Sitting of 30 September 1976

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Chelmsford.

CAREERS IN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what practical steps they are taking, in concert with educational authorities, to encourage careers in manufacturing industry.
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, the Government are very conscious of the importance of ensuring that manufacturing industry secures its fair share of able people. I can assure your Lordships that the Careers Service, the education services, the employment and training services and industry itself are all working together at both national and local levels to achieve better co-operation and to provide more realistic guidance and information to young people about careers in manufacturing industry.
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that reply and I am very glad to see that he agrees entirely with my own feelings on this matter. Does the noble Lord agree that in view of the parlous state of our economy, this is perhaps the best long-term investment we can make for the good of the country?
Lord JACQUES: I entirely agree, my Lords. I think that the Government have a good record in that respect.
Lord POPPLEWELL: My Lords, so many Departments are involved in this matter, and my noble friend will remember that some time ago I asked a Question in this connection. Is my noble friend now
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able to say what improvement is taking place regarding an intake into these schemes? In view of the desire among many students and others attending colleges to switch over to the industrial side, can my noble friend say what improvement is now taking place compared with when this matter was last raised?
Lord JACQUES: I find that difficult, my Lords, because there are so many improvements taking place all over the show. For example, there is vast progress in improving the knowledge of pupils in relation to the careers available in industry. For instance, there are work experience schemes for school pupils; there are link courses between schools and further education colleges—and here I would remind the House that we are spending £500 million on further education, much of which relates to industry. Furthermore, arrangements are being made to bring teachers and representatives of industry together to consider school courses. There is a major industry project by the Schools Council in consultation with the CBI and the TUC.
There is a programme which includes mobile exhibitions, films and magazines advertising careers in industry to pupils. From industry itself there is the CBI scheme for giving teachers industrial experience, and there is the understanding British Industry Foundation, as well as recent initiatives by the engineering industry to help schools. Action is also being taken by the universities. I could go on and speak of action which is being taken by the Training Board, but I think it would bore the House.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, will the noble Lord bear in mind that British industry in many areas is desperately short of young people trained in industrial subjects? Would it not make sense, perhaps, to increase the grants to engineering and other students, while possibly reducing the grants in cases where there is a surplus of manpower and where, when students finish their courses, they may have no chance of employment? Would this not make sense and would it not be a very good investment in industry?
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, first we have the training schemes associated with the training services and the training

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boards. Here the Government have made available £140 million which is attracting 75,000 students for skilled training in industry, and this involves mostly students who because of the recession would not have had that training had this action not been taken. But in addition there is some move on some kind of Government support for differential grants. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Industry said in another place that differential funding to encourage young people to pursue careers of direct industrial relevance is an action that is now under consideration. That was followed by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education stating recently that she wants special attention to be given to the problem of how to attract young people—women as well as men—into engineering and applied sciences. She has also indicated that in this matter she will be working very closely with the Minister for Industry.
Lord RHODES: My Lords, if so much is being done may I ask the Minister why it is, then, that applications for places in our polytechnics in the North for subjects to do with manufacturing industry are the lowest on record this year?
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, that is our problem. Our problem is not that we are unwilling to attract them or are not doing all we can to do so. We are up against the resistance of the students. For example, the intake to industry from the universities fell to a very low figure in 1975. Only 23 per cent. of the university graduates who took up careers went into industry. The resistance is on the other side. We are doing all we can. We are spending millions of pounds trying to break down that resistance.
Lord ELTON: My Lords, does the noble Lord not agree that the answers should be sought further down the educational ladder? Does he not see the decline in the teaching of mathematics? Does he not see the turning away from the scientific subjects? Should he not be turning his attention there, to where the standards of teaching and the enthusiasm of the pupils are engendered?
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, I am pleased to be able to tell the House that our interest is there also. The Government
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are naturally concerned with this, and work is going on which will give a clearer picture of standards of achievement in English and arithmetic, and how to maintain and improve them.
Lord LEE of NEWTON: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that in Britain the percentage of young people obtaining day or block release is less than 20 per cent., while in Sweden it is over 80 per cent. and is the same in Germany? Can he say at what stage the Government will consider making block release for all these young people compulsory?
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, I think it is quite clear that I would not be able at this stage to make such a statement, but I shall cheer with my noble friend when such a statement is made.
Baroness SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, can my noble friend say why so few apprenticeships are given to girls and what the Government are doing to prevent this quite appalling wastage of ability?
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, there is a special scheme, with grants—I am speaking here from memory—which is being promoted by the training services for girls in engineering, and in addition a recent statement by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education shows that she has a particular interest in girls in engineering.
Viscount ECCLES: My Lords, further to the question put by my noble friend Lord Elton, may I ask the Minister whether he is aware that half the children in school today are being taught mathematics by teachers who themselves have not even "O" level? Throughout the country—I can give many instances, and will do so next week on the Education Bill—employers are complaining that the young people who come to them cannot add up.
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, I can only repeat that we are aware of the problem indicated and that work is being done upon it.
Lord DOUGLASS of CLEVELAND: My Lords, would the Minister agree with me that from this questioning it appears that ample facilities are being provided

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for students but that the manufacturers themselves are not making the jobs they will subsequently get sufficiently attractive to make more students go into the courses which are provided for them?
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, there is strong evidence to support that view.
Baroness EMMET of AMBERLEY: My Lords, may I draw the Minister's attention to the fact that I have a direct Question down for tomorrow on apprenticeships for girls, and that I am hoping for supplementary support from the noble Baroness opposite if she is here?
The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Lord Peart): My Lords, I think this subject has been well covered, and my noble friend has answered effectively. I think we should proceed to the next Question.

SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS: POSTAGE COSTS
3.18 p.m.
Viscount MELVILLE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what arrangements have been made to reduce the cost of £10 million incurred in posting social security benefits to able-bodied persons.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the £10 million to which the noble Lord refers was the total cost of posting nearly 100 million benefit cheques to claimants in 1975–76. About half the cost arose from postal charges in respect of people receiving sickness or injury benefits, or those who were otherwise incapacitated. Any alternative to posting social security benefit cheques to claimants, whether able-bodied or not, would certainly involve extra cost in additional staff and accommodation requirements.
Viscount MELVILLE: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his concise Answer, I must point out to your Lordships—
Several noble Lords: Question!
Viscount MELVILLE: My Lords, is it not the case that in fact I did not mean handicapped people who were going to collect their security benefits?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the bulk of them are persons who are not able-bodied. The House might be interested to know that the 100 million cheques which were posted in the year 1975–76 represented only 11 per cent. of the total number of payments which are made by the Department in the course of one year. My Lords, 89 per cent. of payments are made straight through the Post Office by order book payments.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, would it be possible to deduct the cost of the postage from payments made to able-bodied persons?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I am sure everything is possible, my Lords, but one has to bear in mind the accounting. If we were to do it, it would cost a jolly sight more in accounting to deduct these things and to show them, and so on, and in all the book-keeping involved.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that many of the questions that he has been asked have been asked without experience of the difficulties faced in social insurance? Is he aware that there are many remote parts of England, Wales and Scotland where villages are now so remote that, because of the higgledy-piggledy system of transport, the able-bodied needy cannot get to the post office and that, in consequence, it is cheaper to post than to subsidise their fares?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend because it was a point that I wanted to bring out and thought I might have an opportunity to do so. These Giro payments are sent from various locations. We have a very successful computer—I think perhaps I ought to put that in—at Reading which is responsible for sending over a large area millions of Giro cheques in the course of a year. They go to people who live a considerable distance from Reading. If we did not do that, they, would have to be sent to the local office of the DHSS. This would take up time, money, staff and accommodation.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, will the noble Lord confirm that, in fact, half of the payments made under my noble friend's original Question were to able-bodied people?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I am not prepared to confirm that for I am not sure that the noble Baroness is right.
Lord MOYNE: My Lords, is not the cost of posting simply a payment from one national pocket to another?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, that would be so; but nevertheless the charge would fall on the Department of Health and Social Security.

PUBLIC SECTOR: EXPENDITURE ECONOMIES
3.22 p.m.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what guidelines have been issued to local authorities, Government Departments, agencies and public bodies with regard to economising on furnishings and equipment.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of the ENVIRONMENT (Baroness Birk): My Lords, Government policy for restriction of expenditure in the public sector includes reductions on furnishings and equipment; but no specific guidelines have been issued generally.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness when she intends to issue specific guidelines? Surely this would be an admirable way at this moment of getting down the costs of Government expenditure. If she wishes, I would willingly send her some examples of the extravagance of these Departments at the present time.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, the Property Service Agency is responsible for the provision of furnishing and equipment
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for the Government. They are now operating on strict cash limits and have formulated priorities to secure economies, and all Government Departments have been notified of these priorities in a letter of 3rd September. So far as the local authorities are concerned, they have also been told quite specifically and the level of expenditure now allocated to them means that they have cut down. In fact, we know that this is so from the Joint Consultative Advisory Council. The noble Baroness will appreciate that she has mentioned a number of different agencies and that I cannot cover them all. If she has any specific examples I should be grateful if she would write to me.

TERRORISTS AND NUCLEAR ENERGY SECURITY
3.26 p.m.
Lord JANNER: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps have been and are being taken in conjunction with other civilised nations to deal with the menace of terrorism, particularly in view of the possibility of the use of nuclear energy by terrorists unless such immediate international action is taken and unless the endeavours which are being made to give the PLO access to atomic energy information are frustrated.
The MINISTER of STATE, FOREIGN and COMMONWEALTH OFFICE, (Lord Goronwy-Roberts): My Lords, further to my Answer to my noble friend on 20th July, the United Kingdom is supporting efforts in the Council of Europe to co-ordinate action against terrorism and the Federal Republic of Germany's proposal at the UN for an international convention on hostages.
We co-operate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency, with the European Atomic Energy Community, and with individual countries to ensure the security of nuclear material and equipment. We have greatly strengthened our own security precautions over recent years, including the protection of nuclear exports.

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of an International Atomic Energy Agency if it is not going to discuss the question of atomic energy? If it is going to discuss atomic energy, whether or not this gives possession of classified information, is it not significant that the P.L.O. can use the fact that it has been admitted to obtain some kind of information which is of a very serious nature in so far as the use of atomic energy is concerned? We have heard in this noble House in the past few days about expenditure, and what steps can be taken in order to curb it. Is not there a vast expenditure of billions of pounds being used today throughout the world in order to cope with this terrible evil? What on earth is the use of our standing aside and not voting when it comes to a question of admitting these people into that kind of company which obviously stands for atomic energy information being available.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I am sure the House will agree that my noble friend has once more made the point he had in mind when he tabled this question. We are all in sympathy with his general purpose. I invite him once more to consider what I have said; namely, that whatever access previously the P.L.O. or any other observer organisation had to any kind of atomic information, whether classified or not, their presence in these conditions as observers at the meetings of the I.A.E.A. does not increase those opportunities.

THE LORD PRIVY SEAL: COMMITTEE APPOINTMENTS
The CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES (The Earl of Listowel): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Lord Privy Seal (Lord Peart) be appointed a member of the Committee of Selection and the Committee for Privileges in the place of the Lord Shepherd and that he be added to the Select Committee on House of Lords Offices and the Select Committee on Procedure of the House.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LICENSING (SCOTLAND) BILL
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend the Leader of the House, I beg to move the Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Order of Commitment of yesterday be discharged and the Bill be committed to a Public Bill Committee.—(Lord Strabolgi.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

DOCK WORK REGULATION BILL
3.32 p.m.
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The present arrangements for the joint regulation of employment of dock workers are embodied in a scheme made under the Dock 'Workers (Regulation of Employment) Act 1946. This Act is now out of date. The revision is needed not only to meet present and future needs, but to enable the United Kingdom to ratify a recent ILO convention, Convention No. 137.
The Devlin inquiries of the mid-1950s confirmed the need for joint regulation of employment of dock workers. The Devlin inquiries of the mid-1960s recommended the allocation of all registered dock workers to permanent employers. This was done in a new and revised scheme in 1967, and it is only from then that we have had virtually the end of casual labour in the docks concerned. During the past decade, there have however been fundamental changes which are of two kinds. First, there have been technical changes such as containerisation and rolling on and rolling off, and these changes have reduced the dock labour force to one half of what it was a decade ago. But there has been a second kind of change; a change in the pattern of trade. Our trade with Europe has increased and our trade with more distant parts of the old Commonwealth has declined. Consequently, some ports have increased their tonnage, other ports have decreased their tonnage. This has not been a shift from ports which had a dock labour scheme to ports which had not a dock labour scheme. For example, 28 ports with a dock labour scheme

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increased their tonnage since 1969. Likewise, 23 ports which were not covered by the scheme also increased their tonnage. On the other side of the picture, 20 scheme ports and 15 non-scheme ports lost traffic. You will see that the movement was not one from scheme ports to non-scheme ports, it was a movement entirely due to the changes in the pattern of trade.
In 1970 an independent committee, the Bristow Committee, made recommendations on the need for a workable and acceptable definition of dock labour. It recommended that action be taken. Unfortunately, no action was taken. In 1972 the National Ports Council reported there was heavy reliance upon casual labour in the non scheme ports. It also reported that this labour was often substandard in its conditions of employment, and it recommended action. But again no action has been taken. The Aldington-Jones Committee which, obviously by the name was a committee of employers and employees, recommended action without delay. But still no action was taken. Up to 1970, with the exception of the General Strike of 1926, there had never been a comprehensive strike of dockers. That I think was quite a good record. But largely because no action was taken arising out of the changes that had taken place in the past decade, the dockers took action, and in 1970 and 1972 we had for the first time comprehensive strikes of dockers. In 1975 we had an unofficial strike of dockers. The Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service set up an independent inquiry panel to investigate the causes of the strike and make recommendations. That independent inquiry panel recommended that the present Government's proposals be acted upon without delay.
Seldom has there been any Bill which was based upon so many recommendations of independent bodies and joint committees of employers and employees. This Bill at least has that merit.
I now deal with the Bill. Clause 1 reconstitutes the National Dock Labour Board as a statutory corporation. It will have a chairman, vice chairman and 12 members. The chairman, vice-chairman and four of the members will be appointed in consultation with the CBI and the TUC. The remaining eight members will
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be nominated by the National Joint Council for the dock industry, and there will be four representatives representing employers and four representing workers. Schedule 1 Part I lays down the constitution of the Board, and Part II deals with the transfer of functions and property from the old Board to the new Board.
Clause 2 lays down the general duties of the new Board. In particular, it will have to keep under review developments affecting dock work. This has been framed to comply with the ILO Convention No. 137. Clause 3 deals with the finances. It lays down the borrowing powers and conditions under which grants can be made. The borrowing powers are fixed at £10 million but can be increased to £30 million by order. The borrowing is largely to finance redundancy payments because these workers are outside the general redundancy scheme and the money is refunded by dock employers by a levy upon wages. The levy at the present time, depending upon the port concerned, is between 4 and 5 per cent. of wages. So far as grants are concerned, grants can be made as contributions towards expenses and reports on classification made under Clauses 6–10 of the Bill. This is expenditure which at the present time falls upon Central Government, and in any case all payments, whether grants or loans, have to have Treasury sanction.
I come now to Clause 4. Clause 4 provides for the preparation of a new dock labour scheme to be brought into force area by area. A draft will be published and the opportunity will be given for representations. The final draft will be submitted to both Houses for approval. In this new dock scheme the cargo-handling zone will be defined in layman's language as within 5 miles of the sea—that is, the mean high-water mark—or within 5 miles of a major waterway open to the sea. That latter provision embraces the Manchester Ship Canal, where the dock labour scheme is already in force in most of the ports. Why 5 miles? Because that is the limit recommended by the independent Bristow Committee, and has been voluntarily accepted by some of the employers concerned who have become registered and licensed to employ registered dock workers.

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discussing day by day. It is well nigh unbelievable that, as the events of the week unfold, Parliament, and in particular this House, should be left to discuss measures, of which this Bill is an example, which can have no conceivable beneficial effect upon our ability to play our part on the world stage; nor, by ameliorating our woeful economic plight, restore to us as a nation a measure of prosperity and self-respect.
Earlier in the week, the possibility of a settlement of the Rhodesian problem, which would bring us immense political and economic gains throughout Africa and, indeed, throughout the Third World, passed the House by almost without comment. We now have a crisis over the exchange rate of the pound—and I appreciate that the word "crisis" is one of the most over-used words in our language—of such severity that if the newspapers are right, or if one of them is, one large bookmaker has opened a book on whether the Government can survive this weekend. The effect of the muddle which the Government have got themselves into is that there is no time for Parliament, for this House, to debate our present predicament, and no opportunity for Members of this House, who have immense experience in many fields, to offer advice and counsel and, may I even suggest it, comfort to the Government and by so doing help to allay the anxieties felt throughout the country. Contrary to what the Government sometimes claim, there is no lack of patriotism on these Benches, but there is growing disaffection that the Government have so lost control of the Parliamentary situation that there is no opportunity to express such patriotism. It is therefore with a sense of some distaste that we turn our attention to this Bill, and discuss what are the motives behind it and what it seeks to achieve.
Lord POPPLEWELL: My Lords, is that the end of the Central Office brief, so far as the general picture is concerned?
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, if the noble Lord contains himself he still has time to put down his name to speak; none of his colleagues has. So far as the motives are concerned, without doubt one can describe them as murky. Nevertheless, I do not regard it as being
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altogether profitable to speculate whether this Bill is the price for the continued support of Mr. Jack Jones and his undoubtedly effective advocacy of Government policy among his colleagues. What this Bill undoubtedly does is to extend the monopoly, which registered workers presently enjoy in the scheme ports, to the non-scheme ports and, indeed, to any other area in the country, and to bring within the dockers' monopoly a variety of activities which at present. certainly it would be agreed, do not fall into the category of dock works and which in many cases cannot conveniently do so.
I must make it plain that our objections to the Bill in no way stem from a lack of sympathy for the dockers. They have suffered very hard times in the past. They are having to endure the inevitable contraction of their industry. No one, I am sure, blames them for trying to alleviate their lot, although sometimes one may question the wisdom of some of their tactics. But the effect of this Bill is to create a privileged class of citizens who in effect are being told, "For better or for worse, for richer"—but not for poorer, my Lords—"in sickness and in health, till death or severance payment do us part, you are guaranteed gainful employment". This Government, dedicated as they frequently claim, to the abolition of inequality and privilege, have adopted the almost Orwellian theory that while all workers are equal some, apparently, are to be more equal than others.
One may look at the matter from the economic point of view and quote from a source which, at least on this occasion, I regard as impeccable:
"The cosy world which we were told would go on for ever, where full employment would be guaranteed by the stroke of the Chancellor's pen, cutting taxes and deficit spending, is gone".
The Prime Minister, for it was he, went on:
"When we reject unemployment as an economic instrument then we must ask ourselves unflinchingly, What is the cause of unemployment? Quite simply and unequivocally it is caused by paying ourselves more than the value of what we produce".
By importing a system of work traditionally, one has to say, under-efficient and overmanned throughout the length and breadth of our cargo handling industry, the Government are ensuring that those working in the industry are doing precisely

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what the Prime Minister complained about: securing a level of remuneration higher than the value of their productivity. One asks, how can the Government in one breath ask for an increase in efficiency in industry and in the next produce a measure which will raise costs and must, to some extent, reduce efficiency.
One looks around for those who seek to justify the introduction of this Bill. One has to look pretty hard at the list of speakers to see any noble Lord upon it from the Benches opposite who wishes to speak in support of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, is one and no doubt all of us will look forward to hearing his contribution. However, I doubt whether he will be so controversial as no doubt he will be in the future. Therefore one is left with the undoubted fact that there is no Back-Bench supporter of this Bill on the Government Benches. One is left with the uncomfortable feeling that either noble Lords opposite are treating the House with contempt or alternatively that they are unable to find anything good to say about the Bill. I do not believe the first alternative that I have postulated. I have far too much respect and, indeed, affection for many noble Lords opposite. However, taking this Bill together with the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Bill, we are in a sorry state when such important and far-reaching measures as these are debated, in effect, by only one side of the House, and of course one must not forget the Cross-Benchers.
If I may turn away from that side of the matter, this Bill is not only inequitable in its concept, as I submit it is, but it will be unfair in its application. I have no doubt that many other noble Lords will draw attention to the various shortcomings and unsatisfactory aspects of the Bill. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Lyell in particular will fill in some of the details. We shall not oppose the Second Reading of the Bill, although in this instance that is a course which we take reluctantly. Nevertheless, we shall seek to amend the Bill drastically and we will be concerned particularly to examine those parts of the Bill upon which the guillotine fell in the other place so that large parts of the Bill were never adequately discussed or, indeed, discussed at all on Report. We shall call the Government to account over the matter of many undertakings which were
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given in Committee by Ministers either to consider or, on some occasions, to reconsider suggestions and points which were made.
To us, one of the most distasteful effects of the Bill is that which in effect provides what might be called blanket extension of dockland work on a geographical basis. By that I mean the proposed cargo handling zone. As noble Lords will know, the "cargo handling zone" means any place within five miles of the mean high water mark, or of a major waterway navigable for 20 miles from the sea by ships of a gross tonnage of 6,000 tons or over. One must not forget that the Secretary of State has power by order to extend the zone, although, as the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, pointed out, this power is subject to Parliamentary approval. The zone is totally unrelated to existing port or cargo-handling facilities; it is unrelated to existing arrangements as between management and employees; it is unrelated to the availability of dock labour; it is unrelated to the realities of the industrial operations that are being performed in any locality. It is bound, in my judgment, where there is blanket coverage like this, to have a deleterious effect on industrial relations. It has been said, and said more than once, that the introduction of dock practices, if I may so describe them, in this way into entirely new fields will not disrupt industrial relations but I believe that it is bound to do so.
Once dockers who are on the register are provided with what will be a pool of new jobs they are bound to wish to fill them with their own people. Indeed, it would be unnatural if they did not and they have already said that this is what they intend to do. There is, is there not, my Lords, every likelihood that there will be unpleasant repercussions, with all that that entails? Therefore we shall table Amendments which will in no sense of the word be wrecking Amendments because they will, what I might call, observe the ambition or the philosophy which is apparent behind the Bill. Nevertheless, the Amendments will remove the geographical element from the cargo handling zone and replace it by what I might call a test of function. We believe that that will achieve what the Bill sets out to achieve and achieve it in possibly a more

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unfortunately it has failed to do in recent years. The Government's answer in this extraordinary Bill is, first, to seek to preserve the status quo so far as registered dock workers are concerned, which we believe is wrong; and, secondly, to do it by means which the Government know perfectly well are quite futile. We believe that this is politically dishonest.
May I venture to make clear what I mean? First of all, in all the 36 days of Committee in the other place, it has never once been suggested by a single Government spokesman that this Bill will create any more jobs, except for the few extra on the National Dock Labour Board, and perhaps that does not really count for this purpose. No more jobs will be created. It follows quite simply that if more jobs under the Bill are to be made available to registered dockers, they can be made available only at the expense of people who are not registered dockers. The Government then proceed to say that the way to achieve this, the way to ensure more jobs will be available for registered dockers is to create this five-mile corridor, five miles or more at the discretion of the Secretary of State.
Lord JACQUES: Or less.
Lord WIGODER: My Lords, five miles, or more, or less at the discretion Of the Secretary of State. I shall be agreeably surprised on the day when the Secretary of State uses his discretion in the way indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Jacques. Of course these proposals have given satisfaction, inevitably, to the existing registered dock force, and it is quite understandable that they should. It is quite understandable that they have greeted the Bill as an indication that there will be more jobs available for them once the corridor is extended in this way. But when one looks at the Bill, nothing could be further from the truth. It simply is not correct.
If one looks at the Bill, one finds, first of all, that all existing holders of jobs in the area which the dock workers think they will expand into are to be completely and totally safeguarded. Clause 10 of the Bill makes it quite clear that the Board must provide safeguards for the existing workforce, and that there have to be special reasons before anybody in the
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existing workforce is not made what amounts to being an honorary docker. In other words, the proposals are, on the one hand, to say to the registered dockers, "Yes, you can have all these extra jobs", but on the other hand, to satisfy those already working in existing jobs you say, "Of course, you can all keep your jobs; you will become registered dockers on the extension register and on the permanent register on a par with the other registered dockers".
And not only that. As the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, mentioned without stressing it—and, if I may say so, I can understand why lie did not stress it—on page 28 of the Bill, in paragraph 8 of Schedule 4 there is this simple proviso:
"If, at any time when the Board have under consideration proposals for a recommendation under section 8"—
that is about classifying workers' dock work—
"…the Board shall not proceed further in relation to that work unless the objection is withdrawn."
That is if an objection is made by a qualified independent trade union—admittedly an objection that has been accepted under the terms of an agreement before 1967.
My Lords, I have sometimes heard idle and malicious rumours to the effect that the trade unions are running the country, but this is the first time I have ever seen it written into a Statute in terms. But that is precisely what it says. It says that whatever the National Dock Labour Board, whatever the Government or whatever the Secretary of State may think about the merits of extending dock work into a particular area, the trade union concerned may have an absolute veto, and that is the end of the matter.
In those circumstances, where all existing work is to be protected and where the unions are to have a veto, how many jobs will be made available under this scheme to registered dock workers that are not available at the moment? Not unnaturally, the Government have been a little reluctant to give a figure, but it has been made perfectly clear that the only jobs to be made available to registered dockers that they will not have at the moment are those which will in due course arise as a result of natural wastage in the area of the corridor, where jobs are classified as registered dock

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work. How many that is I find difficult to estimate. The Government perhaps have some figures. It may be of some value to indicate that of the 54,000 who were registered dock workers in 1969, the natural wastage there over seven years has been precisely 670. Is it seriously suggested that anything more than a handful of jobs will be made available by the whole of the machinery of this elaborate Bill? If not, really, what is the point of it?
My Lords, it might perhaps be thought by noble Lords who are coming afresh to this Bill that what I am saying is entirely fanciful and based on a total misconception of the Bill. They may say to themselves that nothing could conceivably he so ridiculous as this set of proposals. Therefore, may I simply recite four very short quotations, one from Mr. Foot, who said at the Committee stage:
"I hope that the honourable gentleman will accept our repeated assurances that existing employees will not be turned out of their employment to make way for existing registered dock workers."—[Official Repot, Commons; Standing Committee G: 1/4/76; col. 707]
Then, at column 1793 of the Committee stage, Mr. Booth said:
"I hope that these amendments now make clear that everybody will be covered by recommendations to protect their jobs and that the Board will be able to choose only the means by which the protection is recommended, whether it be by the process of placing them on the extensions register or by the alternatives which the amendments offer". [Official Report, Commons, Standing Committee G: 20/5/76; col. 1793.]
I have an extract from what the Chairman of the Port of London Authority said in his report for the year ending December 1975. He said:
"It is my belief that even if the Bill works as originally it was intended to work, it will not add in any significant way to job opportunities for registered dock workers."
There is one final quotation from column 1775 of the Committee stage, where Mr. Booth said:
"I would not wish to cross swords with him"—
the right honourable gentleman—
"on the proposition that the extra work so created will be sufficient to solve the problem of surplus. I would tend to agree with the proposition, particularly in so far as it applies to London. The extra jobs created may well be nothing like sufficient to remove the problem of surplus in London."—[Official Report; Commons; Standing Committee G; 20/5/76; Col. 1775.]
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That is a problem of some 2,000 people. In effect in this Bill the registered dockers, who have every right to worry about their position, are being made the subject of an elaborate confidence trick by the Government. They believe that more job opportunities will be available to them, but if one looks at the Bill in detail it is apparent that nothing could be further from the truth.
My Lords, in those circumstances, the position appears to be that hardly any new jobs will be created for registered dock workers. Such few as are created will only be at the expense of others already doing that work. It has been said that the author of the Bill in some way is Mr. Jack Jones. If I may say so, I suspect it is much more likely to be Mr. Lewis Carroll. If the Bill serves no useful purpose in that way, may we look for one moment at the catastrophic side effects it will have. It will inevitably raise costs to the consumer. If new employers coming into the scheme have to pay a Dock Labour Board levy which they are not now paying it is quite inevitable that the cost of that will be passed on to the consumer and will result in an increase in the cost of living. It is going to have an effect on our trade, particularly our export trade, for example to the Far East, where there are very narrow margins of profit involved.
It is going to make great difficulties in the smaller ports. The noble Lord, Lord Jacques, talked about the terrible problem of casual labour in the smaller ports. What is it? Altogether, in all the small ports in the United Kingdom, there are 350 people employed as casual labourers, and doing that work because they enjoy doing it and because it fits in with other part-time occupations they have. It is bound to react to the detriment of the local communities who depend on those small ports. If I may, I will leave my noble friend Lord Simon, who knows a great deal about the problems thus involved, to elaborate on that. Inevitably it will cause difficulties in industrial relations. Registered dockers will find themselves working side by side, miles from the sea, with non-registered dockers, in circumstances in which there are bound to arise different forms of labour problems, different demarcation disputes. Again, if I may, I will leave my noble friend Lady Seear to deal with that matter.

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book which came out in 1970 on dockers. He says:
"Tilbury Docks, which from its opening in 1886 was the white elephant of the Board, and saved only from a premature closing three years later by the revenue earned by the London Docks Company, has now become the hub of a modern port."
And there have been other shipping predictions that have gone awry more recently—predictions that bigger is best; the prospect, which now seems to have faded, of successive generations of ever growing tankers. We have an instance of what has happened in the report on the financial pages of The Times on Tuesday. Use by large tankers was to have been a justification for the seaport part of the Foulness or Maplin project. Mercifully the nation has been saved from that economic and environmental disaster. Nor, if I may mention it in passing, would that project ever have met the employment needs of East Enders, as some have suggested. It is no good offering East Enders jobs on the East coast.
My Lords, it is not for a newcomer even to approach pontificating about the role of your Lordships' House, but it has always seemed that one of its special attributes is its ability to stand back and take a longer, overall look at a problem. It is not perhaps subject in the same way as another place needs to be, understandably, to the day-to-day demands and pressures from outside. Your Lordships do perhaps have a better opportunity sometimes to gauge the effect of legislation on a longer-term basis. And quite apart from any benefit from dealing now with the current work problems in the docks, partly through this Bill, action now could have longer-term benefits not sufficiently explored, it seems, so far.
Let me put it this way. If we fail to take action, if we allow the decline to continue, if we lose the labour force which is geared to dock work, if we allow our inner urban docks to run down more, we shall have lost a priceless asset—one hesitates to use an extreme term like that, but certainly an immensely valuable asset which future generations will find it too costly to resurrect. I have for some time been harbouring a suspicion (if "harbouring" is the right sort of word to use in today's context) about these inner docks areas, particularly in London.
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If they are closed down altogether, in days to come someone, I venture to suspect, in a blinding flash of inspired revelation is going to say, "What a good idea it would be if we had a port right here in the middle of London. We could bring the goods right to the centre. We could save costs. We could save on transport, on heavier lorries, on environmental damage." But they would not be able to reclaim those docks built 176 years ago, and a bit before and a bit after, because the cost would be monumentally prohibitive. So we should have lost an asset for all time.
How much better, is it not, my Lords, to take action now and so keep open the prospect of expansion in the future? Bringing stability to the workforce is one step, I venture to suggest, towards that. I hope that the Government, and all concerned, will also seize the earliest opportunity to press ahead with the other developments that are needed to make these areas the flourishing enterprise that they could surely be.
4.48 p.m.
Lord MOTTISTONE: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, asked me to swap places with him. This gives me the great privilege of being the first to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, on his most felicitous speech. If I might say so, not only was it interesting, and indeed in parts humorous, and indeed relevant to the subject, but also it was non-controversial, which in the framework of this Bill seems quite impossible. I should like to congratulate him very much on a splendid speech, and I hope we shall hear him many times in the future.
We are now confronted with a very real present-day dilemma on how democracy should be interpreted in a modern State. One of the misfortunes of the Bill is that it is the culmination of a long period of controversy and cannot easily be viewed objectively by all of us who will be affected by its outcome. It can be seen in various ways by different groups of people, and I propose to examine briefly the effects that it may be thought to have on some of those groups. First, there are the dockers themselves who may feel that in its present form the Bill is too restrictive to their interests rather than meeting all their aspiration.

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Then there are the employers of labour involved in the import and export of goods who have hitherto been spared close involvement in earlier controversies over dock labour schemes and who now fear that they will have dockers included in their workforce by Statute, with implications of increased costs and possibly inter-union strife. We also need to consider the interests and fears of many ordinary workers, especially those in small ports who have hitherto worked in harmony with their employers without the need to consider precisely whether the work that they do falls into a statutory category or whether they have from time to time to support a cause the relevance of which to their own interests may appear obscure.
Finally, and perhaps more importantly, we can consider the interests of the country as a whole under the Government of the day of whatever Party whose duty it is to protect us all from the encroachment on our freedom of powerful minority groups. Before examining briefly the possible effects of the Bill on each of these interests, I should declare two interests. First, I come from the Isle of Wight and am particularly concerned with the effects of the Bill on small ports. Secondly, I am a director of a trade association, the Cake and Biscuit Alliance, and am therefore especially interested in the effects of the Bill on the food industry.
Regarding the interests of the dockers, one is at once confronted with a fundamental issue. As I see it, from having studied the matter as deeply as I can—I have read Mr. Wilson's book to which the noble Lord, Lord Boston, referred as well as taking other action—past experiences have convinced the dockers that their working contribution within the country is vital to its wellbeing and that this entitles them to a certain degree of privilege over and above other types of people whose contribution is not so obviously essential. The purpose of the Bill, it seems to me, is to ensure that such privilege as has been fought for in the past shall not be eroded and indeed shall be extended in the future in what they would feel was a reasonable manner to ensure that it is safeguarded for all time.
While one must recognise that an attitude of that sort exists and cannot be ignored, I suggest that it is a dangerous
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one which has within it the seeds of great strife, for the fact is that in the modern world, especially in a small highly industrialised country such as ours, we are all dependent on one another and no one group of people is more important in the long run than another, even if some groups—and dockers are not the only ones—can, by withdrawing their labour, have more immediately detrimental effects on the wellbeing of the whole.
What I have just said may appear somewhat surprising to some noble Lords but in a small country we will find I think that over a period of time the groups of people we have, whether they be shopkeepers or noble Lords, dockers or miners, seamen or bus drivers, they are all here on a continuing basis only because somehow they have been found to be necessary in the past, and the community as a whole cannot exist by assuming that any one of these component parts is more important and useful than another. In the event that such a component part proves to be not wholly useful, then in due course it disappears and is replaced by some other group of people, so to my mind it is very important that in this country today we should seek to ensure that all of us appreciate that all these groups are important to us all and that there is no particular justification for any one group to consider itself entitled to more than what one might call a reasonable amount of privilege, and that is what we are arguing about in this Bill.
I feel, therefore, that we should say to the dockers, "Yes, we understand your past problems and your expectations but we ask you to consider whether you have not already got as much privilege as you can reasonably expect and whether getting more will not bring you into conflict with your fellow workers". That, after all, is what the TUC has recently splendidly said to the National Union of Seamen with such good effect.
I come to the question of employers who fear the introduction of dockers into their ranks as a result of the extension of the statutory cargo handling zone. Their concern is basically, as with all employers, to run their businesses as efficiently as possible and if noble Lords do not think that that is what employers' main concern is, they really had better learn what business is all about. These employers

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of your Lordships' House to take some step to make sure that the interests of such people are protected in this Bill.
Finally, how about the interests of the country and the implications for the powers of Government? Of course, one immediate consequence of the Bill, even if it has been exaggerated, will be increased costs to importers and exporters. This will tend to increased prices and a loss of business to overseas competitors—a situation which the country cannot accept with equanimity. I am endeavouring to be as low key as I can in putting these views across but, in view of what we heard in the Government Statement yesterday, it seems that what I have just said could have been given a great deal more emphasis than perhaps it could when I first thought of it.
More importantly, however, there is the increased power which the Bill will bring to the dockers in enabling them to threaten an embargo on trade and especially to disrupt food supplies. The full implementation of all the powers granted to the Secretary of State by the Bill could place in the hands of a few citizens an ability to starve the bulk of the remainder in under a week. This may be excessively alarmist, but the implications are there. We heard earlier from the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, when this point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, that the cargo handling zone might be less than five miles. Unfortunately, the noble Lord is not in his place, but I should be grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Oram, could expand on that feature of what the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, said in answer to the question. As I read the Bill, there is no provision for the zone to be less than five miles deep at any point though it may be considerably extended.
Of course, the necessary order would be subject to parliamentary approval but, in the event of any sort of Government majority, one imagines that we would not be protected from a Secretary of State who was carried away by his enthusiasm to look after the interests of this section of the community. Surely, if something in a Bill is dangerous to the community as a whole, it is better that it should not be in the Bill at all. If in the future it were necessary to extend the area described as dockland, perhaps that could
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be the subject of further legislation in due course. If noble Lords say that it is difficult to get legislation through, so be it. We are not in a hurry to work these changes. One of our troubles, particuarly with this Government, is that they legislate so violently and continuously that we are having our way of life upset at a rate which the common citizen cannot keep up with. Not good English, my Lords, but I hope you understand the point.
For centuries, we in this country have sought to achieve a balance of power so that no one group of us can ride roughshod over the interests of the remainder. We have cut off a king's head, we have formed trade unions, we have emasculated your Lordship's power. Above all, we have endeavoured to centralise power in our assemblies elected by universal—and I stress that—suffrage. Today, we see other power centres arising to challenge this principle. Who can be surprised that, in the aggregate, our people their liberties challenged? I assure your Lordships that they do and that those who feel so do not come only from among the sort of people who support those of us on these Benches. They are to be found among people who support the Party of the noble Lords on the Benches opposite. This Bill positively encourages the extension of the narrowly based power centre and it must be modified to ensure that the interests of the country as a whole, not to mention the bulk of its workforce, are properly safeguarded.
In conclusion, this is a bad Bill, introduced at a time when the country can least afford it—and I echo the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, in making that remark. If we must have it, let us do our duty and ensure that it does not excessively extend the privileges of the few at the expense of the many.
5.9 p.m.
Lord AMPTHILL: My Lords, this deplorable Bill has so few friends that it provokes feelings verging on embarrassment to join the chorus of opposition to it. Its genuine supporters, apart from the dockers themselves, seem restricted to the wild gentlemen of the far Left who yearn for the corporate State and those who have failed to observe that we live in a changing world. I would not of course include in either of those categories the

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noble Lord, Lord Jacques, or the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, to whom we are indebted for a brilliant and moving speech. We look forward to hearing from him again with great joy.
A reading of the more than one million words spoken and written in another place leaves the clear impression that only those whose job it was to support the measure spoke with any enthusiasm for it. Even their utterances had a defensive tone, indicating a lack of certainty that the chosen course was the right one. It will not have gone unnoticed by your Lordships that in another place the Government were able to secure only one vote from a Member who does not take their Party's Whip, throughout the lengthy, but truncated, debates upon the Bill.
Ten years have elapsed since the Docks and Harbours Act, and I believe that legislation to deal with the altered situation may be required. The laudable intentions of the Government are to protect the livelihoods of 32,000 dockers, to improve industrial relations in the docks, and to define what is dock work—the latter a difficult task which they ducked in 1966. I doubt whether any of your Lordships would not support the Government in those objectives, but it is much less certain that some of us can accept the solutions they propose.
Most important is the livelihood and welfare of the 32,000 men. It is not difficult to understand the feelings of a group whose numbers have halved in ten years and who have seen the occupation contract from a long ago peak of a quarter of a million men. They may not be entitled to feel bitter, but they do. If this industry accepts technological progress at anything approaching the rate our competitors willingly do, then the conventional dock workforce must shrink further. There is thus no doubt that an imaginative and compassionate solution must be provided for those who for generations have done this arduous work.
The two other objectives, the improvement of industrial relations and a definition of dock work, are patently interlocked. To say that the Government have muffed it is carrying understatement to inordinate
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lengths, but so many derogatory expressions have been used about the Bill throughout the land that your Lordships may favour more moderate language. Furthermore, while others have questioned even the morality of the Bill—that it is the purchase price of political support, or appeasement of a power bloc—I would prefer to concentrate upon its folly.
Those outside the industry would probably not quarrel with the functions classified under Part I of Schedule 3 as "general port work", as being work to be properly done only by dockers. But does the Minister not agree that rational people will be stirred to protest if an activity which could fall within the definition is performed in the heartland of England, whose nearest expanse of water is a duckpond?
In my view the starkest error in a misconceived measure is the attempt to impose on the function a far-ranging geographical designation in which such functions can become classified as dock work. Bristow sired the five mile radius concept under the dire pressure of settling the November 1969 London dock strike, intending it to have a purely local application. It must be madness for Government to determine that an ad hoc expedient should be enshrined in such far-reaching legislation as this.
When the Government propose to go beyond the irrationality of the five-mile corridor and provide the Secretary of State with the enabling powers he is given under Clause 4 (6), to extend the area to any place he chooses, the Minister is being placed in a position where intolerable pressure will be brought upon him by the job-seeking dockers. Employment Secretaries have for many years been prone to describe their job as a bed of nails. Are we to provide the bed with a mattress of barbed wire?
One of the least attractive features of the Bill is its deceptiveness. At the same time that it reassures other workers that their jobs are safe, it encourages the belief in the minds of dockers that there will be extra work for them. What, or, more accurately, whose jobs? Even the Bill's most ardent fan does not pretend that the Bill will of itself create any new jobs—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder. Most of us would predict that,

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by extending the sphere in which the restrictive and privileged practices of the dockers operate, there will inevitably be a loss of opportunities for work, by whomsoever it is done.
It is deeply regrettable that expectations should be raised in one group and fears generated in another. And let no one be deluded that it is not the declared aim of the dockers to put registered men into warehouses and cold stores, and to phase out the men currently employed there. They have said so on many occasions, in particular in the magazine Port in the issue of 4th June.
Can it be other than retrogressive to set up the vast bureaucracy that will be required to devise and to operate the scheme? Hundreds of people will sit round tables for thousands of hours delving into the appalling maze of traditional practices and local customs, always under the pressure that, if they do not give the dockers what they want, they will have a strike on their hands. The increased costs which will be generated can only push up prices. The demarcation disputes with which they will have to contend are horrifying.
I am left with the impression that this Bill was concocted not in the Department of Employment, but in a gymnasium. The agile Ministers swung around on the high bars like Olga Korbut—an ageing lady, one understands—while the well-muscled groups went through their powerful rituals beneath. Obviously British Rail, the National Freight Corporation, and other nationalised industries had done their physical jerks, because they got themselves totally excluded from the provisions of the Bill, leaving only the private sector, in whose fitness this Government show insufficient interest, to get stuck with its penalties.
I do not accept that the private sector deserves to be hamstrung in this way. They have shown great enterprise in developing the non-scheme ports to provide a more efficient and flexible service, and one that is much cheaper. There is no evidence to support the contention that labour relations are worse in non-scheme ports than in scheme ones. The majority of men in the non-scheme ports are not pining to become registered; they know too
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well that, by so doing, they put their jobs at risk.
What is to be done? I do not subscribe to the view, mooted by the Opposition in another place, that a further inquiry is needed. I agree with the Secretary of State's opinion on Second Reading there that that would get a horse laugh throughout the land. There is ample information available and, although there has not been a full blown inquiry since Devlin, there has nevertheless been a plethora of less formal investigations, discussions, reports, books and all the rest of the paraphernalia.
The Department is reputed to have disliked the Bill from the start. Let the Government put them to work with all speed to produce a measure which does what is needed to be fair and generous to the dockers but which will not have the catastrophic effects of this Bill which must increase prices, which must increase unemployment, and must increase industrial strife. I profoundly hope that your Lordships will prevail upon the Government to take the Bill away and come back with one which makes sense.
5.18 p.m.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, it is my pleasure to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, on his excellent speech. I remember him in another place. He may also be interested to know that the first General Election I ever fought was in Poplar, which included the Isle of Dogs. My opponent at that time was called Mr. Guy, and the dockers and others got the children to go around singing, "Vote, vote, vote for Mr. Guy, and swipe Joan Vickers in the eye." I got a very good swipe, and it took me another ten years before I was able to get into Parliament. I am now very pleased to see another colleague from the other House in this House.
With regard to the Bill, it was first brought to my attention by the Road Haulage Association of Devon and Cornwall. The Association wrote to me and I invited them to come and see me, because the Association said that it would go anywhere, at any time, to any place if only it could put its views forward. I was very impressed by is arguments and I decided to study the subject. It was a

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shock to the association to find the extent to which the cargo handling zone could be extended by the Secretary of State to incorporate specific areas and premises outside the corridor into the zone.
As I understand it, under the Bill no haulier would be safe from the effects of the Bill as drivers and other staff would not work alongside dockers at vastly inferior terms. Inevitably the pressure would mount for parity, and so increase the labour costs throughout the industry. There are a great many small firms, and also individuals, who are road hauliers, and many of them, particularly the individuals, have their own warehouses. The flexibility and excellent labour relations in the South-West are in danger when it is noted, as noble Lords who have studied the maps will see, that 80 per cent, of Cornwall is covered by this Bill and that practically all of Devon will now be able to be operated by dock labour. At present there are very few South-West ports and warehouses manned by registered dock labour, so the efficient handling of import and exports is through several small ports and warehouses by the local people—and this is a great feature of the economy in the South-West.
I have already said that I fought Poplar in a General Election, and I quite understand the difficulties and anxieties of dockers. Of course, it was even more so in 1945; and their conditions have been greatly improved. But I think one must also realise the difficulties of other people, like the road hauliers. For example, the worry is that the taking over of vehicles at dock gates is not only extremely wasteful of labour but also means that such vehicles are being driven by unqualified and uninsured drivers, whose attitude towards the care of vehicles may not be the same as that of the road hauliers. I further understand that Schedule 3, Part I, seeks to classify certain repairs as dock-work. That means that mechanical repairs and tyre changes may become of interest to dockers. This is also, I think, a very dangerous innovation, and I hope that when we come to discuss the Bill the Government will clear up what is really meant in that Schedule.
There is, of course, an appeals procedure, which is of interest to all employers, but there are two relatively small matters
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applicable to the road haulage industry on which we feel the Government should be able to accept Amendments. The first concerns the driving of vehicles, which I mentioned just now, but, also, the driving of vehicles on public roach is exempted from classification, and I think that if we are not careful the dockers will interpret this as meaning that driving on private port roads is their province. This is what we want to clear up when we come to discuss the Bill. Of course, there are a great many of the road haulage workers who are members of the Transport and General Workers' Union. I questioned them as to why their interests are not being protected by their union, and they replied that it was because they are a lesser number and not so strong as the dock labour force.
I should like to mention small ports and give one example, the example of Teignmouth. Estimates have been made of the operating costs if Teignmouth were made a scheme port. It is a non-scheme port at the present time. To take an example, in November 1975 42 cargoes, of which 32 were export cargoes of clay, were handled during the month. The manpower requirements varied between nil and 24 men on any one day. The average number of dockers employed per day was 11. Assuming that the port had been manned by 11 dockers, then on three days there would have been correct manning. On six days the port would have been understaffed, which would have resulted in vessels being delayed because of the tidal nature of this port. It is probably well known to many noble Lords that this is a very tidal port indeed, and ships can only get up at certain times, particularly on high tide. Very often, too, vessels have to leave with a light load, or they may have to wait, if they do not get out on the tide, at least ten days for the next spring tides.
Either of these occurrences would lead to vastly increased costs, which is a situation which is avoided at the present time, and could continue to be, by flexible manning. On 13 days the port would have been overstaffed, and hence costly and inefficient. Therefore, assuming that the port was incorporated in the scheme, and assuming that other National Dock Labour Board dockers were available from other ports when required, there would be additional costs in respect of manning and of transport costs of men on daily transfer from other ports. These extra

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costs are estimated at about 62 per cent. on present wage costs. To install such a system, I think noble Lords would agree, will increase the working costs too greatly. The operating costs would then be 62 per cent, up, with no increased benefit, either to the ship or the shipper; and I think your Lordships will agree with me that that is not a very satisfactory way to run a business.
Also, as I understand it, there is being laid down for the first time, at the instigation of the National Dock Labour Board, what work is to be classified as dock work. The right of appeal to have all existing rights to dock work proposals determined by an industrial tribunal, I gather, are now to be revoked. With regard also to this Bill, annulment orders suffice in almost every instance. For example, I think it is very odd—perhaps it is because I am not used to this type of Bill—to establish a new scheme as set out in Clause 4, where it says that the Secretary of State "shall as soon as may be" prepare a new scheme, after which we shall be asked to pass the proposed new scheme, when I think it may be difficult to prevent it if we do not like it. The arrangements for classifying dock work, which are set out in Clause 6, also, I think, could have been done before bringing in a Bill.
Unfortunately, in this Bill, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, there seems to be no mention of the public interest. The Bill seems to me to be entirely in favour of the dock workers. I should like to mention another point which the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, touched upon, and that is the effects on the supply of raw materials and feedstuffs. It is interesting to see, when one looks at the record, that on every day of the year half a day's food for the population passes through our ports and is distributed to the various warehouses and cold stores. About six months' supply is normally held; and when the registered dock workers' monopoly in the scheme ports has caused a shutdown, as has happened in the past, the population has been fed by distribution from what are known as buffer stocks. That has meant that up to date the general population has not been short of food. However, it could be if everything comes under the dock labour force, because it is
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now proposed to extend the monopoly to non-scheme ports and any other area of the country. So if there was a strike, the bulk of our reserve supply of food could be unavailable, leaving only those supplies in the shops and in the manufacturers' hands, and these would last only a very few days.
This could also affect animal food, and it might mean an extensive slaughter of our animals, so affecting farm products and hitting the consumer, the farm community and also our balance of payments. Foodstuffs in warehouses and cold stores need experts to understand how to switch them from one warehouse to another or when to switch on the heat or the cold, if necessary, to keep them fresh. It could also affect the raw materials; for example, the supply of newsprint, which could force a newspaper to close down. So it seems to me very unwise to place the imports of food and raw materials in the exclusive power of a small section of the nation's labour force. What is more, my Lords, as other noble Lords have mentioned, it is not going to help employment. In fact, from what I have said I think noble Lords will realise that it is going to cause further unemployment.
So, my Lords, my noble friend on the Front Bench has expressed the opinion that changes should be made in this Bill, and I very much hope that we shall be able to do so. But what I think is a very worrying factor is that Her Majesty's Government have always said that they want to consult the people. There was a very interesting document produced by Arthur Skeffington, an ex-Minister who is regrettably now dead. He produced this document, which I thought set out what were going to be the guidelines for the Government in the future. I suggest, my Lords, that in Bill after Bill, when they become Acts, we are getting further away from consulting the people. Therefore we are going to lose touch with the people in the future and we cannot blame the people for not giving their support. I should like to know why this Bill is being brought in at the present time. It is not going to be helpful to anyone and it is not going to help any of our present economic difficulties. I suggest that the best thing to do would be to postpone this Bill until national circumstances are better.
5.30 p.m.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, I share with my noble friend Lord Mansfield a certain amount of disappointment, it may even be shame, that we should be spending our time this week, and particularly this afternoon, on a measure that is puerile and piffling in the extreme when there are so many other vastly more important issues to which the energy of your Lordships' House and its undoubted skills could be applied. However, that we have got this Bill to talk about is not going to restrict me in my comments; although the managers of this afternoon's list of speakers have put me alongside another staunch supporter of the Road Haulage Association's case against the Bill.
That those workers under the dock labour scheme have a degree of protection and have enjoyed that protection for a number of years seems to me to be no good reason for any extension. Any extension of the scheme seems to me to do two things: first, it mitigates against the dock workers themselves because if, in the fullness of time, other work is deemed to be dock work and other workers are put on the extension register they must ultimately come on to the main register. I cannot see—if the Port of London is an example, and if the port of Southampton is an example—any dock labour board wanting to find additional work which will necessarily mean putting more men on an extension register who must, at some time, come on to the main register thereby increasing the number of unemployed main register workers who are guaranteed pay week after week. In fact, I can see a shying away if the dock labour boards do their job properly.
The second reason why I think this works against the interests of the dock workers is that a restrictive practice has grown up, a practice which has prevented the use of more modern methods of handling and distributing cargoes. Obviously, new methods have been employed; but they have taken an inordinate time to come into use. That, in its turn, has forced certain cargo practices to have been moved away from the dock area and into other means of moving. For example, there is an enormous amount of cargo now air-lifted out of the United Kingdom to
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Brussels and shipped on from Brussels. That is as a direct consequence of this kind of protection. So in any kind of Bill of this nature I should have looked to have seen some ways in which a greater flexibility of the resources within the docks could be used. It certainly is not here.
We in the Haulage Association have been worried about the cargo handling zones. I think it should be remembered that with the reduction in dock work many buildings and vast tracts of land have become available and other activities have been encouraged into use. These can be, and in some instances are, businesses that have a shipping or exporting connection. They would not have come into that area if they thought that at some time the movement of their goods, or, indeed, conditions on the people whom they would have to employ, were going to be imposed artificially. I believe that a number of businesses so threatened and a number of people so threatened may very well move away outside the five-mile corridor. Indeed, there is some mystique about this five miles—it could be five miles or more; or anywhere at all.
I believe that at the appropriate stage of the Bill this cargo zone should be quite firmly designated; it should be firmly set down. I do not believe that the Secretary of State should have any powers at any time to alter that zone; because we have discussed for many years the problems of road transport, and heavy goods vehicles trundling through the country. So many times we have said there should be designated routes at the end of which there should be a trans-shipment depot. We on our side who have been arguing for the use of heavy goods vehicles have said that it is easier for us to take these goods from door to door; that it is quicker for us to take a mixed container load from the Midlands to the dockhead as this land becomes available. In many dock areas there is railway land derelict which should be, and could be, used as trans-shipment depots. But what haulier is going to bring his lorry into a trans-shipment depot where its contents cannot be handled by his own men? He would sooner go somewhere else. He does not want dock labour.
Some of this land is private land. My noble friend Lady Vickers referred to the private roads within dock areas. Today's

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big lorry is worth £30,000 or £40,000 and no driver worth his salt who has been trained and who is a professional hands that over to somebody else. I can tell you that there are disputes now at Southampton docks where the rule is that articulated vehicles are split—the trailer part taken on board a roll-on, roll-off vehicle with a tug master and the tractor is driven on by the driver. You will not find a French, Italian or German driver allowing anybody whatsoever, irrespective of any agreement, to handle his wagon. Why should we impose that upon his English counterpart? I ask the Minister, quite specifically, notwithstanding what appears to be an exclusion in the Bill: are we within our commitment to the EEC with respect to the international movement of goods in having this requirement in the Bill?
I have only one other point which I shall make and that is a generalisation. The drivers and hauliers, the people who start off handling the goods, from the factories, belong to the Transport and General Workers' Union. So also do those who might at some time usurp their positions. I commend to noble Lords opposite that they read the fears expressed by one section of that union, the drivers section, in two articles of the August issue of their magazine called Headlamp.
I am not going to quote from it this evening because there are another 10 speakers on this Bill and the hour goes on and there is much more business to be done tonight. If there is a body of men—the drivers and hauliers—who feel that they are being unfairly treated, trouble will ensue one day. It is no good Ministers, particularly the Ministers and spokesmen in the other place, giving assurances. Assurances in matters of this kind, where men's jobs are at stake, are about as valuable as the one line of print they make in Hansard. If those assurances are met, then embody them in the Bill so that ordinary men and women, deriving their livelihood from matters contained in this Bill, know they are safe in their employment, or as safe as the economic conditions allow. That is not to say that they do not cast some fairly jealous glances at that minority group employed in the transhipment of goods who are in the enviable position of being protected.
5.42 p.m.
The Earl of INCHCAPE: My Lords, this Bill will inevitably affect port performance, the shipping industry and international trade—all matters of vital concern to the nation, but also affecting interests which I personally represent and which I now declare. I am chairman of a merchant house which exports to most parts of the world; I am president of the General Council of British Shipping; and I am chairman of a leading shipping company which also has road haulage interests.
I recognise that the Government wish to improve industrial relations in the ports. That is a worthy intention. In the view of the shipping industry, the approach adopted in this Bill is both muddled and misguided. We believe that the Bill, far from achieving its objective, will disrupt operations which are presently working very smoothly without the help or hindrance of the scheme. By damaging, quite unnecessarily, a key link in the transport chain, it will make exporting and importing more difficult and more expensive.
The Bill proposes to extend the scheme to ports which have flourished without it. The reason seems to be plain jealousy by the dockers in such large scheme ports as London and Hull, who appear to think that ports which are outside the scheme have an unfair competitive advantage. If that was indeed the case, would not the sensible course be to abandon the idea of extending the scheme, and instead to modify it so that the scheme ports could also flourish? If extension there must be, let there at least be exceptions for smaller ports, and for the seasonal ports, which do not need and cannot use a permanent workforce.
The other leg of the Bill is the extension of the scheme at existing scheme ports to cover employees in certain other industries within a cargo-handling zone. Initially, as we have heard this afternoon, this covers five miles from the coast, but potentially it goes further inland and now we have heard that it may be reduced. In this way the Government hope to provide more work for dockers, for the underlying problem, which we all accept is that over the years—and particularly in recent years—there has been a decline in jobs in the docks. This has led dockers

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to believe that they have been unfairly deprived of work which is traditionally theirs.
Previous little evidence has been produced in support of this view. Extensive inquiries undertaken on behalf of the Joint Special Committee on the Ports Industry in 1972 established that much of the cargo handling performed near the ports is warehousing or export packing, which is carried out at premises where it has always been done. The other type of work which the Bill would touch is container groupage—the trade name for the equally technical phrase for container cargo work, the stuffing and unstuffing of containers. Many container depots are inland. Where groupage is performed near the ports, the conditions under which it is done, and the recruiting policy, are usually settled by agreement with the relevant trades unions.
The 1972 inquiry established that only 2 per cent. of the total container movement was groupage work carried out by non-union labour. In the whole of the United Kingdom the number of additional jobs that could be made available to union labour, including registered dock workers, was of the order of 125. The decline in job opportunities at the docks is due, not to job poaching, but to technological change, as Lord Jacques and other noble Lords have said. Containerisation and bulk handling both mean that fewer dockers are needed. Between 1967 and 1973 the proportion of imported cargo handled in bulk or specialised from across London's docks quays rose from 37 per cent, to 85 per cent. In the same period, the proportion of exports similarly handled rose from 6 per cent, to 55 per cent.
Technological change has produced similar problems in the railways, the steel industry and the motor car industry. Yet it is only in the docks industry that the Government are trying to deal with the situation by giving those affected a privileged position, in respect of work becoming available in other industries. What is more, this is not being done by helping individuals, but by the fiction that work in those other industries—warehousing, cold storage work, et cetera—is dock work, which patently it is not.
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Compared with the reduction in other industries, the decline in our requirements for registered dock workers is comparatively small. In all, there are only 30,000 registered dockers, and the great majority of those will certainly still be needed. Indeed much of the necessary adjustment has already been accomplished by control of recruitment and by voluntary severance schemes. This is a solution which certainly costs money, but it does not involve legislation. The Bill's method of dealing with the decline in jobs is simply to extend the National Dock Labour Scheme, which was devised in a different era to meet different circumstances, and to extend it, apparently, without any fundamental alteration.
I appreciate that the Bill has some safeguards and that those safeguards have been strengthened as a result of various Amendments which have been made since the Bill was first introduced. For example, I hope, as the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, indicated in his reply to the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, the veto given in the Bill to workers in other industries being limited to those premises established before 18th September 1967 has been extended to include other premises established since that date; for there are other premises which have been established since that date, and very important ones—notably, the major container bases—which operate perfectly satisfactorily under agreements freely entered into between the employers and the trade unions, including Transport and General Workers' Union.
There has been strong and reasoned opposition to this Bill, not only from the shipping industry but also from port operators, trade and industry warehousing and cold storage interests, and transport undertakings. Yet the Government have shown no willingness to reconsider this Bill in principle. I can only hope that if this Bill proceeds your Lordships will so amend it that our worst fears are not realised. For example, I hope that particular attention will be given to the introduction of a significant independent element in the National Dock Labour Board and the local dock labour boards. I also hope, for the reasons I have given, that there will be stronger safeguards for existing workplaces which operate perfectly efficiently, economically

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and on a trouble-free basis under agreements made between the employers and trade unions concerned.
Another aim of amendment should be to avoid divided manpower forces, with all that that implies in the way of inefficiency, high cost and potential friction amongst the workers themselves. Only last week, the Secretary of State himself said that:
"…it could be most undesirable to split an integrated labourforce with the same terms and conditions by bringing some of them within the dock labour scheme while others remained outside."
Those are wise words, and I hope there will be Amendments made to eliminate any risk of such damaging division.
There are other aspects of this Bill which I feel your Lordships should scrutinise carefully. For example, the process for obtaining the exclusion from classification is cumbersome and time consuming. Could not groups of specialised workers, such as riggers, be excluded at the outset and spared the doubt and uncertainty which this Bill would inflict? If the Dock Labour Scheme is to be extended, it should be amended so as to reflect the major changes made since it was introduced. For example, it should recognise that, despite the best possible manpower planning, controlled recuitment and voluntary severance schemes, redundancy will sometimes be the only sensible course. If the National Dock Labour Board sees that the labour force is indeed surplus to the foreseeable needs of a port as a whole, it should not reallocate them to other employers. It is not in the interest of anyone to postpone the evil day, and pretend that there is a job where there actually is not. In these, hopefully rare, cases we must remember the human problem. If a docker loses his job as the result of redundancy, he should receive (as he does now) a generous lump sum grant and also help in retraining for a job in another industry where he is needed. We believe that, with encouragement from the Government, an arrangement along these lines should have been hammered out within the industry. The docks industry should solve its own difficulties without thrusting them on to other industries such as warehousing and cold storage.
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Legislation, particularly controversial legislation, is likely to create more problems than it cures. Instead, we should like to see a period of stability, so that employers and dock workers can forget about Acts of Parliament for a few years and concentrate on the real problem of improving turn-round and attracting future business. This Bill takes a sledge-hammer to crack a nut and, what is worse, the hammer is misdirected. Let us see what we can do to reduce the damage it is likely to cause, which is something that, in the dire economic circumstances of the country, we simply cannot afford.
5.53 p.m.
Baroness SEEAR: My Lords, I should like to take this opportunity to add my congratulations on his very elegant and constructive maiden speech to the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, who has temporarily left us. We hope that we shall hear from him very often in the future.
I shall be brief today. A great many things have already been said about this Bill, and many speakers have said the same things. That is not surprising, because the errors in the Bill have attracted the attention of a great many members of your Lordships' House. Indeed, the general feeling is, as with the shipbuilding Bill earlier this week, the Government are rivalling the Emperor Nero: indeed, I think they are out-Neroing Nero. I have never heard it suggested that Nero's fiddling did anything to make the fires burn more furiously, but this Bill is going to make our present extremely serious economic situation even worse. It does nothing whatever to help it, but in fact provides a further handicap to a country and an economy already far too handicapped.
I should like to concentrate on two of the major criticisms which are made by friendly as well as hostile critics of our economy, and to point out how this Bill illustrates and deepens these defects. It is said again and again that two major handicaps from which we suffer are the over-manning of our industry, bad utilisation of our labour strength in this country—our potentially very valuable and useful labour strength—and poor industrial relations. It is my contention,

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as it has been the contention of many other speakers, that this Bill contributes to the under-utilisation of labour and to poor labour relations.
As regards the under-utilisation of labour, it has been said in defence of this Bill that the intention is to give security to dockers and a secure future to the dock labourforce; but if the work is not there, work cannot be guaranteed which does not exist and will not exist if technical progress goes forward as, in the economic interests of all of us, it needs to go forward. Indeed, it will be argued that the dockers must be given security in their jobs because of the level of unemployment and because what all workers want at the present time is that no steps should be taken which would seem to be increasing the chance of further unemployment.
But, my Lords, this Bill does the very opposite of seeing that there is no increase in unemployment. By trying to guarantee people jobs which cannot continue, by putting the price of those jobs too high, in the immediate present the Government will be creating unemployment elsewhere. They will be merely safeguarding the dockers temporarily at the expense of other workers—because anything that puts up costs is bound to do that. In the long run it will do nothing to secure the employment of those dockers, because unless the prosperity of the docks rises in the long run there is no hope of continuing the employment of the dockers, unless they are to be totally subsidised by the community as a whole.
As other noble Lords have said, what is needed at the present time is not this phony guarantee of security but a recognition, which indeed should have been given long ago, that we should welcome technical change and that the way we can give security to people affected by technical change, not only in this industry but in other industries—and we should be well on the road to recovery if the Government would recognise this—is to say to people whose industries are bound to decline because of advances in technology: "There is no future for you in these industries but we will do everything in our power to see that there is a good future for you elsewhere"
I would remind the Government that, at any rate in the London area, there are
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still shortages of labour even at the present time. There are many jobs in London and elsewhere and there are many demands for skills which are we unable to meet. The Manpower Services Commission has itself recognised this. It has published lists of unfilled jobs; and again and again I have asked the Government what is being done, and with what results, to fill the jobs in short supply. Instead of putting forward this futile Bill, why have not the Government put the money and effort into seeing that the men who will not be required in the docks are being trained—if you like, at double the cost of guaranteeing their jobs in the docks, because it would be well worth it—for jobs for which there is a future and not for jobs for which, in the long run, there cannot be a future. So it does nothing to contribute to the better utilisation of our labour forces, which we so seriously need.
What does it do on the other major question which underlies so many of the economic difficulties in this country—the improvement of labour relations? I think that the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, was a little less than frank when he claimed that the record of industrial relations in the docks is good, because there are very few instances of national stoppages. Surely no one would deny that, although it is true that national stoppages have been rare, stoppages in individual docks have been very frequent indeed. Surely no one would pretend that the industrial relations record in the docks is a good one. It is not. But what is there in this Bill that will improve that record?
It is generally agreed that to get good industrial relations you need to have a labour force which will work co-operatively, one group of workers with another; you need to have clearly defined responsibilities, and you need to be able to deal quickly with problems as they arise. The prospect laid out in this Bill goes against all those essential criteria of good industrial relations. Built into the Bill is conflict between different groups of workers. It cannot possibly be denied that if, working together or needing to collaborate closely together, there are workers who have a different status in relation to their claims under the Dock Labour Board, this can be anything but disruptive in relationships between different groups of workers.

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There is a need to have clearly defined responsibilities and to deal quickly with problems as they arise. But it has been the curse of dockland for years that responsibility for control of dock work has been so split that hardly anybody knows who is responsible for what. The role of the employer has been divided between the employer, as customarily understood, and the Dock Labour Board with disastrous consequences. This Bill perpetuates that division of responsibility, inevitably making for inefficiency and had industrial relations. Delay is built into the new proposals, for there are so many different people responsible for decisions. Decisions will be put up, they will go from the employer to the Dock Labour Board, the Secretary of State is there and able to come in, people have rights to make representations—of course they must, if you have a scheme of this kind—and what does all this mean? It means on the one hand bureaucracy, and on the other hand delay, and delay is always the enemy of good industrial relations.
I say this to the Government. In this Bill which you are putting forward today, on this day of all days as we go beggars, cap in hand, for yet more money, you are sacrificing the opportunity to improve economic conditions to your doctrinaire determination to put through your old-fashioned ideas.
6.3 p.m.
Baroness HORNSBY-SMITH: My Lords, I should like to join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, with whom I sat in another place as a Member, on a most polished maiden speech. I join so many noble Lords in this House in opposing this Bill. As the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, has pointed out, this very contentious Bill contradicts all the plain speaking and the economic guidelines of the Prime Minister in his speech at the Labour Party Conference this week. It will not reduce costs. It will encourage overmanning and, undoubtedly, cause inter-union friction. Indeed, I share the concern of many noble Lords that under this Bill the dockers will be able to take over the jobs of those in other unions, many of whom are highly skilled and trained in their own speciality. Whatever case there may be for a monopoly of union
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labour in the immense complexes of the major ports, I believe that the draconian measures in this Bill are totally irrelevant to the requirements of the small ports around the coastline of this country, in which I have a particular interest.
When one considers the effect of the five-mile corridor, as my noble friend Lady Vickers pointed out, it could spell absolute ruin for many of those small ports which in many cases are the whole nub of the community in the West Country, in Scotland and in other parts of the United Kingdom. The one-time activities in the old smugglers' creek in the West Country will only pale into insignificance beside the power to poach jobs and operations, which is being given to the dockers under this Bill, in this five-mile corridor right through that area. As other noble Lords have pointed out, it will cut right across the established agreements between employer and employee, and it will engulf whole towns and communities and bring them completely under the overriding powers of the dockers' monopoly. It is all very fine for the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, with his tolerant manner, to tell us that there will be consultation, to tell us that when a decision is made there can be representations. But for months now some of the most valuable and important trade associations and trade unions have been making representations against this Bill, yet the Government appear to have taken no notice at all of them.
Let me take, for example, the coastal shipping which brings coal to the small ports of the South-West. It is unloaded by dockers, reloaded by dockers on to coal merchants' lorries and is then distributed around the areas by Transport and General Workers' Union drivers, who know their customers. Many of these small ports and coastal towns are only two or three miles across and are completely within the five-mile zone. So, in fact—and it is the uncertainty that is worrying so many of the hauliers, the small merchants and, indeed, the lorry drivers—under this scheme, with the five-mile corridor, the dockers could claim to handle coal, food and every landed item throughout and beyond the towns, to the detriment of the present operatives doing their traditional jobs. As a recipe for inter-union friction, it makes every other

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demarcation dispute look like a game of patball.
I wonder whether the Government have considered the terrible uncertainty and chaos that it will create for manufacturing companies, wholesalers, retail distributors, and firms which export a proportion of their goods, leaving the rest for the domestic market. If they are within the five-mile zone, are they to have two sets of drivers, one of whom will go to the docks and one of whom may go North?—and if a load goes to Glasgow it will again come into the five-mile zone. Is it any wonder that there is uncertainty, annoyance and indignation among companies and whole federations, who see the friction and the uncertainty which this Bill will create?
For several years, under both Governments, there has been generous compensation in pursuing a policy of reducing overmanning at the docks, at a cost to industry and the taxpayer of some £60 million. The Government now propose to turn this very policy, which they hitherto supported, on its head by deliberately inflicting a dock labour force which will be paid whether it works or not. In these small ports they may have regular but not daily quotas of cargoes, as my noble friend Lady Vickers pointed out. There are some docks where there is a hustle and bustle for three months of the year, while a local commodity which is in season is exported. If it comes under the monopoly of dock labour, is a dock that is busy for three months and ticks over for nine going to have to employ its full complement of staff for 12 months? That is the quickest way to bankruptcy that I know.
Many of the small ports have highly seasonal trade. These regulations place an open-ended liability on port employers, many of whom have fought their way back to profitability by their local knowledge, flexibility, desire and willingness to give the client what he wants when he wants it, as well as their competitiveness. No good employer could, or would, tear up agreements which had been reached with recognised unions, yet that would be inevitable as the Bill gives carte blanche to the dockers to ride roughshod over agreements that have been honourably entered into between employers and other unions. It makes nonsense of the employer/
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employee negotiations by interposing The Dock Board and the Secretary of State between employers and employees. Therefore it makes direct negotiations by employers with their own workforce practically intolerable.
I share the view of many that it is quite outrageous that there should be no real right of appeal to an independent authority. Those who use the ports and pay for them should have the right of appeal against the tremendous powers which are granted in the Bill. Overall, the Bill negates all the sweet talk of trade union leaders about improving employee participation in company affairs because it takes out of the direct negotiations of an employer with his own workforce many of the activities which they, and he, consider theirs by right. It makes no provision for public inquiry where the interest of the consumer is concerned, particularly in relation to the distribution of food which I consider is of vital importance.
The Bill empowers the Board and the Minister to extend the so-called dockland well into the countryside. It gives to the Board the right, almost at will, to amend the definition of "dock work". The handling of food supplies is a highly skilled operation which demands the most efficient handling. It demands rigid timetables, particularly in relation to perishable goods. Wide powers are given to the dockers in the great warehouses and cold storage complexes which are not in the exclusive ownership of the "big boys".
The noble Lord, Lord Jacques, pointed out that the vast company chains using exclusively their own centres are protected by the Bill, but there are thousands of distributors in this country who, in the case of commodities like foodstuffs, have to get thousands of items from many sources. They do not possess their own warehouses and they will be bedevilled by being unable to use, as they normally would, their own handlers, their own lorry drivers. Equally, I believe that action by the dockers could withhold feeding stuffs for our farming community or even raw materials for our manufacturers. I believe that it is dangerous to put into the hands of a small minority of workers the inherent power in the Bill to hold up, as they could do by strike action, vital supplies either to the public or to industry.
Another noble Lord mentioned that nowhere in the Bill is mentioned the public

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interest, a phrase about which we hear a great deal in other ways. However, it is fair that "public interest" should not be included in a Bill which is solely to the advantage of one exclusive union, to the detriment of other workers, the ports and the consumer public.
May I add a word to the comments which were made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, regarding lorry drivers. Lorry drivers want something more than promises, and I think that they are entitled to see written into the Bill proper safeguards for their own skilled occupation. It is not enough to say that they will have the highway on public roads because, as the noble Lord knows, there are thousands of miles of roads on trading and industrial estates which will come within this five-mile limit.
Is a regular lorry driver to cover a long distance haul and then, in a port or trading estate miles away from the docks, to hand over his precious cargo to whichever docker is on duty? The professional lorry driver knows the commodity he is handling, and he is used to the vehicle that he drives, which has probably been purpose-built at enormous cost. He knows to a fraction of an inch its height, breadth and depth and, even more important, he knows the foibles of its manoeuvrability.
If dockers are to be empowered to handle an enormous variety of vehicles in this vastly extended cargo zone, are they all to qualify for heavy goods vehicle licences? And is the employer to be at the mercy of a docker who drives his own specialised vehicle, which is perhaps very cumbersome? Nobody has told us what is to happen in relation to the employer who has insured against the mistakes of his own driver whom he is responsible for seeing is qualified to drive that vehicle. What kind of trouble will he encounter if an unknown, inexperienced driver, with neither knowledge of the load nor experience of that vehicle, crashes it?
At a time when the Prime Minister is exhorting us to produce wealth in order to pay our way, this Government have introduced a Bill which encourages overmanning and extends payment for work not available and not done over and above the requirements of the small ports,
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many of which will go out of business. Therefore it reduces job potential in these small, vital and active communities. The Government are obsessed with bigness. I wish that they would listen to the pleas of the smaller units, the smaller confederations and undertakings. With their practical experience, in many cases they have built up new industries and exports in the smaller communities. They are proud of their competitiveness and of the flexibility which has enabled them to deal with new imports and exports of their own commodities, whether it be china clay, Devon cider, small boats, machine tools or fish fertiliser.
This Bill has been justly criticised by manufacturers, chambers of commerce, the food industry and the retail consortia who are all endeavouring to fight inflation by trying to hold down the costs which the Bill can only inflate. I should like this Bill to be taken out on a Devon trawler and buried at sea, with a guard of honour of lorry drivers and the Prime Minister adding positive action to his brave Blackpool words by conducting the service.
Lord JACQUES: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness a question before she sits down? I understood her to say that if a company produced goods for the home market but also had some exports, it could be frustrated by the monopoly the dockers would gain by the Bill. If a company is handling its own goods, there is no third party handling. That is entirely outside the scope of the Bill.
Baroness HORNSBY-SMITH: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jacques. I am well aware of that. But there are many exporters who do not run their own transport. If an export and home market producing factory is within the five-mile zone—let us say on the borders of Plymouth—then possibly all its goods will have to be handled under the dock scheme; or, according to the decision ultimately made, part of its goods may have to be handled under that scheme: those which finally go for export down to the docks or to the North. It is this uncertainty which is important, because as the wording stands now if that factory is on the edge of Plymouth it could come into the scheme.
6.20 p.m.
The Earl of KINTORE: My Lords, my first pleasurable duty is to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, on a very fine maiden speech and to congratulate him intensely on managing not to be controversial. If I am ever in really dire straits, having committed some frightful crime, I hope he will come and defend me, because he is the only kind of person who might get me off! I am afraid that is the only complimentary thing I can say about the whole Bill.
As it is getting late and we have had a long and interesting debate, the points which I shall raise will be confined to the effects of the Bill on the region where I live and where I am a regional councillor, and concerning our small ports for which we have responsibility. I will endeavour not to repeat many things which have been said because I agree with almost everything.
I object to this Bill. Is it necessary, considering the doubt, confusion and delay it will give rise to? Is it in the public interest? I am sure it is not. Will it produce more jobs? I do not think it will. Will it reduce the cost of living? I am sure it will not. Will it produce a better service to the public? No. Will it produce confidence overseas, considering our begging-bowl economy, on the part of anybody who is putting more cash into that begging-bowl? I am quite sure it will not.
What is the justification for increasing spending at this time? We are told on every hand, screamed at by the newspapers and the other media and by the Prime Minister that we are in an economic mess. If there is any money to spare, why not use it for local government spending, which has been ruthlessly slashed: on education, housing, the social services and the infrastructure that goes with them? In my opinion, if there is any spare money those are the things on which it should be used—not on a folly of this sort. Scotland with its islands and remote areas, often with no rail services, is, I would suggest, in a somewhat different position from a great deal of England—not all, but a great deal.
If we are talking about devolution, surely this is the sort of thing that the Scots should decide upon for themselves. As the Bill stands, it appears to me to be a retrograde step. In particular, some
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of the confusion arises in Part II of Schedule 3, and in particular in paragraph 11. Under that paragraph one can supervise unloading but one cannot do the unloading. If one is producing a load of barley for a small ship in one of our small ports (which is done quite constantly up there at the right time of the year) it appears to me that as the Bill is drafted at the moment the situation could arise whereby it would be a dock labourer's job to operate part of the combine, loading the lorry, because it is within the five-mile zone, and it would then be again a docker's job to tip the lorry at the side of the ship. This appears to be the case, and it is the doubts, confusion and delay which are doing such great damage.
Again in paragraph 15 of Part II of Schedule 3, I should like to know whether an oil or a gas-production platform is a site? What is it? If it is a site then is it included in this provision? And what is the position as to drilling mud—is that a chemical or not? These things are not defined and there is an enormous amount of confusion. It refers in the Bill to a boat, but not a sea-going boat. A supply ship for a drilling platform is a sea-going boat, so where does that leave us? I just do not know and I do not think that anyone else does.
There is one other point. Within the five mile limit we have a fairly large slaughterhouse at Port Lethen. That slaughterhouse sometimes exports loads. Clearly I should have thought that as the Bill stands, this would come under the Bill, but most of the loads are for home consumption or for consumption in the South of England. However, some are not, and we never know quite when the loads will occur; it depends on the normal run of business. This is confusion added to confusion, doubt and delay and can do nothing at all to help the country. Ports like Buckie, Burghead and Macduff besides the fishing industry handle a few small coasters. Barley is the export from there, some going overseas and some not. There is the import of cement, coal and possibly fertilizers. These are the sort of things that worry one.
With permission, I will read a part of a report which we had done by a consultant on these small ports to ascertain the possible effect of the Bill. It says:

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"There are two types of activity carried out at the small ports under Grampian Regional control; namely, fishing and cargo handling.
Under Schedule 3, Part II, paragraph 13, certain exclusions are stated for the loading and unloading of fishing boats. The details are considered unnecessarily complicated and it would be better to exclude all fishing boats but it would appear that it is the Government's intention to bring the larger fishing boats into the dock labour scheme. It should be stressed that even for smaller boats the exclusion refers to unloading fish on to the quay—the movement of fish on to lorries, et cetera could still be controlled by the unions under the transport section, therefore the exclusions written into the Bill could turn out to be 'hollow' concessions. To suit the reality of work at our small harbours, the expression 'unloading of fishing vessels' should be extended to include loading of fish on to transport on or abutting the quay.
As the amount of cargo handling at the regional harbours is small and variable throughout the year, there is no need for full-time dockers and indeed most of the work is carried out by casual labour employed by the local stevedore company. These harbours are just viable at the moment and any increased labour costs due to the Dock Work Regulation Bill would undoubtedly create a loss at each of our commercial harbours of Burghead, Buckle and Macduff. Each of these harbours handle from 60 to 80 small cargo ships per year, and as the turn round extends over one or two days it is obvious there would be a lot of idle time which would have to be paid for if full-time labour had to be employed.
The great fear is that although each small harbour may not have sufficient full-time work, there could well be an attempt to slump two or three small harbours together and create a 'flying' labour force to move between the small ports, thus bringing the small ports into the Bill. From a practical viewpoint this is unsatisfactory, because a ship could be in each harbour at the same time; consequently one and two ships may have to wait in the harbour—a most unsatisfactory state of affairs."—
—That is because the labour force has to go from one to the other. The report goes on:
"This is not a fanciful situation, since much of the business through our ports is concerned with the export/import of barley and this occurs over a short period in any one year. It would have been more satisfactory if the Bill had contained definite exclusions relating to cargo boats, for example harbours which could not accept boats over 2,500 tons g.r.t. or 300 feet in length or dealt with less than 200 boats per year should be automatically excluded.
There is a provision for representations to be made against the inclusion of any port, but it is difficult to see many objections being upheld if the Secretary of State for Employment and the National Dock Labour Board have recommended the extension of the scheme to a particular port or group of ports.
If the small harbours were to come within the Dock Bill either individually or in combination, then their future must be regarded as being very black. As stated, there is no great financial
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gain derived from these harbours but they do play an important part in the life of the community and provide considerable employment. Any resulting closure would result in far greater loss of jobs than would be gained by the handful of full-time dockers which would be needed."
That is part of the report we have made on the small ports that come under our control and for which we have responsibility. I will not venture to speak on some of the other ports as I have been talking for quite a long time. But I think that there are some statesmen in this Government, and I appeal to them to withdraw this Bill and to throw it as a lifebelt to the sinking pound.
6.33 p.m.
Viscount ROCHDALE: My Lords, I have listened to every speech made on this Bill this afternoon and I am afraid my worst fears about the Bill have been underlined by every speaker many times. I wholeheartedly agree with the condemnation that has come from one speaker after another. Undoubtedly this is a very controversial measure. It has been a controversial measure right from the word "go" in another place; it is controversial not merely on partisan, but also on other lines. If ever there was an industry that needed to be left at peace to get on with its work, surely it is the port transport industry.
The noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, referred to the fact that this industry has had more committees of inquiry than probably any other, and I am afraid I must plead guilty to that myself. The fact is, we do not want any more committees of inquiry, and we certainly do not want radical legislation; we want that the industry should be allowed to get on with its work. Committees of inquiry are very disturbing to an industry. The Bill in front of us certainly does not help, and in my view is just one more piece of folly on the part of the present Government, which will help to remove what little confidence our overseas friends still have in this country.
My Lords, I hope I am not misinterpreting what the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, said in his speech, but I got the sense that he was reiterating what was inherent in some of the remarks made in the debates in the other place when he tended to throw out at the Conservatives

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that when they were in power they had not done enough for the port industry. I do not think that would be fair criticism, because if we look back to 1964 and the Harbours Act, the Conservative Government then leant over backwards to make that measure a non-partisan measure, and they very nearly succeeded in so doing. Regrettably, after the Labour Party came to power, within two years the whole industry was put into a turmoil by the threat of nationalisation.
Then again in 1970, Mr. Peyton, when Minister of Transport, initiated a number of Acts which were helpful to the industry. All this is past history and I need not dwell on it, but I raise it for one particular purpose. There are rumours in the industry today that the concept of nationalisation is being reconsidered by Her Majesty's Government. If there is substance in those rumours, then I very much hope the Minister will say so. If there is no substance in them, I hope that when he comes to reply the Minister will categorically deny them. But if there is some substance in them, then I ask the noble Lord the Minister why this Bill is here before us at all, because organisation and dock work regulation cannot really be separated and considered under separate files. They should be considered as a whole. So I hope very much that the Minister will come out quite clearly with what are the intentions of the Government in this matter.
My Lords, today we are addressing ourselves to this Bill, and how the industry can be most efficiently worked. To do that sensibly, we must take into account, as other noble Lords have mentioned, the considerable changes in circumstances that have taken place over recent years, changes in cargo handling methods, changes in the pattern of world trade and, in consequence, movement away from established port areas, notably London and Liverpool. Changes of this kind will always continue. There will never be a static period where changes do not go on. Whatever else we want in the form of legislation, we must have legislation which leaves us in as flexible a position as possible so that we can adjust ourselves to these changes as they come about, as they certainly will.
My Lords, the dock labour scheme was originally conceived as a means of
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dealing with the great problem of the day, persistent and difficult cyclical unemployment and casual work. Undoubtedly, whatever the detailed faults of the scheme—and they have been amended from time to time—it was an important and imaginative step forward, so much so that it has come to be known in dockland as the dockers' bible. I have no doubt that it still is. The present situation with which we are confronted, because of the changed circumstances to which I have just hinted, is largely a question not of cyclical unemployment but of structural unemployment. To expect the medicine for the first to be the correct prescription for the second seems to be quite misjudged.
If we look at the figures of the drop in overall totals of registered dock workers which have been quoted today, in 1966 in round figures the figure was 62,000; in 1976 it was 32,000. If we remember that the huge majority of those remianing in the industry today are no longer casual workers but on full-time engagements, it might seem perfectly logical to pose the question as to whether the time has not come, or is on the horizon, for dismantling the whole present dock labour scheme. That has not been mentioned today, and I am not suggesting it for one moment; I merely mention it in this context.
What is neat and logical, and such a course might be regarded as neat and logical, is not always easy or practical. I think it would be a great disservice if anyone came to the conclusion that rather than extend the dock labour scheme, as the present Bill does, we should try to wind up the present one. That would be entirely wrong. Improvements can be made in the scheme, undoubtedly, and they should be sought as early as possible.
The extension of the scheme as we now have it in front of us, of course, includes all the smaller ports about which so much has already been said. But I would mention this: if there are any ports which, owing to good management, good cooperation from the dock workers, other reasons, have increased in size since the original scheme was conceived, and have now grown to a really significant size, handling, shall we say, over 1 million tons a year over the quay, then it is only reasonable, I think, that such a port should be brought into the scheme, even though

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it is today outside. Of course, in referring to increase in tonnage I refer strictly to ship loading tonnage and ship discharge tonnage and not to other forms of tonnage which do go through. There is one port, of course, which immediately will jump to the minds of all your Lordships here this afternoon, and that is Felixstowe. Whatever one may think about it, it would be only reasonable for Felixstowe to be brought into the scheme.
But if a port is brought into the scheme there are one or two important conditions. It must be allowed to have its own local dock labour board. It must not be made subordinate to existing neghbouring dock labour boards, because some other local dock labour board may be dominated by members from other ports. It must have its own; this is terribly important. On the question of local dock labour boards, I would like to see something else. I should like to see a strong independent element on those boards, which does not exist today. I mention that because this concept of an independent element has been introduced into this Bill, and I welcome the fact that in the Dock Labour Board itself there is a strong independent element there. That, I think, is good, and I hope that the Board itself will have sufficient power to direct the local hoards, particularly in regard to how surpluses in dock labour are to be dealt with. This is very important.
As regards the smaller ports, extension of the scheme to these, as other noble Lords have said, may, regrettably, have the effect of killing them, owing to costs and other obligations. These ports are often an essential part of the local community. Casual employment has largely been eliminted, and owing to the way they operate they are very often in a unique position to be able to give very special service to customers, service that the customers want and service it is right they should be given, seeing that often those customers give local employment of other kinds in that area.
That brings me to another point. At first your Lordships may think we are not discussing it today, but it is, to my mind, very relevant to what we are discussing. I want to say a word about participation. We hear a great deal about involvement and participation. It is a concept which I have considerable sympathy for, and which I have, where I have been in the
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position to do so, done as much as I can to encourage and promote, so long as it is not by any fixed formula established by statute. The point I want to make is that in so far as the dock labour scheme tends to separate the control and size of the labour force from the employing companies, whether they be port authorities, registered employers or otherwise, this must tend to accentuate the we/they attitudes on both sides and so prejudice the success of any real, effective participation. The result of this can only be to make the solution of a major problem in the ports, overmanning, more difficult, and certainly not to encourage improved productivity. I, therefore, believe it is good commonsense to retain the present dock labour scheme in being in genuine dockland as a means of alleviating distress where it may still exist, and I know it does, though diminishing.
But to adopt the same scheme over very greatly extended areas, where work has moved not for cyclical but for technical and permanent reasons, and widen the definition and content of dock work, is to my mind to perpetuate and widen indefinitely the problem, instead of attempting to get down to the root of it and cutting it out altogether. The five mile proposals in Clause 4, therefore—and I would say even more the possibility of extending the five mile limit—seem to me to be quite misplaced. They seem to me very short-sighted, opportunist—I am sure they are opportunist—and merely laying up potentially dangerous trouble for the future. It is not the dock work areas which should be changed but the method of working and operating within old areas.
I have already mentioned the major problem of overmanning. Other industries have had to meet this and have done so successfully. Indeed I would pay tribute to the port transport industry, both sides of it, for the degree of success they have themselves achieved, which is indicated by the overall employment figures which I mentioned a moment ago. There is still a long way to go, particularly in London, as the noble Lord, Lord Boston, said—and I am sorry I did not add my congratulations to him on his maiden speech—particularly in London and in Liverpool. I know we have got a voluntary severance scheme at the moment.

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I think the Government should bring forward a further concerted severance scheme, which must, of course, be associated with retraining and redeployment. But the important thing about what I am suggesting is that it should not be for general application everywhere; it must be locally and selectively capable of application, so that where there is a genuine labour surplus that labour surplus can be effectively and correctly dealt with.
This will, of course, cost some money, but it should lead in not too long a time to a situation comparable to that in every other industry where for technological and other reasons demand has fallen away never to return. Other industries have managed to do this and they have realised that there is nothing like a job for life. In the interests of themelves and their successors, the sooner dock workers and their leaders accept, and are seen to accept, this concept, no job for life, the sooner will it be easier for new and more flexible and more satisfying arrangements to be developed, so that the myths, often very unfortunate myths, about dock work can be buried forever. In the past, some years back, I had some responsibility in the port transport industry when I was the first chairman of the National Ports Council, and though then I was not directly concerned with employment matters there is no industry where employment and organisation can be kept apart and in watertight compartments with impunity. They must be regarded as a whole, and considered as a whole. I therefore have some very strong feelings for the wellbeing of all who work in the industry in the docks today, including the many who are not registered dock workers. I must frankly admit that I do not believe that this Bill will help them. I agree with all my noble friends in the hope that when it leaves your Lordships' House it will at least be very considerably amended and improved.
6.51 p.m.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I am only going to speak briefly about one particular aspect of this Bill, but I must start by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Boston, upon his maiden speech. I was sorry that I was not in my seat when he was speaking; I had an unavoidable meeting elsewhere. But I am told that
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his speech was interesting and exciting, and I look forward to hearing him in the near future.
I am not sure that the Government fully understand the extent of all the associated industries which are going to be affected and covered by the provisions of the Bill. Among them are warehousing, cold storage, road haulage, packing, and agency work of all kinds. I am particularly concerned with two of these; namely, warehousing and forwarding. I have to declare an interest in that I am associated with a company involved in these two areas, and I have also been fully briefed by the National Association of Warehouse Keepers, to which my company belongs. I shall be concerned at the Committee stage to secure the exclusion of these two activities—namely, warehousing and forwarding—from the provisions of Clause 5 and Schedule 3.
I indeed would question the constitutional propriety of providing work for one set of workers at the expense of another set of workers, and that is exactly what is going to happen. In the warehousing industry, for example, those who are presently working in the warehouses within the areas covered by the Bill will, if the Bill becomes law as it is presently conceived, be displaced by another set of workers coming from the docks. I cannot really think that this is what the Government intend, but it is certainly the effect of the legislation not only in the industries that I am specially concerned about but in many other as well. That is all I really have to say, except that, like my noble friend, Lord Mansfield, I am deeply concerned about many other aspects of the Bill and I shall be supporting him fully in the Amendments that he will move.
6.53 p.m.
The Earl of CROMARTIE: My Lords, first I should like to apologise to noble Lords. I was not here at the beginning of the debate because I was at Lord Grenfell's funeral. To get on to a happier note, I should also like to add my congratulations to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Boston.
Any Bill which gives a minority the power to paralyse the food supply of an entire nation is a bad Bill, and I think many noble Lords will agree that this Bill

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comes within that category. As usual I will be brief, as so much of the ground has already been covered, and I shall confine my remarks to Scotland, especially the North and the Western Isles. In my view if we exclude the Firth of Forth, the Clyde ports, and Aberdeen, every other port on both the eastern and western seaboards should be excluded from this Bill, and this includes Lerwick in Shetland.
May I remind your Lordships that the further North one goes, especially when the Grampians are passed, the more expensive every commodity becomes, and the forcing of the smaller ports into this scheme will push up prices to the consumer even more. Let us take, for example, the port of Stornoway in the Island of Lewis. As in all the other Hebridian Islands every article in bulk, be it food for human consumption, cattle food, fertilisers, et cetera, has to come from the mainland by sea. As a result prices are even higher than on the mainland. If ports such as Stornoway are forced into this scheme not only will the prices escalate yet further, but the Government, or rather the taxpayers, will find themselves paying more in unemployment benefit. At present most of the handling of cargoes is done by those who at different times of the year are doing useful jobs, such as fishing of various sorts, depending upon the season, and salmon net fishermen. This, to a greater or lesser degree, applies to all of the smaller Scottish ports. And there are other considerations. It should be spelled our clearly in the Bill that all factories and cold stores processing agricultural, horticultural and piscaternal—I had to find out that word; I was not quite sure that it was the right one—produce should be excluded from the Bill.
Since London discovered that Northern Scotland was not part of Finland we are now almost wholly associated with oil and oil related industry, and for many reasons much more emphasis should be placed on alternative industries than is the case at present. This to some extent has been met by the cold storage industry. Here I declare an interest, being a non-salaried local director of one such plant in Ross and Cromarty. But we, like every other area, have unemployment, and these places not only employ local labour but provide a most valuable service to fishermen, the salmon netting industry, fruit growers, and more besides. Do
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the Government want to make these projects less viable, and put up prices to all consumers still further? I can hardly believe that is their wish, but this is what this Bill will in fact do. This Bill has to a great extent been engineered by a very powerful and sometimes militant union based in London, and I fail to see why we, in Scotland, should be subject to some of its most damaging clauses.
6.58 p.m.
Lord BURTON: My Lords, may I also hasten to add my congratulations to the excellent maiden speech which we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham. One of the points which particularly concerns me is that the Bill provides for 12 people with unspecified remuneration to fall to the patronage of the Secretary of State. It is my belief—and I think I am not alone in this—that there is already too much Government patronage. There is also another small point, which I think was nearly touched on earlier this evening, in that I believe a lorry driver is responsible for the safety of his load. If dockers are going to load his lorry, I wonder how this could possibly be the case? It seems to me that the driver will not be able to order the dockers how to put the load on his lorry.
Had these proposals been tolerable in other respects, it would have been intolerable in that other people will suffer a reduction of their standards of living to give doubtful benefits to the dockers. I will not enter further into the general implications of the Bill, but I have come South from the North of Scotland at considerable personal inconvenience because I am convinced that the Government, with their urban orientation, have not appreciated the difficulties and hardships which the Bill will bring to those who live in the remoter areas, and in particular the islanders. I therefore reinforce what my noble friends Lord Cromartie and Lord Kintore have said. It is estimated that the Bill in its present form will cost Stornoway Harbour at least £25,000 per annum. That estimate was given some time ago and it could be higher if McBraynes withdraw their steamer and the harbour becomes even more unviable. There are in this area of very high unemployment 20 to 25 people employed in the harbour itself. It is felt that the Bill could enforce such uneconomic working

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that those men would have to be paid off. If the harbour continues to operate, who is to pay for this inefficiency? I think there is little doubt that the cost will fall on the islanders themselves, and they already have substantially higher costs of living than elsewhere.
Consider, for example, the cost of a pint of milk. For a householder I visited in a remote island area on Tuesday the cost was 20p. What would a London docker's wife say if she had to pay 20p for a pint of milk or if her food bill was nearly doubled? Now, however, the Government plan to throw additional and unnecessary burdens on people already facing high living costs. Is it surprising that Scottish Nationalism is increasing? Apparently the Chairman of the Highland and Islands Development Board has made representations to the Government on this matter, but it appears that any action taken by him has had no effect. There is little doubt that neither the Orcadians nor the Shetlanders, let alone the Western Islanders, have yet awoken to the devastating effect that the Bill will have on them. Indeed, it seems that everybody carrying a parcel, other than their own personal baggage, on to any ferry boat which crosses the sea will have to become a registered docker; the pier boys at Kyle of Lochalsh or at Kessock ferry will have to become registered dockers. What will happen at Castlebury in Barra, Lochboisdale in South Uist, Lochmaddy in North Uist and at the many little ports serving the Islands elsewhere?
It was with great relief that I heard my noble friend Lord Mansfield say that it was the intention of the Opposition to try to alter the Bill so as to remove the blanket coverage which is at present proposed. I hope that the Government Front Bench in this House will try to prevail on their friends in another place to facilitate this essential alteration. Having looked from these Benches for most of the debate across at the Benches opposite, I have wondered where the Government speakers are on the Bill; we have not heard from them today. By their sparse attendance they have shown that they do not even seem to want to know about the Bill and I suggest that the Bill is an embarrassment to many of them.
7.4 p.m.
Viscount SIMON: My Lords, I wish, first, to add my congratulations to those which have been offered already to the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, who spoke with humanity and sincerity of the sad face of London's inner dockland and of the problems of the people who live there and want to work there. His tributes touched me because I, too, lived on the edge of that area for about 13 years and got to know much of it well and to know the desperate problems that were arising through the necessary closure of the upper docks. It is tragic that so little has been done to rehabilitate the area and help the people living there, and if he wants noble Lords on these Benches to help him to rouse the Greater London Council and the East End London boroughs to do something about it, he will have our very warm support. I am afraid that I have to tell him that the possibility of repoening the upper docks for seaborne trade is very remote indeed, but perhaps I can discuss that with him on another occasion.
At this stage of the debate it is difficult to know what to say. It has been noticeable, as the noble Lord, Lord Burton, said, that all the speeches have come against the Bill. Practically everything has been said and we have not even had any arguments from noble Lords opposite that we could seek to rebut, so noble Lords will forgive me if I am very brief; perhaps that will please them. They will also forgive me if I do not repeat all the arguments that have already been adduced.
The noble Lord, Lord Jacques, reminded us at the outset that the existing dock labour scheme is now out of date, and that under the Bill the Secretary of State would be producing a new scheme, "as soon as possible" were I think his words. But as this problem has been under consideration for so long it seems incredible that the new scheme was not produced, in draft at least, before the Bill was presented. We could have had it as a Schedule to the Bill, we could have known what was proposed and we could, incidentally, have saved a lot of time; and in this I agree very much with the remarks of the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale, who knows so much about these matters. It would have been a splendid opportunity, before the Bill was presented, to have considered what modifications

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were required to the scheme to make it both more effective than it has been in the past and better suited to deal with the wider range which the Government propose it should cover. We on this side do not believe that it should cover a wider range, but if that is what the Government are forcing on us, then at least we might have had the opportunity of studying the scheme.
When the noble Lord, Lord Oram, replies perhaps he will make something clear. Lord Jacques, in an intervention earlier, said something about the decision as to whether warehouses should be brought within the scheme would or might depend or would have a bearing on the proportion of overseas and local cargo with which they dealt; and when the noble Baroness, Lady Hornsby-Smith, was painting a picture of the situation of a warehouse on the outskirts of Plymouth, I think I observed the noble Lord shaking his head. Perhaps Lord Oram will be able to clear that up. I cannot find anywhere any proposition which says that there is any proportionate arrangement. Indeed, I do not understand how that would work, unless a given proportion was taken as covering the position; that is to say, that only if a warehouse was handling less than 50 per cent. as local traffic would it be brought into the scheme.
Lord DRAM: My Lords, I think the noble Lord will find that point covered in Clause 8(5)(c). That is where the point about proportion is defined. I intervene now simply because it is a separate point from the general sequence of argument.
Viscount SIMON: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that information, which is most helpful. I confess that I had not appreciated that that was what that rather complicated paragraph meant, but we can look at it further in Committee. Meantime, I am much obliged to the noble Lord for helping me.
The noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, in a very forceful speech, called attention to the really ridiculous character of the five-mile cargo handling zone extending for five miles all round the coast and following every little indentation. This seems to me to be quite absurd. Consider some of the outlying areas. The one I had in mind was Central Wales, but I imagine that the same problem would arise in
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many parts of Scotland. The road system tends to run along the coastline because of the mountainous areas inland. If somebody wanted to build a warehouse for the distribution of cargo arriving in this mid-Wales area from Liverpool, Cardiff or Bristol, he might well find that the best place to do it would be somewhere near Aberystwyth or Dolgellau. These are easily within five miles of the coast but they are not within 50 miles of any port. It seems to me absolutely absurd that it could be argued that a warehouse handling overseas cargo in that area could be required to employ registered dockers, none of whom would at present be living anywhere near it.
I should now like to say a few words about small ports because my noble friend Lord Wigoder put it upon me to do so, though we have heard excellent speeches on small ports from the noble Baronesses, Lady Vickers and Lady Hornsby-Smith, and from our friends from North of the Border. It seems to me that this Bill and the thoughts behind it have been derived from people who have been accustomed to working in the great ports of this country so that they feel it almost an article of faith that everybody should be permanently employed in a job. In these outlying places it is, as several noble Lords have mentioned, perfectly convenient and right and useful that dockers should be temporarily employed when there is a ship in port and the rest of the time should engage in fishing, or they might even have a bit of land of their own to cultivate. The idea that because they are not permanently employed they are underprivileged people is, I believe, completely wrong. I certainly hope that in Committee we can deal firmly with this problem of small ports.
I know that in another place the Secretary of State said that the scheme would not automatically be extended to all small ports and thus very small ports where satisfactory arrangements could not be devised to sustain a permanent labour force, however small, would not be brought within the scheme. That kind of Ministerial announcement—and those noble Lords who were here in the Committee on the Race Relations Bill last night will remember the argument between our legal experts as to how necessary it was for Ministerial statements of that kind to be written into Bills—ought somehow to be written into the Bill. There remains the

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difficulty of defining the line of demarcation, and that we shall have to face up to in Committee. Various suggestions have been made, but there is no point in going through them now because we shall have to discuss them at some length in Committee.
There is one other matter to which I want to call special attention and which has not been mentioned at all. Hidden away in paragraph 3 of Schedule 2 we find that among the matters for the new Dock Labour Board are the following matters relating to dock workers and their work: remuneration, hours of work (including weekly periods of rest and holidays with pay), welfare and training. It is on remuneration and hours of work that I want to say something. We have a Dock Labour Board which is representative of both employers and trade unions but on which I hope the representatives will not consider themselves as delegates. I hope that these will be men or women who will sit around the table trying to find a meeting of minds in order to run this scheme.
They are like a board of directors, trying to work together and, I hope, succeeding in working together. But, when they are engaged in negotiating rates of pay and remuneration they are performing a completely different function. They are sitting on opposite sides of the table and, quite properly, are bargaining hard one against the other. I feel that if we impose on the Dock Labour Board the function of dealing with both these matters, one or two things will inevitably arise. Either the antagonisms that arise during negotiations—and one knows that they can be quite rough and that tempers can be lost—will be carried into the boardroom and, instead of having a unified board trying to run this scheme, we shall have the two sides bickering with each other, or another possibility may arise, though it might sound a little far fetched to noble Lords. This other possibility on which I feel that I can say something of interest to your Lordships is that if the board works as well as we hope it will and all is sweetness and light at the negotiating table, the men outside on the docks will cease to have confidence in their negotiators.
I said that I could tell your Lordships something about this, and it is interesting
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that the Port of London Authority, which was established, as I like to remind the House, by a Liberal Government in 1909, had from the start two representatives of the trade unions on its board. I am sure that it was the earliest public body in the world on which that was done. I was chairman of the Authority for 13 years, and all the time I had the greatest help from and friendship with the representatives of the trade unions. However, it never escaped my feeling that some of the appalling troubles we had in the docks with unofficial action against the advice of the trade unions could be related in part to the fact that the men could be persuaded that the trade union officials were part of the boss—which indeed they were.
I feel that it is a matter of real importance that these two functions should be separated so that the people who are engaged as a board in trying to make the scheme run should not be the people who are engaged in negotiating terms and conditions. I mention this now although it is clearly a Committee point because I feel that it is so important that I should like noble Lords on the other side—and I wish there were more noble Lords present with experience in trade union negotiations because I would very much like to know their views on this—to give this matter some thought so that when we bring the matter up in Committee we can have a really intelligent discussion.
Lord BROWN: My Lords, I should just like to say that I endorse the noble Viscount's point.
Viscount SIMON: My Lords, I am greatly obliged to the noble Lord. I really have no more to say. The case against the Bill has been expressed forcefully and very effectively by my noble friend Lord Wigoder as well as by the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, and no speaker has had a good word to say for it.
7.19 p.m.
Lord LYELL: My Lords, first I should like to add my congratulations to all the more eloquent congratulations and tributes which have been paid to the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, on what I felt was an excellent and very able maiden speech. It was notable for the fact that he so far has been the sole

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representative of the Government backbenchers concerned in one of the major Bills to come before the House during this Session. But his contribution was thus all the more valued and all of us will hope to hear more from him in the near future.
The Bill that we have been discussing today is one of the most extraordinary to come before your Lordships for many a year. Its intentions are those of a repentant sinner clothed in sackloth, because this Bill is indeed meant to ensure stable and orderly employment within the docks industry. Yet anyone who has had even the remotest contact with those connected with the industry, or who has read the proceedings of the Standing Committee in another place, could not fail to notice the concern, the confusion and the apprehension felt by almost everyone in the freight handling industry.
If the intention of the Government is to regularise the employment position of all those who work in the dock industry, then I am afraid that we must tell the Government that the Bill does not in its present form do any such thing. Indeed the Bill goes much further, and it has caused alarm and fear among thousands of others whose work could not in any sense be construed as falling within the category of dock work.
The Bill is clumsy since it is very broad in its outline and much of the content matter simply cannot ever have been intended to have been taken seriously—at least we cannot see that. The question of the infamous five mile dockers' corridor has aroused enormous publicity, and I believe that the blame belongs entirely to the Government for this misapprehension. We know that the Government have had difficulty in drafting the Bill satisfactorily so as to meet the demands of one small but vociferous section of a very large trade union, while not putting at risk the thousands of jobs of others, many of whom belong to the same trade union.
We know that throughout its passage in another place the Government have spent hours in vain attempts to calm the fears of those who will lose their jobs if the Bill becomes an Act in its present form. Yet still the doubts, the fears and the complaints arrive in a deluge to Members of your Lordships' House. These are
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not hysterical or scaremongering propagandists; they are merely representatives of all those who wish to see our cargo-handling industry prosper and compete with our rivals overseas.
My Lords, the Government tell us that the Bill is intended to bring increased efficiency to the docks industry, and we have no quarrel with this intention. But the Bill is riddled with inconsistencies and defects. The pressure of Parliamentary time in another place has meant that many of these defects have not been discussed. Regrettably, when many of these errors have been discussed or pointed out at all, the Government have been unable to give any adequate reassurance to those who will be affected.
In our opinion the first major defect is in the composition of the National Dock Labour Board and the local boards. Under the proposals of the Bill a host of new interests and industries is concerned, yet these interests are unable as of right to obtain any representation on these boards. Consultation seems to be very limited, and nowhere is there a mention of a public inquiry into any matters which have a bearing on work done in or around or through any particular port.
Where cargo handling becomes more and more technical and highly organised, many more industries will grow up to meet the needs of cargo handlers, stevedores and wharfingers. Furthermore, the National Dock Labour Board will tend to become a large and, I believe, almost monolithic organisation with hardly any freedom to act. Also the Board has the power to intervene between port employers and their employees. I believe that this flies contrary to everything that we have learnt about industrial relations in the past few years, and indeed in this century.
The next defect in the Bill appears to us to concern the local dock labour boards. Why can they not have far greater autonomy as to what should be done to increase port efficiency in their particular area? Under paragraph 6 of Schedule 2 these boards will have only such powers granted to them by the National Dock Labour Board. Yet it is in these areas that most of these fears arise which are expressed daily to your Lordships and to Members of another place.

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Noble Lords opposite will agree with us when we insist that the best and only form for settling the small local problems over classification of dock work and over the treatment of new techniques is at local area, preferably the port itself. We have grave misgivings about the centralising effect of the National Dock Labour Board provisions in the Bill and we shall be giving the closest scrutiny to this matter when the Bill is discussed at the next stage in Committee.
I now come to one of the most publicised and I believe one of the most foolish aspects of the Bill. It is of course the five mile corridor in which only registered dock workers may carry out what has yet to be defined and agreed as dock work. Those of your Lordships who have perused the proceedings of Standing Committee G might have noted the difficulties found by the Government when they tried to explain how the corridor was defined and how it would work out in practice. Much confusion arose when, after long and repeated demands, a map was eventually produced and it showed that most of Cornwall is covered by the corridor, as indeed are the towns of Doncaster, Tadcaster and Tewkesbury.
There are countless other anomalies and uncertainties. All of these are completely unnecessary and they are caused entirely through the fear of the Government that some crafty or even devious employers will remove their operations from the waterfront to some inland site. It is this fear that puts the Government into the ludicrous position in which they are today. Countless spokesmen here and in other places have reassured critics, both in and out of Parliament, that the points that I have raised and the fears aroused by people working in a wide variety of industries within this corridor are without foundation.
Cannot the Government understand that when they come to this House with measures such as this Bill, all of us here are attempting to see that the law means what it is intended to mean? This particular concept is not meant to imply that such effects as I described earlier are intended. The position seems to me to be even worse than this. The Government are afraid to make the law intelligible in this case entirely because the Docks Section of the Transport and General
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Workers' Union wishes to indulge in what is militarily known as over-kill. Once again where dockers are worried—and we believe that they have reason to be worried—by the steady erosion of their employment and their prospects, the casual attitude of the Bill to the establishment of local boards is again shown. Again, this must be at the local level, with due representation of all interests.
The third major defect in the Bill concerns the definition of a cargo handling zone, and we shall have much more to say about this in Committee. These cargo handling zones appear to be where classified dock work, as laid down by the National Dock Labour Board—not the local boards—will be carried out only by registered dockers. Apart from the five mile corridor, we find other major criteria, defining the sea, and the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, earlier mentioned, I think, inland waterways. I do not think he read the whole definition, but he covered creeks, bays and all kinds of other things. These waterways have to be navigable for 20 miles by ships of 6,000 tons or more. But even with all this criteria, the three inland towns (as I regard them), which were mentioned earlier—Tewkesbury, Tadcaster and Doncaster—still fall within the aegis of these cargo handling zones.
Further, there is the provision for the Scretary of State to extend—or, apparently, as the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, says, reduce—the cargo handling zone. I must say that on a fairly perfunctory examination of the Bill at the Front Bench this afternoon I did not find powers for the Secretary of State to reduce the cargo handling zone. But possibly we can go into this later. The Secretary of State will be able to carry out these powers by order, and this has made many thousands of people concerned in, for example, the food industry and among cold storage interests.
There is nothing that the Government have said at any stage, in or out of Parliament, that has removed the legitimate apprehension felt by so many and also, I believe, by the public. Many of us consider that the public interest in preserving our food supplies is paramount, and despite the protests by Government spokesmen no concessions have been made to ensure that the food and cold

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storage industries can continue to use the most modern methods of importing and exporting their materials.
This industry, above all others, has spent large sums to modernise cold stores, processing plants and transport depots. All of this requires the most intense use and flexibility of the labour force. Fears continue to exist that should any or much of such work be classified as dock work under the proposed scheme, the dockers will have to move to inland depots, will have to be trained in new skills, and of course will have to adapt to new methods and places of work. Many dockers have already left the docks voluntarily and have started a new career in cold storage or in container depots, in such operations as, I understand, stuffing and stripping where they used to be engaged in normal stevedoring work.
My Lords, if the Government really wish to have us believe that they say what they mean, the whole concept of cargo-handling and classification could he left to local dock boards or even to the individual employers at small ports and, indeed, the representatives of the employees. The Government have already declared that where airports lie within the proposed cargo-handling zones such airports will be exempt from inclusion in the scheme; but many more exemptions and much further thought than are evident in this Bill are needed for it to have any chance of widespread acceptance. Existing agreements between employers and employees are not covered by the provisions of the Bill, and noble Lords will recognise that this aspect of possible inter-union strife in what are now peaceful and productive depots is one of the most disagreeable points in the Bill.
Why can the Government not give rightful assurances to workers' representatives that their agreements with their employers will be honoured and that the National Dock Labour Board will not be allowed to interfere or to install dockers into depots or ports where at present industrial relations are good? Can the Government give us one or two good reasons for risking the good points of their own Employment Protection Act? We shall await the noble Lord's reply, but even he will not be able to tell us, should the provisions of the scheme apply in the manner set down in the Bill, that
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there will be industrial peace, efficiency or prosperity in those areas which the Bill covers at present. But once again, my Lords, I hope that good sense and reasonableness must prevail in the end.
Overseas trade, mainly to and from continental Europe, but of course increasingly between the United Kingdom and Asia Minor and the Middle East, is already affected by the scheme, and of course the provisions of the Bill could do great harm to developments in shipping and in containerisation. Roll-on/roll-off methods of shipping are growing, and, in spite of the provisions in the Bill dealing with inland depots, some United Kingdom ports, especially London, are unable to provide the type of swift service which many of our importers and exporters seem to require. These new types of transport have not arisen or been developed by the port industry without considerable effort and investment, both in equipment and in employee-training. The public interest and the requirements of meeting export delivery dates mean that containerisation and roll-on/roll-off freight transport will increase even further, and so rapid has been the progress to date that existing agreements between cold store operators and employee representatives are not covered by the 1967 scheme. This seems to add weight to our concern, which we mentioned just now, about allowing agreements currently in operation to continue, as well as to the necessity to allow local boards to have local representation.
My Lords, much greater flexibility in all forms of dock work is going to be needed, but the Bill has done nothing to ensure that this process is encouraged. Instead, the Bill confuses, it stirs up fears, and it obscures what we want to know. Under the scheme in the Bill, workers in the cargo-handling zone will fall into any one of four categories. There will be the dock workers on the main register, those on the extension register, those who are exempt from classification and those who I must regrettably call the victims, as they surely would be should this Bill reach the Statute Book in its present form. These workers are members of other unions than the Transport and General Workers' Union. They are often members of the Transport Branch of the Transport and General Workers' Union,

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some are members of a small union, and there are those who belong to other, smaller, recognised unions. Yet they still have a binding agreement between their employers and themselves.
The fears expressed in another place and in the Press have been largely focused on these particular workers. These fears are felt equally by all employees in any industries which are not exempted in the Bill. But how can any large employer in cargo-handling or in transport to and from docks or ports, or even in food manufacturing or processing, take any logical and clear view of whether or how to invest in new equipment or in employee-training? The Government have not yet admitted—nor, I believe, will they do so—that this incredible proposal to classify dock workers into one of these four categories, together with the whole concept of cargo-handling zones, stems from the need for the dockers to have the right to seek the jobs in cold stores and other areas that have nothing to do with work that has been done by dockers. We believe that this classification of workers is at the heart of all the problems which have been found in the Bill. We have already heard this evening from my noble friend Lord Lucas of Chilworth, when he pointed out the problems that are already arising at Southampton in the roll-on/roll-off container terminal over the tractor part of the container lorries which are taken on or taken off roll-on/ roll-off boats. He said quite enough on that, and I think the problem will only get worse.
My Lords, the remaining defects in the Bill which concern us are covered by the discussions and exemptions available to the small ports. A great deal has been said, more eloquently than I could put it, on small ports, but we know that these are scattered around the coastline of the United Kingdom, from the Shetlands and the Hebrides right down, let us not forget, to the Scillies in the South-West. The inhabitants of these islands, and indeed of the remote parts of the mainland, depend to a very large extent for their livelihood and for their essential supplies on these ports. Of all the representations received here and in another place, the most persistent and worrying have been those from people concerned, either in their work or in their daily life. Of
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course, at these small ports the cargoes vary and the amount of labour required will vary, but the essence of all these ports is one of flexibility. Often the customers are much nearer the small port, and the transfer of loading or unloading to a larger, scheme port will cause extra expense, together with a risk of unemployment.
It has often been pointed out to Members of another place that if the smaller ports are not exempted from the scheme, many small businesses in no way in competition with dockers or port workers at present will cease to exist. For my own part, my Lords, the port of Montrose is fairly near my home, and noble Lords may be aware that this port permanently employs over 60 people. I paid a short visit in the Summer Recess, and found labour relations there were absolutely excellent and of a very high standard. Estimates that I have been given from there, and which, indeed, have been given in another place, show that the loss in finance to the communities served by Montrose, together with the extra costs incurred of approximately £75,000 to the port of Montrose itself, should Montrose be declared a scheme port under the Bill, is of the region of half a million pounds per annum. That is a very substantial amount for what is not a very large part of the hinterland of Scotland, and yet this is going to bear very heavily on all the rural industries and the smaller industries in that part of the world, where the current unemployment rate is pushing 10 per cent. at the moment.
Should Montrose be brought into the scheme, extra time may have to be spent in dockers on the main register travelling, and the loss may be as high as 65 to 70 jobs. That is not just the dock workers, but other, ancillary workers in and around the port of Montrose, where of course the unemployment is not alleviated to any great extent yet by oil employment. Indeed, the oil service base users are also concerned that, should the scheme apply to Montrose, their service and their flexibility will be adversely affected. Furthermore, the entire work force at Montrose Harbour unanimously sent up a petition to the honourable Member for North Angus and Mearns in February of this year urging that Montrose be allowed to continue working as it does now, with flexibility and efficiency. So far as small

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ports go, my noble friend Lady Hornsby-Smith mentioned all the small ports in the West Country and in Cornwall, where, indeed, they have a great bearing on the livelihood of the local community.
I think that in general the whole of the Bill puts at risk good relations between employer and employee, in that a third force is to have powers over the type, the length and (if I may call it such) the style of the employment. All this can be far more easily agreed locally. Many of us are bewildered when we read Clause 5(2) of the Bill, dealing with the objects of the new scheme, where it says that the scheme shall be framed by the Secretary of State with a view to securing the employment of dockers together with the requirement that such work shall be carried out only by registered dock workers. Later, in the same clause, we can read that the Secretary of State shall have powers to amend dock work classification or the cargo-handling zone by order. Nothing could do more to affect the efficiency of the cargo-handling industry, not to mention the other industries which are not exempted. Perhaps the noble Lord who is to reply could attempt to assuage some of our fears; but they are very great fears.
This afternoon, my Lords, we have been discussing a Bill which, more than any other in this Session, has created problems for more people for a longer time, and I believe for no good or justifiable reason. The Bill has set one section of a trade union against another section; it has set one group of employees against another; it has caused hundreds of people to lobby Members of this House and of another place; and it has made thousands fear for their jobs.
What merit is there in such a Bill?—despite the vast amount of advice which was available to the Government, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Jacques. Is there an indication of the feelings of the Government's supporters in that alone, apart from the noble Lords, Lord Jacques and Lord Oram, we have heard the maiden voice of the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham? Noble Lords will recognise that for the second major Bill before us in this overspill Sesssion, the Government's proposals on very major legislation have aroused such scant support, in numbers at least, that we have had one, and only one, noble Lord
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speaking from the Government Back-Benches on each debate. Can the Government find merely a lone voice to support them—albeit of the calibres of the noble Lords, Lord Shinwell and Lord Boston of Faversham?
This Bill is really riddled with defects. It sets out, so it says, to regularise dock employment; it has done nothing to do this. It causes fear and alarm among thousands of people. It promises much, yet provides grounds for needless complaints, arguments and strife. We on these Benches can assure the House that we want to improve this Bill so that freight handling can be improved further, so that people will know that their jobs are not to be taken over by others more powerfully organised than themselves. We believe that this so-called attempt to ameloriate conditions in the docks is clumsy, it is ill thought out, far too wide ranging and, worst of all, it is engendered as part of a political deal between one section of a powerful trades union and the Government. Never can such a measure, which affects more of us than any other, have caused such fear. We cannot commend this Bill to the House; we merely accept it—for onward processing.
7.42 p.m.
Lord ORAM: My Lords, I begin with a point on which we are unanimous because it is clear that there are many points on which we are not. The unanimous point is that we all very much welcome the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Boston of Faversham. It is a personal pleasure to me and not merely a formal duty to congratulate him on having entered our debates so soon after joining us and for doing so effectively and well. It is perhaps appropriate that he and I should take part in a debate on this particular Bill because he and I have for many years represented in another place constituencies on opposite sides of the Thames Estuary. Your Lordships do not need to be reminded that so much of the history of dock labour problems has evolved along that estuary. Indeed, my own interest in this debate and in this Bill is enhanced by my having represented a dockland constituency in another place for some 20 years. With my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, I shared Parliamentary responsibility for the

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area which contains the Royal Group of docks.
It is on the basis of that experience and in the light of the dockers' vexed history and their bitter struggles that, in my judgment, it is fully understandable that they cherish the scheme which ended the worst features of that evil system of casual labour, it is fully understandable that they wish to see it extended and I believe it is right that this Government should respond to their hopes in this matter and to bring up to date—and this is what this Bill does—the working of the dock labour scheme to meet the changes that have taken place within the industry for the reasons which my noble friend Lord Jacques outlined.
I shall attempt to reply to many of the points raised in the debate not, since they were so many and intricate, by taking them seriatim, but by trying to group them under three or four of the main arguments that have been brought forward against the Bill. Regrettably, many points will not be covered. I apologise in advance for that; although I am sure, as many noble Lords have indicated, we shall take the opportunity of returning to them in Committee and in other ways.
In answering the main arguments as I see them, I should like to do so against the background of what my noble friend Lord Jacques said in his concluding words about the series of safeguards which the Bill contains against any hasty or improper classification of work as dock work; because I believe it is that aspect of the Bill, the many safeguards spread around various clauses and Schedules of the Bill and the flexible and painstaking procedure it provides for, that have not been fully understood. I believe that it is that lack of appreciation of the safeguards within the Bill that has led to a certain character of the debate during the course of the day when at various times I thought that noble Lords were entering into some kind of competition as to the extravagant phrases they could find to describe the Bill. "Piffling", "footling" and "outrageous" were three that I noted; and there were many more.
The first main argument that many noble Lords have brought forward is that they see the Bill as being wrong because it opens up the possibility of a steady extension of the classification of
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dock work to cover, for instance, operations beyond the five-mile limit under the provision where the Secretary of State can make an extension: the point that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, made about his fear that warehouses and cold stores not previously covered by the scheme will be included; the fears of those who have the interests of small ports at heart and their fears that these small ports will be squeezed out by higher costs and so on.
This, of course, arises from what the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, called the "infamous five-mile dockers' corridor"—one of the phrases for which I would give him one of the prizes in trying for extravagant language. Others used other language. The noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, referred to a "blanket extension" of dockwork; the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, told us of the high proportion of Cornwall which, because of its configuration, would be covered, if one draws (as has been drawn) the corridor around the intricate inlets of that county; and the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, went into a similar geographical exercise in relation to Wales—all with the implication that there is to be an automatic extension of dock work within this corridor.
That is very far from being the case. The five-mile test is but the first of many tests. That sets the first consideration when those concerned will come to consider the wisdom or otherwise of classifying particular jobs in particular areas as dock work. There is nothing sinister, as noble Lords have tried to suggest, in the five-mile corridor. It is simply the first test and there are many others.
Viscount SIMON: My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to interrupt? This is an important point which I do not think anybody has raised: to go back to my warehouse in Aberystwyth, supposing somebody is considering building a warehouse in Aberystwyth, can he apply for declassification before he has built it and started to employ people there?
Lord ORAM: My Lords, the decision will be about jobs actually existing and after consideration of a great variety of matters. No doubt someone wanting to build the kind of warehouse that the noble Viscount has in mind would have regard

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to various other decisions that might have taken place, and by the time the scheme had been operative, the exaggerated fears would have been proved to have been groundless. I am sure that in the light of experience, people will not face the difficulty that the noble Viscount suggests.
Lord WIGODER: My Lords, is the noble Lord saying that in the five-mile corridor there will not be an automatic inclusion but an automatic uncertainty?
Lord ORAM: My Lords, I return to my point that it is simply the first test. Of course, experience will have to be developed of the operation of this scheme. When any new legislation comes along people have to find by experience the implications of it. Certainly the fears and uncertainties will be nothing like those described throughout the country and in this debate today.
In particular, before we come to the Committee stage, I would urge noble Lords to study—and I hope they have already studied—Schedule 3, Schedule 4 and the various other safeguards throughout the Bill. They are so important in providing the subsequent tests after the five-mile limit test that much more publicity should be given to their provisions. Indeed, I thought it might be helpful if I wrote a summary of them into my present speech. Someone, with great skill, has summarised them but the summary is still much longer than would be welcome to your Lordships, therefore I will not read it. Nevertheless I urge you to believe that, if you look at all the tests, then the fears that have been expressed in this respect and in other respects are greatly exaggerated.
The next main argument which has been brought up from many sides is that the Bill will be extending the opportunities of what have been called a privileged class. The noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, referred to a monopoly by a privileged class of worker. There have been references to Mr. Jack Jones. There have been references to the Transport and General Workers' Union. The implication has been that this union and trade union leader are at variance with other unfortunate, less powerful trade unions involved either in the ports or on the peripheries of the ports. There is nothing
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in this. It is true that when the Bill was first published some trade unions were anxious about their position. Naturally, all Bills of this kind are examined by responsible bodies and they expressed anxieties in their initial reactions. But Amendments were adopted in another place to allay the fears, which in most cases were groundless, but the Amendments were included to make it absolutely clear that their position was not threatened as had been alleged. To make it clear, the Trades Union Congress' Transport Industries Committee subsequently issued a document signed by 12 unions involved in this business expressing unanimous support for the Bill. Those who have been the advocates of the small unions need have no fears because their unions are satisfied with their situation under this Bill.
In this connection, there have been expressions of fears of people losing their jobs, being squeezed out of their jobs by the Transport and General Workers' Union people. These fears are groundless and they have been allayed by Amendments introduced in another place. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, was rather arguing the opposite way when he said that the Bill would act against the interests of the dockers organised within the Transport and General Workers' Union because the Extension Register would tend to weaken their position. I think both arguments—those who think this is a powerful trade union acting as a juggernaut against its fraternal union, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, who thinks the Bill is going to act against the interests of the Transport and General Workers' Union—are wrong. The Bill will act in the interests of all workers, the dockworkers in the extension of the Dock Labour Scheme, and the other workers whose interests are fully safeguarded by many detailed provisions within the Bill.
Lord BURTON: Could I ask the noble Lord this: he says the interests of the dockers will be fully safeguarded. Would he totally disagree with what I said; that is, that there is a grave danger of risk to 20 or 25 men in the docks at Stornoway?
Lord ORAM: My Lords, I am afraid I do not have the details of the employment situation in every one of the docks around

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our coasts. I have no doubt that if the noble Lord has specific issues, he will find an opportunity to raise them at Committee stage, when I can reply more adequately than at this moment. I now want to turn to the arguments about the jobs which were different from the arguments I have just dealt with. Those were raised most forcefully from the Liberal Benches by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, and the noble Baroness, Lady Seear. They may be surprised to know that I found myself agreeing with a good deal of the forceful and eloquent arguments they were bringing forward. The point I suggest they missed is that this Bill does not pretend to do what they were accusing it of not doing. The object of this Bill is not to get rid of the present surplus of registered dock workers by making additional jobs available for them at the stroke of a pen; it is to ensure the area of work covered by the dock labour scheme is appropriate in the light of changing patterns of trade and developing technology. That is its purpose. It is not to create new jobs to absorb surplus dockers. It is true that in the short run few new job opportunities for registered dock workers will be created, which is why I was agreeing with some of the points being made. But in the longer run the new and more flexible arrangements provided for in the Bill should ease the industrial relations problem caused by the irrationalities of the present arrangements and, by enabling a more rational deployment of labour on dock-work it will benefit both those who are at present registered dock workers and those who will be brought into the scheme as a result of this Bill. If I may refer to a point made by the noble Baroness, the Government are not in any way altering their policy of assisting the industry to solve its excess labour problems through the national voluntary severance scheme. Indeed, it has provided a loan to the National Dock Labour Board for this purpose; the Bill provides for the continuation of that kind of assistance.
The next main argument that has been raised a number of times is that the effect of this Bill will be to raise costs and prices. The noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, said it would have the effect of raising prices in the shops. The noble Lord, Lord Mottistone,
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said that he had been in touch with trade union leaders who had tried to disabuse him of the possibilities that perhaps much of what has been said on this score has been exaggerated. I would agree entirely both with the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, and the trade union leaders with whom he wisely discussed the matter, because the Bill does not impose wage rates or earnings level—nothing of that kind. These are determined through the normal processes of wage bargaining by local agreement and through a national joint industrial council.
I hope that none of those who raised that point were hoping it would be possible to keep down costs through the exploitation of unorganised labour. No one said that, and I hope there was no such implication behind what was said; but I would urge them to realise, if they have what the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, described as the national interest at heart, or the consumer interest—the essential need to keep prices down rather than raise them—I would urge them to realise that one of the chief ways of doing this is to maintain good industrial relations in the docks, because nothing is more calculated to raise prices than bad industrial relations in the docks. It is my contention, although I know that many noble Lords will not agree, that the purpose and ultimate effect of this Bill is to improve industrial relations.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hornsby-Smith—incidentally I apologise to the noble Baroness for having missed most of her speech—both raised questions concerning road haulage. I should point out that the Bill provides, in paragraph 10 of Schedule 3, that the driving of vehicles normally used on public roads is classifiable when the vehicle is driven on private roads within the cargo-handling zones; that is, in practice, in the docks. The dockers have no right to drive vehicles in these circumstances unless a classification order has been made by the Secretary of State. Clearly, such an order would not be made if it would result in the contravention of existing regulations or legislation or if it was not sensible in all the circumstances.
One other argument was not very explicitly made, and I may be wrong in

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suggesting that was even in the minds of noble Lords as they spoke, but there were a number of speeches which made me wonder whether they were expressing dissatisfaction not only with this Bill but also with the Dock Labour Scheme and its principles, as it exists today. I shall not mention names because it was only a "hunch" or impression in my mind. I certainly hope that I was wrong because, as I said at the outset, the Dock Labour Scheme is now very much part of our industrial relations framework within the dock industry.
Viscount SIMON: My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Lord was thinking of something that I said. I said I thought the Dock Labour Scheme as it exists at present is due for renewal, and that is what the Bill says; so I do not think we are in disagreement.
Lord ORAM: No, my Lords, I did not have the noble Viscount in mind, but I am glad that he agrees with us on this point. This question of the principles of the present scheme is at the heart of industrial relations, and I hope that no one is going to suggest that it be discontinued.
I should now like to summarise the case for the Bill. The chief aims were admirably summarised by my noble friend Lord Jacques, but I should like to leave in your Lordships' minds this quick summary of the reasons why we are bringing forward this Bill and why we intend to see it on the Statute Book. The present arrangements date from 1946 and they met the needs of that time and prevented a return to the worst pre-war features of the casual labour scheme, although of course the dock labour force remained essentially a casual one until 1967. But—and this is where the point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, comes in—parts of the 1946 Act are now out of date. Modification is needed to meet many of the changes that have taken place in the industry, to provide for the future so far as we can see it and to make possible the ratification of the ILO Convention No. 137 concerning dock work.
Among the changes which have resulted from changes in the pattern of trade and the revolution in techniques has been this
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movement of dock work from the waterside to the surrounding area. The noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, said this did not represent any action taken by malevolent employers but was done for purely technical reasons. I accept his point in the main, but there have been some employers who have moved in order to avoid employing registered dock workers, and there have even been one or two capable of creating suspicion in the minds of many. Even if there are only a few, I believe it is necessary to legislate in order to meet that situation.
As my noble friend Lord Jacques reminded your Lordships, the problems arising out of these technical changes were the subject of an inquiry by the Bristow Committee in 1970. That Committee made recommendations to meet the problem of employers moving to avoid employing registered dock workers. Later, in 1970, the National Ports Council reported that in a significant number of non-scheme ports there is heavy reliance on casual labour, and that often substandard terms and conditions of employment prevail there. The Jones-Aldington Committee reported that these problems still existed in 1974. As I have known from my own personal experience, these problems have been a potential source of industrial unrest which can be avoided only by bringing the legislation up to date.
Viscount SIMON: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt, but is the noble Lord saying that there has been a lot of industrial unrest in the small non-scheme ports?
Lord ORAM: No, my Lords; I was saying that the movement away from the ports is—partly through suspicion, partly through actual fact—a potential cause of industrial unrest. That was my point. That was emphasised by the inquiry of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service into the unofficial strike in London last year. Therefore, since 1970 in particular—there were many inquiries before that, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, mentioned, regretting that he had not been chairman of any of them—there has been recommendation after recommendation that action should be taken. The Conservative Government failed to act. We are acting. We are maintaining

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the central principle of joint administration of the dock labour scheme, because it is now so much a part of the structure of the industry that any attempt to end it would be wholly detrimental to industrial relations. But on the basis of that central principle, we are providing for an appropriate extension of the scheme.
I finish on the note which I do not think can be over-emphasised. The Bill provides a flexible procedure for that extension, and also provides the fullest safeguards for the protection of all the legitimate interests against any danger of abuse. For these reasons, my Lords, I urge you to give the Bill its Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read 2ª and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

GREATER LONDON COUNCIL (MONEY) BILL
8.13 p.m.
Lord PITT of HAMPSTEAD: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time. This Bill is promoted by the Greater London Council to carry out the duty imposed upon it by paragraph 25 of Schedule 2 to the London Government Act 1963, which requires the expenditure by the Council on capital account or on lending to other persons, during each financial year and the immediately following six months, to be regulated by annual Money Acts. The present Bill accordingly deals with the estimated capital expenditure to be incurred and loans to be made by the Council during the financial period from 1st April 1976 to 30th September 1977, and includes provision for the requirements of the Inner London Education Authority.
Every GLC (Money) Bill makes provision for a financial period of 18 months from 1st April in one year to 30th September in the following year. This financial period consists of a financial year (12 months from 1st April to 31st March) and the first six months (1st April to 30th September) of the immediately following financial year. Thus the first six months from 1st April to 30th September of each financial year are dealt with by the previous year's Money Act until the Money Bill for the financial year in
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question receives the Royal Assent, which is usually in late July or early August. This six months overlap allows the Council to carry out, and to continue to carry out, without a break from one financial year to another, its powers to incur capital expenditure or make loans.
In the past this procedure has worked well. This year, however, after the Bill was given an unopposed Second Reading in your Lordships' House on 12th July, a Motion was successfully moved instructing the Select Committee to whom the Bill was committed to consider the proposed expenditure in the Bill on the development of the St. Paul's School site in Hammersmith. The Select Committee also had before them for consideration five Petitions deposited against the Bill, four of which opposed the development of the St. Paul's School site and the fifth opposed expenditure on certain waste disposal matters. These were the first Petitions that had ever been deposited against a Money Bill of the Council or its predecessors.
The Select Committee sat for five days between 20th and 26th July. The Council successfully objected to the locus standi of the five Petitioners and the Petitions were accordingly struck out. The Committee then considered the Instruction of the House and heard evidence from witnesses from the GLC and three witnesses summoned by the Committee. In the light of the evidence, the Committee decided to allow the Bill to proceed unamended and to report to the House in response to the Instruction. Your Lordships will have received and read the report of the Committee. The Committee was not able to produce its report before the House rose for the Summer Recess on 29th July, and the Third Reading of the Bill was therefore fixed for today to allow noble Lords sufficient time to consider the report beforehand.
As explained earlier, the provisions of the Greater London Council (Money) Act 1975, conferring on the Council powers to spend on capital account and to lend money, also expire today. The present Bill, after completing its stages in your Lordships' House, will have to await the return of the House of Commons on 11th October before it can receive the Royal Assent. There will thus be a period of at least 11 days in which the Council will have no power to spend on capital

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account or to lend money to other persons. This is the first time in the 85 years in which a Money Bill has been promoted in more or less its present form, that Royal Assent has not been obtained to a Money Bill before the expiry of existing powers on 30th September, and for the reasons which I shall now indicate it is earnestly hoped that the House will ensure that this does not happen again.
This unprecedented situation has created serious problems for the Council and for many of the citizens of London. The Council has been forced to make the following arrangements for the period from 1st October until the Bill receives the Royal Assent. All loans by the Council, including home loans and loans to housing associations, will be halted because the Council will have no power to make those loans. Where the Council has already agreed to lend money to home buyers, all completions of such house purchases will be delayed. The anxiety and distress that this is causing in individual cases is deeply regretted, but the Council has no option but to take this action. As an indication of the anxiety that this is causing, there have been to date 225 inquiries about home loans. These inquiries are becoming more and more acrimonious and, of course, will increase during the next few days. People who were planning to complete their purchases in the first two weeks of October are terribly distressed, particularly when there are linked transactions.
Your Lordships know that in many house purchases there are linked transactions. No completions of acquisition of land or buildings by the Council involving the payment of money to the vendor will take place. Payments due to contractors under their contracts for capital construction jobs will have to be temporarily financed, so far as possible, from revenue and special steps will be taken to contain payments within the revenue available. Your Lordships will realise that this is bound to be very limited, because expenditure for capital purposes from revenue involves an increase in the rate precept. Let us be under no illusions about that. The limited revenue available will be used to make unavoidable payments or to prevent unreasonable financial loss to the Council.
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It will also be necessary to delay payment to contractors so far as possible until Royal Assent, even though this may conflict with the contract terms that payment must be made within a prescribed number of days from the architect's or engineer's certificate that work to a stated volume has been carried out by the contractor and payment is due. As your Lordships will realise, this will cause pressure on cash flow to private industry. For some small contractors this can be very serious.
The Council has been placed in a difficult and embarrassing position and if Royal Assent should be delayed substantially beyond 11th October, new arrangements will have to be made to meet what will then be a critical situation. I have been given a brief on the kind of measures it will be necessary to take, but I do not believe that your Lordships will wish me to go into this and I do not intend to do so. All I want to say is this. As the matter in issue has been fully explored in the Select Committee, it is hoped that the House will now give the Bill an unopposed Third Reading without rearguing all the issues considered at length by that Committee.
The Greater London Council accepts the report and endorses the terms of the report of the Select Committee. I, for my part, would particularly like to draw the attention of the House to paragraph 12 and I shall read it. Paragraph 12 reads thus:
"The Committee are obliged to observe that they have some anxiety about the procedure adopted in this case. The Greater London Council is the only local authority whose expenditure requires Parliamentary approval. The Petitions against the Bill and the Instruction created an anomalous situation since the need for the Council's expenditure to be justified in this context has enabled a question of town planning to be submitted to another review over and above such safeguards as are laid down in planning legislation. The real objection of the Petitioners was to planning procedure and not to any of the provisions of the Bill, and indeed, apart from the choice of the St. Paul's site, the proposed expenditure in building a unified West London College was not by itself raised as an objection to the Bill. The Committee cannot believe that petitioning procedure is intended to operate in this way, and do not think it right that it should do so. If Parliament wishes to review individual planning decisions, then it ought to do so at an earlier stage, and not at the last moment when all that remains is for the necessary expenditure to be sanctioned or even, as in the present case, where some expenditure, albeit not very great, has

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already been sanctioned by Parliament. Moreover, the Committee can see no justification for submitting proposals for developments by the Greater London Council to risks of intervention which, if arbitrary or belated, could prove much more onerous than those which proposals for developments by other authorities must undergo."
I thought that I should read this paragraph and draw your Lordships' attention to it because on the basis of recent events and of the Select Committee's observations I think there is a strong case for the modification of the Standing Orders of both Houses of Parliament to prevent the deposit of Petitions against the Greater London Council's Money Bills. Once a Petition has been deposited against the Money Bill, the Council is obliged to incur considerable expense to object to the locus standi of the Petitioner. If once a right to petition against the Money Bill became established, every Council development would be open to the challenge of aggrieved parties by that means and—this is the important point—the Money Bill procedure, which enables both Houses of Parliament to consider the expenditure of the GLC, will come into disrepute.
It is, in fact, difficult to see how anyone could establish a locus standi on a Petition against the Bill when the Bill does not confer any new functions on the Council but gives Parliament the opportunity of considering the financial limits on the carrying out of projects validly undertaken under other enactments. Let us not forget that those financial limits have to be agreed with the Government in the first instance. I cannot believe that if Parliament wished to provide a further stage in planning and other similar procedures they would wish to do so through amending a Money Bill to interfere with the exercise by the Council of discretionary powers which have been entrusted by Parliament to local authorities under existing Statutes. They would create some other machinery. As an example of the problem which could be created, the cost of developing the St. Paul's School site was included in last year's Money Bill and will be included in future Money Bills until it is finished, and it would obviously be undesirable for the Council to be faced with further Petitions designed to delay the progress of those necessary Bills and cause further disruption in the Council's finances.
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To some extent what I have said about Petitions holds good about Instructions. It is obviously right for both Houses of Parliament to have the right to attach Instructions to the GLC Money Bill when referring it to a Select Committee. That is right, otherwise there is not much point in the procedure.
But, my Lords, while it is excellent to have a giant's strength, it is tyrranous to use it as a giant. Your Lordships should therefore be very careful how you use that power, and it is my view that if it is to be the pattern that there are to be Instructions on the Money Bill every year, then the business managers of both Houses of Parliament must take steps to ensure that the Bill is considered earlier, so that it can receive the Royal Assent before Parliament disperses for the Summer Recess. The alternative will be that the overlap period will have to be longer than six months and this will make a nonsense of the whole procedure, because it will mean that the House will be considering a Money Bill which can apply only to a very small part of the year in question.
I hope your Lordships will think carefully on this and if the attachment of Instructions to the Money Bill is to be the rule, then provision should be made to ensure that what has happened this year is not repeated. I hope your Lordships will not try to make the life of the Greater London Council more difficult and will not try to heap additional expenses on the ratepayers of Greater London. I invite your Lordships to give this Bill a Third Reading.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3ª—(Lord Pitt of Hampstead.)
8.32 p.m.
Lord CAWLEY: My Lords, it is the custom for the chairman of the Select Committee which submits a Special Report to the House in answer to an Instruction, to speak on the Third Reading of the Bill. I had personal experience of this when I sat on the Brighton Marina Bill Committee, chaired by my noble friend the late Lord Grenfell, and on the Third Reading it proved to be a very boisterous affair.
I hope that I may have the leave of the House at this moment to pay tribute

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to the memory of my noble friend Lord Grenfell who died this week, and this tribute has the wholehearted support of the noble Earl the Lord Chairman of Committees. Lord Grenfell's obituary in The Times yesterday correctly stated that he was awarded the CBE but was quite silent as to the reason for that award. In fact the noble Lord was honoured for his long and devoted service as a Deputy Chairman of Committees and chairman of numerous Select Committees in your Lordships' House. As one who served with him on the Brighton Marina Committee I soon learned that while showing great courtesy and kindness he kept a firm hand on the proceedings. Your Lordships, I know, much admired his gallantry, when his health finally gave way, in attending the House in a wheelchair. He was a man with many friends and no enemies and we all mourn his passing.
Several noble Lords: Hear, Hear!
Lord CAWLEY: My Lords, this Select Committee which was appointed to hear the various Petitions came to a unanimous conclusion on the issue of locus standi in the case of both sets of Petitions and the make-up of the Committee was unusually wide. In fact, there was a Member from each of the four corners of the House. They were also unanimous on the issue that the Bill should proceed and that the relevant expenditure was desirable.
There was one point which the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, raised and I am afraid he is not able to be here tonight because he is in Penang, but he wanted to amend the report by adding that the Committee did not explore the possibility of the further dispersion of the West London College in order to provide a "kick-about" area. I do not think that adds very much to our report but I thought I ought to mention it, seeing that the noble Viscount is not able to be here tonight.
Having decided that there is no locus standi the Committee was left in a rather invidious position because they had to apply to the House for permission to call witnesses themselves. This is always un-desirable because these witnesses cannot be cross-examined and in this case in view of the timing, to which the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, has referred, we had to get them and hear them as quickly as possible.
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So we selected three witnesses to give evidence because obviously it would have been extremely unfair if we had only heard the Greater London Council's witnesses. We chose Mr. Fry, who had been appointed agent for all the Petitioners on the St. Paul's Field issue, as a witness and of course not as an advocate. We also chose a local resident whose house is on the edge of St. Paul's Field, and the Secretary of the Fulham Society, which is an amenity society which now covers the whole area of the new Hammersmith Council. But, as I think I have stated, the custom in this House is that of the High Court, that if the judge calls a witness himself then the witness is not subject to cross-examination, and these witnesses were not cross-examined.
I am sorry to say that I think a good deal of the trouble in this case arose from the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, on Second Reading inadvertently did not mention the fact which is very much in favour of his case; namely, that the Greater London Council Act of 1975 authorised the expenditure of £1 million on this project, and so if we were to curtail the project now we should be going back on what we authorised last year. There I am afraid the report has gone slightly astray, because owing to the difficulty of obtaining shorthand notes it was compiled before we had them all in hand and in paragraph 12 I added these words:
"where some expenditure, albeit not very great, has already been sanctioned by Parliament."
I am afraid that was not quite accurate because the sum sanctioned could not possibly be called "albeit not very great", being a million pounds. That deals with the report, but I have certain observations of my own to make on the contents of the general observations which are contained in paragraph 12 of the report.
Baroness PHILLIPS: My Lords, before the noble Lord continues, as he has said that he has now dealt with the Report, may we not know the criteria on which the Committee decided who the witnesses were to be?
Lord CAWLEY: My Lords, the answer to that is that we received a considerable number—in fact about nine—applications to give evidence and we chose them so as to be as different as possible

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Mr. Fry obviously knew all about the matters concerned; Colonel Burnaby was a local inhabitant. We chose Mr. Ground because the Fulham Society is an amenity society, and he would obviously have knowledge of those matters. The noble Baroness must realise that the timetable was so very restricted that if we had allowed all and sundry to give evidence, we would have got into the same position as if the locus standi of the Petitioners had not been challenged. One has to accept that the discretion of the Committee in choosing witnesses in this case is a matter which is for the Committee.
The Earl of ONSLOW: My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Cawley, would allow me to interrupt, can he tell the House what witnesses he did not call as well as the witnesses he did call?
Lord CAWLEY: Certainly, my Lords. We did not call J. C. Putnam, the Hammersmith Councillor, G. F. Simpson, the Hammersmith Councillor, Angela Dixon, Acting Vice-Chairman of the Hammersmith Society, C. R. Bex, an architect, G. F. Hart and A. Martin, local residents, so there were quite a lot of people to choose from.
Baroness PHILLIPS: My Lords, would the noble Lord, Lord Cawley, not agree that it would have been wiser, surely, in view of the interest of the Hammersmith Borough Council, to have called at least one of the two Borough Councillors?
Lord CAWLEY: My Lords, the Greater London Council called a member of the Hammersmith Borough Council, at the request, I think, of the noble Lord, Lord Brimelow, so we had one Hammersmith Councillor giving evidence.
The noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, said that this is the 85th Bill. Of course, this is not so, because it was first enacted with those early Bills which came before Parliament under the Metropolitan Works (Loans) Act of 1869. That was a Bill put before Parliament by the Metropolitan Board of Works, the predecessor of the London County Council. There have been 106 Bills before the present Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, is quite right
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in saying that no Petitions have been entered against any of these Bills except the present one. There have been two sets of Petitions against the present Bill of two different subjects. One might ask what on earth is the reason why the Greater London Council is being subjected to this nursemaid treatment, as one might call it. The reason was that in 1869 London was much the most important city in the country.
A noble Lord: It still is.
Lord CAWLEY: It was then necessary to regulate London strictly by Statute. Now, the Greater London Council has 7 million inhabitants and it has a rateable value of £1,894 million. The West Midlands Council, on the other hand, has 2·8 million inhabitants and a rateable value of £285 million. The Greater Manchester Council has 2·7 million inhabitants and a rateable value of £300 million. There is no West Midlands Money Bill, and there is no Greater Manchester Money Bill each year, so I cannot see why the metropolis should be treated in a different way from great authorities which admittedly are not quite as big as Greater London, but are of a great size.
In future, these Bills will obviously have separate Petitions. There is a misapprehension among the officials of the Greater London Council that this Committee decided locus standi against the West Kensington Borough Environment Campaign on some ground which it did not so decide. The reason the Committee decided against the West Kensington Borough Environment Campaign was that they held that it did not sufficiently represent an interest in the district under Private Bill Standing Order No. 117. The notepaper issued by the campaign is certainly impressive, and shows a chairman, a secretary, and treasurer and a list of sponsors. But when Mr. Fry was examined as to the substance of his campaign he said on Day 1 at page 42:
"It is very difficult to speak about members of the Campaign. When there was a debate last week 12 people who are supporters of the Campaign who are central came and occupied seats in the gallery. At Committee meetings there have been between 12 and 20 or 25 of them. We do not have paid-up members because nobody has ever bothered to do that. We have a simple aim. We are a campaign and have 11,000 people who we can clearly purport to represent".

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At page 44, Mr. Fry said:
"No, we did not have a roll of members. If you want a roll of those whom we represent, there is the Petition."
My Lords, on this evidence the Committee decided the Campaign did not sufficiently represent the inhabitants of West Kensington. The Committee could not think that a series of names on a Petition could possibly constitute a representative body which would have a locus standi to oppose the Bill. But that does not mean that in future some other body might not have a locus standi because the West Kensington Borough Environment Campaign was held not to have a locus standi.
My Lords, as your Lordships will see, I am wholly in favour of a move to abolish these Bills. But I am told that it might not find much favour in another place, where Members of that place use this Bill as a sort of dartboard at which to throw Instructions. In fact, on a Second Reading in another place this summer, there were two sets of Instructions which, luckily, were defeated on a vote. Of course, they may not be defeated in the future.
I should say that in the other place there was no reference to St. Paul's Field in the Instructions, although Mr. Stephen Ross, the Member for the Isle of Wight, mentioned the matter. So I hope that some steps will be taken to put an end to this ridiculous procedure, which must be very costly because even to promote a Private Bill which is unopposed is costly, and it is an entirely unnecessary burden on the ratepayers.
8.49 p.m.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, it has been suggested to me in the course of the day that I must be very angry, and that I am going to attack the noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, and the noble Lord, Lord Cawley. Let me assure the House that I am not going to do anything of the sort. On the issue of the St. Paul's playing field site, I have gone through the complete range of feeling and thought. My first feeling was, and is, of great concern for the people of Hammersmith. That has been my entire motive in the whole of this matter. My second was hope when the House agreed to refer the St. Paul's field site to a Select Committee.
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The third feeling, I admit, was anger when I read the report of the Committee. But now, although my abiding feeling is still of concern, it is also one of sorrow for the fate of those who live in the inner city who are not always able to put their case as wisely or as well as perhaps are others but who nevertheless have a very real case indeed.
Once again I should like to make it clear that it is not my intention to be Party political. The noble Lord, Lord Pitt, has already told me on more than one occasion what in fact I already know, that the original decision on this matter was taken under a Conservative-controlled Greater London Council and a Conservative-controlled Hammersmith Borough Council. I do not now pretend, nor have I ever pretended, that no blame attaches to the Conservative Party. Staunch Conservative that I am, I have never pretended either that my Party has never made a mistake. I believe now that all of us, including Members of your Lordships' House, carry a very great responsibility for the position that we have today. I feel somehow that when I die "St. Paul's field" will probably be engraved on my heart.
As I said, I speak today in sorrow and not in anger. I do so because I hope that even at this late hour I can appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, to reconsider this issue, to see whether there is not any solution to it at all which will keep the open space at St. Paul's field. Let me put it to him, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, who will be speaking for the Government, in this way. The noble Baroness indicates that she is not speaking. Never mind, perhaps I may address her anyway. I do not believe it is good for democracy when many people feel deeply aggrieved that justice has not been done.
I know, because I have read the entire proceedings, that the Greater London Council were upheld in a High Court case on the issue of the St. Paul's playing field. But, as I indicated on 12th July, that is not really the issue. The judge was not asked whether the decision was right; he was asked whether it was legal, which is quite a different matter. Even now your Lordships may well ask why people should feel aggrieved. The objectors have never argued about the legality of the case since the High Court ruling, nor indeed have

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they argued their case on planning procedure, though I am bound to say, having looked into this matter, that a great deal is wrong. They have said that they have never been allowed to put their case anywhere and this is the injustice they find. The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, shakes his head, but I hope that by the time I have concluded what I have to say he will agree that there has been a grave miscarriage of justice.
If we begin in 1970, which I referred to on 12th July, an advertisement was put in the local paper in August to indicate the development of the site as a substantial departure from the development plan. This is quite right; it is the proper procedure and it was quite legal. It was one advertisement in August one summer, and not surprisingly only 51 objections were received. No objection was put in by the Hammersmith Borough Council. The then Secretary of State decided 18 months later that there ought not to be a public inquiry. So the first fact is that a public inquiry was refused.
Then it came time for the detailed planning application, and this occurred in 1975, when there was an exhibition in Fulham Town Hall headed, "New Housing in Hammersmith". The advertisement appeared in three local newspapers and it looked like this. For anybody who cares to see, it is quite a small advertisement, headed "GLC New Housing in Hammersmith", and it goes on to say that it would be held from March 26th to 30th 1974. Accompanying the advertisement was a leaflet very nicely set out with a picture. It is here for anybody to see. In the whole of this leaflet, which is entirely devoted to GLC new housing in Hammersmith, St. Paul's School site, there is only one sentence about the College of Further Education, and it reads:
"The site is approximately 5·98 hectares and has been allocated for both GLC housing and ILEA educational purposes, that part to the south, approximately 2·71 hectares, being developed for the West London College and Hammersmith College of Further Education and also at a later date for the rebuilding of Hammersmith College of Art and Building."
Nobody can say that the residents did not know. But I ask you, my Lords, is it fair, when you circulate a leaflet with this amount of printing on it, that that is the only reference to the development of the
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College of Further Education? One would have thought that people in Hammersmith would have taken the trouble to circulate all the local residents. There is indeed an extremely good local magazine circulated from Hammersmith called the Hammersmith News. I found from one of the local residents that he in fact first heard of the exhibition from the Hammersmith News, which, unfortunately, reached him ten days after the exhibition had closed. He therefore wrote to the borough architect to ask why this had come very late. Your Lordships might like to hear the reply, written on 7th May 1974:
"The Hammersmith News would normally have been published on or about 13th March, well in advance of the exhibition, but the March issue had to be reprinted in order to publicise the important matter of the domestic support grant affecting rates. Reprinting entailed a delay in distribution."
Again, of course, they have gone through the motions. The local residents were circulated. Unfortunately, it was just too late. So the kind of people who might have waited to get something pushed through their letter box did not get it. May I add in passing that the Fulham Town Hall is very nearly a mile and a half from the site, and, although that perhaps does not sound very much, anybody who has struggled a mile and a half across London knows that this is quite a way. Never mind if all these things are wrong, the fact is that at each stage the law has been complied with. There is nothing illegal about this. But imagine, if you are a resident in Hammersmith, what you feel at the end of this matter.
At the end of the exhibition the West Kensington Environment Campaign was formed, and they did what was absolutely the proper thing. They wrote to their two Members of Parliament, the honourable Member Mr. Stewart and the honourable Member Mr. Townley. Unfortunately, both Members of Parliament declined to take up the case. So the natural way they would have expected to put their case was not carried out.
We now come to the question of your Lordships' House, and the first time this was raised was in a Question from the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, who on

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22nd March 1976 asked the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, a Question about this to which she replied (col. 435):
"It is a problem"—
That is the building of the college—
"but I know that the noble Lord is aware that certainly in London the overwhelming demand for housing and education must take priority. There will be four acres of open space in any case."
I think this must have been a slight mistake, because on looking very carefully at the site, so far as I can see there will be one and a half acres of open space within he housing area, and there will be a small adventure playground for 15 years only.
Baroness BIRK: My Lords, if I may intervene, as I understand it, Hammersmith had been given the opportunity to purchase the four acres of open space but they said they could not do so. There were actually four acres of open space available at that time.
Baroness PHILLIPS: Not at that time.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, I will come to this point about the purchase between the Greater London Council and Hammersmith, but I think by March 1976 this was water under the bridge. The Petitioners, as they could not get anybody else to take notice of them, wanted to take a deputation to see the Secretary of State, who was by this time Mr. Crosland. He looked at the case, and he felt that all the legal requirements had been carried out. He declined to receive the deputation. So we have this situation: the residents were refused a public inquiry. They got no help at all from the two Members of Parliament. The Secretary of State declined to see the deputation. And at last the matter arrived at the House of Lords, and it came on a Second Reading debate on the Greater London Council (Money) Bill on 12th July.
I appreciate that five wise men have considered the case in the Select Committee but I would ask them to look at the report that they have written through the eyes of someone affected by this development. I see that they do not expect to do this because that is not the job of a Select Committee. Nevertheless, it is one of the functions of those taking part in the whole democratic process to use one's imagination, to think what it is they are doing. I realise that they went
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through my speech on 12th July as if I was addressing a court, and not looking to find out what exactly it was that I had hoped to achieve. Had I thought that I was addressing a court, though I am not a lawyer I would have made a different speech. As it was, I believed that I was addressing your Lordships' House, and although it might be called a court it was not on that occasion sitting in a judicial capacity. I would, of course, have expanded on any of my remarks had I been called to give evidence or say anything further, but I was not. I am bound to say that I have come to the conclusion that the Select Committee did not answer what my Instruction asked them.
I have read their report so many times that I could almost recite it by heart, but I can find an answer only three-quarters of the way through paragraph 9, in which they say:
"Having regard to the shortage of amenities and public open space in this densely populated area, the Committee regret that the provision for public open space on the St. Paul's site should have been so sharply reduced; …"
That seems to me the only point that they make. They make a great many other points, very well put by the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, and by the noble Lord, Lord Cawley, and they have said in effect that I ought not, on a Bill like this, to have raised the question of the St. Paul's School site, although of course it is perfectly allowable under the rules of the House.
I will not take exception to paragraph 12, although I am bound to say that I find it very difficult to compare what the Committee has said with what the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said on 12th July at column 104, He said:
"But this, of course, is not a Money Bill in the technical sense of this expression. There is no constitutional reason why this House, or any one of its Committees, should not amend any Money Bill promoted by the Greater London Council if it wishes to do so."
Either one or the other must be right, and as I had taken advice before moving my Instruction I do not believe that there was anything constitutionally wrong in what I have done.
It seems to me that the Greater London Council has two options: either it can accept that it should be treated exactly like all other local authorities and have to get permission and agreement from the

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appropriate Secretary of State for its capital expenditure, or it must face the consequences of having its own Money Bill with the option of Instructions. I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, about the time-table of it. It may well be that this is at fault, and it is something which we should jointly look at; but the fact that this procedure has not been used since 1869—that is the date when this procedure was first introduced—does not mean that it cannot be used, or should not be used.
The Committee goes on to say that, of course, the whole matter should have been brought up much earlier. Regrettably I was not in your Lordships' House in 1968 when the merger first came up, nor indeed was I here until the middle of 1971, just in time in fact for the Greater London Council Money Bill, but it was hardly likely that my maiden speech would have been to question the expenditure of the Greater London Council. So asking me to take it up earlier seems to me to be very difficult.
For the reasons I hope I have already explained, those who have objected did not take it up earlier because at each step of the way they genuinely believed, either by a public inquiry, their Members of Parliament, or the further inquiry into the detailed plan that they would have an opportunity to put their case. It then came to the Money Bill, and the noble Lord, Lord Cawley, has made a very important point about the previous expenditure in 1975. I have not had the time to look up the details, but I suspect that this was probably money on architects' fees—common practice in local authorities when the fees and costs of drawing up the plans, which are always very considerable, are included in the capital expenditure before the contract is let, and then appear later on.
Lord CAWLEY: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Baroness? There was evidence that the £190,000 was the sum expended on architects and similar fees.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, I am most grateful for that piece of information. We do not know of course what the rest of the money is; we know only that the contract was let subsequently in
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May 1976 and work started almost immediately. Therefore, I suspect that the contract was not let until this year. However, as I say, I do not think that that invalidates the case because even last year the Petitioners must have expected that they would have received redress from some other course.
First, I feel that the Committee did not answer my Instruction. I feel that it is not an argument to say that it was too late, and I am disturbed that they dismissed all my constructive proposals on alternative sites with one sentence at the top of page 5, when they say:
"On the evidence adduced, none of the other sites proposed for the West London College appeared to the Committee to be reasonably satisfactory."
I am bound to say I found that statement surprising. I have already on 12th July quoted from the letter from Mr. Mulley, who was then Secretary of State for the Department of Education and Science, indicating that the former college of education could, with suitable adaptations, be used.
There is another letter, this time from Mr. Armstrong, saying that there is no reason to suppose that with adaptation the Post Office site could not be used for a college of further education. I understand that the Select Committee considered otherwise. It does not give its reasons, so we do not know what they were. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Cawley, referred to the letter from the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, it is very interesting to note that in a reply to Lord Hanworth, who was worried about the Select Committee's report from Lord Brimelow, one reason he, Lord Brimelow, mentions is that the Committee could not consider Lord Hanworth's suggestion of what was called a "kick-about site" of one and a half acres because the Committee was not professionally qualified. If the Committee was not professionally qualified to decide that issue, I cannot see how it was professionally qualified to decide the other, which, with such firmness, it says it did.
Lord BRIMELOW: My Lords, will the noble Baroness kindly read out all the arguments that I gave to the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth?
Baroness YOUNG: I should be happy to do so, my Lords, if the House will bear with me and would like to hear them.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, it depends how long they are!
Baroness YOUNG: The passage reads:
"I should like however to make it clear that had I been consulted about the inclusion in the report of a recommendation regarding a provision of a kick-about area, I should certainly have had misgivings and should probably have objected or suggested wording which did not amount to a recommendation. My reasons would have been:

(a) The Committee was not asked to make recommendations about alternative possibilities for the development of the site. (This is tantamount to your alternative (a) namely, that the matter was beyond the terms of the Committee);

(b) The Committee was not professionally qualified;

(c) The Committee, in the absence of complete cover in its terms of reference, should be careful not to encroach on the prerogatives of those who, under the law, are the custodians of the public interest; and

(d) Procedurally, it would be open to objection if the Committee were to recommend one alternative scheme of development without having examined alternative schemes and formulated its reasons for not recommending them."

I have read out, I think Lord Brimelow will agree quite fairly, the whole of that section of his letter, but I do not see that it in any way invalidates my case. Even if it did, I do not see that the case to the Committee is proved.
Lord VAIZEY: My Lords, would not the noble Baroness admit that what she has just read from Lord Brimelow completely contradicts the impression that she has been trying to give to the House?
Baroness YOUNG: No, my Lords. I am saying that Lord Hanworth made a suggestion about the development of the St. Paul's School site. Lord Brimelow, quite properly, wrote back and gave four reasons why it could not be included. I was talking about another development of the college of further education at another site. The Select Committee said that they were quite qualified to pronounce on alternative sites, and they have made this bald statement in their report, yet Lord Brimelow says that they were not qualified to pronounce on the development of that site.
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I am not a lawyer, so I cannot argue all these fine points of law that arise, and I feel certain that the Committee had no intention of misleading the House when they said—they kindly quoted part of my Instruction, which was carefully worded—in paragraph 7:
"Having regard to the interests of the inhabitants of West Kensington in particular and of Greater London in general in the preservation of this valuable open space…".
When one goes on to the opinion of the Committee, it begins:
"St. Paul's playing field has never been a public open space."
I know enough about planning law to know that "public open space" has a very precise meaning, and for that reason I did not put it in my Instruction. I know that the site was originally acquired by the LCC for public open space; before that it had been a school playing field, and that is not public open space, although it is open space. In the long period between 1964 and 1976 it has been used as open space by the residents and by 30 schools as a playing field.
It confuses the issue to talk about "public open space" in this context when that was not what I was talking about because I knew that it had not been used as public open space, and I wish to make that point quite clear. It is true that the report does not say that the GLC could not provide public open space, but they use very curious wording about this in paragraph 9 when they say:
"The abandonment of this intention"—
that is, to provide public open space—
"was due to the historical accident that in 1965 responsibility for the transformation of the playing fields into public space passed to the Hammersmith Borough Council, which decided that it could not afford the cost."
It goes on to set it out and a number of people, including Mr. Reg. Goodwin, Mr. Ashley Bramall and Lord Pitt, have said at intervals that the GLC could not provide public open space. The last person to say it was the counsel for the GLC, and we read on page 18 of Day 3 of the proceedings of the Select Committee:
"The crucial ratio decidendi was that Hammersmith could not afford to buy the land to provide the open space which, at that time, they and they only were statutorily empowered to do."

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Again, I am not a lawyer, but I should like to quote from a letter from the Department of the Environment dated 3rd February 1976, which begins:
"I have been asked to reply to your query concerning the powers of the Greater London Council under Part VII of the London Government Act 1963. The Greater London Council, as a local authority, have powers under Section 164 of the Public Health Act 1875, as applied to Greater London by Section 58(1) of the London Government Act 1963, to provide a park or open space by way of appropriation of land, provided that the application is made with the consent of the Secretary of State."
My point is that the Greater London Council had reserve powers, and I believe that a great many people have been under a misunderstanding on this point. It is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Select Committee was itself misled in this matter. Is it surprising that the Petitioners feel a sense of grievance? I was very interested to see a Press notice which reached my desk today on a speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Birk. It is dated 29th September, 1976, and, at the end, she says:
"But at least we are not sitting back in comfortable complacency mesmerised by sophisticated planning machinery. The machine is not the message and we must be constantly self-critical about what planning is, or is not, achieving for our environment."—
with which sentiment I entirely agree. I think, when we have heard what has happened here, we may well wonder whether the planning machinery is working as it should.
I have already indicated that the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, would have liked to say something, had he been able to be here, about the need to provide a kick-about area. Also, I am delighted to see my noble friend Lord Crawshaw here who will also speak because I believe that he is not entirely happy about the report. It has been suggested that I should have argued my case of my Instruction on cost: I deliberately did not do so because I thought the case rested on its merits on the need for public open space. However, perhaps I may just finally quote an article which appeared in the Sunday Times on August 22nd 1976. It was taken from a report which was still secret from the Department of the Environment. Part of it said:
"Given the cost of the Greater London Council Building programme—£174 million budgeted this year—to produce a mere 5,500 dwellings, then much of it must be unduly expensive.
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Covent Garden, Thamesmead and the St. Paul's School site are three fairly obvious cases."
I have not raised the question of the housing shortage but I wonder whether, if the Greater London Council and the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, cannot look at the College of Further Education site, he might look at the other site. I have never argued on that point, because I accept the need for housing, but it may well be that, in one of those curious quirks of fate, the present economic crisis may just intervene to help the residents of Hammersmith. If so, this would indeed be something to be said for it which I should applaud.
When I was preparing for this debate, I read again a poem about London which was written in the middle of the 19th century when people were worried about the rebuilding which was going on. It said:
"Who builds? Who builds? Alas ye poor,
When London day by day removes,
Where shall ye find a friendly door
When every day a house removes?"
It is so apposite today that I felt I should quote it. We all pay lip service to those who dwell in the inner cities. I hope I shall never hear from noble Lords who vote happily for this development talk about the problems of those who want open space and who live in deprived areas, because I shall know that, when they had the opportunity actually to do something about it, they declined.
9.19 p.m.
Lord SOMERS: My Lords, I think it only right that somebody should say something from these Benches. I should like to confirm what the noble Baroness, Lady Young, has just said. I, too, have had the same information that it was apparently not true and never has been true that the Greater London Council are unable to preserve this land as open space. If that is so, then the Select Committee has been misled, your Lordships have been misled and I can only think that the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, himself has been misled—and nobody can know more about the affairs of the Greater London Council than he does. If that is the case, I do not know what the present situation is. I leave that to those who are more learned in the law. But I feel that it should be emphasised and remembered when considering the Select Committee's report.

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There is another point. A Petition was handed to Mr. Tony Banks, the GLC councillor for Hammersmith, which contained, if you can believe it, 11,320 signatures. Mr. Tony Banks received it, but later when there was a Motion of protest against the taking of this land Mr. Banks voted against it. To me that makes a nonsense of everything that we like to call democracy. A councillor is elected by his local citizens and he then pays no attention whatsoever to what they desire. Is that democracy? If so, I really would opt for a different system.
Everybody who knows London, particularly that part of London which is in question, knows that it is very badly off for open space. There is no earthly reason why the GLC should not preserve it as an open public ground. Admittedly, it has not been a public ground before, as the noble Baroness pointed out. But there is no earthly reason why it should not become so. In a part of London such as that, which is very densely populated, it seems to me absolutely criminal to take away any opportunity of providing some open land. That is all I have to say.
9.21 p.m.
Lord VAIZEY: My Lords, when I read the Report of the Select Committee, I expected to find the noble Baroness coming here in sackcloth and ashes, but she is as elegant as ever and was extremely eloquent in the speech she has made on behalf of the citizens of London. She, of course, lives in Oxford. I live very near the St. Paul's site and indeed my children go to the St. Paul's Schools. I think I know something about this matter because I sat on the higher and further education committee of the Inner London Education Authority when the new higher education college for Hammersmith was approved. Consequently I have a greater direct knowledge than the noble Baroness of the processes which have been passed through in this whole affair, though I realise that she feels very strongly and has a very warm heart, and has perhaps to some extent been misled by the correspondence she has had and the interest she has lately assumed in the affairs of London. When they come to pay their increased rates, I only hope that Londoners will thank her for her intervention on their behalf—
Baroness YOUNG: I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but does he not agree that on a matter like this any Member of the House of Lords is perfectly entitled to raise a question? The fact that I have no axe to grind on this matter might be considered a point in my favour.
Lord VAIZEY: My Lords, I perfectly well concede that point. It is a perfectly fair point. However, there were earlier occasions on which this matter could have been raised without introducing this extremely heavy cost on the ratepayers of London.
It seems to me that the central point which was made by the Select Committee is absolutely essential. If this kind of Parliamentary device is to be used to view every planning procedure in the country—
Lord BROUGHAM and VAUX: My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to interrupt? He has just said that this matter could have been raised earlier. We have just heard that the Minister of State would not even consider a deputation.
Lord VAIZEY: My Lords, I will come to that matter later in what I hope will be a brief speech.
The Select Committee makes a central point that these kinds of procedures cannot be used on any regular basis to review planning decisions. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Cawley, who spoke earlier made a very important point that this power of the Greater London Council to raise money through a Parliamentary Bill, rather than the way in which other local authorities do, is a matter which should be reviewed. It is important to realise that this is a consequence of the London Government Act which was passed in the 1960s, and perhaps at that time people might have thought more carefully about this particular issue.
However, I should like to turn to the issues of substance which the noble Baroness dealt with. I would concede perfectly willingly that on all these issues of the use of inner city space the arguments for the use of land for different purposes are very narrowly balanced. Anybody who has taken part in decisions about the use of land in London knows this perfectly well. The fact is that land is short, land

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is expensive, and the alternative uses to which it may be put are very many and varied.
The competent authorities to decide this are quite clearly the Hammersmith Borough Council and the Greater London Council. I cannot speak about what was going on in the Hammersmith Borough Council; nor can I speak fully about the Greater London Council; but I can certainly speak about the West London College. I can say that when I sat on the higher and further education committee we were fully presented with the alternatives. I have looked up my notes on this and have gone through the files that I kept at that period, and there is absolutely no doubt that all sorts of alternative schemes were put before the members of the committee. Both major Parties were represented on that committee, and we went through a very searching examination with the authority's architects at that time as to whether or not the college could be housed in an alternative way. I think my noble friend Lord Pitt will confirm what I say; he was then also sitting on that authority.
It seems to me, if I may say so, a very strange argument that because 11,000 people have signed a Petition and presented it to the GLC member Tony Banks then, when he, as he is duty bound to do, presents it to the Greater London Council, he has to vote in favour of the people who have signed the Petition. I think that really is an entirely new constitutional doctrine; or that because you write to your Member of Parliament, because you write to Mr. Stewart or Mr. Tomney, it is therefore Mr. Tomney's or Mr. Stewart's duty to come straight down to the House of Commons and say, "I have had a letter, and I have decided to vote in accordance with the way the letter tells me". This is a very strange kind of doctrine. There is absolutely no evidence which has been adduced by the noble Baroness, or by other people who have bombarded us with literature on this particular issue, to show that the representatives of the people of Hammersmith have not fully understood the issues and have in fact come to an extremely difficult decision about the use of this land.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, Lord
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Vaizey, one again, but I never said that I thought the Members of Parliament for the area should have voted in favour of it. All I said was that they never provided it with a chance to be debated in the House of Commons.
Lord VAIZEY: I am sorry, my Lords, but if the noble Baroness really wants every planning decision up and down the length and breadth of the country debated in Parliament, what on earth is Parliament going to do about foreign affairs or the economic situation? It will be sitting day and night for years. There are hundreds and thousands of planning decisions taken. You really cannot bring them all to the Floor of both Chambers, to be debated. The issue which the noble Baroness raised was whether or not the people of Hammersmith and the people of London have had this issue—
The Earl of ONSLOW: My Lords, would the noble Lord give way for one moment? There have been planning issues raised on the Floor of this House. There have been successful planning battles fought on the Floor of this House when a council has had to introduce a Private Bill to do it. I myself have been involved in one.
Lord VAIZEY: My Lords, I am not suggesting it has not been done; I am suggesting it is a rather bad way of going about planning procedures. The fact of the matter is that the use of this space, which was a large school playing field, has been very thoroughly debated by the elected representatives of the people of Hammersmith, and there is no doubt whatever that the consensus of the opinion of those people—and we also considered it very deeply on the ILEA committee on which I served—was that there was urgent need by that college for a purpose-built building, which serves the deprived youths of that area, and that the need of the people was for that rather than for additional open space. There is also absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the need of the people for new housing in that area is greater than the need for open space in that area. I also do not concede for one moment the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Somers, that it is an area which is grossly deficient in open space.
Baroness PHILLIPS: My Lords, would the noble Lord give way? As a resident of Hammersmith taking part in this debate—possibly the only resident of Hammersmith living within walking distance of the field and born in Fulham—I should like to say to the noble Lord that the ILEA committee that he has referred to surely cannot have explored the possibilities of alternatives in a borough where we are constantly told we have a shrinking child population, where there are schools which are under-used, and where, certainly to my knowledge, one college is empty.
Lord VAIZEY: My Lords, that is a powerful argument; I concede that. But the fact is that Fulham Town Hall is a mile and a half away, apparently further than the noble Baroness's legs could carry her. Holland Park is only three quarters of a mile from the St. Paul's School site. One of the arguments included in the enormous volume of material with which I have been deluged is that the primary use of the playing field site should be for the playing fields of the local secondary schools. Any open space used for local secondary schools cannot be used—and this was another argument—as a public park for the elderly people of the neighbourhood.
We are dealing here, in my submission, with a fairly common occurrence in public life recently: a small and vociferous group which has popularised this case which they feel strongly about. They have collected a Petition. It is very easy to collect a large number of signatures. They have told the noble Baroness and the noble Baroness's heart has bled about this issue. On the whole, I should have thought that the argument that she presented—that the local elected representative of the people have not weighed up the issue carefully—is, with respect, not wholly correct.
My Lords, I must conclude by saying that these issues about the proper use of land in inner cities are extremely difficult. I feel from my own knowledge of the area that the primary need of the area is for rebuilding of the college, a very important part of the higher education provision in the area; and, furthermore, for housing. I do not believe that the use of St. Paul's site for a public park comes first.
9.32 p.m.
The Earl of ONSLOW: My Lords, I am not going to speak on the rightness or wrongness of public open spaces being developed—and I use "public open space" not in its strictly legal sense but in the sense of St. Paul's Field—except possibly to note in the case of Hammersmith that they are short of open spaces. The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, refers to Holland Park. Holland Park is not one of the bigger parks in London. I am not going to speak of the flood of irreconcilable statements which have been made. There has been ample evidence produced today to show that the true situation has been befogged. I am going to speak on only one aspect and that is the difficulty of citizens appearing to get justice. The noble Lords, Lord Pitt and Lord Cawley, in their speeches seemed to suggest that the citizen's rights before Parliament should be curtailed. I am sure that neither of them, both being democrats, would really want that to happen.
The West Kensington Environment Campaign was not allowed locus standi, as we have already been told. The reason, as the noble Lord, Lord Cawley, told us, is that they were not properly constituted. This was probably so; but they certainly represented the people of West Kensington; otherwise how would they have obtained 11,000 signatures? I know the argument about how easy it is to collect signatures. As I indicated earlier, I have been involved in one of these battles myself. It is not quite so easy to collect signatures as those who disagree with the Petition will glibly assert. Let us, however, be charitable and discount 50 per cent. of those signatures. That still leaves over 5,500 people and I am sure that any councillor who got 5,500 votes in his ward would be extraordinarily happy with that figure. The fact that in two weeks this environment group raised £3,000 to pay legal fees—and this is a working class area, a deprived area—shows how well their views represented the people.
Lord VAIZEY: My Lords, it is a mixed area, with great respect. Extremely rich people live within a stone's throw of the St. Paul's site.
The Earl of ONSLOW: I thought, my Lords, it was designated as a deprived

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part of London. Perhaps I am misinformed. That is something that happens to me frequently, my Lords.
Baroness PHILLIPS: My Lords, to comfort the noble Earl, I am not a rich person and I live in the middle of that area. I am not sure, but perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, lives in Hampstead—
Lord VAIZEY: With great respect, my Lords, I live in Hounslow.
Baroness PHILLIPS: A mixed area! If I may comfort the noble Earl who is speaking, part of that area is very much a derelict area, as anybody will know who has gone down the West Cromwell Road. It is a deprived area rather than a rich area.
The Earl of ONSLOW: I thank the noble Baroness, but then I have always things for which to thank the noble Baroness. We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Crawley, how many witnesses were not called. That seems unfair. As I said, we had a similar experience at my home. A similar association was formed to fight the Surrey County Council's plans to build on what they said was not public open space and what we said was open space; but that is another matter. We won that argument. I live in obviously what the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, will call a plutocratic area. It is an area where many people live with many skills and they commute to London. So it is that much easier for us to be competent. It is that much easier to avail ourselves of the skills to pilot our way and find our way through the procedural minefield that Private Bills produce.
These people in the Association, I regret to say, were not competent. It did not take advice very well; they felt too passionately. One felt so passionately that I believe he may have even alienated some of your Lordships. Despite this, a feeling of injustice prevailed among the ordinary people of Hammersmith. I know that my noble friend Lady Young has had pathetic letters pleading with her for help on this issue. They feel that they were denied a fair hearing by the Committee. I am sure the Committee acted within the letter of the law; but did it act within the spirit of justice? Will
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this whole episode not have furthered the feeling of distrust and dislike of authority and the Establishment? Will this not have made Parliament just that little less respected?
Having said this, may I appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, for whom every Member of your Lordships' House has a genuine respect and great liking, to use his considerable influence with the GLC to see whether something cannot be done to prevent the "concretisation"—and I use that horrible word for a horrible process—of one of the few open spaces in the West part of London. Then children, mothers, senior citizens, people on holiday and ordinary folk can continue to sit in the sun or, for that matter, walk in the rain—perhaps exercise their dogs—play football or take part in any other innocent amusements. I know that the noble Lord is a kind and sensitive man. I know that he cares for his fellow citizens. I know that he will listen.
The noble Lord is now shaking his head and says he does not care for his fellow citizens. I am sure he would not like that to be noised abroad. I am sure he will take into account some of the pleadings from us who are not making any Party political point at all.
Lord AIREDALE: Before the noble Earl sits down, would he allow me, as a member of the Select Committee, to remind him that the Committeee, having felt bound to deny locus standi to the West London Environment Campaign, with its 11,000 signatures, then proceeded to call as a witness called by the Committee Mr. Fry, who was the agent and advocate speaking on behalf of this campaign, to put before the Committee the evidence which the campaign wished to put before it.
The Earl of ONSLOW: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Cawley, has told me that, and perhaps the noble Lord would care to say whether Mr. Fry was able to produce all the evidence he wanted or whether he was cut short.
Lord AIREDALE: My Lords, we shall be getting out of order if I begin answering questions.
9.41 p.m.
Lord CRAWSHAW: My Lords, as a member of the Select Committee, albeit somewhat reluctantly, I feel I should say a few words at this stage. I was one of the first to realise that this was a highly complex problem of long standing and also that the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, and indeed our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Cawley, had very little room to manoeuvre. I felt they were in rather the same tight corner as Muhammed Ali was the other night. I agree entirely with the first eight paragraphs of the Select Committee's Report, but when I saw the first draft I informed the Clerk and, through him, the Chairman of the Committee; that I had some reservations about the opinion of the Committee and, as I intimated then, I thought I should relate them to your Lordships unless, of course, they could somehow be incorporated into the Report.
My first point concerns the undisputed fact that St. Paul's Playing Field was private property which had been acquired by the GLC and has not under either ownership been open to the public officially. But I would suggest that if one lives in the area one retains a considerable interest in what is happening to a 14-acre site such as this. The prospect of exchanging even the abstract advantages of fresh air and open space for concrete and buildings may well not be very appealing. To make a comparison, may I say that your Lordships are not allowed to sit in the other place but no doubt you would feel personally affected by those who do sit there and might well react very sharply, one way or the other, if the other place were suddenly used as a strip-tease club.
My next point relates to the intervention of Parliament at a very late stage—a matter which nearly all of us seem to think unsatisfactory. But how could we have done anything before we did in this case? It is true that a small sum of money was authorised in the 1975 GLC Money Act, but how could we have realised that St. Paul's Field was involved? I have a copy of the Act in front of me and I can see no mention of the project there at all. Of course, it was only the public outcry which drew the attention of Parliament to this subject. If anyone is at fault here, surely the GLC should not have proceeded
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with the operation when they realised that the whole matter had been referred to a Select Committee. It was disconcerting to me, and I think to other members of the Committee, to be taken clown there and to find bulldozers and excavators already at work.
So far as alternative sites for the West London College are concerned, it seemed to me at the time that the College of St. Mark and St. John is a very real alternative. The total area is sufficient. Some of the buildings need replacing anyway, arid I should be quite happy to see some of the listed buildings sacrificed if this meant saving St. Paul's Field, which is of far greater importance as part of the national heritage.
Since the Committee sat, Mr. Ernest Armstrong, the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, has confirmed that the Post Office Savings Bank at Blythe Road, Hammersmith, is likely to be available for other use in the near future. This, I understand, is a very large building and it could be used for the purpose of a college, but I must admit that we did not see this building. As a general point, I do not think it is essential for all parts of the college to be housed on the same site. I saw a programme on the television the other night about Magdalen College, Cambridge, and I thought the point of the way in which the Oxford and Cambridge colleges are laid out was very well made. The other point in the Report which I would question is the final paragraph because, contrary to what has been said here, there may be good reasons why the GLC should have its capital expenditure approved by Parliament. We did not go into these reasons in depth. The size of the population under the GLC, compared with other authorities, has already been mentioned, and I well remember counsel for the Promoters confirming the opinion of the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, that it is done in this way because London is the capital of the United Kingdom, and is therefore in some way the property of all the people—not just the GLC, or even those who happen to live in London at any particular time. In this way, Parliament can be held to represent the national interest. I think that Hitler was probably well advised during the war when he tried to destroy the heart of the United Kingdom.

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By way of general remarks and in conclusion, I was firmly convinced that there is a chronic shortage of open space in this part of London. Without space, frustration and claustrophobia thrive and this can so easily lead to the kind of incidents we witnessed in London three or four weeks ago. Playing fields, more than anything else, provide a safety valve for young men.
During the proceedings, I reminded the Select Committee and others present of the historic fact that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, and that by the same token the Battle of Alamein was won on the playing fields of St. Paul's. I trust that Slough Corporation will not get any ideas if that is the case. Since then a thought has occurred to me which I hope is not too fanciful. Could not these fields be bought by public subscription at the GLC's original price of £2 million, plus some subsequent costs, as a memorial to the victor of Alamein and used by the young people of Hammersmith and the immediate area? I am sure that this would have appealed greatly to the late noble and gallant Viscount, and is it not for just such a purpose that the Queen's Jubilee Fund has been set up? That is only one idea which I would ask your Lordships to consider, and there may be others as well. But I believe that every avenue should be explored before we lose for all future generations a valuable and historic open space such as this.
9.49 p.m.
Lord PITT of HAMPSTEAD: My Lords, I had expressed the hope that the issues which were debated in the Committee would not again be debated in this House, but it was a faint hope, which has not been realised. I will not prolong the debate or pursue it in the way in which it has been carried on. I will merely start by saying that it is not really true that the area that we are discussing is deficient in open space, because Holland Park is approximately three-quarters of a mile from the Northern part of the St. Paul's school site and is 55 acres in extent, while Ravenscourt Park is approximtely one mile from the St. Paul's school site and is 32·5 acres in extent. Therefore it is not strictly true that the area we are discussing is deficient in open space.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, Lord
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Pitt of Hampstead, who I am sure has made statements which are absolutely correct, but would not he agree that the GLC report Open Space Provision in Urban Areas, April 1973 indicated that this area is short of 74·3 acres of open space?
Lord PITT of HAMPSTEAD: Yes, my Lords, Hammersmith is short of open space, but the area we are discussing is not short of open space. That is all I am saying. I do not want to speak for the Hammersmith Borough Council because it is not my job to do so, but that is why the Hammersmith Borough Council was at no stage very anxious to do something about it. That is not the area in which they want open space. Therefore that is not the area in which they are prepared to spend money which is in short supply. The noble Baroness will know that for locally determined schemes the money available is very short. Those concerned have to select very carefully the areas in which they spend that money, and that area is not one of their greatest needs. That is where we start. It is an area of only 14 acres, and by—
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, only 14 acres?
Lord PITT of HAMPSTEAD: Yes, my Lords, only 14 acres. I have just spoken about 55 acres in the case of one park and 32·5 acres in the case of another, and the area we are talking about is only 14 acres. Of those 14 acres, five will be for open space as a result of the planning decisions which have been made. As my noble friend Lord Vaizey so rightly said, in determining how one uses land in the inner areas it is always very difficult to decide what are the right priorities.
It was felt that the college was very badly needed. I do not want to go over the same ground again but, as I said in the last debate, the college is now situated on 11 sites and needs to be brought on to one site. It is regarded as one of the immediate needs. What is more, I have been told only today, and I wrote it down, that 74 per cent. of the applicants for low level courses at that college have to be refused because of lack of space. Infact, the vast majority of them live in Hammersmith. There is therefore a need for this college in Hammersmith and this site is basic to it.

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In addition, as the noble Baroness has conceded all along, there is the need for housing. What the Council has done is to divide the area, giving a part to open space, a part to housing and a part to the college. When you bear in mind what I have said about the distance between that site and Holland Park, which is a very big park, and the distance between that site and Ravenscourt Park, which is also a reasonably sized park, you will appreciate that the Council has tried to do its best for the people of the area.
As for the legal point about whether or not the GLC had powers to provide open space, I have here a long Opinion which has been given to me and which I could inflict upon the House if it wished. However, the point is that the London Government Act was framed in a way which indicated that local services were to be the responsibility of the boroughs and that strategic services were to be the responsibility of the Greater London Council. When it came to parks, in terms of the responsibility which we inherited the interpretation was that parks of local significance should be the responsibility of the local borough council, and that parks that have more than local significance should be the responsibility of the Greater London Council. In that setting, the St. Paul's School site was regarded as a park which would be of local significance and therefore the responsibility of the London Borough of Hammersmith. Had the London Borough of Hammersmith been willing to use it we should probably never have had this debate, but they found that they could not afford it and that is when all the consequential problems arose.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord. I am extremely glad to have heard his explanation, with which of course I entirely agree, but the fact is that it has been made as a categorical statement on a number of occasions that the GLC has no power to provide open spaces. That is not in fact what the noble Lord has just said, but he would agree with me that it has reserve powers.
Lord PITT of HAMPSTEAD: My Lords, it is more than that and that is why, if we have to go into this whole matter, I must read the whole of the
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brief that I have here, because in actual fact the division which was agreed upon between the borough councils, the GLC and the Minister culminated in the GLC really not having powers to develop except for parks which are of more than local significance.
Let us try to understand this. The Borough of Hammersmith is only one of the 32 boroughs. If the GLC started by going to the Minister to get permission to do what some boroughs would regard as usurping their powers, the GLC would be in great difficulty. I said on a previous occasion, when we were speaking of local government here, that the London Government Act only works because there is this great co-operation between the GLC and the boroughs. In order that that co-operation may continue, the GLC must at all material times respect the powers of the boroughs. I repeat again that in so far as open space is concerned, the agreement has been from the beginning that parks of local significance are the responsibility of boroughs and that the GLC will only be responsible for parks which are of more than local significance. This is where the division occurs. If your Lordships wish, I can read this 20 page document but it will not tell you anything more than that.
The GLC has tried to do the best in consultation with the Hammersmith Borough Council on this matter. I do not honestly know what more I can say to the noble Baroness. After speaking to her earlier, I telephoned to the powers-that-be in County Hall to discover whether any bits of the housing could be removed in order to extend the open space from five acres to six, or something like that. I was told that if the housing was further reduced the economic cost of providing that amount of housing would be considerably increased and we should then be in a new situation of difficulty, coupled with the fact that we have already entered into contracts on both the college and the housing.
The Earl of ONSLOW: Why?
Lord PITT of HAMPSTEAD: I am asked "Why", my Lords, and I have to repeat what I said at Second Reading. The GLC has never had its Money Bill challenged in this way, and once the Money Bill had passed the Commons the GLC

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thought it would be passed into law. What is more—although I did not mention it, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cawley, for reminding me of it—the first expenditure on the St. Paul's School site was in last year's Money Bill. Therefore in effect the council was not expected to think that on this occasion an expenditure which your Lordships passed last year would be challenged in the way you challenged it.
Therefore, in effect, we must confess we were taken unawares. I say to the noble Lord that the truth of the matter is that contracts had been entered into and contractors were already on the site before the Committee was appointed and, in effect, there was nothing we could do unless we were prepared to pay compensation. We would have had to pay compensation anyway.
The Earl of ONSLOW: My Lords, there is a point which has been raised before, but the noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, has not really answered it. Is it not really almost a gross disrespect of Parliament that you should charge contractors straight on to a site without being authorised by Parliament so to do, when it is the law that you have got to get Parliamentary approval?
Lord PITT of HAMPSTEAD: My Lords, your Lordships had already given us permission last year. If we are to conclude that every year—this was the
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point I made earlier—we have to stop our building programme until the Money Bill is passed, we are going to be in a terrible situation. This is the reason why we have always had an overlapping Money Bill of 18 months; it allows us to carry on.
If I may take your Lordships away from West Kensington and St. Paul's School for a second, we are building the Thames barrier. Every year there is expenditure on the Thames barrier in the Money Bill. Are we going to have to come every year to defend the expenditure on the Thames barrier before your Lordships' House? We do not expect to. This was something agreed from the beginning. Once your Lordships have voted the first sum for the Thames barrier, the Greater London Council has a right to expect that every year the money required for the Thames barrier will be made available. Unless your Lordships are going to act in an entirely different manner from the manner in which you have always acted, I cannot see how your Lordships can expect the Greater London Council to act any differently from the way in which it has.
My Lords, I have spoken for long enough. I have tried to reply to some of the points made, and I hope I have satisfied your Lordships that, in effect, we have had a good "go" on this matter and we must now allow the Greater London Council to have its Money Bill.
On Question, Bill read 3ª, and passed.
10.3 p.m.
The MINISTER of STATE, HOME OFFICE (Lord Harris of Greenwich): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, that the House do again resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Harris of Greenwich).
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The Lord Aberdare in the Chair.]
Clause 27 agreed to.
Clause 28 [Discriminatory practices.]:
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH moved Amendment No. 39:
Page 19, line 12, leave out from ("applied") to end of line and insert ("included persons of any particular racial group as regards which there has been no occasion for applying it")
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 39. This Amendment is a drafting Amendment. We are about to have a debate on the substance of this clause on the next Amendment.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 28, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 29 [Discriminatory advertisments.]:
10.6 p.m.
Baroness ELLES Baroness ELLES moved Amendment No. 40:
Page 19, line 25, leave out ("whether") and insert ("if")
The noble Baroness said: Clause 29 has already given considerable ground for concern; it is again one of those clauses which acts most unfairly against a person who has inserted any kind of advertisement. What is of particular concern is the fact that in the Bill, in line 5, the Committee will see that even if the act is lawful the individual will be liable for formal investigation in certain
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aspects. At this stage I think the noble and learned Lord might like to take over.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: I apologise to your Lordships, but we have had many alarms and excursions and I was waiting in the wings for our proceedings to begin. I rise to move the first Amendment standing in my name in respect of Clause 29, and all three Amendments are really designed to achieve together a result. The present law, which is reproduced, I think exactly, but, if not, substantially, in Clause 29 is that advertisements are rendered unlawful whether the act which they advertise for is a lawful act or an unlawful act. That is the present law.
It has always been disputatious whether it is good law, and I have always maintained it was bad law. But whereas in 1968 in another place I contended that it was bad, I would now claim, with great respect, that it has been proved a bad thing in 1976. The case of Mr. Relf, to which I have made reference before, as have other noble Lords, is only one of a whole series of cases in which the Press, in my opinion quite rightly, have ridiculed the practice of rendering it unlawful for a man to advertise for people to co-operate with him in an act which is expressly allowed by the law.
I should have thought prima facie that must be right; it must prima facie be right that if you are entitled to do something, especially where the matter has been recently legislated, it is part of your general right of free speech that within the bounds of what is not offensive you can advertise for somebody to perform the service or co-operate in the act with you. In other words—let us give an example which we were discussing yesterday—if the Act says, and it does still say in Clause 10, that you can have five partners and within that bound have them of whatever race or ethnic origin you choose, you should be able to advertise to have up to five partners of any race or ethnic origin you choose. Otherwise you might not get them; otherwise you might not get the most suitable. It is part of the ordinary right of free speech which flows from the provision of Clause 10. Or if, as it does, the Act allows you to have your own choice about a paying guest in your own household, you ought to be allowed

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to advertise for such a guest, and there is nothing wrong in it. The Act has allowed it. There can be nothing intrinsically immoral about exercising your right to get the most suitable paying guest. I will come to Mr. Relf in a moment, because there are one or two extra observations I should like to make about that.
The fact is that it is an infringement upon the general right of free speech that you should not be allowed to advertise for what you may lawfully do. Of course in whatever form Clause 70 is ultimately passed—and we shall be turning to that in due course—if you advertise in terms which are calculated to arouse racial hatred, or if you advertise in terms which are otherwise unlawful, this is against the criminal law, or against the civil law. There is nothing in what I propose; there is nothing in this Act as I would amend it, to legalise the terms of an advertisement which is offensive, provocative, libellous, or obscene under the general law of the land. That would be struck down. But within the bounds of decent expression if the Act permits an act you ought to be allowed to get it by means of advertisement. Of course the case of Mr. Relf was a ridiculous one. I should like, because it has aroused so much emotion, to look at it for a moment in the light of this Amendment. A man may sell his house to whom he pleases. So far as I know he can do so now; so far as I know he can do so after the Bill becomes an Act.
It is extremely stupid to impose conditions of any kind, whether they relate to race, religion, sex, or anything else in the proposed purchaser, and that for two reasons. First, once the house is sold to a proposed purchaser, that purchaser can immediately the next day, or in the next ten minutes, pass it on to somebody else of exactly the opposite sex, race, religion, or what have you. Moreover, he can buy through a nominee of the permitted sex, race, religion, and what have you. So Mr. Relf was not only extremely unattractive because, if the newspapers were right—and of course I have not checked them, but they published the fact—he had himself been guilty of writing the most offensive letters to other people abusing them for their racial
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characteristics, but he was also extremely stupid because what he did could have absolutely no effect at all.
But because the law refused him permission to advertise in these terms, two things happened. One was that he became immediately the hero of the National Front—and because I criticised him on Second Reading I have had I should think a host of letters from the National Front abusing me for having criticised this unattractive character. He became the hero because he had advertised to do something which he was lawfully entitled to do, but which the law forbade him to advertise about. That was the first result.
The second result was that the excellent Mark Bonham Carter, who is and has been for many years a warmly beloved friend of mine, and his apparatus got into play and brought him before the county court. The county court judge had no option but to tell him that he must not advertise that he will sell his house only to an English family, and so he disobeyed the law and became not only a hero but a potential martyr to the National Front.
I am sorry that there is no member of the Judiciary present, and I hope it will not pass wholly unnoticed by the Judiciary—it is not my practice to criticise judges or the Judiciary—but I would, as a general rule, lay it down as a custom of prudence that when somebody defies an injunction in a civil court the judge should always contemplate the use of a fine rather than the use of imprisonment for contempt. I am saying this in the presence of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, whom I am glad to see with us tonight. If he thinks I am talking nonsense I hope he will say so because I am saying it as the result of a good deal of experience in the practice of the law in humbler capacities and indeed in the noble and learned Lord's Office.
The LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord Elwyn-Jones]: My Lords, the judge in question is an extremely able and conscientious judge who, in the circumstances of the case, thought he had no other alternative; and I hope that the noble and learned Lord, bearing in mind his

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immediate antecedence, will not press a criticism in the circumstances in which this judge found himself.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, I am not applying it to this judge at all because I think he was applying what has become very largely a general practice. However, I hope it will not be forgotten that among the remedies for contempt is a fine as well as imprisonment. The effect of a fine is that one can send in the bailiffs and sell the television set instead of sending the man to Brixton or wherever else. The advantage of a fine is that one does not have a martyr and one secures that the law is obeyed. The learned judge followed what I believe to be the general practice in these cases, in civil cases; he applied the remedy of imprisonment straight away and without attempting to fine.
That may have been perfectly right in the particular case, but I am pointing out in general—I hope that some notice will be taken of it; and I am speaking in Parliament now and not in court—that where one gets these highly sensitive cases in which potential martyrdom is at stake, a fine is a better remedy for contempt than imprisonment. That is my contention and it is based on fairly wide experience of both ends of the profession, if I might put it like that. At any rate, imprisonment was applied and the result was that he went on hunger strike; so the potential martyr became an actual martyr, and being evidently a man of some resolution and perhaps of frailer constitution than I appear to be by looking at me, he had to be let out. The result was that he became an actual martyr and trebly a hero.
I ask the Government Front Bench to reflect on the facts of this case in the light of the Amendment—I will not recall the turbulent history of the trade union cases; they have been discussed more than once, no doubt with the noble and learned Lord, who, although he was not yet here, would have been here spiritually on the other side of the fence—since we must consider these cases because they are becoming not altogether infrequent in one way or another. Here we have a law which I believe to be ridiculous fundamentally because it is an infringement of the right of free speech. It is
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challenged after a number of years, not in one case but in a number; this was the extreme and latest case. It resulted in the challenger winning the battle. The damage to the law in question is serious, but more important than the damage to the law in question is the damage to that respect for the law which I regard as something which we should do our utmost to uphold at the present time.
I propose the Amendment not because I have the smallest sympathy with people who advertise in offensive terms. On the contrary, if they do that they will be caught by Clause 70 or some other rule of the general law. Nor do I approve in the smallest degree of racial discrimination in any field at all. But when we are imposing restrictive Statutes we do not achieve our object by passing regulations which offend against general principles of legislation which have commended themselves over the centuries and which, when they are challenged, prove to be paper tigers.
Lord MONSON: I rise to support the Amendment because of the words,
"might reasonably be understood as indicating an intention"
to discriminate. In Standing Committee in another place on 25th May, the Minister of State made it quite clear that the clause was not only designed to catch overtly discriminatory advertisements but also that
"any matter in an advertisement that could reasonably be interpreted as discriminatory would be illegal as the clause now stands"
As I understand it, that means that, supposing a notice were to go up on an Earl's Court notice board saying, "Young South African supporter of Mr. Vorster seeks fellow student to share flat", this would almost certainly be caught by the clause as drafted.
There is another point which does not seem to have been noticed by anybody at any stage. Anyone who has travelled in the Indian sub-Continent and has read English language Indian newspapers will have been struck by the classified matrimonial columns. Advertisements more often than not include the phrase, "seeks fair skinned or relatively fair skinned marriage partner", because a relatively fair skin is esteemed in India. I must admit that I have not read any Indian

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newspapers published in English in this country, but I should not be surprised if they contained similar advertisements. These would appear to be made illegal by the clause. I shall be very interested to hear what the noble Lord has to say about this.
Lord JACQUES: I should like to state the reasons why the Government included the clause as drafted in the Bill. First of all, I should like to make clear what is the present law. It is the 1968 Act and under that Act, any advertisement which is discriminatory is unlawful, whether or not the intended act which is being advertised is lawful. There are therefore no exceptions. In looking at this, we felt that it went a little too far and that there were cases where there could be exceptions. We felt, for example, that, where there was a genuine occupational qualification which was accepted both in the Act and the Bill, it would be reasonable to permit a discriminatory advertisement because it could be done in a way which was not likely to be offensive. For example, if somebody of a particular race were required for a theatrical part, one could advertise for somebody of that race for the part in question.
So we felt that there were cases where it would not be offensive, and consequently we have done what was not done in the 1968 Act and have set out some exceptions in the clause. We could not see our way clear to give exceptions in the case of those acts which were excepted in the Bill because of personal and intimate relations. We felt that in that case it was unnecessary and would in fact be dangerous. The effect of the Amendment is that it would widen the scope of the exceptions to a discriminatory advertisement. While it would not be the short list that we have exempted in the clause, it would be a long list—all those which have an intended act which is lawful. As the noble Lord himself has explained, it would include the small partnership.
I should say that many of those who accepted the compromise of the figure of six, so that cases of the number of partners being under six form an exception and cases of six and more are not an exception, have been happy to accept that compromise because a discriminatory advertisement was unlawful—no matter what
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size the partnership. If the Committee accept the Amendment, it would undermine the spirit which was behind the compromise on partnership.
It would also affect the case of small dwellings, and I should have thought that there was nobody in this Chamber who would not wish it to be unlawful for a landlady to put up a notice stating: "One room available—no blacks." We would all be opposed to that; it is offensive and it would promote bad racial relations. Consequently we feel that it is good law to allow in the case of small dwellings where there will be close and intimate relations for there to be an exception so far as the intended Act is concerned, but no exception so far as the advertisement is concerned, because we feel that that would promote bad racial relations.
We recognise at once that we have the cost to pay; and the cost to pay is the Relf case. We regard that as a liability, as does the noble and learned Lord. But we say that against that one has to put the advantages, and we believe that it is an advantage to make discriminatory advertisements unlawful whether or not the intended Act is lawful. We believe that that is worth while because the majority of our people are law-abiding and are anxious not to break the law and so have the inconveniences of the consequences which would follow.
Accordingly, while the publicity of the Relf case made him a hero of the National Front there was also this advantage. All the readers of the newspapers, all the listeners to television and radio heard, many of them for the first time, that it was unlawful to do the kind of act which Relf had done. Consequently, since our people are law-abiding citizens the very fact that the law was being made known would help to get the law carried out. So we believe that even in the Relf case, even where there is a price to be paid, there are also advantages. It is for those reasons that we should prefer this clause to remain in the Bill—
Lord MONSON: Before the noble Lord sits down would he be kind enough to say whether he agrees that the two hypothetical advertisements I cited would in fact be illegal as the clause now stands?
Lord JACQUES: We think not.
10.28 p.m.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: I do not want to enter into potential cases, but I do not think the noble Lord has really met my doubts, although he has argued his case reasonably and courteously as he always does. He says that the Government's view is that the Relf case was in effect a desirable episode because all the readers—
Lord JACQUES: But—
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: Let me finish my sentence; I may have misunderstood the noble Lord, but I think not. I understood that the argument was that all the readers of the newspapers and all the listeners to the radio would have learnt for the first time that the practice of Mr. Relf was illegal and would therefore be more rather than less likely to regard what they now knew for the first time as the law, after they had learnt that Mr. Relf had defied it successfully.
That is a pure judgment of likelihood and probability, but it so happens that I take the view directly the opposite to the noble Lord. He is entitled to his opinion, which I do not think I have misrepresented and certainly did not wish to brush away with contempt. But there comes a point at which one has to state one's view on issues of that kind. If my judgment of the matter is right, I think he is wrong.
There is another aspect of the matter which I do not think he has really grappled with and perhaps I ought to have put it to him in my original opening. But I put it to him now. Let us assume that the noble Lord gets his way, that the law continues to be what it has been since 1968 and that advertisements of a discriminatory character are illegal even though the thing which is advertised for is perfectly lawful. That means assuming, of course, that a number of people obey the law who none the less intend to discriminate after the advertisement is answered, and that may well be so up to a point, although I fancy that we have not heard the last of Mr. Relf or his kidney in those circumstances. But that assumes that a person who deliberately wishes to discriminate in favour of, let us say, a British partner in a partnership of less than six is compelled to advertise and decides to advertise in the local newspaper: "Member of a
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partnership of six desires a partner", giving no indication at all that he intends to have no coloured people, or no people of a particular persuasion. He can lawfully do that if they are under six. I am sorry. If I inadvertently gave the wrong figure, I did not intend to; but he can lawfully do it. So he advertises without this precaution.
Now there answer the advertisement 15 or 20 persons, some of whom may be suitable, some of whom may be wholly unsuitable. When they come, they reach the door, they knock at it and the man says, "It is no good; you cannot come. I will not have you; I am having only white people". Which is the more offensive? I wonder whether the noble Lord has really thought that out. One knows the infinite damage, the infinite sensitivity of coloured people, if discrimination is overtly showed to them on the grounds of their colour. Is it that they should know that this door must be avoided, or is it that they should come full of hope to get a partnership, or a room as a paying guest or a small employment with the family in a family business, and then be turned away on account of their colour? Is it that they should know in advance that they are dealing with a man who wishes to discriminate them and not go near the place?
I ask that question, and I ask it partly rhetorically because it is late at night, but I believe I know the answer. I do not think I am less sensitive to other people's feelings than other people. I believe, particularly in the present situation of rather heightened racial tension and difficulties with employment and housing, that the policy pursued by the Government, for the best of reasons—and nobody hearing the noble Lord would doubt that—is a policy which is an error of judgment. It is because I have formed that view that I put down my Amendment, and it is because the noble Lord has said nothing to displace it that I remain of the same opinion still.
Lord PITT of HAMPSTEAD: May I try to help the noble and learned Lord as someone who would obviously be affected by such an advertisement? I am afraid that I do not agree with him. The 1968 Act had its best effect in the reduction of what black people regarded as the

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insulting and obscene advertisements which said, "No blacks wanted—no coloureds". I am talking now about advertisements for rooms, and things of that sort. Although the Act allowed discrimination when there were only a few people and the owner was occupying the house, the fact that he was not allowed to advertise his insulting attitude was a consolation to most black people. In fact, one of the reasons why I raised on Second Reading the sort of advertisements which are disguised discriminatory advertisements in the B.M.J. where they say, "Only British-qualified persons need apply" is that, although I am a British-qualified person, I recognise that the general practitioners who were doing it were doing it in most instances in order to discriminate against Asian doctors. I resent it on those grounds. Therefore, I would say to the noble Lord seriously that, in terms of discrimination—although having listened to me earlier he will know I believe that the exceptions should be at the absolute minimum and that is really my argument about partnerships and so on—if you agree that there are going to be exceptions, then okay. But the one thing we must not do is to allow people to advertise in an insulting manner because that would be stepping way back to before 1968. One of the successes of the 1968 Act is that it curbed what was to most black people very insulting and obscene advertisements.
Lord AVEBURY: There is a question puzzling me. Perhaps I ought to know the answer to this following the debate on Clause 10 the other night. Could the noble Lord say whether the words "might reasonably be understood as indicating" do cover the sort of advertisements in the B.M.J. that we were discussing the other night. If I were a black doctor and saw this phrase used in the B.M.J., notwithstanding the fact I might have been qualified in Edinburgh University, I would think it likely that the partners in that firm would seek to discriminate against any persons with a black skin who presented themselves as applicants for the partnership. I want to know whether the words in Clause 29(1) do prohibit the sort of advertisements that the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, referred to the other night and which are so offensive to a large number of our fellow citizens.
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I would say one word to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, just in case he is thinking of testing the feeling of the House on this question of advertisements. May I put it to him that he is not going to achieve the objective he desired because this is one Part of the Bill which would certainly be restored by another place. So the effect of his Amendment being carried, if that was the result of pressing this matter to a Division, would merely be to give an additional triumph to Mr. Relf and the Fascists who have exploited the case so thoroughly up to now. They would be able to say that the vote in this House was a vindication of the martyrdom to which the noble and learned Lord referred.
Lord JACQUES: The noble Lord put the case of the individual who without any advance notice presents himself and finds himself in a position which is offensive to him. In the circumstances in which the noble Lord said it, I would regard it as extremely offensive.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: So would I.
Lord JACQUES: On the other hand, we have to consider not merely the offensiveness but the effect upon race relations. I believe that the absence of an advertisement so that the offence is not widely publicised, the offence is private to the individual, makes it much less dangerous in relation to good racial relations. It is the publicity that, in my view, makes the difference.
Lord WIGODER: May I make one comment to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham. It is simply that he has demonstrated this evening by his argument that it is possible for the law to deal firmly and decisively with people who break Clause 29 without creating martyrs or heroes. Does that very fact not, in itself, make it not necessary to press this Amendment?
10.40 p.m.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, who has divined my exact purpose in saying what I said. Despite the desire of the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor—

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and the perfectly legitimate desire—to defend the judge, whom I did not intend to criticise personally; indeed, if he had been open to criticism there could have been an appeal on his decision. His decision was perfectly within the law and he was driven to apply it.
I do not wish to criticise him in any way. I have had some experience of this, both as Lord Chancellor and in a humbler office as counsel, and I think I am right in saying that there are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream. The reason I made the particular observations to which the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, referred, was I hoped that this would be noted. I feel absolutely certain that whether or not this Amendment is carried, those who seek to enforce the law of contempt in civil actions and who may give rise to attempted martyrdom, would be wise to remember that they may be fined instead of being sent to prison, and the grand piano may go out of the front door to pay the fine.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: To the extent that the noble and learned Lord says that, the machinery the courts provide for dealing with contempt extends from the fine to imprisonment. The difficulty about the fine of course is if the offender manifests an intention to defy the law, he will contemptuously refuse to pay the fine. We are back again against that difficulty.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: With respect to the noble and learned Lord, I think in this respect—and I say it with the greatest humility—I think I am right and he is wrong. No doubt the potential defier of the law will refuse to pay the fine. This was exactly the circumstance which I was contemplating whereupon a fi. fa. will be issued. This can be done because I looked it up when I was Lord Chancellor. A fi. fa. can be issued and the grand piano will go out of the front door, will be sold by the sheriff and the fine will be paid. The law will be vindicated, and the poor defier of the law will be without his grand piano.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: This, of course, is on the assumption that there is a grand piano.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: Mutatis mutandis, the principle will apply. Even if the noble and learned Lord is taking me perhaps au pied de la lettre I think the Committee as a whole has "tumbled" to my meaning, so I hope will the average county court judge. Having said that by way of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, I should like to say a word to the noble Lords, Lord Pitt and Lord Jacques. I can only say to the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, that the advertisements to which he takes exception are of course very carefully worded. They are worded under a law which is exactly the same as the law which is going back into this clause if my Amendment is not carried. Therefore, it will not improve his situation if the Amendment is rejected.
If anybody can read the easily detected codes by which these advertisements can be inserted in the terms which will no doubt be defensible under this clause, he will only see that in addition to the other disadvantages which I have indicated will be the disadvantage of hypocrisy which will thereby be encouraged and which I do not myself approve either in public or in private life. However, I will say this to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury: if there were one single thing which was calculated to make me divide upon the Amendment it would he the belief that whatever I said and whatever argument I adduced, another place was bound to disagree with me.
I cannot imagine anything more likely to make me divide upon this Amendment than that. Nor do I know with what presumption the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, from the remote corner of the Liberal Benches (who has not once had his Party in support of him in the Division Lobby on any contentious matter since we engaged upon this Committee stage), ventures to speak for the House of Commons. Perhaps he has so totally failed with his own Party in the House of Lords he must look back on something we cannot verify in order to justify his self-esteem. This is evidently a matter of judgment. My judgment remains exactly the same as it was; but we are getting on rather slowly and a Division takes 15 minutes. Therefore, out of sheer decency, I am not going to divide the Committee. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question Whether Clause 29 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord MONSON: I wonder, before we leave this clause, whether the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, could indicate whether in the clause as now drafted the offence of advertisements to which the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, understandably objected would be quite legal so far as the clauses and subsections mentioned in subsection (2)(a) are concerned. It would not be necessary for anybody who wanted to be offensive to use the code to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, referred. As I interpret the subsection, it would be perfectly legal to say "Partner sought for practice: no blacks."
Lord JACQUES: It is a matter of opinion. I do not think the subsection would apply.
Clause 29 agreed to.
Clause 30 agreed to.
Clause 31 [Pressure to discriminate]:
10.47 p.m.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE moved Amendment No. 43:
Page 20, line 27, at end insert ("and is made with the intention that he should act upon it.")
The noble and learned Lord said: I rise to move this Amendment, which I think requires a little explanation because it is a technical one, although it is not an unimportant one from the point of view of making this Bill a workable instrument. Incidentally, I think I should have said the other night when we were discussing the shop steward question that inadvertently I did not refer to Clauses 30 and 31 which would include shop stewards in their ambit, unless they were expressly excluded. At any rate, Clause 31 is one which makes it unlawful to induce or attempt to induce a person to do any act contravening Parts II and III.
Just to remind the Committee, Part II refers to employment and Part III refers to discrimination in other fields. Education is the first one, but there are others to follow. So it is unlawful to induce anybody to do anything which contravenes Parts II and III. If I may say so,
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I am not at all sure whether it is in the 1968 Act, but I have no objection to the principle. Subsection (2), with which this Amendment is concerned, provides that an attempted inducement is not prevented from falling within subsection (1)—that is, art inducement or an attempted inducement—because it is not made directly to the person in question, if it is made in such a way that he is likely to hear of it. That is the effect of it. In other words, if you say something which is likely to produce the same effect as an inducement would have if you made it to a person who would act on it, you are in the same position as if you induced the act.
That is fair enough—but on one condition, which is that if you make the remark that is likely to have that effect to somebody who is not himself likely to act on it, I do not think it ought to make it illegal on your lips unless you know that the other person is likely to hear of it and unless you intend that he should. In other words, a careless remark made perhaps to a member of your family who may be likely to pass it on ought not, by itself, to render the remark an inducement under subsection (2). I have added the words in the Marshalled List in order to ensure that only the guilty are caught by subsection (2). Those words are,
"… and is made with the intention that he should act upon it",
and, of course, that must imply knowledge that he is likely to hear of it, so I did not add those words as an additional factor. I hope that I have explained the Amendment shortly, in such a way that it is clear to the Committee. I beg to move.
Lord JACQUES: We entirely agree with the objective of the noble and learned Lord, but we do not think his Amendment is necessary and believe that it could possibly be undesirable. In order to fall within Clause 31(1), the inducement must, in our view, be made with an intention that the person at whom it is directed should act upon it. Unless this intention can be established, no inducement will have taken place. That expresses our view, and that is why we consider that the Amendment is unnecessary. We think it is probably undesirable, because it would apply only in the case of indirect inducements and this might cast some doubt on the need to prove intention in the case of direct inducements.

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We believe, also, that there is a danger that it would cast some doubt on the corresponding provision in the Sex Discrimination Act, which is similarly worded without the Amendment which the noble and learned Lord is seeking to make.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: My withers continue to be unwrung by the Sex Discrimination Act, and that is all I propose to say about that on this occasion. If it is badly drafted, the noble Lord is speaking for the Government and he must put it right. But I had anticipated that the noble Lord might say that; indeed, I had thought of the argument and the point before I put down the Amendment. So if I agree to withdraw it at this stage, in order to reflect about the matter still further in the light of what the noble Lord has said, I hope that he will also agree to reflect upon something which I am now about to say in reply, which is not necessarily conclusive, because, as I say, the point had occurred to me.
On subsection (1) of Clause 31, my understanding of the word "inducement" is that it implies an intention to induce. I think that the noble and learned Lord is nodding his head and takes the same view. But subsection (2) adds something which would not otherwise be an inducement, and says that it does not fall outside subsection (1) if it is made to a third party and if it is likely that the person to be induced would hear of it. It occurred to me, and it occurs to me still, that having introduced the factor of his being likely to hear of it, a court might easily construe it in such a way that it excluded in those cases the intention to induce. But I am quite satisfied that the noble Lord and I are of the same mind as to what we wish the clause to mean, and the last thing I wish to do is hold up the Committee, since he assures me that the Government's advisers think it means what I already want it to mean. Therefore on the supposition that the noble Lord will do as I have asked—and I notice that he is nodding his head—I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 31 agreed to.
Clause 32 [Liability of employers and principals]:
10.54 p.m.
Lord MONSON Lord MONSON moved Amendment No. 44:
Page 20, line 29, after ("Act") insert ("save for section 12")
The noble Lord said: I am in something of a procedural quandary as regards this Amendment. If the House of Commons accepts the overwhelming verdict of the Committee yesterday, supported by noble Lords of all three Parties and of none—namely, that the iniquitous subsection (2) of Clause 12 should be removed—then, clearly, my Amendment is superfluous. However, if, unhappily, the other place should reject your Lordships' Amendment, then the only way in which subsection (2) can be ameliorated in any way is by means of my Amendment No. 44, which would effectively provide that a man seeking a professional qualification would not be held responsible for the actions, done without his knowledge, of his employees.
I believe that if the Amendment is not carried at this stage there is no possible way in which it could be introduced later in another place. In view of the opposition of honourable Members of all Parties in another place to subsection (2) of Clause 12, I believe also that it is possible that they might agree to this Amendment and that a quarter of a loaf is better than none.
The other problem is what the Committee decides to do about the Amendment which is to be moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, to delete altogether Clause 32. Perhaps the sensible course would be for me to wait to hear what the noble and learned Lord and the noble Lord on the Government Front Bench have to say. In any case, I formally beg to move.
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: I am not quite clear about the precise direction in which we are proceeding. As I understand the noble Lord, he wishes to hear what the noble and learned Lord is going to say on Clause 32. With great respect to the noble Lord, I do not think that his Amendment makes an enormous amount of sense without Clause 12(2). Indeed, the noble Lord said as much himself. It might be better to move off this Amendment and come to the substance of the

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matter which will be debated when the noble and learned Lord rises in his place. However, as drafted at the moment, this Amendment does not, with respect to the noble Lord, make a very great deal of sense without subsection (2) of Clause 12, and I am sure that it does not do what the noble Lord wants it to do.
Lord MONSON: I quite see that it means that the Bill is something of a nonsense. However, is it not correct to say that theoretically it would be possible for the other place not to reinstate subsection (2) of Clause 12, but to leave in my Amendment?
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: With great respect to the noble Lord, I do not think that I would want to answer procedural questions of this kind. All I am saying—I know that the noble Lord takes these matters seriously and I am sure that he will share this view—is that it would be rather curious to have a debate on an Amendment which does not make sense. I do not think that it would carry the support of the majority of the Committee. Indeed, I am sure that the noble Lord would hesitate before causing us to have a debate on an Amendment which, without subsection (2) of Clause 12, does not make sense.
Lord MONSON: That answers my question. In that case, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 32 shall stand part of the Bill?
10.58 p.m.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: This Amendment, to leave out Clause 32, is a probing Amendment. The reason I probe is to try to make out what this clause does, for I am not quite clear what it does. If some of my apprehensions are not allayed, I intend to put down at Report stage a more precise Amendment than the one which now stands in my name, aimed at some of the evils which I apprehend. In the meantime, and taking advantage of the presence of the noble and learned Lord, besides that of the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, I venture to say this. We
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have a very elaborate system of legal rules providing for the circumstances in which at civil law a master is liable for the acts of his servant and we have a similar series of rules at civil law stating when the principal is liable for the acts of his agent.
The first question I want to raise is: why have this clause at all when those very sophisticated rules already exist? Are they intended to state the existing law, or are they intended to alter it? If they are intended to state the existing law, why do we need it?—because as the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, said to me a moment or two ago, if it states the existing law it will only cast doubt upon all the other principal and servant cases outside this Bill; and if it is intended to alter it, exactly how is it intended to alter it?
That gives rise to the second series of questions that I want to ask the noble Lord. In each case it is the liability of the principal or the employer, as the case may be, which may be, as the noble Lord will see from subsection (1), that he is responsible in a state of complete innocence as to what the employee is doing because it makes him liable,
"whether or not it was done with the employer's knowledge or approval".
It is stated to be in both the subsections, "for the purposes of this Act". The Bill in the main deals with civil liability; in the main it provides that somebody shall be liable in damages if he commits an act of discrimination, and I can quite see that it is not unreasonable, if that is what is intended, to make the employer responsible for the acts of his servant done within the course of his employment, whether or not he is himself aware of what the servant is doing—provided, of course, he is not on a frolic of his own. The same, broadly speaking, might well be thought to be true in relation to principal and agent. Certainly it would not be a very startling change in the law if that was what is intended.
But of course the Bill is not limited to civil liability. Take, for instance, Clause 70, which, as it stands at the moment, although I have tabled Amendments to it, is solely dealing with the criminal law and is part of the Bill although it also takes the form of an Amendment to the Public Order Act 1936.

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Or take, for instance (although it is much less important), subsection (4) of Clause 33, which creates a summary offence rendering the person guilty under that section liable to a fine of £400. That also is the criminal law.
I want to raise the question as to whether it really is the intention of the Government to make the principal or the employer, as the case may be, liable in criminal law where the criminal law is altered or stated in the Bill, as well as at civil law. If they do intend to do that, they are intending to do the unjust, and I would propose an Amendment on Report which would be aimed at eliminating that possibility. My doubts and anxieties about this are slightly increased rather than diminished by subsection (3) of the clause, to which I address my next question—that is, Clause 32(3)—because this provides a statutory defence, the burden of proof of which is placed upon the employer or the principal, as the case may be, to show, before he can avail himself of it, that he took such steps as were reasonably practicable to prevent the employee from doing that act.
This type of defence is lifted mainly from the criminal law. I say this with feeling, because it is lifted from a section under which I was myself once prosecuted when one of my cows unfortunately put her foot into the bucket when she was being milked and my employee, without my knowledge, instead of emptying the resulting mixture down the drain, put it into a bottle, and it appeared by a singular mischance on the breakfast table of the chairman of the health committee of the local authority, to my infinite embarrassment and chagrin because the episode was widely reported at the time. I rather chivalrously did not avail myself of the statutory defence available to me because I would have lost my employee if I had, so I stoically paid the fine duly imposed on me by the Hastings magistrates.
But this subsection (3), as I know to my cost, mainly applies to criminal law. I doubt whether it has any reasonable application in civil law, because why should it be a defence to a principal or an employer whose employee or agent commits a civil wrong that he had taken reasonable steps to prevent him committing a civil wrong? And if in fact he was totally ignorant of what he was
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likely to do, which is the possibility contemplated in the last words of subsection (1), obviously he could not be expected to take any steps at all.
My question is really related to the drafting of this clause at the moment. What are the intentions of the Government? How do they conceive this clause alters the law in civil liability? Is it really their intention, as appears to be the effect of the draftsmanship, that it applies to criminal offences no less than to civil offences? What is the precise advantage of having subsection (3) at all? Having said that, I await the reply of the Government not with impatience, but with interest.
11.8 p.m.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: The intention of the clause is to confine liability to civil liability, and I entirely agree that if by a side wind criminal liability was sought to be imposed upon the employer in the circumstances we are dealing with in Clause 32, that would be wholly unacceptable. That is not intended. If that intendment is not apparent and clear from the language and context of Clause 32, I am willing to have a look at it again.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, will see that in Clause 32(1) the language of the subsection is that,
"Anything done by a person in the course of his employment"—
are the critical words—
"shall be treated for the purposes of this Act as done by his employer as well as by him, …".
That is a wider concept than the vicarious liability of the employer for the employee in the course of the employment, so that the clause places a wider area of responsibility upon the employer; but as, so to speak, an offset to some extent, a mitigation, of the wider concept of responsibility in liability there is the provision in subsection (3) for those particular circumstances.
In the case of responsibility for the vicarious liability of the servant, as the noble and learned Lord knows, it is no answer to say he did his best to prevent the employee from doing that act; so the words used in subsection (3) are, as I say, intended to mitigate the generality

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of the extension of responsibility placed in subsection (1) of the clause. I think that is really the explanation of what is meant, and what is intended. I hope that that will satisfy the noble and learned Lord.
Lord AVEBURY: May I ask the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor this question? As he knows, these days employers receive a flood of requirements under various Statutes with which they have to comply or suffer penalties. Is it not asking rather a lot of the many tens and hundreds of thousands of employers that each one should immediately be aware of the meaning of the words "reasonably practical" and know what they imply, when perhaps many of your Lordships may be in doubt as to the steps that might have to be taken to ensure that this defence was a valid one?
I was talking to my noble friend on the Bench here and I asked her whether she thought it would be enough for the employer to draw the attention of his staff to the Act, perhaps by giving them a copy of it, and giving them a written instruction to comply with its provisions. My noble friend said that certainly would not be enough in the case of the Health and Safety at Work Act, that the responsibility of the employer would be to provide all kinds of training which would enable the provisions of that Act to be carried out. If it is not spelled out in any detail, the employer will have to be a better lawyer than many of us in this House to know what is required of him to give instructions to his employees to render himself immune from prosecution for the acts of his eeployees which he knew nothing at all about.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: The phrase, "reasonably practicable" is well known to the law. I do not think it would be possible within the Bill to define it and give examples. The intention of the clause is to encourage employers to ensure that their employees know about this legislation and carry it out. A mere publishing of a copy of the relevant section of the Act in some part of a factory might be deemed to be wholly inadequate where there was evidence of actions by employees in defiance of the provisions of the Act. I think
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one has to be reasonably practicable as to how much one can put in an Act by way of illustration. This is a frequent phrase used in legislation like workmen's compensation legislation, Factory Act legilation, and I should have thought the courts are familiar with dealing with this kind of problem. I am not unduly worried that those words are not illustrated by example, because I think illustration by example is really unnecessary.
11.12 p.m.
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: I hesitate to intervene in the discussion because I know that my noble friends on the Front Bench would rather these Bills be passed than discussed. We have imposed on us a timetable not of our making which I think is tending to show, to coin a phrase, that your Lordships' House is being turned into a kind of Parliamentary factory farm. Things must be pushed through, and we are confronted with the horrible prospect of long sittings to make up for delays which have occurred in another place. Listening to this debate and the debate yesterday, the thought occurs to me how unreal much of our debates are in the context of what people are saying in the pubs and clubs and on the streets and on the football grounds on many of the affairs of the day.
I hope that no proceedings will have to be taken under a number of clauses of the Bill, the present clause under discussion being one of them, because I fear that in this Bill lies the possibility of recruitment to the National Front. I think probably our debates have been weakened by the lack of plain speaking at times on this very difficult and delicate issue. We are all afraid, or many of us are afraid at times, to express our thoughts lest we be accused of adopting an attitude which is contrary to the general trend of enlightened thought. It is a fact that the strength of the National Front has increased as this kind of legislation has been enforced. That has to be borne in mind.
I recall when I was in the United States some years ago hearing that the ruling of the Supreme Court on the question of segregation had put back by ten years the educative process on non-discrimination in the United States because there is

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a pace at which public opinion cannot be pushed. We have to be careful that the niceties of the law, and the refinements that can be introduced in it, can possibly do more harm than good.
I feel that the people who are responsible for drafting this Bill were told to go away and think of everything, and when they had done that they were told to go away again and think of everything they had not thought of before. One finds here the extremity of refinement of provision, anticipation and safeguard. I am very uneasy about a lot of this. This clause, which seeks to place responsibility on persons who have no knowledge of what may be going on but are going to have that responsibility pinned upon them unless they can show, as in subsection (3), that they took such steps as could be reasonably practicable to prevent an employee doing something, means really that employers have to be guided in what defence would be reasonable in the circumstances.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, mentioned a point just now: would it be enough for the employer to give a general direction that there is an Act in existence, and everybody must conform to it, and their behaviour and conduct in the course of their employment must be governed by the provisions of the Act. There are many pitfalls here for quite innocent people who may be fixed with responsibility for something which it is probably not reasonable to place upon them. I hope that we shall have something a little clearer in this clause before it is finally disposed of, otherwise I am quite sure that if prosecutions are undertaken, and proceedings taken under some of these clauses, and more martyrs are created, then the harsh judgment of a great deal of public opinion upon the provisions of the Bill when it becomes an Act will have repercussions in attitudes towards race relations generally.
I fear also that the more we put in Acts of Parliament the less trouble will be taken to accompany the changes in the law by the necessary education, the propaganda. It is really publicity to a point of view rather than the announcement of obscure provisions of an Act of Parliament that is going to achieve the purpose that we all desire. There is a big psychological question here and one can make errors of judgment in achieving a common aim;
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there is more than a suggestion that we may be along that path at the present moment.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: I do not know whether my noble friend will be comforted by the thought that a provision similar to this appears in the 1968 Act and that there is no evidence to show that it has given rise to any difficulties. That may comfort him.
Lord AVEBURY: I apologise for troubling the Committee again. I do so to ask the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to reflect again on the words "such steps as are reasonably practicable" and their interpretation by employers. The term may appear in a variety of Statutes and it may be familiar to lawyers but, as I mentioned earlier, it has to be interpreted by many hundreds and thousands of employers, large and small, not all of whom may be as well qualified to interpret it as are the members of the noble and learned Lord's profession.
Perhaps he will consider the suggestion, made by my noble friend Lady Seear on Second Reading, that codes of conduct might be developed in consultation between trade unions and employers and then be approved by the Commission, perhaps separately from one industry to another. For example, where there are employment agencies, there would be codes of conduct dealing with particular aspects of interviewing. Once such codes of conduct were promulgated in a similar way to the codes of conduct that have to be approved under the health and safety at work legislation, everybody would know precisely where they stood, and conforming to the code of conduct agreed between representatives of employers and employees would be an essential and important ingredient of the defence under subsection (3).
The LORD CHANCELLOR: As I have said, this provision has been in the law for eight years and does not seem to have given rise to difficulty. But of course we will ponder again on that suggestion. I am not sure that we want to elaborate too much codes and matters of that kind. I should have thought that the simplicity of the language here meets the needs of the situation. Nevertheless,

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I am certainly willing to look at the matter, without, I am afraid, being able to give any commitment.
Viscount SIMON: Will it not be necessary, in any case, to do some redrafting of the clause to remove the implication, which is otherwise there, that this also applies to criminal acts?
The LORD CHANCELLOR: In the context, it seems to me to be apparent that it does not do so, but, as I said to the noble and learned Lord, I am willing to have a look at it because it is too serious a matter to leave uncertain.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his answers to my questions and I have only a few comments to make. First, I particularly welcomed his reiteration, in his answer to my noble friend Lord Simon, of the promise he gave to me because I am anxious about the drafting in this respect and the matter should be put beyond peradventure. I hope that he will give me the answer which he promised in time for me to reflect upon it before Report so that, should I feel inclined, I could if necessary try to devise an Amendment, though I should prefer it to be a Government Amendment in view of the resources at their disposal.
Secondly, I should be grateful if the noble and learned Lord would examine a possible inconsistency between the last words of subsection (1) and the special defence in subsection (3). It seems almost impossible to believe that there could be any circumstances in which an employer could avail himself of sub-section (3) with the burden of proof on him if he did not in fact know what his employee was doing. Subsection (1) makes him liable even if he did not know. I should therefore be grateful if the noble and learned Lord would pay actual and specific attention to that point too.
I am glad to know of his enthusiasm for these particular words, although I do not know that I can share it. I would remind the noble and learned Lord that while I was Lord Chancellor a case came to the House of Lords, in which I had the
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pleasure of sitting judicially, in which a caterpillar appeared in a tin of Smedley's peas and Smedley made use of these particular words. The matter arose, in its dignified fashion, from the Dorset magistrates to the Divisional Court, presided over by the Lord Chief Justice of England, and from the Divisional Court to the House of Lords; and if the noble and learned Lord will look at the various Opinions stated by myself and my noble and learned friends on that occasion he will see that a great deal of learning was spent on the exact meaning of words which were either identical to or, so far as I remember, not easily distinguishable from these about this poor immolated insect.
In the end, Smedley's were convicted. They themselves could not have done anything that I could see to avoid the presence of the caterpillar, which had thoughtfully rolled itself up into the exact dimensions and was already the exact colour of the rest of the contents of the tin. Indeed, so much did the case appeal to the compassion of the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, that he issued a great indictment against the authorities for prosecuting at all. Nevertheless, Smedleys were convicted and they had to pay, and they had to pay for the appeal. So I do think that the noble and learned Lord is taking a—I will not say complacent—but rather too rosy view of the situation. In the meantime, I shall not proceed with this matter.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: May I draw the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, to the provisions of Clause 47. The clause provides for the issuance by the Commission of codes of practice containing such practical guidance as the Commission thinks fit for the purpose—and I mention only the first as relevant to what we have been discussing—of the elimination of discrimination in the field of employment. It may well be that, within the ambit of what is contemplated there, the kind of suggestion the noble Lord was making earlier may be conveniently fitted in. I cannot promise, but that looks a promising line of advance.
Clause 32 agreed to.
Clause 33 [Aiding unlawful acts]:
On Question, Whether Clause 33 shall stand part of the Bill?
11.27 p.m.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: I do not think we need spend much time on this. I put down the Motion in order to ensure a very short debate on the clause and not for the purpose of removing it from the Bill. I wonder whether one can ask the noble and learned Lord for a short exposition of what it does to the existing state of the law. How is it better with this clause than without it? I must say that I was very much struck and wholly in agreement with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, a moment ago. I believe that his apprehensions are very well founded and I felt that his speech was not only wise but also a little courageous in the circumstances. None of us likes to be tarred with the brush of racialism and it is very easily flung about nowadays. I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack would give a short exposition of why the clause is necessary at all and how the law would be different if it were not in the Bill, with the exception of subsection (4), which is of course only made necessary by the rest of the clause.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: Again, this provision is in the 1968 Act and it is thought to be an essential part of the Bill. Subsection (1) ensures that a person who knowingly aids another to do an act of unlawful discrimination is treated as doing that act himself. That provision would apply, for example, if an employer with redundant employees made available lists of those employees to another employer and, at the request of the second employer, excluded the names of workers from a particular racial group because the second employer discriminated against coloured workers. If the first employer knew that the second employer wished to use the list for an unlawful discriminatory purpose, he would knowingly be aiding and abetting the latter's unlawful act. It is our view that the aider should be caught by the Bill, as he was under the 1968 Act.
The clause is also important in relation to Clause 32 which we have just discussed and which makes the employer liable for the unlawful acts of his employee in the course of his employment but, if Clause 33(2) were not in the Bill, the employer would stand alone in taking
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responsibility for the employee's unlawful act. Subsection (2) makes it clear that in a case like that, the employee is treated as aiding his employer, so that they are both responsible for the unlawful act. That would cover, were the facts so justified, for instance action by a shop steward, but I do not want to go into the details of that controversy. But this has value in completing the scheme of this part of the Bill.
Lord FOOT: I should like to ask the noble and learned Lord a question, particularly about subsection (1). This follows on what the noble and learned Lord on the Opposition Benches was saying just now. Would he tell me whether the word "aids", in the phrase:
"A person who knowingly aids another person"
is wider or narrower than the well-known words, "aiding, abetting, counselling and procuring"? Does the noble and learned Lord take the view that the word "aids" diminishes those other words, or does he take the view that it is wider than those words which are so well-known to us all?
The LORD CHANCELLOR: All I say is that I think that it is wide enough for the purposes of the clause. Abetting is a form of aiding, and I have often thought that those other words were merely a colourful addition to the first word, "aid". I think that "aid" in general covers all the contingencies of aiding and abetting.
Lord FOOT: Does the noble and learned Lord agree that the word "aids" does not in its ordinary meaning include the "counsel"? Does not the word "aids" suggest that the person who is aiding is doing some act, or is doing something more than advising or counselling or procuring that the act should be done?
The LORD CHANCELLOR: I am not sure whether "counselling" and "procuring" would not qualify in the clause as aiding. I should have thought that they could well do so. But I do not know that I can throw any further light on this point at this late hour, standing up where I am.
Viscount BARRINGTON: May I ask the noble and learned Lord whether the

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question of "aiding" and "counselling" are the same depends upon the counsel? Some counsels may aid, some counsels may not.
11.33 p.m.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: That is a very good point. I must say also that in fifty years at the law I have never yet discovered what the verb "abet" means, and I have never yet found anyone else who did. However, I am not altogether reassured by the noble and learned Lord. He seems to be very happy about the 1968 Act, but this is something which I view with very great reserve. He says that it has been on the Statute Book for eight years and there has been no trouble about it, but the fact is that it has scarcely ever been used, it has scarcely ever been tested in court. No doubt Mr. Mark Bonham Carter is very active behind the scenes, aiding and abetting the various persons who might otherwise come within this question. But despite the propaganda which some people sometimes urge against him, he has in fact been extremely cautious about taking proceedings under the Act, and I put that wholly to his credit.
But I must tell the noble and learned Lord this. I do not believe that it would make a ha'porth of difference if this clause were omitted altogether. I do not agree with him that subsection (2) is necessary, because I think that exactly the same law would be applied if it were not there. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, said a few moments ago. In 1975 there were three volumes of Statutes—or rather there will be three volumes, because they have not got round to printing them yet—of 1,000 pages each, with 10 volumes of subsidiary legislation of 1,000 pages each, making 13,000 pages of legislation for the year 1975 alone.
Then one gets this kind of business, that some clever young man in the draftsman's office in 1968 thinks that it is a good thing to put in a Statute something that is never tested for years and years, and so every other Statute has got it, and the Sex Discrimination Act has got it. Then, when we get it again in 1976 we are told: "It is in the Consumer Credit Act;
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it is in the Sex Discrimination Act; it is in the Race Relations Act; it is in the health regulations, and nobody has ever found any trouble about it"; and so the great snowball of statutory legislation gradually accumulates. I am the little boy who says that the Emperor has no clothes, in spite of the beautiful appearance of the Lord Chancellor. It would be exactly the same if they were not there.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: While I am not wearing my predecessor's clothes, he certainly distinguished himself in similar garments. But I should like to say one thing. The implication seems to be that you ought to judge the value of legislation of this kind, which is to establish standards of decent, civilised behaviour in our community, and to set the standards, by the number of cases that are brought under it. That is a wholly false test of the value of legislation of this kind. It is intended to instil, so far as guidance in legislation can do so, in the generality of the public, that racial discrimination is offensive and insulting; and, in order to make a reality of that, the law has got to establish enforceability and provide sanctions for refusal to live up to the standards which the law imposes. So I am not at all impressed by the argument that because there have not been a number of cases the 1968 Act has been ineffective.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: But unfortunately the noble and learned Lord has not understood the argument. Of course nobody says that the mere number of cases proves that the Act is either good or bad, but it does so happen—and the noble and learned Lord would be the first to recognise it if he were not here polemically arguing across the Table with me—that it is the only way, if the Lord Chancellor will not tell us, that we can find out the meaning of Statutes. The matter arose because the noble and learned Lord was asked about the meaning of this clause, and his defence was: "Well, it has been on the Statute Book a long time, and there has been no trouble about it".
All I can say is that, if the noble and learned Lord will not tell us about it and only tells us that it has been in the Sex Discrimination Act, the Race Relations Act and the health regulations, and

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cannot say what it means, the only way you can find out what the Statute means is to have litigation about it. Nobody wants litigation about it; but the fact of the matter is that I simply do not believe that all this elaboration of the modern Parliamentary statutory machine, which is devised to prevent the most elaborate and unlikely forms of evasion, really improves the administration, knowledge or understanding of the law. It is getting to the stage at which the Bible was getting when it was written entirely in Latin. No lawyer knows what it is and no lawyer knows what it means, and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, with a solemn face, tells us at nearly midnight that all the people in this country will be vastly inspired to understand the odious character of race discrimination when they have read, as they will avidly do in the Daily Mirror tomorrow, the provisions of Clause 33, the exact purpose of which he is unable to tell us.
The LORD CHANCELLOR: It is too late at night for me to quarrel with the noble and learned Lord, but I made it perfectly clear that if Clause 33 did not exist, then the offending employee who gets the employer into trouble would get away scot free, which seems to us to be a wholly unsatisfactory arrangement. If that would make the noble and learned Lord happy, we will consider getting rid of Clause 33.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: I believe he would be just as liable as he is under subsection (2) if the common law was applied instead of any part of Clause 33 of this Act. I remain of that opinion; and although I would not go so far as Judge Kerr did once to me when I was arguing in front of him, when he said, "Young man, do not cite the Sale of Goods Act to me; the common law was good enough when I was at the Bar", I would at least suggest this to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. I would not accuse him of trying to bluff his way out of this difficulty. He is not that sort of man. But I do not believe that subsection (2) adds tuppence to the common law position.
Lord JACQUES: May I put the layman's point of view? The noble and learned Lord
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seems to be taking the line that it is not necessary to repeat this clause in this Bill and in previous Bills because it is the law anyway. That is roughly his attitude. I want to say that I have spent a lifetime, not in the law but in management; and if I wanted to look up something on race relations to know my position as a manager, I would hope that the Act would tell me if there was a liability for aiding and abetting. It would not expect me to be a lawyer and to know it. I think it is helpful to the lay public that the law should be spelled out in the Statutes and not left to the lawyers.
Lord WIGODER: May I mention one matter to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor? I have no doubt he would agree that it is highly undesirable that there should be in a Statute words which are sufficiently vague to give any opportunity for the raising of wholly unmeritorious defences. I mention that because I am a little perturbed at the point that has been made about the use of the word "aid". I have at the back of my mind cases which have indicated that a person aids and abets if he is present at the time the offence is committed. He counsels and procures if he is not present at the time the offence is committed. If it is desired, as it might properly be, to catch the counsellor and procurer as well as the aider, might it not be better to go back to the time-honoured form of wording in this subsection if it is going to remain in the Bill?
The LORD CHANCELLOR: I hesitate to fall further into the trap of over-elaboration and over-extension; but I will look at the point.
Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONE: Noble and learned Lords on the Front Bench are geniuses at obstructing their own business. I suggest that we are ready to reach a conclusion on this clause.
Clause 33 agreed to.
Clause 34 [Charities]:
11.43 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL Lord WELLS-PESTELL moved Amendment No. 45:
Page 22, line 6, leave out subsections (4) and (5) and insert—

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("(4) In this section 'charitable instrument' means an enactment or other instrument passed or made for charitable purposes, or an enactment or other instrument so far as it relates to charitable purposes, and in Scotland includes the governing instrument of an endowment or of an educational endowment as those expressions are defined in section 135(1) of the Education (Scotland) Act 1962.
In the application of this section to England and Wales, 'charitable purposes' means purposes which are exclusively charitable according to the law of England and Wales.")
The noble Lord said: On behalf of my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich, I beg to move Amendment No. 45. This is a technical Amendment designed to ensure that the Bill affects charities in Scotland to the same extent as it affects charities in England.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 34, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord SANDFORD: Before we leave this clause, I wonder whether the noble Lord could explain, to me at any rate, how the repeal of the 1968 Act and Section 9 with it, which is achieved by Schedule 5 to this Bill, plus the introduction of Clause 34 here, gives effect to the intentions expressed in the original White Paper in paragraph 79; and in particular where is the broad exemption or exception—both words are used in that paragraph—similar to that in the 1968 Act, Section 9, now to be found in the Bill we have before us?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I shall have to look at this. I cannot give the noble Lord a good answer at this stage. I will write to him.
Lord SANDFORD: I am not sure that that is very satisfactory. All I am asking is how Clause 34 works. That is not unreasonable in a Committee stage, is it?
The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES: The Question is, That Clause 34, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord SANDFORD: Have we reached the stage where one can ask a basic question about a clause and not get an answer? It really is not very good.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: The English and Scottish legal definitions of "charitable
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purposes" differ. Therefore, where it is desired to achieve uniform application of legislative provisions affecting charities, it is necessary to define "charitable purposes" as being the same thing in both countries for the purpose of the legislation in question. For all practical purposes, this means adopting the English definition for Scotland. It is reasonable to do this in the case of charitable purposes because the English definition covers a much wider area of the United Kingdom in terms of population than does the Scottish one, because inasmuch as there is a Scottish definition of "charitable purposes," it is more restrictive than the English definition. However, there are presentation difficulties in that the definition reads as a simple application of English law to Scotland. The definition of charitable purposes currently used in the Bill seeks to meet those presentation difficulties, but is defective in that it does not achieve the uniformity desired and would create in Scotland the anomalies as I tried to describe earlier on. The definition substituted by the Amendment avoids these anomalies and achieves uniformity of application to Scottish and English charities.
Although that uniformity results in the application of English law to Scottish cases, the new definition avoids offending Scottish susceptibilities by attracting a definition already used in the Scottish—
Lord SANDFORD: We must not take up too much time in Committee. If the noble Lord will read paragraph 79 of the White Paper, he will see that nothing he is saying now has any bearing on it at all. Let us leave it for now. Perhaps the noble Lord will write to me between now and the next stage.
Clause 34, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 35 [Special needs of racial groups in regard to education, training and welfare]:
11.48 p.m.
Lord O'HAGAN Lord O'HAGAN moved Amendment No. 46:
Page 22, line 24, at end insert—
("Provided that it can be shown that the group in question will remain at a disadvantage if no special provision is made.").
The noble Lord said: Part VI of the Bill deals with general exceptions from Parts II and IV, and Clause 35 makes lawful some kinds of discrimination. Under it it will be possible to make special provisions for a particular racial group in certain defined circumstances where they have special needs of educational or welfare nature. But for the time of night, it would be very valuable to have a debate about the urban aid programme and the operation of Section 11 of the Local Government Act 1966, and so on. I wish to ask one question: Are the Government satisfied that the clause as it stands without my amendment restricts sufficiently narrowly the special provision that can be made under this clause? Would not the aim of the clause be more clear if the words I now add were included in the Bill? I beg to move.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: The Government are not of that opinion. The noble Lord is expressing a fear that Clause 35 is too widely drawn. He would prefer to see it drawn rather tighter. The Bill is based on the principle of non-discrimination. But as the White Paper pointed out, in paragraph 57, this principle must not be applied with blind inflexibility. Where there is good reason for permitting an exception to the formal principle of legal equality the Bill should provide for it.
Clause 35 is such an example. The racial minorities experience special needs which are not shared by the rest of the population. The most obvious example is the need for special language training, but needs arise equally in the welfare field. The Government believe that it is right that special measures to meet such needs should be permitted by the Bill even if this involves an exception to the general principle of non-discrimination. It is clearly important to ensure that, if Clause 35 is to be of any real value, it goes sufficiently wide to allow all the needs peculiar to particular racial groups to be catered for adequately. On the other hand, it is equally important to ensure that the clause is not so wide as to allow its provision to be abused. We believe that as it stands the clause strikes about the right balance the two between requirements.
The clause is not a general exception applying across the face of the Bill. In
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it we have been careful to identify those fields in which special needs are most likely to be found—education, training and welfare—and the exception can only be claimed for a need arising in one of these areas. However, within the broad limits, the exception covers all the acts associated with the provision of the facilities or services designed to meet the needs of members of a particular racial group. Thus, it covers the arrangements an employer makes to enable his employees to attend language classes, as well as the actual training itself. Any tightening of the clause which would exclude such acts would severely limit the practical application of the exception and is therefore undesirable.
Given the need to ensure that the exception can be made use of in all cases where it is required, and given the safeguards that have already been written into the clause, we believe that it would be unwise to restrict its availability further. The Amendment, if it were made, would limit it to those special needs which can be shown to place the racial group in question at a disadvantage. Is such a restriction necessary? Surely a "special need" experienced by members of a particular racial group—that is to say one that is not shared by the rest of the population—cannot do other than place them at a disadvantage. In these circumstances, I wonder whether a "special need" that did not constitute disadvantage could be described as a need at all. And if it could, would it be right to prevent special measures being taken to meet it? In the absence of any compelling reasons why this Amendment should be made, I would hope that the noble Lord would be able to withdraw it.
Lord SANDFORD: I wonder whether I might give the noble Lord an example of a special need which is not covered by the Bill as drafted and which would be covered by my noble friend's Amendment? Take the case of the substantial Italian population now residing in Bedford and in Peterborough. Until they have been educated in the use of English, in relation to the rest of the population, they will remain at a disadvantage when it comes to employment and other things. But that group of people, and particularly their children, have a further special need: namely, to be educated in their mother

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tongue and mother culture—a matter which w e had in a EEC Directive only a few weeks ago. But a failure to meet that special need does not put them at any disadvantage with the rest of the English population.
Lord MONSON: I should like to support the very reasonable Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan. The noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, told us a moment ago what the people in pubs and clubs are saying—the man in the street, in other words—and the kind of thing they are saying, in a nutshell, in connection with legislation of this nature, is that the immigrant population is being favoured at the expense of the indigenous population. They do not put it in that way, but that is what they mean. Surely acceptance of the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, would demonstrate to the public that their assumptions are mistaken.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: I am advised that if the Italians have a special need in English, or Italian for that matter, they are covered by Clause 35.
Lord O'HAGAN: I do not put down Amendments to waste time, and I do not put down Amendments because I disapprove of the principle of the Bill. I have been interested in this subject for some years, and I put down this Amendment for much the kind of reason that the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, mentioned earlier. It is essential to underline that the Bill does not create a whole range of privileges for black people; otherwise, it becomes counter-productive. There are inner areas in cities in which people, both black and white, are disadvantaged by reason of their living in decayed urban centres. There are some associated disadvantages which black people suffer in addition to other social disadvantage, because they are black as well. If there are special disadvantages that they suffer because they are black, it may be necessary to make special provision for them. That is the objective of this clause. That is the objective which I wholly share. But it is necessary to reassure people that it does not open the door to a whole cornucopia of special benefits.
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I am not going to press this Amendment to a Division tonight, because I think we should be more constructive than merely scoring points. But I put it to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, whom I like very much, that it is not good enough to read out a long brief, most of which has nothing to do with the very narrow drafting point that can be important to the general public's view. It is not good enough, and I hope that when I put down the Amendment at the next stage we will get a more satisfactory answer. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 35 agreed to.
Clause 36 [Provision of education or training for persons not ordinarily resident in Great Britain]:
11.58 p.m.
Lord JACQUES Lord JACQUES moved Amendment No. 47:
Page 22, line 26, leave out from ("done") to ("access") in line 28 and insert ("by a person for the benefit of persons not ordinarily resident in Great Britain in affording them")
The noble Lord said: when I spoke to Amendments to Clause 6 I also spoke to these Amendments, which correspond to them. Therefore, I formally move them.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Lord JACQUES Lord JACQUES moved Amendment No. 48:
Page 22, line 29, at end insert (", where it appears to him that the persons in question do not intend to remain in Great Britain after their period of education or training there.")
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 36, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 37 to 40 agreed to.
Lord STRABOLGI: It is now just on midnight, and I suggest that this may be a good moment to halt the Committee. I beg to move that this House do now resume.
Moved accordingly and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

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