service. They can no
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longer afford a paid secretary. No doubt the much-needed communication between voluntary agencies will now deteriorate.
There is no doubt in my mind that volunteers will often undertake jobs which the professionals will not consider doing. I remember one occasion when two volunteers heaved an 18-stone helpless woman with multiple sclerosis on to the lavatory; and in my local education authority now is a paraplegic girl of 12 who cannot go to a secondary school because no one will help her to change a pad at lunch time. If the noble Earl, Lord Snowdon, who chairs a committee on the integration of disabled people in society, wants to achieve his aim, I suggest that he ought to look at the integration of disabled children into ordinary State schools.
I was very pleased to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, said today. As chairman of the Spinal Injuries Association and as a representative of people who have broken their necks and backs, I feel more could be done to help these people back into the community after long stays in hospital. The missing link sometimes can be so vital that it can prevent people committing suicide through depression or oversensitivity. This could be established by means of a service manned by fellow sufferers who have succeeded in re-establishing successful lives in the community. To run this service, full co-operation with the hospital social workers is needed, and hospitals could do far more to give incentive and encouragement to such schemes. Many hospital services are so stretched that they cannot give the full and comprehensive rehabilitation which is necessary for patients with lasting disabilities. Many hospital workshops are closed because there are no instructors, and this is due to the hospital service being unable to compete with industry in the recruitment of staff.
In many parts of the country, training and rehabilitation units have no adequate facilities for dealing with the more severe cases. For example, the training college in County Durham, which is run voluntarily with State aid from the Department of Employment, works very successfully. But it cannot cater for the more severe injuries and, therefore, this means that there are no training

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facilities in the North for these unfortunate people. One young man of 20, who sustained a neck injury, was discharged from hospital to his home in Richmond, Yorkshire; and when a social worker and the disabled resettlement officer called at his home, all they told him, in their ignorance, was that he was unemployable. That young man trained himself to be a computer programmer and, with the help of a volunteer who battled on his behalf for a transport grant, he obtained a job. He is now in full employment, mobile and happy, because he is earning his own living. All this took him five years to achieve!
Until we have better rehabilitation facilities—as good as those of Germany—I hope that Her Majesty's Government will give incentive to volunteers to help each other in conjunction with the statutory services. Fellow sufferers belonging to the Ileostomy and Colostomy Association are doing valuable support work, as they are with "stroke" cases. Because of the lack of speech therapists, fellow sufferers are also helping each other in their arduous fight to regain speech. These groups need accommodation in which to meet and they also need encouragement to succeed. But they can do a great deal to help themselves even without very much financial outlay. When there is bias against the volunteer it is a sad thing, because no one knows better the struggles involved than those who have gone through such an experience themselves.
I should like to pay tribute to the people who have worked voluntarily for the mentally handicapped. During the last few years, the facilities for them and support for their families have both greatly improved. These improvements would never have happened without the concerted efforts of the voluntary agencies. The National Health Service hospitals would be very sparse places were it not for the numerous voluntary agencies providing all the extras. When one begins to think of the life boat volunteers, the NSPCC, Alcoholics Anonymous and the thousands of other agencies, the question is: what would happen to the country if voluntary organisations ceased to be? The trustees of monies belonging to Charities have a moral obligation to invest safely: therefore, the yields on their funds are not very high. Unless
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the Government find it possible to do more in the way of relieving taxes and giving special concessions as regards the Community Land Bill, they may have to foot far more bills than they have envisaged so far.
7.40 p.m.
Lord WALLACE of COSLANY: My Lords, it is always a great privilege to follow the noble Baroness, because in her we have an example of the tremendous amount of voluntary work and valuable services which are given. I have this privilege now. We have heard a great deal about young people; many speakers have referred to them. I should like to pay my personal tribute to the young people who have served as volunteers overseas and done a tremendous job. There are many other young people who are only too willing to serve at the present time but who lack the opportunity to do so. So far as providing services for young people to assist in a voluntary capacity is concerned, there is the danger of patronage, because the young people of today are very mature and independent. Therefore, any hint of the old type of patronage would be enough to put off any teenager. Therefore, I do not advise any scheme which would introduce the question of privilege.
I have been privileged to represent the City of Norwich in another place. There we have an example of close co-operation between the local authority on the one hand and the voluntary organisations on the other—an example, may I say, to many other areas who ought to be indulging in greater co-operation in the provision of facilities. I know of many clubs for the disabled, elderly people and so on, where the people who are receiving such benefits are involved in helping to provide them for themselves and others.
I come now to a problem that has not been spotlighted this afternoon and evening. In many areas elderly people are accommodated in fine, modern flats or maisonettes but are left to pine for a small piece of ground in which to grow a few flowers or vegetables. On the other hand, there are those who, due to increasing infirmity, are unable to cope with a garden and sit worrying about the neglected state of what was formerly a tidy and attractive garden. This is an

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area where more voluntary and neighbourly help is urgently needed. It is true to say—and here I am pleased to pay my own tribute to them—that organisations such as Task Force which has been set up in South-East London are doing a great deal of work in this field. It is interesting and very inspiring to know that so far they have enlisted the help of at least 10 schools. One of their jobs is to find land and also to help to clear and tidy old people's gardens.
May I draw attention to one example of imaginative voluntary service. Two years ago a mixed group of handicapped and able-bodied students from the Hephaistos School near Reading and St. Paul's School in Barnes carried out a survey project in Paris which resulted in the publication of Access in Paris—a tourist guide for the disabled. Later a similar survey was carried out in Jersey and a guide is very shortly to be published. A survey is to be carried out in Norway to establish ease of access in holiday areas, with special attention being given to youth hostels. The information that is gained in these surveys is fed to British and overseas organisations for the disabled. I feel that there is great scope for this work not only overseas but in home holiday areas as well.
I come now possibly to a "commercial". The Friends of the Hephaistos Fund need financial help, and I am sure that they would welcome an extension of the type of effort they are making, for here—make no mistake—is one imaginative way of increasing the mobility of the disabled, particularly the young disabled, and those who help them.
I come now to a voluntary service which does not ask for, or require, or beg for, State money. I refer to the Friends of Hospitals. In the National Health Service great work has been and is being done by Friends of Hospitals, not only by raising money for special requirements that are not covered by the National Health Service but also by providing such invaluable services as broadcasting record request programmes and sporting commentaries, hospital shops, catering facilities for those visiting geriatric patients and sending them birthday and Christmas cards. Sadly, unless this service is given, often there would be
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no visit for some of these elderly geriatrics who have no friends or relatives left to them.
I did not intend to mention this, but I remember very vividly that years ago it was my custom as a Member of Parliament with a "dicey" seat to send to all the people who came to see me a House of Commons Christmas card with a little verse and a goodwill message. Then I lost my seat, and some time later the supplies officer at the hospital, who was proud of his cheap contract for funerals and who always insisted on sending a mourner for a person who had died without relatives, telephoned me to say that someone had been brought in dead, that they had been through his belongings to try to trace a relative and that the only thing they could find was a Christmas card which I had sent to him. He asked me whether I knew the man or whether I was a relative. This is an example of a lonely person without a friend in the world. But for this act of mine, for which I do not claim any credit, that person would have had no consolation whatever. This type of thing is being done by Friends of Hospitals in many of the hospitals of our country.
There are many other practical services which are being carried out in this field by voluntary effort. These—let us face it—are adding to the care and recovery of the patient, because all of these little services relieve the anxiety of the patient, help him in many ways, and aid his recovery. I am sure that any member of the medical profession will agree with me about this. Unfortunately, however—and here I come to the point that I wish to make regarding the situation of Friends today—the reorganisation of the National Health Service by the previous Government is creating disillusion among many Friends of Hospitals organisations. Gone is the close personal link of the old Hospital Management Committees. In the eyes of many, there has been the creation of a remote, impersonal, bureaucratic monster, despite the creation of Community Health Councils which are facing their own problem of communication with higher authority.
Area Health Authorities—here I must reveal the fact that I am a member and vice-chairman of an Area Health Authority—with their small numerical membership face tremendous problems in trying

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to maintain the old spirit of close co-operation. Far too many of these authorities regard Friends' organisations as useful money raisers. As I have already indicated, there is a vast field of voluntary service to be tapped. May I say further—although I shall probably outrage the feelings of some people outside—that far too many officials regard the professional approach as important and the voluntary helper as a downright, damned nuisance. In these days that kind of attitude is not unusual.
This is one of the many aspects of voluntary service that we have discussed today, but as one who was proud to be in Parliament in another place, may I say that at the inception of the Welfare State I was serving in the Forces, and that the Beveridge Report was the key topic among all ranks. There will always be a place for voluntary service in the Welfare State. Indeed, social services can be extended and humanised by voluntary effort.
Like many other speakers, for the sake of time I have cut out a great deal of what I would have said, but may I conclude with these words. Let us delete "self "and substitute "service" in an imaginative appeal to the nation such as was made this afternoon in this House.
7.50 p.m.
The Countess of LOUDOUN: My Lords, there are many areas where, quite clearly, voluntary bodies have made an enormous contribution to supplementing the statutory services. Now, more than ever, this is necessary when the statutory services, through lack of manpower and money are unable to implement their commitments. In the social work field, to mention but two, the Family Welfare Association, which works only in London, has provided and initiated a service to many deprived groups who would otherwise have been neglected; another, similar organisation is the Family Service Unit.
The British Association of Social Workers, in January 1974, set up a three-year research project to study the relationships between social workers and volunteers, and a full report is hoped for not later than the end of 1976. This project has so far been funded by charitable bodies. A recent appeal to the Department of Health and Social Security for some additional finance to enable the
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Association to make a wider use of the material which is becoming available was turned down. Could not this decision by the Department be reconsidered?
The other point I should like to mention concerns the role of the voluntary services organiser in our subnormality hospitals. There are, of course, many practical difficulties that arise when introducing a voluntary help scheme into a hospital. Some of these difficulties are common to all hospitals, such as overcoming the fears of professional staff in regarding the volunteer as a "threat ". But where voluntary help schemes have been in operation for some time this difficulty is a thing of the past.
Sometimes, too, on the part of voluntary organisations already established in a hospital, there is resentment to the appointment of a paid organiser. I feel that what is most needed in organisational terms in the field of voluntary effort is more co-operation and co-ordination between existing voluntary agencies. If such organisations as the Red Cross, the League of Friends and the WRVS could come together on a national basis to discuss the need for, and development of, the services they provide in the hospitals, it would surely be of great benefit.
When current thinking is for returning patients of all handicaps to the community, much more thought should be given to the role of the voluntary services organiser. Of course, some organisers make a great effort to create for their patients facilities for social activities in the community, and a great number of projects take place outside the hospitals, with the full support of the professional staff; but this is not the case in most hospitals, where voluntary schemes are hospital orientated.
It would be helpful if a clear lead could be given by the Department of Health and Social Security for more emphasis to be placed on using the voluntary services available in the community when preparing patients for return to the community. The importance of an accepting and caring community in the field of mental health cannot be overemphasised. At the present time, even in the best hospitals the potential help available in the community when resettling patients is not utilised, and the expertise of the voluntary services organiser in this

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field does not seem to be realised. To my knowledge, no voluntary services organiser is included in the health care planning teams in the re-organised Health Service.
The voluntary organisations in the field of mental health have a wonderful record of development of new types of provision which, in a field that is developing and changing as rapidly as this one, is extremely valuable and is something which, perhaps, only voluntary organisations not subject to such strict limitations as statutory bodies, can achieve. They also fulfil the much needed role of pressure groups for a branch of medicine which has all too often and too accurately been described as the Cinderella of the Health Service, a situation the more deplorable when it is viewed in the light of the social and physical consequences of mental health. Mental health is surely a prerequisite of both physical health and a healthy society.
7.55 p.m.
Baroness ELLIOT of HARWOOD: My Lords, this has been a most interesting debate and we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for inaugurating it at this time. It is an important time and today we have had two remarkable maiden speeches, one from my noble friend Lord Wolfenden, who shares the same activities as my own in connection with the Carnegie Trust and the other from the noble Baroness, Lady Pike, about the WRVS and its marvellous work. To be able to hear two such speeches in a debate of this kind on an occasion such as this makes the whole thing even more worth while than it might have been. I think we were all delighted, too, to hear the voice of the Prince of Wales—from whom we have heard before because he made a speech on a previous occasion—and I agree with eyeryone that he is a most delightful and enterprising young man, and I believe he will help a great deal in this question of the work of youth organisations. Incidentally, he is now the chairman of one of the biggest trusts to do with youth; namely, King George's Jubilee Trust, which I served for some 31 years. I left because I thought I was getting too old.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: Shame!
Baroness ELLIOT of HARWOOD: Certainly it does a splendid job and I am delighted to see that the Prince of Wales is now the chairman. I was tremendously encouraged by the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich. He told us a great many things that the Government were anxious to do; he told us, quite rightly, that they had no money, and we all know that, but nevertheless it is wonderful how you can get by if you have the enthusiasm and drive to get help from many sources which are perhaps not always paid.
However, I would urge him to try to get from the Chancellor of the Exchequer every penny he can, because I am quite sure it is a good return on the money and very much cheaper than having to pay for people when they have to be dealt with by a fully paid professional staff and the Civil Service. I was extremely interested in what he said about the Voluntary Services Unit, which I know was started by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, but I am glad that the Government are still carrying it on and I have heard from conversations I have had with people who have had assistance from that Unit how excellent it is. I should like to congratulate the Government on their attitude towards it, because the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, rightly said that in the old days there was a sort of prejudice between the two Parties—perhaps not political prejudice but a feeling we on our side were doing good to others on another plane, and that is not really the idea at all. However, it turned out like that but it is no longer so. We are now all working in the same field and on the same basis, and I think this is an encouraging and good thing, because there is no doubt at all from this debate that whether it is the present Government or the last Government or any political Party, everybody has it firmly in mind that we all think that voluntary service is absolutely vital to the welfare of the State and the community.
There are three inquiries going on at the present time, and I hope very much that the people who are conducting those inquiries will have the opportunity of reading this debate. The first one, which has now been completed, is a small inquiry which was made by PEP—Political and Economic Planning—called,

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A Chance to Share: Voluntary Service in Society. This report which is coming out on Monday contains a number of interesting proposals, poses many questions and is a small but valuable contribution to the working of voluntary organisations.
Then, as we know, the Carnegie and the Rowntree Trusts are sponsoring an inquiry of which the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, is the chairman. Some of us—I for one—have already given evidence to this committee and I am hopeful that there are a number of young people and people of long experience in many walks of life on that committee. I also hope very much that the Trusts will make a report which will help us to understand what the function of voluntary organisations in the last quarter of the twentieth century is to be, because that is the title of the Inquiry. Then, as the noble Baroness, Lady White, mentioned, the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, is inquiring into the effects of charitable law and practice on voluntary organisations. All these inquiries are very important.
I think our debate has been very apposite, and I hope that all these organisations will read the Report of it. I do not think there is a single voluntary effort which has not been mentioned. I have listened to all the speeches, and have learned a tremendous amount, even though I have spent nearly all my life in voluntary organisations of one sort and another. I have had the interesting experience of being both on the giving end and on the receiving end. This is something which does not happen to everyone, but it is a very interesting experience. For 36 years, I have served on the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and for 31 years I have served on the King George's Jubilee Trust. In those capacities, one is in the position of receiving the applications, looking at them, analysing them, seeing what type of organisation is making the application, and seeing whether or not one thinks it is an organisation—however small and original—which should be supported.
At the other end, I have spent a great deal of my life running youth activities. For a good many years, I was chairman of the National Association of Youth Clubs. I have also been in local government for a long time so I have an appre-
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ciation of both sides of the picture, which I have found is very interesting. As the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, said, there is no doubt at all that voluntary organisations have started a great many of what we now accept as statutory services in this country. That is a great tribute to them. I am now talking about the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today, voluntary organisations are bodies which should be pioneering and experimenting, because those of us who have been in local government know that you cannot really risk the ratepayers' money by backing something when you do not know whether or not it will be a success. But if you are in a voluntary organisation, and you have a bright idea but are not sure whether it will be successful, you can get a trust or some local fund to back it, which can quite often lead to something quite considerable.
In the sphere of youth work, when I started—and goodness knows how many years ago that was; I should not like to tell your Lordships—there was no statutory money at all. We had nothing to do with education authorities. The local authorities thought we were running some small show which was very nice, but that was all. But today, every local authority has a youth committee; it is part of the further education services of local government. That is as it should be. When I say "part", I mean that it plays an independent and co-operative part, but it is accepted by local government. That is a good example of the way progress is being made.
My Lords, it is very important, when one thinks of co-operation, that once local authorities accept what the voluntary organisations have pioneered and take it on, the voluntary organisations should not continue to try to do exactly what they did before, because in that case the voluntary organisations are wasting time and energy. But they can certainly supplement, as many here have said. Those of your Lordships who have worked in the hospital and health services know how much people can supplement what is already there, but it is important that the voluntary organisations should not continue to do what they did before, just because they have always done it, when the local authority, or the Government, have in some way or other incorporated their work into the

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State system. That is something which ought to be looked at.
One of our principles when distributing money—and I think this has worked fairly well—is to work on the basis of backing good people. Often applications for a new venture have come to the Trust with which I have worked and we have looked to see who was supporting or backing that venture. I will give your Lordships some examples of what I think have been successful pioneering efforts. Before anybody heard of Leonard Cheshire, before he started any of the Cheshire Homes, he was known by one of our trustees. He asked us to help with the very first Cheshire Home in Hampshire. We did, and it proved to be a remarkable idea and a remarkable effort. We helped him to build the first Cheshire Home. I need not tell your Lordships, who know better than I, of the large number of Cheshire Homes which now exist all over the country and all over the world. This was a pioneering effort and we backed the man, Leonard Cheshire.
I am sure many of your Lordships know about the Children's Bureau, which was started by Dr. Pringle not very long ago. We thought Dr. Pringle was a remarkable person who had got hold of a good idea. We backed him, and the Children's Bureau is now one of the important social work organisations today. We backed Music for the Physically Handicapped. I cannot remember the name of the man whom we backed, but it was someone who had the idea of music for the physically handicapped, and it is now accepted as being one of the best ways in which we can help physically handicapped people.
Then there is the training of social workers, which we backed many years ago, long before even the universities started on this work. We found Dame Eileen Younghusband, famous from the LSE days and now retired, but a pioneer of social work training. We backed her, and revolutionised the whole training of youth workers and social workers. I am putting these facts forward to the Government because, with the other voluntary units, this is one of the ways in which the Government can try to get new things going. This is one way of getting real help to change and improve the com-
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munity services. There are many others, I am sure, of which I do not know or cannot mention because it is too late. But the idea of backing someone who has leadership, who understands and knows about certain aspects of social work, is very good indeed.
My Lords, in the present day there are new organisations springing up, about which quite a number of your Lordships have spoken. I would support some of these very strongly indeed as new developments in a new age. These organisations are started and supported by people who are participating in a certain sphere. I have had some experience of a small organisation called the National Society for Autistic Children. That has been run entirely by the parents of autistic children. It is amazing what they have done with minimum expenditure, the minimum headquarters organisation, and the minimum of finance. This is growing every day, every week and every year. It is being run by people who are interested, and who themselves have autistic children.
Again, the Council for the Single Woman and her Dependants, in which the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, is interested, is an organisation which has been started, run and financed by single women who have dependants, but who, in many ways, have tremendous difficulties if they are earning their living and have to look after aged parents. Then there is the National Council for One Parent Families and the organisation known as Gingerbread for the care of single parent families.
These organisations are new. Some of them are run by young people; they are people who are participating in the actual organisation itself. It is very economical; I am amazed what they can do on an extraordinarily small sum of money. I think this promotion of interest in a new situation is something which should be supported. I admire enormously what people are doing. Young people are working all day and then helping at night, as are also a great many people in voluntary organisations. They are ordinary people who work from nine to five, and then go out and work in the evenings again. Those people are much to be supported and helped, and that is the way in which voluntary organisations

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in the modern world will have to be run.
There is one other point I should like to make. I believe that some voluntary organisations must be prepared to close down. Lord Houghton spoke about co-operation and the difficulty of getting organisations to co-operate together. I am sure that that is so. There may be several organisations doing the same thing, or groups of young people running one sort of show, and if you ask them to co-operate with each other they will not. It is a real problem and can be the cause of a great waste of money. I should very much like to see some of these reports—and I make this hint to Lord Wolfenden who is sitting here—say quite honestly and frankly that there are too many organisations trying to do the same thing or doing things which should now be done by local authorities or the State in some way or another. I have always thought there ought to be a society for the veiling of statues. Too many statues are unveiled and far too few veiled. Some do not belong to our generation at all, and it would be much better if they were not there. I think one could say the same about some voluntary organisations—I am not specifying which—which could be veiled. I think that would be economical, and would not in any way affect the service given to the community.
This debate has shown that we are all convinced that the co-operation between the statutory and the voluntary, between the officials of local government and the officials of voluntary organisations, is extremely important. I think that is happening all over the country. In my authority, where I have been working for 29 years, we brought in voluntary organisations the whole time to help us. That meant that we did not have so many paid officials in the county council. It saved the ratepayers a great deal of money and it created a good spirit between the statutory people and the voluntary people. I think we are all agreed that this is something we must encourage in every way.
There have been excellent suggestions made by various speakers on the subject of finance and taxation. Lady Pike's description of the different rates of motor car allowances in the whole field in which she works very much appealed to me. Something of that kind is a nightmare,
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and I hope the Government will try to do something about it. There is no doubt that inflation is causing us all agonies of anxiety as to how to carry on. We must look at the relevance of the work and the way it is being carried out and get the best value for our money. In the pamphlet I have here from PEP, they reveal that there are 1,467 charities with incomes of £10,000 a year or more and the NCSS Charities Aid Fund estimate their annual income for distribution at £330 million. That is a terrific figure, and it shows the generosity of people in this country. I am quite sure that they will still continue so far as possible with their contributions. The difficulty is that it goes only half way compared to what it did before the great inflation started. I think it is doubtful whether in any other country in the world, except perhaps the United States, is there more voluntary work and money than here, and it is something we are all exceedingly proud of. Let us see that we get value for our efforts and value for our money, and since we are all agreed on both sides of the House that we want voluntary organisations to prosper, I hope the Government will take heart from this debate and continue in what I think is the very excellent policy they are carrying out.
8.16 p.m.
Lord SEGAL: My Lords, at this very late hour I must of necessity be brief, first, because it would be wrong to weary your Lordships with all that I intended to say, and secondly, because I am due to relieve my noble friend Lord Amherst on the Woolsack within the space of a few moments. I should like to say how greatly privileged we have been today to hear two maiden speeches of really outstanding quality which have set the seal on the whole of this debate, and also the admirable speech from His Royal Highness. May I also, in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Wincllesham, for introducing this Motion, say how singularly appropriate I feel it is that it should take place at this time. Here I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, but not quite for the same reason. I think it is singularly appropriate because we happen to be in the midst of Mental Handicap Week, when all over the country more than 500 branches of the National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children, of which I have had

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the privilege of being chairman for many years, are actively engaged in drawing public attention to the needs of the mentally handicapped in our midst.
One of the striking aspects about your Lordships' House is the large number of your Lordships who feel themselves under an obligation to render different forms of voluntary service, whether charitable, educational, scientific, industrial or economic, but covering the whole vast field of voluntary activities. The one point I should like to stress this evening is that these various forms of voluntary service are not confined to one class of the community who happen to be among the financially fortunate or who happen to have leisure on their hands. The organisation with which I am connected is an organisation of parents of mentally handicapped children, with a vast and growing membership running into many tens of thousands who are drawn from every class in the community. They know no distinction of colour, race or creed. For years now they have had a first claim on our time and energies, just because the needs of these mentally handicapped children have had a first claim on their parents over and above the claims of their normal brothers and sisters. It is just because these parents are often quite exceptionally gifted, and drawn from all sections of the community, as well indeed as from both Houses of Parliament, and because they devote so much of their time to the care and upbringing of these mentally handicapped children, that our community is relieved of a very heavy burden which it cannot in all honesty truly fulfil in any official bureaucratic capacity.
These parents are often far removed from the leisured classes. A West Indian plumber, for example, out of gratitude for the help we have given to his adopted child, would cheerfully give up his overtime at work to do work for one of our London day nurseries. This instance can be multiplied a hundredfold all over the country. When we initiated the series of Gateway Clubs where these mentally handicapped children could come and play with normal children, we were overwhelmed with offers of voluntary help, and within a few months hundreds of these clubs were established in our great industrial centres. Not least gratifying in the response we have in Northern
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Ireland, where 24 of our local societies are now flourishing and serve as a means of bringing together both Protestant and Catholic parents, reconciled by that common bond of having mentally handicapped children to care for, literally fulfilling the Biblical injunction that a little child should lead them together on the road to peace.
What so constantly amazes me is the readiness of parents whose child has been taken away to a home or institution, to devote their lives by means of voluntary service to helping parents who are less fortunate and who still have the problem of a mentally handicapped child on their hands. This is work that no trained official in the field of social service can adequately perform, however capable and sympathetic, for here we have a sharing of deep suffering, of affection, horn out of involvement and understanding which no amount of care and sympathy can replace. That is why we look to the Government to foster and encourage these voluntary societies in their important work, for they are part of the very fabric of our public life.
May I quote one small incident which emphasises the admirable quality of voluntary service. Yesterday the National Society of Mentally Handicapped Children launched during Mental Handicap Week a unique publication to which generous tribute has already been paid by the Press. It is called Answer Me World. It consists of an anthology of contributions by children, and by parents of children, who are mentally handicapped. It was honoured with an introductory poem by the Poet Laureate, Sir John Betjeman. No official publication, of which there are many, could ever have matched it in genuine authenticity. It has that rare quality that every word rings true, often wrung from the heart and born of a degree of deep suffering. That is a measure of the contribution that only voluntary service can make.
It is a strange paradox that when war or natural disaster, crisis or catastrophe, overtakes our community, people rush with their offers of voluntary service, but we have not yet fully learned how to harness our resources when we enjoy the blessings of peace. That is where our voluntary agencies can help; but they need active encouragement, and an occasional word of praise and appreciation from the powers

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that govern our country. As the noble Earl, Lord Longford, said, it has always been a source of intense pride to cur parents of mentally handicapped children that they are not Government subsidised. They prefer to depend largely on the pennies of the poor and on their own resources to maintain their organisation, uninfluenced by Government pressure or patronage. Indeed, they prefer to be entirely free to exert pressure rather than to have to yield to it. It is just this sturdy independence that is a source of such strength to many of our voluntary services, and I devoutly hope that it may long continue.
Here I should like to refer to that splendid maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden. He referred to his four Wolfenden points, which to me were strangely reminiscent of President Roosevelt's four freedoms. May I just make a passing reference to that fourth point of specificity. He asked, and very properly, why do not these organisations amalgamate? I remember how keen I was originally on this idea, and indeed how keen the late Duchess of Kent was on amalgamation to save overheads, to pool staff, to promote efficiency. But how quickly did I realise that I was utterly wrong! It was soon made clear that funds would not be forthcoming, that this was their organisation, the child created by these parents themselves for their own children; and we very soon realised that funds would probably dry up at source if it fused into an amorphous, wider, less individual organisation. Not only do these parents provide funds for maintaining the organisation but we always get vast voluntary countributions of funds for research.
I could go on at length on this subject, but that might be unfair at this late hour. However, I hope to be able to Snatch a few moments on some future occasion to discuss this matter directly with the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden. May I in conclusion say that there is a very great deal that the Government can always do to help, quite apart from giving financial aid. Their true objective should always be to foster, to stimulate, to encourage and assist our voluntary services wherever they may be found, and in this let us hope that our present Government may not be found wanting.
8.26 p.m.
Lord HUNT: My Lords, speaking at the tail-end of a long and informative debate just before the Minister is to reply has been for me a most valuable experience in constraining me to listen and learn a great deal more about a subject about which I thought I knew a good deal already. It has also had for me the salutory merit of removing every vestige of originality in the thoughts that I had come prepared to deliver to your Lordships. In fact, I was tempted at one stage to think that the greatest voluntary service that I could do to your Lordships would be to remove my name from the list and not be here at all. However, at the risk of doing a voluntary disservice to the House, I have risen to support the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, who specially asked me to speak, in his contention—as of course everyone in your Lordships' House who has spoken today has done—that it is crucially important to enable the community work of the voluntary services to continue and not to starve them. I believe, as I think does everyone who has spoken, that there is room for more volunteering.
There is a need to develop the spirit of volunteering on a much wider scale than at present, precisely because, rather than despite, the troubled times that we are passing through today, or perhaps despite the troubled times we are passing through and because of the probability that other troubled times will lie ahead. The spirit of volunteering, as we all would agree, generates the very qualities that we need to see us through our troubles, and on which we would depend; to starve that spirit is certainly no prescription or cure for an ailing prosperity.
If I continue not to dot i's or cross t's on one or two points—my noble friend Lord Wolfenden in his notable speech said he would do this and then proceeded to make some very original points—but proceed to cross some i's and dot some t's to reduce the monotony of unanimity in the debate this evening, I hope that your Lordships will forgive me. In this I am perhaps in league, although I am tempted to cross swords, with that notable swordsman, the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby. I said that I believed that we need more voluntary effort and more voluntary service, and I

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propose to venture on some rather difficult terrain to pursue this need. Despite the tradition, the reputation, the magnificent work over the past 100 years or so by a number of voluntary agencies, I do not believe that it can be truly said that voluntary service has achieved the status of a national tradition, in the sense that it is evenly and equitably spread throughout our social strata.
The motivation of much voluntary service, and indeed the adult support of it, remain in the tradition of a minority whose background has been, even if it is less so today, the privileged, and in the minds of a great many people outside this House, outside the cosy comfort of our debate this evening, the image of voluntary service is one of patronage epitomised by the flowered feminine head-dress and daubed as "do-gooding". I believe that this still endures in the minds of a great many people. I intend no disrespect for those who head up and serve in the adult voluntary organisations of long-standing and renown, nor of the numerous and admirable mushroom enterprises which are mainly the inspiration of young graduates. Having been closely involved with both types of organisation over many years, I suggest that other people whose background has not been privileged are not represented, particularly in the hierarchies of these organisations, in proportion to their numbers in the population as a whole.
I said I would trespass on to difficult terrain and I hasten to add, having arrived in this socio-political minefield, that this is no reflection on anybody, whether they are involved or have been involved in voluntary service or not. For too long too many people have been perforce at the receiving end of voluntary service and too few have been privileged by the opportunity and experience of rendering it. In rapidly changing social circumstances, that opportunity is changing, too, and I do not for a moment dissent from what the noble Lord, Lord Segal, said, and others have said in different words; that is, that by many individual people whose background has not been privileged that opportunity is not being missed; in fact, it is being taken up. However, it is my contention that the tradition and practice of voluntary service, circumscribed as it has been,
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and deriving as it has from a past era of charitable patronage, should be encouraged to grow into a wider and more representative culture. Indeed, questions of privilege or social disadvantage are no longer relevant to the principle and habit of volunteering in our society. If worker participation in management is relevant in the industrial situation in our evolving social democracy, and I believe it is, then voluntary participation by working people in giving voluntary service outside the factories is no less relevant.
I digress slightly to link a thought, having had the thought put in my mind by the noble Prince in his notable speech when he referred to community service orders. I have a certain amount of knowledge of these orders, having been to numerous places in the country to see how those orders are getting on. They are still a novel resource available to the courts of law, but they have passed their novitiate and they are now generally available. The view being expressed in the Probation Service, of which I have the great privilege to be the president. is that a great deal of juvenile delinquency could have been avoided by those who are serving these orders and by many others, young people, who have come up against the law, had they been involved in a national scheme of community service. I wonder sometimes how many of those young hooligans who create havoc in the housing estates and before, during and after football matches have been given the opportunity ever to think and do anything for anyone other than themselves.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilion, spoke of substituting Gordonstoun for borstal and in that connection I have received a report from the Durham Probation and After-care Service which provides an interesting sidelight on this viewpoint. It reads:
" The community service order "
—and I remind your Lordships that this is from Durham—
" has shown that throughout the county there is a social vacuum in the field of leisure activities for the young adult. Accidentally, the punishment of comunity service has filled this vacuum for many and the word is spreading. Probationers and ex-probationers, and dare we say ex-offenders. are coming forward without an order from the court to work with and for others. "

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I am about to mount a hobby-horse, encouraged again by, but without any collusion at all from the noble Prince, in giving a little more substance to the idea he mooted in his remarks about giving the opportunity to learn about and do something about service to every boy and girl. It is a hobby-horse on which I have tilted vainly at more than one Ministerial windmill. I am suggesting that it is no less the responsibility of the State to include this kind of experence within the statutory period of full-time education, or immediately following it than it is to fulfil its obligation to provide a basic education in literacy. If Gordonstoun can do it, why cannot the State?
We all know that many schools, perhaps most, now provide some opportunities for community service in secondary education, but we who know anything about this know that it is only a minority who can or do take the opportunity to do so. I believe that this basic thesis could be given expression and form by an education or a training element in the secondary school curriculum embracing all young people for a limited but specific period in their final year at school. If examination or prospects of higher education would be prejudiced by that, then it could be done immediately afterwards; it could be dove-tailed by a variety of models, normally into the final year but exceptionally into or immediately preceding the start of a job. It would be an experience which would give everyone, every young person at an important stage in growing up, an insight into other people's problems and an inkling of their opportunity for doing something to help. It would impart that sense of responsibility about which we have heard and which I maintain is so largely lacking at present. If we really believe in the importance of community, this is a way to achieve it. I believe it could be done without prejudice to the voluntary element in community service which it is so vitally important to preserve. Indeed one can say that such a programme could not be worked without the experienced guidance and co-operation of the voluntary bodies, because skilled supervision in the training of volunteers would be of the essence of the idea and it is in those very areas which are open to the voluntary bodies that a
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general programme for rendering service and training young people for service would have to be worked out.
Referring back briefly to community service orders, a good deal of fear was expressed at the beginning that community service orders on offenders would be harmful to volunteering and might take away the opportunities of the voluntary bodies, but nothing has impressed me more in the reports from the probation areas in which the pilot schemes were carried out than the point they have all made; that is, that community service order workers have contributed to the scope of voluntary work; they have filled gaps and provided a continuity which has often been lacking. I am quite confident that a general training element in the secondary education stage would not be prejudicial and would produce many more recruits from the voluntary bodies across the whole social spectrum. There need be no fear that there might not be enough useful work to do. It would stimulate research into the many areas of need which so far are not being met, whether in the conservation of our countryside or in our towns.
Again, I wish to quote from a report from a probation area, which gives some indication of the point I have in mind. This report relates to Nottinghamshire and it states:
" The existence of voluntary helping agencies has contributed as much to the uncovering of submerged needs as it has to the meeting of recognised community needs. Tasks have been referred on a scale which it is impossible to meet. … At times, the entire workforce could have been absorbed by meeting the needs of one particular voluntary agency, or undertaking certain types of work for a single category of beneficiary. "
The report concludes:
" Demand on such a scale causes concern about the extent of much unmet and urgent need. "
It is equally the case that more voluntary help, adequately trained, would strengthen the statutory social services. Ask any social worker or probation officer if he or she is able to give as much individual care and attention as he or she would wish and the client may need, to the many clients on the case lists. I think that from all such officers you would get the same answer—that they have far too many in order to give sufficient individual attention.

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Finally, my Lords, it all adds up to this. I have a vision of what might be achieved both in social terms and for the great benefit of individual people in need of care, and those in need of outlets to their energies and aptitudes, by tapping more generally the potential sources of good will in support of the statutory services and the voluntary organisations. It is not just a pipe dream, because in community treatment of deliquency and crime, Holland has for long been setting a shining example which we could well emulate. I hope that it will not sound too competitive if I am tempted to finish by saying that everything they can do we can do better.
8.42 p.m.
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: My Lords, with the leave of your Lordships I should like to address the House for a second time in this debate. The noises off which we heard a moment or two ago are explained by the fact that it was realised that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was coming to the end of his speech and that the House was to be subjected to the pleasure of hearing me for a second time today.
I think it would be agreed that we have had a most stimulating debate. It has been one of the occasions in the life of the House which will be long remembered. I believe that there are two reasons for that. First, we have had the notable maiden speeches—referred to by a number of other speakers—by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pike. I noted that the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, at the beginning of his speech described himself as a "stumbling novice ". I do not think that he did so badly, and that I think would be the view of this House as a whole.
Secondly, I did not realise until this debate—and, I suspect, nor indeed did the noble Lord who initiated it—the wide variety of voluntary organisations which are represented by Members of your Lordships' House. I tried to take a note of these organisations and it certainly does not include all the organisations named. But they range from the WRVS, the problems of which were referred to in the speech by the noble Baroness—and I shall deal later with one of the points she raised—to the
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reference by my noble friend Lord Longford to the Melting Pot organisation. As he said, the Home Office has a close personal interest in this organisation, which is working among young West Indians in Brixton. Furthermore, we heard about Community Service Volunteers mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Pike, and the Young Volunteer Force Foundation, in the setting up of which my noble friend Lord Houghton of Sowerby was very much involved.
We heard, too, about the King's Fund, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, as well as the various organisations concerning the mentally handicapped, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Segal, and the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, dealt with a number of specific points concerning the problems of the mentally handicapped. These are inevitably the responsibility of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services. I shall make a point of drawing her attention to the contribution made by the noble Lord.
We also had the speech by my noble friend Lady White. I apologise for not being present to hear it. She referred to her own involvement with the National Council of Social Service. The noble Baroness, Lady Hylton-Foster, dealt with the Red Cross and the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth, spoke about the Save the Children Fund. The Scout movement was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, and the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, dealt with the Spinal Injuries Association.
Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, dealt with the involvement of the voluntary organisations in the community service orders scheme. As I am sure the noble Lord will agree, this has been a most important experiment, and I wish to take this opportunity, being involved not only with voluntary organisations, but also in the Probation and After-Care Department of the Home Office, to say how much we appreciate the tremendous amount of assistance we, and the local probation and after-care committees, have received from voluntary organisations which has contributed to what I think has been a remarkable success in a very limited period of time. I feel sure that the noble Lord will join with me in saying this.

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The noble Lord, Lord Caccia, referred to St. John's. This is the only organisation mentioned with which I have had any association during my life. While still at school, I was a St. John's Ambulance cadet. It was a brief and. I fear, rather inglorious episode, because try as I did I could never remember whether the bandage should be applied left over right or right over left. The people in the brigade were extremely kind to me—I say that without hesitation. But I think they became increasingly saddened as they saw my splints disintegrate while everyone else's managed to sustain a fairly reasonable appearance—
Baroness MASHAM of ILTON: My Lords, I should like to suggest to the noble Lord that he perhaps allows the Red Cross to try to see whether it could be more successful.
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: My Lords, I shall direct the attention of my son to the point made by the noble Baroness. The noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth, touched on the contribution made by a whole variety of voluntary organisations in this country to deprivations and disasters abroad. It is right that on such occasions we should not be too insular. No matter how great are our problems in this country—and they are manifold—the scale of deprivation outside this country is infinitely worse. It is notable the number of voluntary organisations in this country which have contributed to dealing with this problem.
I now return to one of the central themes of the debate, which was alluded to in a notable speech by the noble Prince, the Prince of Wales, and by, I should think, well over half the other speakers in the debate. I refer to the financial situation currently confronting voluntary organisations. I gave this matter a central place in my earlier speech in the debate, but it may be helpful if I add a few words now. It is too easy to get the financial contribution of Central Government out of perspective. Voluntary effort is funded from a variety of sources: donations from individuals and industry; earnings from investment and retail activities; and grants from trusts and charitable foundations. There are also local Government grants and payments for services. The amount of
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Central Government money compared with all this is relatively small.
Where the Government can play a unique role is in encouraging the use of volunteers and the opening of opportunities for them, and in helping the voluntary services to co-ordinate their activities and communicate with all levels of authority. But as to finance, support for the voluntary services comes from all the main spending Departments. Ordinarily I should quarrel with nothing in the speech by my noble friend Lord Longford, but the only conceivable quarrel I might have with him is that he was kind enough to give me a status in this matter which I do not altogether deserve. I appeared at the end of his speech as being a veritable octopus, with each of the tentacles clasping a substantial sum of money. I fear it is not like that, as the noble Earl would recognise. Though I have responsibilities for the Voluntary Services Unit of the Home Office and, in addition, for some area of Home Office activities, all the main spending Departments have their own block of expenditure so far as the voluntary organisations are concerned.
For instance, the Department of Health and Social Security makes grants to national voluntary bodies mainly for services which might otherwise be provided by statutory bodies, dealing with the disabled, the sick, children, alcoholics and drug addicts. The Department of the Environment pays grants to a number of environmental and conservationist bodies. The Department of Education and Science supports national voluntary youth organisations. The Development Commission gives money to Rural Community Councils. The Department of Prices and Consumer Protection makes a substantial contribution to the Citizens Advice Bureaux Service. The Home Office, as I indicated earlier, offers finance through local authorities under the urban aid programme and the Voluntary Services Unit, as well as making grants to voluntary bodies working in probation and after-care, marriage guidance and related areas.
I expand this point because I was interested in what the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, said towards the end of her speech about her work as chairman of the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, in making decisions about

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whether or not one gives a grant. From time to time I am confronted with decisions of this kind and in the present situation I find them exceedingly difficult to make. As I indicated earlier this afternoon, the policy which I am sure is right at the moment is to try to keep in business some of the most useful and valuable organisations. At a time of high inflation and level of Government expenditure, this inevitably means that one cannot move into those innovatory fields which otherwise one should like to do.
I followed with great interest what the noble Baroness said because I, too, find this an exceptionally difficult decision. I find it most disagreeable periodically to have to turn down what are clearly most worth while, useful schemes because I am convinced that at the moment the right policy is to ensure we have adequate resources to sustain some of the most important voluntary organisations in the country, and if we spend it otherwise clearly those resources will be dissipated.
I will now deal with another point raised by my noble friend Lord Longford when he quesioned me at the beginning of my speech about the existing level of Government assistance to voluntary organisations. In a speech which was delivered to the National Council of Social Service in December 1971 the then Prime Minister, Mr. Heath, said that direct grants to voluntary services from Whitehall were estimated at £2½ million and that it was hoped to double this figure by 1975–6. Allowing for inflation, that proposed £5 million would now be £7½ million. But the actual expenditure by Central Government on voluntary services in 1974–5 was not £7½ million but more than £16 million. The estimated expenditure for 1975–6 is currently about £20 million. It would be wrong to use these figures as exact comparisons because there is no exact definition of voluntary services and the basis of calculation may be different. But however much it may have differed, there can be no doubt that the Government contribution to voluntary services has increased rapidly.
I should like to go further in putting into perspective the Government contribution by reference to figures in the 1973 Family Expenditure Survey. This was a point touched on in the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. This
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showed that only 35·8 per cent. of the 19 million households in the United Kingdom made any contribution to charity and that the average donation was 14p a week, which amounts to roughly £50 million a year. It is never easy to decide between priorities among candidates for public expenditure. But to raise £20 million from the public, only another 15 per cent. of households would need to contribute 14p a week.
I now turn to a number of other points which have been mentioned in the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hylton-Foster, raised the question of increased relief from VAT for charities and voluntary organisations. They will be aware that this is a question which has been vigorously debated and, as the noble Lord was fair enough to point out, this debate took place when his Government was in Office. During the debates on the 1972 Finance Bill, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the noble Lord, Lord Barber, pointed out the problem of drawing distinctions between bodies which might benefit from any concessions. He stressed that there were many bodies doing valuable social work which were not technically charities, and that of these bodies registered as charities, a total of over 100,000 were entitled to claim repayments in respect of VAT on their inputs. A considerable extra burden would clearly be imposed on public funds.
Nevertheless, despite the difficulties—and the Government certainly recognise as I have indicated in my speech already, the very pressing financial problems facing charitable bodies and organisations at the moment—during the last 12 months my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been able to give some relief from VAT to a wide range of aids for the disabled and to charitable donations of medical and scientific equipment; and to many other items such as wireless receiving sets loaned to the blind. Repairs and maintenance of lifeboats for the Royal Lifeboat Institution have been zero-rated and sales of goods donated to a charity established primary for the relief of distress do not incur VAT.
I think that noble Lords will accept that something has already been done for charities, although I recognise this does

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not meet fully the points made in this debate. I will certainly report what has been said in the debate to my right honourable friend so that he is aware of the strength of feeling in the House.
The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, also mentioned the position of charities, which, indeed, for this purpose includes Churches, under the proposed Community Land Bill. This question has been widely canvassed in representations made to the Government and to individual Members of Parliament. My right honourable friend the Minister for Planning and Local Government met the Churches Main Committee on 24th February. An all-denominational group of Church leaders met my right honourable friends the Prime Minister, the Minister for Planning and Local Government and the Paymaster General on the 23rd April.
At that meeting the Prime Minister said that he welcomed the Churches' support for the general purpose of the Bill. He also said that the Government would consider carefully whether anything could be done within the principles of the legislation to meet the points they made. This assurance was repeated during the Second Reading debate on the Community Land Bill in another place on 29th April. But the only comment I can add is that during the Standing Committee on the Bill on the 11th June, when Amendments in favour of the Churches and charities were being discussed, my right honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of the Environment stated that the Government were sympathetic to the difficulties of Churches and some charities and undertook that the Government would make fair provision for them. In the light of these undertakings, the Government are considering what such provision should be and hope to announce their decision before the Standing Committee has concluded its proceedings in another place.
A number of other detailed points were made during the debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Pike, raised the question of the mileage allowance and my noble friend Lady White raised the question of what would happen to the proposals concerning intestate funds; but due to the lateness of the hour and the length of my speech I will reply to these point
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sin writing. I conclude by thanking once again the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for having initiated this debate. I think he deserves the thanks of us all for having raised this issue in the first instance.
9.0 p.m.
Lord WINDLESHAM: My Lords, it is not normal for the mover of a Motion of this sort to speak for more than a few minutes at the end of a debate. There is so much that has been said on which I should like to comment, however, that I am tempted to carry on the debate with those survivors who still remain in the Chamber after a debate lasting six hours or more. But it is a temptation that I must resist. I listened to what the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said, with very close interest. He gave a description in his opening speech of the work of the Voluntary Service Unit in the Home Office which will be of considerable interest to the voluntary movement and will be read widely outside.
In his opening speech, and he has repeated it now, the noble Lord has given a clear statement of Government policy towards the financial crisis facing so many voluntary organisations. He has explained that it will be the Government's policy to keep existing voluntary services going as far as possible even if it leaves very little over for innovation, for new developments or for the expansion of existing services. In some ways this represents a reversal of what the noble Lord, Lord Caccia, was saying had tended to be the previous policy of Governments in his experience; namely, favouring innovatory projects in preference to the maintenance of existing services. Any curtailment of this sort is of course regrettable. I am sure we would all regret it, but if it is necessary to choose in present circumstances, hopefully only for a limited period of time, between keeping the boat afloat and launching new ventures, it would I believe be the judgment of most noble Lords that the Government have made the right choice.
My Lords, this has been a valuable debate. I shall conclude soon, but I do not want to withdraw the Motion and sit down without getting something tangible out of the Government at the end of the day. Let me come back again to two points I raised at the beginning of this debate regarding taxation. I was rather

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encouraged by what the noble Lord said about the Community Land Bill. Other noble Lords, who have been Ministers and who are experienced in the ways of Whitehall, will have been listening with close attention to what he told us has been said both by the Prime Minister and by Mr. Silkin. On the whole, I regard it as encouraging.
I hope the noble Lord, Lord Harris, will make use of this debate as an opportunity to help him in his work. A Parliamentary debate often can help a Minister achieve an objective, and in particular a Minister who has a co-ordinating responsibility. We appreciate his position. I have been a co-ordinating Minister myself, and so has the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, and for a longer period. Ministers sometimes do not have the power to take a decision on their own account. But what the noble Lard, Lord Harris, has the opportunity to do, and the duty to do, is to raise with his colleagues, with his fellow Ministers, what has been said in this House of Parliament. The official advice will be there; it is extremely important and great weight and attention must be given to it. But Ministers have to take political decisions, and I have confidence that the noble Lord will use this debate to strengthen his hand. As a token of the respect I believe the noble Lord has for those who have spoken in this debate, might I ask him to look at the question of VAT once again. I know it is a hideously complicated matter, and that the problems of charities have been continuing for two years. But it is defeatist to leave problems of this sort in that large file on the Whitehall shelf marked "Too difficult". Of course the Government can say, "This was looked into two years ago and we could not find a way of distinguishing between very small charities and public schools and the large voluntary organisations in the main stream ". But I hope the noble Lord, Lord Harris, will be willing to give an undertaking to look at the matter once again, without committing himself, to see if VAT is one additional field in which there is room for some future concession. If so, we should all be in his debt.
My Lords, it only remains for me to thank all the speakers in this debate. I
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do so fervently. We have had many interesting speeches and in particular two memorable maiden speeches from the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pike. Both more than lived up to the high expectations we had. The debate was also distinguished by the contribution from the Prince of Wales. It was entirely appropriate that he should speak from his own experience, mainly about the needs of young people, and impressive that he did so in such a thoughtful and persuasive way.
In the last hour, I have been conscious of a figure sitting quietly over the other side of the Chamber, the noble Lord, Lord Soper, who has been waiting for the debate which is to follow on his Unstarred Question. I am extremely sorry he had to wait so long, together with other noble Lords who are down to speak. I must delay him no longer, and so beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

HOMELESSNESS
9.6 p.m.
Lord SOPER Lord SOPER rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what progress has been made with regard to the "wide ranging review" of homelessness, which they announced they were initiating on 10th June 1974. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to ask the Question that stands in my name on the Order Paper and straightaway take the opportunity of accepting the courtesy of the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, expressing as he did the voluntary service offered to this debate in the brevity of some of the speeches, and also to thank noble Lords and Baronesses who have been good enough to accept a temporary measure of homelessness themselves to take part in what I am sure the House will agree is a matter of peremptory importance.
My Lords, I will begin by saying something about the topic of this debate, which is homelessness, and declare my own conviction in this matter that, just as it would be impermissible in any civilised society to allow people to starve, it would be just as right to regard their claim on the necessary food to keep them alive as being complete and unanswerable. Alongside that of shelter, alongside that

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of clothing, there is the trinodal necessitas of any civilised community. I invite your Lordships to agree that it is apparent that the need for food should be recognised and accepted as a right, as should the need for clothing—not so much perhaps on a day like this, but generally—so it is the question of shelter which has turned out to be something of a poor relation compared with these other two requirements. It is, nevertheless, as completely necessary for life as food and clothing, and it is because of the neglect that has been attributed to legislative opportunities, and the neglect which seems to many of us to have been apparent in the so-called civilised community in which we live, that this matter of homelessness has assumed an importance and an urgency that is even greater than I imagine most people would dare to think.
I shall presume to offer some statistical evidence as to the prevalence of that homelessness, and, indeed, the increase of it. Here are some figures which I think are significant, though they are not finally conclusive. In 1969, applications for temporary accommodation made by homeless families to local councils in England and Wales numbered 22,000—an intolerable number. When the last available figures came to hand—that is, in 1973—the number had risen to 33,000. That is even more intolerable. What is more, during that period the homeless families in that most execrable substitute for decent housing called "bed and breakfast accommodation", increased from, 767 families in 1973 to 1,249 families in 1974.
This has to do with families who are bereft of homes. It is not possible to assess the number of single homeless, and no attempt has ever been made so to do. But those who are engaged in some measure in endeavouring to deal with, or to give some succour to, those who are homeless and single, have no doubt that the number vastly increases. For instance, in 1972 a voluntary survey found 1,415 people in Central London alone who were sleeping rough, sleeping out—and that does not include those who squat—and when one considers that accommodation in the private rented sector of all housing stock in 1947 was 61 per cent. available for those who were home-
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less, which was reduced in 1973 to 12 per cent. of all available housing stock, it is not impossible to make some calculation in terms of the vast increase that has occurred in this miserable and dreadful anomaly of homelessness in a so-called civilised society. The number of hostel beds available for the single homeless decreased by 17 per cent. between 1965 and 1972. I will not delay the House with further details. I will only establish the point that homelessness is not only a running sore; it is a rodent ulcer in the community in which we live. It is intolerable for any society that calls itself civilised not to do everything in its power to reduce this enemy of social, personal, physical and spiritual life, and to do it as quickly and effectively as possible.
Regarding the statistical legislative background of homelessness, it may surprise your Lordships to know that there is none. In fact, the absence of any legislation specifically dealing with homelessness is the most significant comment on the past attitude and, to some extent, the continuing attitude, to the problem. The road of legislation which involves some attempt to deal with homelessness is so tortuous that I will not permit myself to use my memory, because the facts are so complex, but I will invite your Lordships to listen to them. Homelessness has been seen within the context of the Poor Law, the Vagrancy Acts and, specifically, the 1948 National Assistance Act. That Act insisted that local authorities provided temporary accommodation for persons in urgent need thereof. A responsibility was laid upon local authorities towards homeless families but not towards single people.
Then came the Local Government Act 1972, which so amended the duty as to permit it to remain only as a power. The duty was removed, and the power took its place, however inferior in authority that power was. Indeed the duty was re-imposed by a directive issued by the Secretary of State for Social Services which accompanied a Circular which appeared in February 1974. But to add almost confusion to this story, four days before the directive was issued a Joint Circular was published by the DHSS, DOA and the Welsh Office setting out recommmendations to local authorities on provision for the homeless. Among the

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main objectives of the Circular set out in paragraph 18, is the recommendation:
" … that the responsibility for securing accommodation for the homeless should be undertaken "
by the housing authority.
So it comes about that there is a paradoxical situation that while housing authorities are being encouraged to assume the basic responsibility for the homeless, they are under no duty in this respect. The duty to make appropriate provision is imposed on the social services authorities which are themselves encouraged to transfer practical responsibility to the housing authorities. To use the words of the immortal Sid Field, "What a performance!" It is indeed the kind of situation that causes no surprise, that when brought to the notice of the Secretary of State for the Environment on the 10th June—and this is what prompted this Question—Mr. Crosland in a Written Answer announced that the Government were intending to initiate a wide-ranging review in consultation with the local authority associations and representative voluntary organisations. It is not fair to say, though some people would advocate that it is inclusive in this statement, that he agreed that there was a need for new legislation. It is fair to say that he said that the question of the need for new legislation had to be considered; but in the same statement he went on to say that he was not satisfied that this Government should rest on the basis of existing legislation. That is the current situation.
We are now in a position to know what has been happening as a result of this confusion, for nobody I suggest would attribute to it any more important and significant name than that. It is confusion. It has resulted in a number of facts which I have given in detail to the Minister and therefore will deal with in only general terms. Of the 369 local authorities outside London, 120 have not implemented this Circular at all. Half-hearted and compromise reaction to it has been given by the vast majority. You will not accuse me of making a wild statement. I am sure the evidence is available and I will not delay the House to give it. The evidence comes from all over the place—the kind of thing that happened in one local authority when a
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family of homeless were shuttled from one authority to another, from the housing authority to the social authority and back to the housing authority for more than a week, and were without any kind of home during that period. This is an intolerable situation. It is in this kind of situation that the Minister very properly suggested that a wide-ranging review was required, and he undertook to do that. That was eleven months ago.
A few days ago a Consultation Paper appeared of which this wide-ranging review is assumed to consist, and I shall maintain the rest of what I have to say in terms of the kind of arguments proposed in that consultation review, in particular the omissions and failures which belong to it. I will begin by inviting the House to listen to the kind of response which comes from all kinds of authorities to this anomalous legislative situation. The Association of County Councils and District Councils, the Association of Directors of Social Services and the Institute of Housing Managers have issued a joint statement; and a joint statement has been issued also by Shelter and by that magnificent quartet of single letter charities, SHAC, CHAR, CHAS and CPAG, who have with one voice insisted that it is most important that legislative authority should be given to housing authorities if this anomalous situation is to be redeemed. Furthermore, they indicate that there are all kinds of changes that should take place. One of the most imperative is that alongside this clear duty to be put on housing authorities there should be the establishment which Shelter suggest—and I acknowledge an interest in Shelter—of a housing inspectorate which would provide default provisions when the local authorities who have failed to honour their obligations could indeed be brought to book.
There are a number of other suggestions which I shall make before I sit down, but I feel it is necessary to turn to the Consultation Paper itself. It is a wheezy, evasive document. It begins by saying that it is not felt necessary to invoke legislative authority, and yet it acknowledges the anomaly, of which I have already given examples. It is believed there are ways and means whereby this problem can be resolved without the use of legislation; yet the legislation is already in the wrong place. What we

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would require is that legislation should put a duty quite squarely on the housing authority, where in fact the Memorandum insists its place should be.
There are a number of other suggestions and I will not weary the House by retailing them. But what are the chief objections to this particular Consultation Paper, over and above its refusal to accept responsibility for legislative action with regard to housing authorities? It is a document which waters down obligations which the directive and the previous Circular insisted upon. I think it would be worth while to give your Lordships one or two illustrations of the truth of this statement. One of them is this: the Circular puts an obligation on the authority to provide a roof for all without a roof. In the Consultation Paper this is restricted to priority cases only. In the Circular, the question is put in paragraph 11:
" What are the means whereby the local authority could carry out its obligation? "
In the Consultation Paper, that is watered down to the proposal that advice should be given and help should be offered.
In fact—and this is where I come to a conclusion which I would commend to your Lordships—this Consultation Paper is simply not good enough. It is very necessary to ask the right questions. The document and, indeed, the previous directives and so forth, have asked many of the right questions, and it would be thoroughly churlish not to admit that there are many respects whereby the way in which homelessness is now treated is very much better than it was in past days. Nevertheless, there is a plain issue here and it has been dodged. This is the issue as to whether homeless families have a right to accommodation. I believe they have and that, until that right is asserted in a simple and positive fashion, we shall not emerge from the dark tunnel of evasion and partial success, the record of which I believe is only too plain.
Let me end, my Lords, by saying this. I believe that homelessness is a running sore in the community and that it is a matter of absolute priority at whatever cost. Were this a debate of another sort I should be quite happy to suggest ways in which local authorities and, indeed, Governments, could save money on other and less worthy objectives and regard the
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provision of some kind of home or shelter for all its members as of peremptory importance. Until we are prepared to recognise that this is a matter not of persuasion and help, but of absolute obligation, I do not believe we shall get very much further. This document is not good enough. The Government must think again and must come up with a very much better and more forthright proposal on dealing with homelessness on the basis that we cannot tolerate in a community which we call "civilised" more than 33,000 who have nowhere to live, to say nothing of the single homeless who at this moment are bereft of shelter and opportunity. Though they may have something in their stomachs, homelessness will progressively erode the principles that make up their mind and belong to any spiritual characteristics which we believe they ought to maintain and enjoy.
It is for this reason that I am very glad the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, insisted that this was an important debate. It is, indeed, of the greatest importance. It is for that reason that we raise it, even at this late hour, in the hope that the Government will take clue notice of the real needs which as yet have not been met, and will do at least something to meet them.
9.24 p.m.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, the House will indeed be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Soper, for drawing your Lordships' attention to this vitally urgent issue. May I presume to draw to the attention of the noble Lord, who suggested in the earlier part of his remarks that there had not previously been an official investigation into single homeless persons, the report of a survey which I have in front of me which was carried out by the National Assistance Board in co-operation with other Government Departments, and, indeed, voluntary bodies between October 1965 and March 1966. It is a most valuable document which deals with the single homeless person. I have read it and, having read it, feel that despite the fact that it is now more than 10 years old it casts a great deal of light on the problem of homelessness for the single person.
I should like to pass from 1966 when that survey was made to 1971 when two surveys were carried out—the Glastonbury and the Greve Reports. If I may be

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allowed to draw your Lordships' attention to the Greve Report, that related to London homelessness and attempted to draw a profile of homeless families in London. The Greve Report has a fundamental value, in that throughout it has supported the view that the responsibility for housing the homeless should lie with the housing department, not with the social services department.
The noble Lord, Lord Soper, devoted the closing part of his remarks to the deficiencies of this Consultative Document. We on this side of the House wholeheartedly agree with him that the problem of the present state of the law and where the duty should lie is absolutely fundamental. We feel that the Greve Report was right. I need not quote from it at great length. As the noble Lord, Lord Soper, compressed his remarks into only 18 minutes, I shall try to do the same—or perhaps to compress mine into less than that.
The causes of homelessness are only too well-known, but as homeless single persons have been referred to perhaps I ought to mention that table 126 on page 146 of the first document to which I referred gave the causes. Again, this is fundamental to the argument. A number of reasons were given. The first related to those who came from another part of the country to look for work, and the percentage associated with that group was 26; those evicted from a lodging house or a hostel came to 12 per cent.; those who had just left prison came to 11 per cent.; those who were itinerant amounted to 10 per cent.; those who had just left a reception centre amounted to 10 per cent.; those evicted from private lodgings came to 9 per cent.; those who had been turned out or had left relatives or friends came to 8 per cent.; those who had decided to leave accommodation and were unable to find other accommodation amounted to 7 per cent. That information may be out of date but the reasons are very cognate to the subject to which the noble Lord, Lord Soper, has referred. I do not pretend that the proportions are now the same, but, at least, they give us some of the background.
This very urgent problem has many aspects, and perhaps one should stress here the issue of home ownership in the last few years, During the last two
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years, the problem of a young family in finding a home has become greater, simply due to inflation. However, may I put it on record that during the first three years of the last Conservative Government over 1 million families became home owners for the first time, of whom about one-half were on average male industrial earnings or less. But with the soaring price of houses, which was not necessarily commensurate with the average—and I stress the word "average "—industrial earnings of 1973–74, the situation has changed.
My Lords, the position of council housing is fundamental to this issue and it presents very difficult problems for the young married couple. Points and residential qualification systems bar the door and dash many hopes. In fact in many cases becoming homeless entitles one to jump the queue in the way which has been described by the noble Lord, Lord Soper—an entitlement to circumstances which can surely be described as very little better than those described by Shelter in their excellent report called, Bed and Breakfast. We have very much taken on board the fact that local authorities are driven to this through the sheer pressure of circumstances. But I spent this morning doing a small field study, because I believe that in coming to address your Lordships' House we should acquaint ourselves with the practical issue.
I spent part of the morning in Maida Vale, looking at a large block of houses which currently is not available for letting purposes and it was quite evident to me that this was symptomatic of the whole area, which was so adequately and carefully described in a series of six articles by two young journalists, Christopher Booker and Benny Gray in their articles in May this year on the housing crisis.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: Where?
Lord SANDYS: In the Observer, my Lords. The six articles were published in the Observer and I should like to draw the attention of Her Majesty's Government to many suggestions made by two very articulate—if I may be allowed to call them that—journalists in this field. Christopher Booker is of course well known for his book entitled Goodbye London. I feel it would be inappropriate

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to leave this subject without mentioning the Francis Committee—and its important Report—set up by the previous Labour Government; and I am more than ready to acknowledge that. That Report has yet to be implemented and the Labour Party as yet, as we understand the position, refuse to accept many of its recommendations. If that is not the case, perhaps Her Majesty's Government will be willing to put the record straight.
The situation is here very grave and young families on low incomes, especially in our cities, find it difficult to find a first home. Those who lose a home through eviction or other causes, or who come into the city looking for a home, are just as badly placed. This has resulted in the mushrooming of bed and breakfast accommodation for families, paid for, as I have already said, out of the general rate fund. Councils are charged as much as £70 per week by establishments, and we know from the Shelter report, which we assume to be as statistically accurate as one would wish to find, that approximately £4·5 million is spent nationally every year on this accommodation. In return for this, the homeless family is often provided with insufficient space, and instances of overcrowding are numerous. Fire precautions are frequently ignored, and mother and child are often forced to leave the so-called hotel after breakfast—and it is scarcely worth the name—and are allowed to come back only in the afternoon or late evening. These establishments are, however, sometimes preferred to the local authority halfway houses.
My Lords, I should like to turn aside for a moment to mention temporary accommodation, the use of the word "temporary ", and how long a temporary building may last. Perhaps I may be allowed to quote from personal experience. In 1955, I lived for a short time in Army accommodation at Crookham Camp, near Aldershot, in a timbered group of huts. These huts were built exactly a century before, in 1855, and had had almost continuous use during that period. I am not pretending that it is not very good value for money for the taxpayer to have sustained the life of a temporary building for a hundred years or more, but I believe it is very important that temporary accommodation should be
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regarded as temporary. We are all very well aware that the life of a prefab, built with great ingenuity immediately after the war, extended vastly longer than originally intended. Many prefabs in use today are in satisfactory condition for occupation after certain repairs. Nevertheless, all buildings, however temporary, have a value for those who have no roof above their heads.
Solutions are undoubtedly difficult to find, but I would follow very closely what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Soper. The document before us is totally inadequate, and I should like to offer Her Majesty's Government a number of suggestions. First, the number of empty council properties in England and Wales is given by the Government as 55,000. This seems very low considering that in the 1971 Census there were a total of 676,000 empty properties, private and public. Whatever the figures are, I am quite sure that Her Majesty's Government will be able to give us details within a relatively short time. Nevertheless, the use of these properties and the date of possible re-use or demolition will be in the hands of the local authorities. Emergency repairs can be done to them for a relatively cheap cost compared with bed and breakfast accommodation, to which I referred earlier.
As chairman of a housing association, and as chairman of a building preservation trust—perhaps I should have declared earlier an interest in that regard—I feel that there are the strongest reasons for encouraging local authorities to put into effect emergency repairs of buildings, or to reconsider older homes in the light of the fact that to demolish and build as new is very much more expensive at 1975 prices than to restore an existing property of four walls and a rather leaky roof. As chairman of a building preservation trust, my personal experience is that it is a slow and difficult problem accommodating the provisions of the law—that is, the building regulations—to a building which is often very unsatisfactory. However, it is a very worth while thing to do if, once again, voluntary organisations can be encouraged to assist local authorities. We have devoted much time to this matter this afternoon. I feel that here is an area where voluntary bodies can play a very important part.

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Another suggestion which my noble friend Lady Young commended to Her Majesty's Government in a debate earlier this year was in regard to short leases. My noble friend cited the North Wiltshire Council and their housing project. I do not think it necessary to embark on a second description of that but, as your Lordships will be aware, a Private Member's Bill designed to modify the Rent Acts and to allow short lets without the need of local authority supervision has been introduced in another place, and could once again be a valuable tool in this regard.
My Lords, in the private sector the Rents Acts to which I have just referred are very important, especially the Rent Act introduced only a short time ago by Her Majesty's Government. The Rent Acts deter people from letting rooms, and I think much of the present housing problem can be directly attributed to that last Rent Act. There are so many of them, dating from 1915, that it would be tedious to cite chapter and verse of particular Acts and problems at this late hour. Nevertheless, I do not regard this as a simple problem; nobody has ever suggested it was. The modification of the law to allow the letting of rooms would be of great benefit, especially in the metropolitan area of London.
It almost goes without saying that to encourage new building will greatly assist the homelessness situation. Never before have there been more bricks stacked in the brickyards and fewer housing starts. I feel the list can be expanded quite considerably, but I have made a number of suggestions. May I end on a personal note. I believe that, without cost to the Treasury, there is something which could be done in this present European Architectural Heritage Year, and that is a relaxation of the 1965 building regulations. Some local authorities are willing to do so, to the great benefit of older properties, some 200, 300 and 400 year-old houses which do not measure up in terms of light and space to current building regulations. If there were a slight relaxation of those regulations, it would vastly encourage many of those working in the field which I am very much conversant with, and it would be particularly
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helpful for this year and many years to come.
9.42 p.m.
Baroness MACLEOD of BORVE: My Lords, like other noble Lords, we are very much indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Soper, for keeping us, even at this late hour, to discuss this very important human problem. In beginning the few words I have to say, I should like to say how much I appreciate, from all I have tried to do in this field, the great work which the noble Lord does; I should like to pay tribute to all that he does.
As we all know, we have listened this afternoon for many hours to people who have a great deal of knowledge of voluntary service in this country and to those who help to run voluntary agencies. But when I came to try to enumerate the number of voluntary agencies and voluntary services which are connected with the homeless I found that even in London they were too numerous to count. Some of them, of course, the noble Lord has told us about, but perhaps for the record I may mention CHAR, Shelter, the Housing Aid Centre, Child Poverty Action Group, all the numerous Church associations, the Salvation Army, Centre Point and many others, which are trying to do what in my view the Government should do. It is because the Government for many years have not done anything about the homeless that these charities have felt that they had to step in where the Government had failed.
There seem to me to be three categories of the homeless: there are the homeless families to which the noble Lord has referred; there are the homeless single adults who are mostly male and some of whom are, as we all know, homeless by choice, and there are the homeless single young. All the homeless, everyone in this country who has not a roof above his head, are leading a precarious and a poignant existence. They have our sympathy. I hope they have also our understanding, not only in this House but in the Government as well.
We have been told that accommodation has been sought for 33,000 homeless families in England during this last year, but I submit that this is only the tip of the iceberg. These are just a few; 33,000

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is nowhere near what the problem really is. Having turned up the noble Lord's speech of 1973 in this House and found that his figures of the young homeless were 7,000 at the minimum two years ago, one would perhaps guess that it would have escalated to at least 10,000.
The young homeless are the ones who worry me. They worry me mostly, perhaps, because people who have not got a base, young people who have no roots in their environment, are those people who are likely to get into trouble. Those are the people who, in my magisterial capacity, I am apt to have in front of me. If young persons of whatever colour or nationality come to London and have no roof and therefore no base and are also unemployed, I am afraid that very often the next step is that they get into trouble, they become part of our delinquent society, and they come before either my Bench or somebody else's.
Up to about three years ago I was very troubled in my juvenile court because West Indian families came to this country leaving their children, or their eldest children, at home in the West Indies. The families made their homes here and then sent for the children. The children came, having been brought up in the West Indies and not having any knowledge of our ways or our laws, and in a year they would get into trouble or be thrown out by their families because the two generations could not communicate. I had many parents bringing young children of 13 or 14 before my court as being beyond their control. The only way that we could deal with these children was, unfortunately, to put them into care. I learn now from various documents that I have read that the children are not coming into court—they are certainly not coming into mine—they are just being thrown out by their parents if they do not conform to the parents' new life. Those children are homeless, they are rootless, they are without employment, and they are getting into trouble. This is a serious problem.
At the end of the last debate we heard from the Minister of State at the Home Office that every Government Department has money at its disposal; we have also heard that there is no money, but technically they are supposed to have money with which they can help people who come under each Department. I
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suggest tonight to the Minister that any money that she has should go to the repair of buildings, as suggested by my noble friend Lord Sandys, to make homes available for the homeless in our society. I have not—because, being disabled, it would be difficult for me to do so—been to see people sleeping rough in our Undergrounds, throughout London and on the embankments, but I know that they are there in every kind of weather and I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Lord when he said that in our civilised society this is just not good enough. We have been talking all the afternoon about people who receive money from voluntary contributions for various charities, but I maintain that charity begins by giving a home to the homeless and I hope that the Government will do something about it.
9.51 p.m.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod of Borve, has spoken very effectively about the homeless, particularly the single homeless, and I wish to add only a few words to what she said. If I had my way, which I certainly do not have in this House, there would be a rule preventing any noble Lord from speaking twice in one day, and such a rule would debar me from any utterance in this debate. But as there is no such rule, I find it impossible not to say anything tonight on this issue, as I could not resist speaking in the earlier debate. As Chairman of the New Horizon Youth Centre, I am especially concerned with the single homeless, and in this connection the noble Lord, Lord Soper, and I are working very closely together. I must, therefore, make a brief intervention in this debate, but I think it would be indecent of me to add more than a few words.
We appreciate that the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, whose concern for a matter of this kind we fully appreciate, is in a difficult position tonight. Here she is, the Minister who will reply to the debate, but it is inconceivable that she will be able to say anything new tonight which has not been approved before she came here, which means that whatever the strength of our arguments—I do not know what my noble friend can say—I cannot think that she feels very happy with the position. She must pronounce the policy of the Government, and it is

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our Government in the national sense. They are the Government of all Britain but as a Labour Peer I naturally look upon them in a special way, for I am speaking of our Labour Government. Nevertheless, I think my noble friend will find it terribly difficult to defend the policy of the Government on this issue, and I suggest that the best thing for her to do is not to try to defend it but simply to say that all the matters we are raising will be looked into, because to defend it would seem to be beyond the powers even of the noble Baroness.
We were told a year ago that there was a document. Let us assume that that document was neither brilliant nor lamentable. It was fairly good, but there seems to have been a retreat and on this point my noble friend must have been briefed to reply. How far has there been a retreat this year from the document of last year? On the face of it, there has been such a retreat and everybody agrees that this is the case, but perhaps my noble friend will explain that in some sense we have misunderstood the situation. It seems unlikely that we could have misunderstood it because people of different points of view are coming together and are condemning this new document out of hand. Yet there must be some explanation, and I hope that my noble friend will not expect us to be satisfied with something that has been prepared in advance but will at least promise that what we are saying will be considered.
My noble friend Lord Soper dealt mainly with families but touched on the question of the single homeless. I have been concerned in the last few years mainly with the single homeless, but for the reasons I explained earlier it would not be right for me to develop a great argument about that. But perhaps we could ask the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, whose sympathies I am sure are with us rather than with herself, so to speak—or with what she has been instructed to say—to explain how it can be that local authorities are today adopting such an extraordinary variety of attitudes (perhaps it is the fault of the Government, or maybe it is their fault) for the responsibility for the housing of single people.
CHAR, the Campaign for the Homeless and Rootless, has collected these
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examples: Birmingham and District Council accept housing responsibility only for single people over 40 years of age, and of course that does not apply to most of the young people whom some of us have seen much of. Newcastle, while trying to help single homeless people, depends largely on referrals to voluntary agencies. In the South, Glamorgan County Council, the two district councils in the county do not accept the single homeless and the Director of Social Services has actually said, "No policy exists ". I suppose that no policy is better than a bad policy, but it is not very creditable.
The policy of Staffordshire County Council is that single homeless people are the responsibility of the Department of Health and Social Security. In Kensington and Chelsea—I am sorry to think that I have the honour of living there, although it is doubtful that I am part of the housing need—the homeless are not accepted for temporary accommodation. Hounslow accepts homeless families only; in other words, it does not accept the single homeless.
This is the position. I do not know whether the Government are proud of it, or whether they accept it with a kind of reluctance as being an unhappy situation. But the crucial question is: will they do anything about it? I know that we have all the good will that is available from the noble Baroness, but expressions of good will will not do a great deal at this stage for the homeless. I cut the matter short and bring it to the point by saying that what most of us seek from this debate is for the Government to produce legislative proposals to place a duty on housing authorities to secure accommodation for single homeless people as well as for homeless families. That is the crucial matter. We must press the Government to produce legislative proposals along these lines, and there should be adequate default powers for the Minister should reactionary councils refuse to carry out this duty.
I am not naïve enough or young enough to suppose that the noble Baroness will say that, having listened to these arguments, she has been converted. Nor do I expect that she will assure us that before night falls the legislation which we seek will be introduced, or at any rate is foreshadowed. That would be too much to expect. But this proposal is pressed

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not only by the small number of people here this evening, but also by large numbers of others who are deeply concerned with the matter, and I ask the noble Baroness to ensure that it is placed before the Minister. I am sure that we have her personal sympathy, but in the meantime short of legislation what is she, speaking for the Government, going to do? What are the Government going to do about this extraordinary and most discreditable variety of attitudes among the local authorities?
The Consultation Paper is obviously a wretched affair, but I do not suppose one can expect Governments to condemn their own documents, discreditable or otherwise. No, we cannot expect too much. But I ask the noble Baroness to give some indication that she will not leave the matter where it is, because if she does she will disappoint us all.
9.58 p.m.
Lord HYLTON: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Soper, for raising this Question tonight. I apologise for delaying his start by at least 10 minutes because of the previous debate, but I sympathise with him for having drawn such a popular day. He has exposed very clearly the extraordinary kind of Alice in Wonderland legal situation governing homelessness. He has drawn our attention to the quite unacceptable expedient of publicly paid for bed and breakfast accommodation, especially for families, and he has pointed to the unacceptable practice of the shuttlecocking of families and individuals between one authority and another, and between one Department and another. The noble Lord slaughtered the Consultation Document fairly effectively. To my mind, it is a symptom of the lack of both urgency and priority towards homelessness that it should have taken 10 months to produce this rather watered down piece of stuff bound in green paper. It is so finely balanced with, on the one hand, this: and on the other hand, that. Why should it have taken 10 months for what are probably the right questions to be sent out to local authorities and voluntary bodies.
There is one paragraph of Consultation Document No. 6 to which I should like to draw attention. It reads:
" Measures should be avoided if they might develop net additional claims on resources. "
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That, I suppose, means that no more funds can be made available for homelessness. I believe that that is a shortsighted view, and if that is the attitude and the policy of the Government then far greater costs will be incurred even in the short run, and certainly in the long run. These costs will be found to be paid for under such headings as the extra cost of children in care because of homelessness; cost of families and single people in bed and breakfast accommodation; cost of social work and casework for victims of homelessness. There will be further indirect costs in health, mental and physical; in child guidance; in delinquency and crime, as my noble friend Lady Macleod of Borve has already mentioned, and the completely unquantifiable costs that follow on from family break-up due to homelessness. I hope that at least paragraph 6 of the green Consultation Document can be revised.
My Lords, in an endeavour to be constructive, I should like to turn to yet another consultation paper, an orange one, which came out last December and which deals with new towns in England and Wales. This to my mind is a much better one than the green one. I welcome it very much, because the desire is expressed to make tenancy allocation in new towns help the inner city areas. This is something which is very much overdue. I am delighted that the development corporations are being asked to pay special attention to families and people living under conditions of housing stress. It is to be hoped that this will benefit the great number of hidden homeless, particularly those families who are excessively overcrowded and who probably risk losing their accommodation at any time.
The orange document said:
" New towns should not cream off the most skilled and competent people from the cities they were supposed to serve. "
I welcome very much the intention to accommodate in the new towns the parents of existing first generation families; that is, first generation settling in a new town. I trust that suitable sites for sheltered housing for these parents are being reserved in new towns. It is a great step forward that one parent families and the disabled who are not normally in employment are to be helped to move to new towns if they wish to do so.

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I welcome also the slight relaxation in the rules and regulations which specify where one must work in a new town if one is to qualify for a house in one. These are helpful points. I should like to ask the noble Baroness who is to reply to what extent these positive proposals in the orange document are already being put into practice in the new towns. Some of them, to my mind, are quite uncontroversial and can be put into practice immediately. I hope they will be. I would go further—because one can and should go further than the orange paper—and ask this. Will the new towns be urged to plan for a greater intake of semi-skilled and unskilled workers than they have been able to take up till now? Will retraining facilities for the unskilled be sited in the new towns? Will acceptance for a retraining course, almost ipso facto, qualify an applicant for housing in a new town if he has a retraining place in a new town?
Having had a certain amount of personal experience of the cumbersome procedure for notifying job vacancies in new towns to individual applicants, particularly in London, will this slow, lengthy, laborious rather bureaucratic procedure be reformed, and will consideration be given to a much more client-orientated service to meet the urgent needs of the person or family in housing stress in the city who so badly needs to move out?
I should like to ask whether the new town corporations will be helped and urged to build up a pool of temporary accommodation for heads of households who come to start a job in a new town before a house is ready for them and their family? Will more generous financial help be provided for those families who find themselves, probably against their will, having to live in two places at the same time? That is where the head of the household takes up a job and lives in digs in a new town, leaving his wife and children behind in the city from which he originated. One or two local authorities have made a start in that direction—a modest start as yet. Then we come in the Consultation Paper to proposals for co-operation between new town corporations and the local authority of that area. Will the noble Baroness say that something positive will be done
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which will involve also the "sending" authorities, making a three way situation? So far as concerns London, it is most desirable that much more than one London borough is associated with one new town. They will have to work with the Greater London Council, the London Boroughs Association, or through groups of London boroughs if this kind of partnership is to be made effective.
Finally, at the risk of asking too many questions on one evening, may I inquire when guidance will be issued to local authorities in new towns, since this is so urgent? Has the Department of Employment and Productivity been involved in the consultations? The job aspect of the matter can hardly be left out.
10.8 p.m.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Soper, for initiating this debate. I only wish I possessed his eloquence of speech because he has put the whole point so well. I am glad that we are having this debate tonight, and I hope that it will give the noble Baroness who is to reply more influence with the powers-that-be, because she will see those Members of this House who are backing her and putting forward arguments. Ministers need people to back them, and I hope that the noble Baroness is going to take what I have to say in that spirit.
We are all very anxious to get an up-to-date solution to the problem of the homeless. The moment a child comes into the world the whole of its environment affects it. I have known of young children who have had to sleep in vans with their family, often for days. No one who has been a Member of Parliament for any length of time—and I know noble Lords who were in the other place will agree with me here—likes the interview sessions which involve people and homes, because 90 per cent. of them are homeless or need homes, or are people coming out of the Services and have no homes at all. That is why I am particularly interested in the problem.
In the Home Office Working Party on Vagrancy in 1974—noble Lords may see from the Order Paper that I hope to put down an Unstarred Question later on this subject—it was stated that 344 males had been prosecuted and 329 of them had been found guilty. There were also 29 females prosecuted, of whom 27 were

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found guilty of sleeping rough. It seems to me intolerable that people should be prosecuted because they have no homes. I heard that a recent report regarding Scotland estimated that there were 4,500 single homeless people, and that 73 people died in Glasgow alone during 1974 while sleeping rough.
I was particularly interested in what the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod, said, because I am a member of a committee which is setting up hostels for young people, called the London Centre. They are small hostels—we have only 14 or 15 young people in them. We have only one open at the moment, and two more are now being furnished. The object is to take in young people who have come to London, and have been turned out of their homes with their parents. We have found these hostels to be very successful. We keep the young people there for as short a time as possible, but we must find them a job and some accommodation before they leave, so we hope to have a quick turnover. Unfortunately, with unemployment increasing at the present time, this is not quite so easy. I regret to say that quite a lot of the young people involved are West Indians who have been turned out, or people of mixed blood, or young people who have quarrelled with their families, have had love affairs and so on. But there is the other side of this problem. Occasionally, when we have advertised, we have been able to re-unite young people with their families.
One difficulty, which has been mentioned already, is caused by the Rent Act. It is quite amazing—I speak now of the City of Plymouth—how rented accommodation has gradually disappeared. I know that a lot of accommodation could be let, but people are too frightened to let it. The other great difficulty—and I am not being disloyal to the Conservative Government. because I fought the Local Government Bill through from beginning to end as I did not approve of it—is that large counties like Yorkshire or Devon are the planning authority and the local districts are the housing authorities. It is very difficult to get things moving.
Furthermore, there is the yardstick, which does not help in the least. You can have plans which seem excellent, but which are turned down by the Ministry because of this yardstick. I could give
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one example concerning the hotel at Hyde Park Corner. This was built in about a quarter of the time it took to build four blocks, each of two storeys in height. This is because of continual changes in the Ministry's ideas. This Consultative Paper says in paragraph 21:
" Secretaries of State believe that housing authorities and departments should accept the responsibility for securing that those who are homeless get, in either the public or private housing sector, some form of housing in which they can stay permanently or temporarily. "
In many areas this is completely impossible. It seems a great pity that we have the Government saying that the Secretaries of State believe this, because they must know it is only a pious hope.
Paragraph 20 says:
" If new legislation were to be introduced "—
"if", and I think it is essential that it should be—
" it should, in the Government's view, reflect more effectively than does the present legislation, the combined approach to homelessness by housing and social service authorities which was recommended in the joint circular. "
If this was so recommended, it seems very unfortunate that it has not been carried out. It seems that the Ministry has very little power at the present time over the actions of local authorities. I should like to know when the roles of the housing and social service authorities are to be defined and whether there is need for legislation to make clear which agent is responsible.
I understand that at the present time there is no financial aid and no definite statutory duty or powers for dealing with the homeless. I believe that at present there are 21 centres in London with about 2,600 beds, half of which are in the London area itself. About 24 centres are provided by local voluntary organisations, including the YMCA which does magnificent work. However, it is unfortunate that so much of the older accommodation which could have been done up and used—like the Rowton Houses and some of the very excellent old institutions which at one time were called workhouses and which have been done up very well indeed in many areas—is gradually being pulled down. In certain areas there is literally nowhere where a homeless family can be put if they come into the housing office or go to see their Member of Parliament. In the old days, we were able

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to find temporary accommodation for them in which they had a private suite and excellent food. That is not possible now.
I think that the most difficult and the saddest cases of all are families, and every action should be taken to help them. Other speakers have already said that families should not be divided, but what are local authorities to do when families come to them? They have their powers, and often it seems easiest when families are homeless to take the children into care under the Children and Young Persons Act 1963. As has been mentioned before, bed and breakfast accommodation is not a solution. Families have to be turned out in all weathers. If it is necessary to have this accommodation in future, day centres must be provided—even if it is just a school that has a spare room in which they can allow these people to sit. Otherwise, mothers and children will wander about during the day with very little cash for their necessities and food.
Then there is the question of pensioners. Many more pensioners could live by themselves if they had adequate accommodation. Most of the old accommodation is not suitable for them. They have to go upstairs to the bathroom and they cannot manage this. If they were put into little flatlets this would make their accommodation available for families and it would be most beneficial to them. I do not believe that anybody, of any age, should go into any form of institution, however good, unless it is absolutely necessary.
If I may deal with single persons—not only those who have no homes and no work—many of them who are in employment find it extremely difficult to get any accommodation. The final category which I should like to mention is the handicapped. A great many handicapped people are made homeless because their accommodation is not convenient for them; therefore, they have to go into institutions. However, just a little thought—slightly wider doors so that their wheelchairs can go through them, no steps to the entrance of their bungalows, or accommodation where there is a lift—would provide many of these people with adequate homes.
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Shelter has been mentioned a number of times. I think they have made an excellent suggestion in regard to modern prefabs or mobile homes. On Friday of last week we discussed the question of mobile homes, and I was sorry to find that I had been under a misapprehension. I was told that mobile homes would not help the homeless. I had an Amendment down saying that these should be the only home, and I had hoped that they would not become second homes but would help to provide homes for the homeless. However, this is not happening. It is suggested that when a clearance takes place, or development scheme programmes are put in hand, there is often a long period between the clearance of the site and the new building, particularly at the present time. If you have a mobile home that can be put on a site, you do not have to decant people from the homes you are pulling down and put them into council or private accommodation. Therefore, you are not taking up unnecessarily accommodation that could be used for housing other people, and I do not think the decanting process draws on the local authority's stock of permanent council housing.
As mentioned by my noble friend, houses on temporary sites are not always desirable, but they are not meant to be permanently on a site; they are meant to be mobile and they can be removed and resited according to the authority's changing requirements. I have been told that some of these will be quite adequate for a period of 30 to 50 years, and I know quite a number of places where land has been vacant for up to 10 years, where prefabs were pulled down because they were considered to be out of date and needed too much repair, and where nothing—literally nothing—has been built since. There are also quite a number of places where it was considered, for example, that there would be road widening or a new road going through, and prefabs which had been built along roads have been pulled down, but nothing is likely to be done at the present time. In one instance an inquiry is going on which is likely to last a considerable number of years.
A circular, No. 24, was sent out by the Minister for the Environment, which I mentioned during the debate on the

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Mobile Homes Bill, but I hope your Lordships will forgive me for mentioning it again. It said:
" To meet immediate needs mobile homes or other forms of housing which can be made available quickly should sometimes be provided or allowed and such proposals will be sympathetically "—
I would like to draw the attention of the noble Baroness to these words—
" considered for key sector loan consent.
" Local authorities are asked to speed the lengthy process of designing and building local authority dwellings, and in particular designs should avoid complexity intended ' to seek an interesting scheme '."
I mentioned before that the yardstick is likely to stop there, but I should like to know what response there has been from local authorities in regard to these mobile homes. I gather from the Consultation Document issued on 22nd May 1975, that the Minister for Housing and Construction has stated that he is examining a number of measures of an administrative and managerial kind for securing the better use of existing stocks, including empty and short-life property. Perhaps the noble Baroness can tell us how this examination is going on.
I agree that homelessness affects many types, as was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Sandys. I have read also the Greve and the Glastonbury Reports, and I would like to quote from one of them. It said:
" While a lack of accommodation is, by definition, a common feature of all cases of homelessness, it is not necessarily the sole and underlying problem of homeless people. "
I think it was well brought out, by the noble Lord who spoke last, that this is a very important point. I was rather shocked in a way to hear my noble friend Lord Sandys say that people coming out of prison could not find accommodation. This difficulty does not help them overcome their past.
I have studied Document 17/15, which is the Eighth General Report on the development of the social situation in the Community, and I was interested to find that Germany is so much more advanced than other countries in the EEC. They built over 700,000 houses, of which nearly 200,000 were subsidised, while in 1973 we built 300,000, of which 114,000 were subsidised. They decided on a total budget of a considerable size in September 1974, with additional contributions
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from central Government and from the Länder, and this is earmarked for two programmes to encourage investment in local infrastructure, in new housing, and in modernising old houses with a view—and I think this is very important, as is stated in the Report—to sustaining employment in regions and localities with structural problems. I suggest that it is far better to consider something along these lines. It is better than paying unemployment money to people in the construction industry, which is going through a bad time. We should them a job to do, something lasting and useful.
My Lords, I noticed in this Report of the EEC that in the Netherlands the housing shortage has been resolved in most areas during the last few years. I found this fact interesting. It was said in the Report that the construction industry was suffering from unemployment, because they did not need to build more houses. When one thinks of the bombing, the almost complete obliteration of Rotterdam, and the fact that the Netherlands is the most densely populated country of the EEC, I wonder whether any study has been made to see how this has been achieved.
I made a study for the Council of Europe, with regard to battered babies, battered wives and the number of early divorces. I considered that housing must be the number one priority, and I support the noble Lord, Lord Soper, on this point. There are other things that we must forgo at the moment, in view of the economic situation. I should like suggestions to be made by the Ministry as to what can be considered as having a lower priority than housing. In the old days it was said that the Englishman's home is his castle. In these days, it may mean that his home has no roof, and that he is sometimes separated entirely from his family, which is undesirable. Finally, my Lords, perhaps the noble Baroness will let me know to whom the Consultative Document has been sent, and whether it has gone to any of the women's organisations.
10.28 p.m.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, at this late hour I will take only two minutes. I was delighted when the noble Lord, Lord Soper, raised this matter for

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debate in this House. We have been here now for about eight hours. I intended to put my name down on the list of speakers, but did not do so when I saw the length of the list on the other subject which we debated earlier. I hope that the usual channels will find an opportunity to give a day for this debate. It is ridiculous for a person to make a constructive speech of about 10 or 15 minutes at this time of night, on a subject which is so worthy of debate. I should also like to ask why this Document was not available in the Printed Paper Office. I have had my secretary scouting around for days, but no one seemed to know about it. It is the duty of the Government to see that these documents are available on the day when a subject is raised.
Secondly—I am watching the time—one of the troubles is that people are not letting apartments. When I was a kid and I roamed—because in Wales we had hot feet from farming—to the colleries and to mining, there were lots of apartments to let. But people are afraid of letting today, because they never know whether they are going to get in thugs whom they cannot get out again. I am putting the position in straightforward, easily understood, good, English language. In other words, without being a smug reactionary, there must be protection for someone good enough to let part of his house to a stranger, giving comfort and succour in times of trouble. We must find an answer.
God knows what is the matter with us! If a nation pays out thousands of millions of pounds on armaments and wants to arm like Sparta, then it must live like Sparta. We had better get that economic fact sinking in straight away. If the motor car wants a new road, everybody bows down to this vicious machine and it is making mankind horrible. Your Lordships should see the faces that Londoners pull when travelling through London to work, or when trying to get home through the traffic. We sacrifice homes for new roads, for this juggernaut which is killing people and driving them half insane. Do not get me wrong, my Lords, we need transport, but we have lost the balance. Dickens was right.
My two minutes are up, unfortunately. However, because I promised the nice
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little secretary in front that I would finish early, all I can say is that I am so annoyed. I am so annoyed, because there is so much I could quote. I wanted to make a 10 or 15 minute speech. I want the Government to promise that we can have a full day for this debate and that we can have a proper opportunity to discuss it without keeping here all the attendants and the entire staff of the House of Lords, who are working so hard. My two minutes are up, and now the Minister can answer.
10.30 p.m.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of the ENVIRONMENT (Baroness Birk): My Lords, this has been a most important debate, and I can only say what everybody else has said, that it is a pity it is so late in the day and that consequently few people have been able to join in and even fewer have been here to listen. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Soper, although I feel I must be socially very masochistic because it certainly is not the easiest debate in the world. I do not like being—and I am not, actually—on a different side from my noble friend. The noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, was quite right when she said how useful it is to have other voices putting forward one's own views within the Government and within the Ministry.
This is a Consultative Document, and the only issue I take with everyone who has spoken, with the exception of my noble friend Lord Davies of Leek, is that they have spoken as though this is a final document, Government policy about to be implemented without any chance of altering it. It is consultative and the speeches made tonight are part of that consultative process. I saw the Minister of Housing this morning. He was extremely pleased that this debate was to take place, but sorry that it would come on so late after the previous debate—and I am glad to see that we have two of the same cast speaking in this one. I am not going to apologise on behalf of the Government or myself for the consultation. The current review has been the first since the 1930s or 1940s. The document is the result of the review, and we are awaiting everyone's comments.
My noble friend Lord Longford was, as usual, extremely helpful, but I thought

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he was not only asking me questions but also giving me the answers. I would tell him that I have not been instructed to say anything at all; I am speaking in my own voice.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, I did not quite hear what the Minister said.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, I was saying that the noble Lord said that I was probably instructed not to say anything, or instructed what to say, and I was pointing out that nobody can instruct me to say anything or do anything.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, this is a rather surprising doctrine. The noble Baroness is not speaking as an individual, like ex-Ministers such as myself. She has to speak on behalf of the Government. She cannot offer her own opinions just like that.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, I am not instructed to speak; if I did not feel the way I do I would not be speaking at all. It is on the word "instructed" I am taking issue with the noble Lord.
To get back to the main point, practically everything that my noble friend Lord Soper said—apart from going into the figures and statistics, which there is not time to do—is true. It is disgraceful that we should have the housing situation we now have, and for a long time it has seemed to me, both before I was in Government and now, that social historians of the future will look back and wonder what this sophisticated complex society was all about when we could not arrange one of the basics, which is housing for the people.
At the same time, the noble Lord was fair enough to point out that the situation was worse many years ago. The noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, also made that point. Then, unless you were on a housing list—and this was so when I was a member of a local authority—the question of temporary housing, apart from the small amount of half-way housing, was not considered part of the housing responsibilities at all. People did not feel then that they even had a right to have a shelter. Although we have come that far, nevertheless it is true that the problem has expanded. Without any doubt it is quite obviously one of the most
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distressing of the social problems with which we have to deal.
Homelessness is such a wide, rambling, unpleasant, seeping sore that it goes far wider than the stark fact of a physical roof over one's head. It is suffered by a whole variety of groups of people, many of whom have been pointed out in this debate. There are the families; people whose marriages have broken up; the single parent families, and the single people about whom the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, spoke most eloquently, and my noble friend Lord Longford concentrated on. There are the old people. As the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, pointed out, there are the handicapped, and other people who are in institutions, including the old, because they have not adequate housing. There are also people such as battered wives and young people. I am not putting them together because I think that they have much in common, but what they do have in common is that some years ago there was probably less movement in this way.
There was less mobility among young people who struck out on their own to try to find a house perhaps even before they were able readily to afford it, and I do not think that the battered wives were battered less then but they probably stayed at home and said little about it. This does not mean that the problem was not there, but it was more hidden.
As my noble friend Lord Soper pointed out, the problem is mainly in the inner city areas with half of the homeless in Greater London. This is a question not just of housing, and this is the difference between talking about a housing policy, which we have not had time to do and is not part of the Question tonight, and the whole social complex that goes into homelessness where being without a home may be only one of many problems that those concerned are faced with. I appreciated Lady Macleod's speech very much, as I am also a magistrate and have experienced the same consequences of homelessness as she described where it is tied up with delinquency; people being turned out from their home, as she said, and the poverty, the inability to afford a home, the coming from somewhere else where you have no home, and perhaps no job. One of the problems with playing what I call the numbers game at the moment

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is that at the present time we have not sufficiently good statistics to be able to say clearly, and analyse clearly, what are the reasons and exactly what are the correct figures. But the Department have introduced a new system of collecting statistics and we will be soon publishing the results.
A great deal was said about the responsibility for dealing with homelessness and we have had attacks, understandably, on the Government and on local authorities as well, as to who should be responsible for what functions. Central and local government obviously have to have a broad approach to social needs. I would point out to the noble Lords who have attacked—and in some cases, I imagine, understandably, from the information they have—actions of certain local authorities, that local authorities exercise a great deal of power, and in the housing field almost complete autonomy apart from the central financial situation.
It would, therefore, be very odd if there were not differences in approach, in intention and in performance, and this, I am afraid, is part of the price one has to pay. This is what Central Government are trying to balance as well as they can. What I must do tonight, therefore, is to say something about the part the Government have to play. We have to set the statutory framework for those with executive responsibilities; we have to provide guidance based on general knowledge from information gained from all parts of the nation; we have to watch what is happening—in other words, monitor—and we have to judge what needs doing when and where.
In addition to the Consultative Paper, the Government have issued a questionnaire giving effect to the circular which was sent out last year and it is—and this is the point where I think noble Lords have been less than fair—on the basis of the replies we get to that questionnaire that we shall be in a position not just to make guesses but to know exactly how local authorities have responded to the directive, what is being done, what needs to be done and what gaps there are, It is on this point that the debate is most timely because it is taking place while we are getting this information. I hope that it will encourage local authorities and the wide
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range of voluntary bodies to which the Consultative Paper has been sent to send in their views, their evidence and their ideas as strongly as they like, and we are hoping to receive it all by the middle of July.
In answer to the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, I have myself been inquiring into the question of the Consultative Document being sent to the women's organisations. I have asked our officials to make sure that it goes to the National Women's Commission and other women's organisations and I shall be most grateful if the noble Baroness will let me have as soon as possible a list of other women's organisations which she thinks might be helpful in giving evidence in this area.
As we are consulting—and we have so far had only one or two replies—it is true that I cannot give answers to some of the questions that have been put to me, but certainly they have been extremely important. In addition, a great number of constructive points have been put forward. They have been noted, they will appear in the Official Report and I assure noble Lords that they will go straight to the Minister of Housing. All this will help us, the DHSS and the Welsh Office to create new policies and new legislation where needed. I will not, therefore, answer individual points tonight; there is not time and, as I explained, we are in the process of consulting. Nor will I comment on the Shelter report because it is only one of the organisations concerned, although I must commend them for the promptness with which they replied and for the length and depth of their reply. I think it only fair to wait until we receive the other replies so that we may have a much better picture of the whole situation.
What I will do is give some idea of the framework in which the Paper is being considered and if there are some points about which I might write to noble Lords at this stage in answer to specific questions I hope that they will bear with me and allow me to do that rather than lengthen the proceedings tonight. The economic situation means that there is a need for restraint, and that we must be very careful not to waste resources. For example, where people are unable to get to work because they have nowhere to live this is a loss in our economic life

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as well as in social life, and this also affects people's needs. Similarly, people in bed and breakfast accommodation would be much happier and more economically housed in renovated accommodation.
I must comment at this stage on the point made by the noble Lord. Lord Hylton, when he read out part of paragraph 6 of the Consultative Document, stating that,
" measures should be avoided if they might develop demands for net additional claims on resources. "
If that were taken in conjunction with the preceding sentence it would make more economic and social sense:
" Any proposed new statutory provisions must be general enough to cope with changes and should avoid imposing provisions which might turn out to be unrealistic. "
There then follows the passage:
" Measures should be avoided if they might develop demands for net additional claims on resources. "
This is in the context of the economic situation, because although the Chancellor shielded the new housing developments from cuts in his last Budget—and I feel that the Government ought to get some credit for that in this very difficult situation—the economic situation is something that we cannot ignore, and as we are all aware the situation has worsened. But we have not made this fact or the review of housing finance an excuse for shelving our review of homelessness which, quite frankly, in the present circumstances, we could have done on those grounds alone. But we have published our Consultation Paper and sent out the questionnaire. But the economic background is against what we must all—not just the Government—work for.
This makes it all the more important that central and local government and voluntary bodies should use their existing powers and resources to the best possible effect. One speaker felt—I am not sure whether it was the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod of Borve; if it was not, I apologise—that the voluntary organisations were carrying out functions that it was thought should be done by the Government. In the first place, it is quite impossible in the present situation for any Government to cover the whole field in the way it needs to be covered. Secondly,
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in line with the debate which preceded this one, I believe that the part of the voluntary organisations is absolutely essential, and I hope that this will always be the case in this country, no matter what part the State plays. This does not mean that the Government should not be doing more. They will have to do more, but I do not think we should say that the voluntary organisations should bow out.
Apart from anything else, it is essentially my view that voluntary organisations should be acting as pressure groups on Governments—no matter what Government are in power. The voluntary organisations must always be a little way in front, and this applies to almost any question in the social field besides housing. Local government and voluntary bodies should use their existing powers and resources to the best possible effect. The powers are extensive and the Government have increased resources in the housing field—I must point this out to the noble Lord, Lord Sandys—compared with the efforts of the Tory Government. But action does not have to wait on the outcome of consultations.
A priority category in our municipalisation programme is the acquisition of houses which have remained empty for six months which are bought in areas with a serious overall housing shortage to relieve homelessness. This was restated in Circular 64/75 on 9th June this year, and 13,500 such properties were bought in 1974–75. It is not true, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, indicated, that the majority of empty property is local authority property. It is not; it is private property which people are holding on to in order to sell it at the best price. They have the right to do that.
More use should be made, too, of properties awaiting redevelopment and of what are known as short life properties, and especially where—and here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sandys—grandiose schemes have to yield on social as well as on economic grounds to a more flexible rehabilitation and improvement programme, it is better to meet the needs of the people and the community they live in. These are some of the ways in which local authorities, and housing associations in co-operation with them, can already, and within existing resources, do more.

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There is a great difference between what is being done in different parts of the country and naturally there are a variety of reasons for this. They can, as some have done, cut down on the extent to which families are put in bed and breakfast accommodation, and a great deal can be done by housing administration and management. The Department has started discussions on housing management designed to bring general policies and practices up to the standard already being set by the most forward authorities. In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, my honourable friend the Minister for Housing will very soon be consulting on a range of measures to improve the use of the housing stock. In fact, there is a draft paper on housing resources which should soon be published. There is room here within the present situation for a great deal of imagination, ingenuity, better management and administration.
The Government's policy is to build up general housing measures in order to prevent and relieve homelessness. The Rent Act 1974 extended security of tenure to many furnished tenants, and this was a major contribution to preventing homelessness because it cut down the number of evictions. The noble Lord, Lord Sandys, referred to the Francis Committee. The Government did not accept the recommendation of that Committee, because it recommended that secured tenancy should not be given to furnished tenants. The Government do not accept that the Act has caused a dramatic decline in the supply of rented accommodation. We have seen this downward scale over decades now. Allegations that it has are pure conjectures. No factual evidence has been produced so far.
Some landlords, particularly resident landlords, have been disturbed by the alarmist reports about the Act and have possibly decided, temporarily we hope, not to rent out their rooms. We hope that in the coming months they will recognise and understand the Act, because, as noble Lords will remember, at the time it passed there was a printing dispute and it was impossible to get copies of the Act. We have raised the rate of housebuilding in all sectors from the disastrous levels of 1974, and our policies for concentrating on areas of housing and social stress, for giving a
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new role to housing associations, for encouraging more hostels for single people in need, and the whole range of our measures, legislative, financial and administrative, are on the record and they will all help. This does not mean to say that the problem has even begun to be solved, but these are all positive things which have been and are being done. We accept that we need better information about the numbers of those who are homeless and the causes of homelessness, and I have already mentioned the new statistics. We must beware of making the homeless a separate category, since "homelessness" is an omnibus term covering a number of housing and social problems.
It was significant that the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, referred to the role of new towns, reinforcing constructive comments we have received on the recent Consultation Paper on the future of the new towns, which recognised that past policies restricted new towns in making the maximum contribution to the housing problems of our cities today, and changes have been suggested designed to remedy this. Comments on the paper's proposals are now being considered, and we should be soon able to issue firm advice to development corporations, particularly on allocation policies. As regards the other points that the noble Lord made, I hope he will forgive me if I write to him rather than supply answers now.
I come finally to the Consultation Paper itself. This stems from the first effective review of the statutory provisions on homelessness, since the legislation of the late 1940s was added to the basic Housing Act of the 1930s. It examines their relevance to today's conditions and to the new structure of local government. A great deal has been said about the consequences of the split of responsibilities in non-metropolitan counties, with social services at county level and housing at district level. The noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, referred to this. These stem from the reorganisation of local government which was taken through by a Conservative Administration; this is something which cannot be laid at the door of this Government.
Rather than be drawn further on the Consultation Paper and what it says or

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does not say—for that would mean going through every paragraph, and it is a Consultation Paper—there are just two final points I want to make. First, the paper recognises the ambiguity in housing authorities increasingly undertaking the prime responsibility for accommodating the homeless, while the social service authorities, usually the responsibility of the counties, have the duty to provide temporary accommodation. This has led to uncertainty. In the last resort, the test is what is best for the recipient whichever department it is. The paper examines a number of ways in which this can be resolved.
It is clear now that changes in this area will require legislation. What we particularly want are views on the form of the legislation that is needed. We must get this right, and with the help of all those consulted I believe we can. I beg your Lordships to put to the Department such things as the housing inspectorate defaulting, et cetera so that it can go into the general well of consultation. Secondly, the final decisions will be taken in the light of views received on the paper. It is true that the Consultative Paper did not recommend major changes which would mean a level of expenditure which could not at present be contemplated. But I can give your Lordships this absolutely firm assurance: nothing has been ruled out, and the
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options are open. The Government are not going back on their commitment to see that there is a clearly understood statutory basis underlying and reinforcing the way we deal with homelessness.
The purpose of our Consultation Paper is to obtain views and to consider them; the point of our questionnaire is to get a nationwide picture of what authorities have done about the joint circular. We need the views of those who work, campaign and understand the whole field and the whole syndrome and complex of the homeless. We want constructive views addressed to the issues and considerations of detail which the Consultation Paper set out. Rather than be defeatist, whatever noble Lords may feel about it—and everyone is entitled to his view—may I say that it is a starting point, not the end. Let it be used as a Consultation Paper and let us know firmly and loudly what you feel about it.

IRON AND STEEL BILL [H.L.]
Reported from the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills with Amendments, and recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House; Bill to be printed as amended.
House adjourned at three minutes before eleven o'clock.