Sitting of 5 May 1978

Preamble
The House met at Eleven o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c.
Ordered,
That the draft Social Security (Contributions) Amendment (No. 2) Regulations 1978 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.—[Mr. Foot.]

ORDERS OF THE DAY
  ESTATE AGENTS BILL
  As amended (in the Standing Committee) considered.
  ESTATE AGENTS BILL
    Clause 1

      ESTATE AGENCY WORK
      11.6 a.m.
      Mr. Nicholas Ridley: I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 12, leave out from "property" to end of line 19.
      Mr. Speaker: With this we may take the following amendments: No. 2, in page 2, leave out lines 1 to 4.
      No. 4, in line 14, leave out subsection (3).
      No. 5, in page 2, leave out lines 16 and 17.
      No. 6, in page 2, leave out lines 25 to 29.
      Mr. Ridley: The Bill has all the defects of a thoroughly fussy and offensive measure. I do not believe that it is right that we should lay legislation of this sort upon the citizens of Britain. It is to seek to ameliorate the Bill's effect that I table these and other amendments. If we are not careful, it will be impossible to do any business of the sort to which the Bill refers.
      I much object to the structure of the Bill. The first few clauses define a group
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      of persons and there are the ominous words "things done". Those words occur in many places in Clause 1. It is not clear what the offence is until we get towards the end of the Bill. First, we isolate. the victims, secondly, we refer darkly to all the things that they may have done or will do, and thirdly, we come to some glimmering of what these dreadful things are towards the end of the Bill. It seems that we have to tackle the Bill the wrong way round. We should first consider what the evil is and then, perhaps, consider who those are who may be committing evil rather than taking the opposite approach that is adopted by the Bill. It inhibits our debates that we have to deal with these matters in the way presented by the Bill.
      In coming to Amendment No. 1 we have to consider what class of person it is who may be guilty of these heinous crimes. We are defining them without having considered the crimes. I notice in Clause 1(1)(c) that there is included in the definition of estate agents a person who effects
      "the introduction to that person of a third person who wishes to acquire or, as the case may be, dispose of an interest in residential property".
      That statement could mean anything. If I give a couple of friends a drink one evening and in the course of casual conversation one says "I wish to dispose of my house" and the other says "I wish to acquire a house. May I go to see it?" I have effected an introduction between those two persons, albeit unwittingly and albeit without profit or reward. It seems that that is not the right way to define estate agents. Nowhere is there the qualification that the person who effects these introductions does so for reward or profit. He is merely put in the position of being the innocent victim of the Bill by a chance introduction or meeting.
      Within families this sort of thing happens a great deal. It may be that father reaches retirement age and decides to give up his house because his children have grown up and left home. He says to one of his sons "Why don't I move into the bungalow in the garden and you, with the large family, might like to take over my house?" Transactions take place between the father and the son at arm's length. But still someone has introduced

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      those persons to each other and somewhere involved in the family will be someone classified as an estate agent for the purposes of this Bill. That seems to be quite wrong.
      We have this strange expression at the end of subsection (1)(c):
      "and also to things done by him after affecting such an introduction for the purpose of securing the disposal or, as th case may be, the acquisition of that interest".
      I ask the sponsor what that phrase means. It is so widely drawn that it could mean almost anything. Which things are done after the effecting of an introduction which necessarily bring someone within the scope of the Bill? Such loose drafting is quite wrong. In any case, all these words are superfluous because we can perfectly easily define a person in business as an estate agent without including people who make introductions. If we are to include such people, we ought to specify introductions made for profit, as a trade, and not chance introductions. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. Gould) would be wise to accept this amendment without hesitation. He owes the House an explanation as to how these words ever got into the Bill.
      Amendment No. 4 seeks to leave out subsection (3) of Clause 1. Here we have an exemption from the definition of estate agency work for any public or quasi-public authority involved in housing. These are such things as local authorities, the Housing Corporation, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive or any registered housing association. I want to register a strong objection that there should be a separate law for the private sector and that it should be treated as if its motives were always bad, as if it could not be trusted to do anything at all but must be supervised by detailed and fussy legislation of this sort. The suggestion is that anyone who can put up a bureaucratic coat of arms over his door is automatically totally well behaved and runs no chance of committing any of the offences set out in the Bill.
      This concept is creeping into our housing legislation in many ways. It is an extraordinary thing that the housing associations are not subject to the Rent Acts. It will be a great comfort to an evicted tenant to know that he has been evicted because his landlord was a public landlord. Presumably when such a land-
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      lord evicts a person or puts up the rent, in Rachman-like fashion, he behaves in the national interest. If a private landlord does something like that, he is not so behaving.
      In dealing with local authorities one often comes across instances of them using their powers to put up rents, to evict, and to discipline their tenants in a way which would be impossible for a private landlord under the present law governing rented accommodation. In this Bill we have the astonishing suggestion that local authorities and housing associations should be exempt from its provisions. Whatever is the evil which the Bill seeks to stop I shall look forward at some stage to hearing why it is that such evil cannot be committed by State authorities, who can be excepted from this legislation. I do not know when we shall reach that stage in our proceedings on this Bill. It may not be today but in a week or two. It would be quite wrong for me to seek to explore this point now.
      The principle involved here is utterly wrong. If there are evils against which the Bill seeks to guard, if there are wrongdoings from which it seeks to protect people, they are just as likely to be committed by these State bodies as by any other. It is an indictment of the Bill that for some reason these offences are so difficult to define and so incapable of being coped with by public authorities of this sort that they have to be excepted from the Bill's provisions.
      It seems that the target of the Bill is rather unreal. If it was a real target it would be necessary to include within its scope the State authorities of this sort. It clearly is not a real target because the hon. Gentleman seeks to exempt these authorities. That seems to be a major defect in the Bill and I very much hope that my hon. Friends will help me to remove this subsection. I do not seek in any way to extend the scope of the Bill. I say merely that it is intolerable that there should be one law for the private sector and another for the public sector. If there is an attempt to deal with an evil it should apply to all those who are in this business.
      Amendment No. 6 seeks to leave out Clause 1(4)(a) and deals with the question of solicitors. Here I declare a remote interest, which I think has no bear-

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      ing on what I have to say, in that I am a director of a life assurance company which has done some conveyancing work. It could be represented that there was a conflict of interest between my commercial activities and those of solicitors. I do not believe that that is relevant to the argument I wish to put forward.
      My argument is that solicitors should not be exempted from the provisions of the Bill just because they are solicitors. If they engage in the trade of estate agency, and many solicitors do, they should be included because presumably they are just as liable to pursue the malpractices complained of as anyone else. It is possible that a solicitor will be the main person involved in effecting introductions, in accordance with my first amendment. It seems strange that just because they are solicitors they should be exempted from the operation of the Bill.
      I shall be interested to hear from the hon. Gentleman the reason for this provision. Is it that solicitors have come to him and said that they would not allow the further passage of the Bill if they were included within its provisions? Has he been subjected to lobbying? Has there been some pressure of this sort put upon him? Why is it thought that because solicitors are solicitors they should be exempted? I should have thought that a high proportion of the estate agency business carried out in this country was carried out by solicitors, either acting in their capacity as solicitors or in a secondary capacity, doing business on the side, perfectly legally. There is no reason why solicitors should not be employees of estate agents. A number of estate agents employ solicitors to deal with conveyancing and legal problems which arise in the course of business and this trend will grow. I do not see why we should make this specific exception in favour of solicitors.
      I am trying to tidy up the categories of people to which the legislation is to apply. I would have found it much easier if we had been able to discuss what it was they were doing wrong before deciding that they must not do it. The Bill is drafted in a most peculiar way. I hope that my hon. Friends will support me in these three points that I have picked at random. I note that my hon. Friends the
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      Members for Faversham (Mr. Moate) and Romford (Mr. Neubert) have two further amendments included in this group. They probably have found two equally sound, if not sounder, points. It seems a pity that at this stage in the Bill we need to ask these fundamental questions. I should have thought that the Bill could be drafted in such a form that it would be unnecessary to raise these points at this time.
      I find much to complain of in the Bill, and I look forward to going through every clause with great care. It seems to me to be necessary to do that in a Bill of this sort.
      Mr. Roger Moate: I should like to refer to the other amendments grouped with Amendment No. 1. Two of them have been tabled in my name. But before doing so I should like to follow up some of the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley).
      I agree with my hon. Friend that this is the moment at which, quite appropriately, to consider some of the fundamentals of the Bill. The group of amendments raises some fundamental questions. I am not sure that I go the whole way with my hon. Friend in describing the Bill as a totally fussy and unnecessary piece of legislation. Although it would have been desirable to have the evils specified, and to have had examples before us, so that we could consider how best to deal with them, nevertheless I think that there is a prima facie case for dealing with certain offences about which we have a general understanding.
      There is a general feeling—not backed up by evidence in the debates—that there have been offences committed by people practising estate agency work, particularly in our larger city areas. People have suffered from lost deposits and from what many of us would call fraudulent activity. There is a prima facie case for dealing with that sort of activity, but the Bill goes much further than dealing with those relatively specific offences.
      There was an opportunity in Committee for the promoter of the Bill to remove some of the unnecessary parts of it, but he did not do so. We are faced, therefore, with a rather mixed up Bill which seeks to do a variety of things in a very mixed up sort of way. It is a curate's

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      egg of a Bill: it is good in parts and bad in parts. When we have to take the curate's egg in one go, it provides a rather indigestible and basically undesirable meal. I am very worried, frankly, about the form in which it has come to the House on Report.
      The oddity is that we are dealing with what is called an Estate Agents Bill, but there is no definition of estate agents in the Bill. The Bill does not seek to deal with all estate agency work but only residential work, and it does not seek to cover all persons dealing with estate agency.
      Mr. Speaker: I do not want to interrupt the hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) unnecessarily, but his remarks were beginning to sound very much like a speech on Second Reading. Will he deal with the amendments, of which we have plenty to occupy our time today?
      Mr. Moate: I was just at that moment, Mr. Speaker, about to refer to the strange principle with which we are dealing in this group of amendments—the specific exclusion of a number of people who are dealing with estate agency work. My earlier remarks were intended to preface that point.
      We are faced, as I was saying, with an odd Bill, and the amendments which have been tabled by my hon. Friend and myself, and by other hon. Members, might go some way towards tidying it up.
      At least they give the promoter an opportunity to explain the logic of some of the exclusions.
      My hon. Friend's amendment seeks to delete the unnecessary blanket appendage to the description of the business activities of people transacting estate agency work. The words that he seeks to delete include the words
      "and also to things done by him after effecting such an introduction for the purpose of securing the disposal or, as the case may be, the acquisition of that interest."
      Why do we need those words? At the beginning of the clause we have the statement that
      "This Act has effect with respect to things done by any person—

      (a) in the course of a business…; and

      (b) pursuant to instructions given by or on behalf of any other person."

      All activities pursuant to the original introduction are surely covered already.
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      I am worried when I find these little throw-away lines added to the Bill just in case the draftsmen have omitted something or forgotten to think of it in the first place. It is a safety net for the draftsmen, so that subsequently the Director General of Fair Trading or the Secretary of State can bring in other activities which they had not thought of in the first place. Legislation should be more specific than that. We are entitled to an explanation of the reason that these words were deemed necessary.
      Amendment No. 2 seeks to delete lines 1 to 4 on page 2. This would have the effect of including the activities of insurance brokers if they engage in estate agency work. As the Bill stands, it states that for the purposes of the Act anything done
      "in the course of insurance brokerage by a person who is for the time being registered under section 2, or enrolled under section 4, of the Insurance Brokers (Registration) Act 1977".
      shall not be included.
      Why should that be so? Why should an insurance broker, if he engages in estate agency work, not be included within the terms and conditions of the Bill? We have had no explanation of this during any of the earlier proceedings. When we examine it, it is seen to be rather an odd principle.
      It is even more odd when we recall that in Committee we had a discussion about the relevance of the provision to bankers. There had been some representations that bankers and bank managers felt that it was unfair that their activities in estate agency, to the extent that they engaged in them, should be included in the Bill. They accepted that they sometimes make introductions and assist clients with the buying or selling of properties. It could happen on a fairly casual basis, and there might or might not be remuneration in it, but essentially they were to be included.
      When we examined the matter in Committee, the hon. Member for Enfield, North (Mr. Davies) said that if these people were indeed engaging in the buying and selling of houses, and assisting in such transactions, they should be covered by the Bill, and on that basis he refused to consider any amendments on the point. He said—perhaps with a certain logic—that if a banker engages in estate agency

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      work, he should come within the terms of the Bill.
      Let us apply that logic to insurance brokers. I do not know whether insurance brokers engage in estate agency work. I suspect that it is a fairly modest activity if it exists at all, at the present time but that is not the point. We are laying down statute law and must provide for these possibilities. We must also provide for the possibility that once the rules are tightened up, other people will seek loopholes. If one of those loopholes happens to be insurance broking, clearly that is a matter for consideration. Why, therefore, do we have this exclusion? Probably very little estate agency work is done by insurance brokers, but it could happen.
      Mr. Ridley: My hon. Friend is on a very sound point here. It is perfectly possible for anyone who wishes to get round the provisions of the Bill to make himself into any of the things which are exempt. He can make himself into a solicitor without much trouble. He can certainly make himself into a housing association without any trouble. Both would be ways of getting round the Bill. This shows how defective in its drafting the Bill is at the moment.
      Mr. Moate: I agree with my hon. Friend that it is very defectively drafted. Much of this flows from the confusion of principle of philosophy that is fundamental to the Bill.
      Frankly, I think that my hon. Friend has missed some of the worst developments in legislation in the last year or two. The fussy legislation to which he referred has moved on, and it is now not that easy to set up as an insurance broker. That process has been regulated and restricted under the Insurance Brokers (Registration) Act 1977. I have glanced again at the Act, and there is no reason why estate agency work done by insurance brokers should not be included within the terms of the Estate Agents Bill.
      11.30 a.m.
      Mr. David Hunt: Will my hon. Friend explain why under the Insurance Brokers (Registration) Act, as I understand it, a person cannot call himself an insurance broker unless he comes within the provisions of that Act and complies
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      with the regulations controlling his conduct, and yet, as I understand it, under this Bill a person can still call himself an estate agent but because by definition he is not included automatically in the Bill unless he does estate agency work, the mere fact that he calls his business that of an estate agent will not necessarily bring him within the Bill's provisions?
      Mr. Moate: My hon. Friend has put his finger on a difficulty. The difference, of course, is that the Insurance Brokers (Regisration) Act was quite clear in its intent. It was restrictive, it sought registration, and it was clear in its intention. It was totally wrong, but it was clear. This Bill is not clear in its intention. It is wrong in parts and totally muddled.
      Mr. Tim Sainsbury: When my hon. Friend said that the Act was wrong and that it sought registration, did he mean that he did not think that registration was the right answer? If one considers the architectural profession, architects do not have to be members of the Royal Institute of British Architects but they may not call themselves architects and practise as architects unless they are registered with the United Kingdom Register of Architects. Would it not be better if we had a similar situation with regard to estate agents so that a person could not call himself an estate agent unless he had been registered with a central registry even though he was a member of the Royal Institution, for example?
      Mr. Moate: I must be careful to relate these matters to the exclusion of insurance brokers from the definition of "estate agency". But I think that my hon. Friend's intervention is germane to the question of who we should allow to practice estate agency work. The analogy which I prefer to draw is with accountants. Anyone may call himself an accountant and practise as an accountant, but he may not call himself a chartered accountant. That is the less restrictive approach.
      We could have a licensing provision. By definition, presumably, that would exclude insurance brokers who had not applied for licences and met the necessary conditions. However, the hon. Member for Enfield, North has made it clear time and time again that his Bill it not intended to

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      license estate agents. He describes it as a consumer protection measure, and he has made the point that he is not seeking to control entry into the estate agency profession. However, that is a matter for a later debate.
      If the hon. Member for Enfield, North insists that bankers should be controlled when they engage in property transactions of this kind, why should not insurance brokers be controlled? I can only conclude that he believes that registration under the Insurance Brokers (Registration) Act would provide the necessary protection to the public. But that requires some examination. As I say, I suspect that very few insurance brokers engage in estate agency work. Therefore, any code of conduct drawn up by the British Insurance Brokers Association would not include estate agency work. I suspect that it would not even exclude estate agency work because probably it has never been thought of.
      Further, I suspect that any compensation arrangements and there are provisions for compensation arrangements in the Insurance Brokers (Registration) Act—would not apply to losses incurred to members of the public through estate agency work. So I suspect that there is no compensation provision in the Insurance Brokers (Registration) Act for estate agency activities, and it would be very surprising if there were.
      The hon. Member for Enfield, North may say that there is professional indemnity cover as a compulsory feature of the registration of insurance brokers. But that would not apply to estate agency work, because I do not believe that any insurer on a professional indemnity policy would regard estate agency activities as being within the terms and conditions of normal professional indemnity insurance for insurance brokers. So why are insurance brokers excluded?
      The oddity is that we do not know when insurance brokers are to be registered, so that if by chance this Bill became an Act before registration became effective, there would be a definite gap. That would need some explaining.
      But other people can still carry on in insurance work, though they cannot call themselves brokers. They can be insurance agents or insurance consultants. It is odd that the hon. Member for Enfield,
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      North is saying that registered insurance brokers can be estate agents but that insurance consultants and insurance agents cannot be estate agents. This is a most confused and illogical state of affairs, and at the very least we are owed a considerable explanation from the hon. Member if we are to understand why we have this exclusion.
      I suppose that I should have declared an interest, since I am an insurance broker. However, I do not see my interest being affected one way or the other by the inclusion or exclusion of this clause. We are seeking tidiness in the legislation. It is in a bit of a mess, and the inclusion of this provision makes it even messier.
      That is the case, which needs some answer, with regard to Amendment No. 2.
      I turn now to the other fundamentally important group of amendments relating to this other quite wrongheaded exclusion of the work of local authorities, the Housing Corporation, housing associations and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. Why are we seeking to give this advantage to local authorities if they decide to go into estate agency work? It would be an advantage. It is fair to say that many estate agency bodies have welcomed the broad terms of this Bill. However, I think that they would be rather upset if this measure went on the statute book and, in two or three years, we found that for example the Greater London Council was more Labour controlled than it is today.
      Mr. Sainsbury: That is most unlikely.
      Mr. Moate: I hope that my hon. Friend is right. I think that it was the hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Perry) who suggested in Committee that this provision was intended to meet a situation which might arise in 50 years. However, we have to provide for the possibility. I have not seen the document, but I was told that in its manifesto last year the Greater London Labour Party claimed it intended, if it won control of the GLC, to go into the buying and selling of houses. It appeared as a manifesto commitment. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Sainsbury) will agree that, unlikely though a Labour victory might be in the foreseeable future, we do not want to put legislation on the

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      statute book giving it an opportunity to implement more Socialism in its activities and put private enterprise at an even greater disadvantage. That is what this clause would do as it is worded at present, because local authorities would be at a considerable advantage.
      Even without Clause 21, which seeks to regulate, control and lay down minimum standards, the Bill requires individual estate agents to a spend a great deal of money. They will have to take out bonds. They will have to spend more money on accountancy procedures, and so on. But that provision will not apply to local authorities. So immediately every council, including the GLC, will have the advantage of not having to spend all this money to set up all this machinery.
      Why should not the local authorities be covered? Are they such saints that they do not commit any misdemeanours, or is it simply based on the presumption that if they do anything wrong the ratepayer will pick up the bill? That seems to be the underlying philosophy. Apparently the idea is that the public purse will do for local authorities what individual estate agents have to do from their own resources. That is fundamentally wrong.
      That is the case against the local authorities, and I feel that that is one exclusion which should be deleted from the clause.
      I am equally concerned about the activities of the Housing Corporation and the housing associations. Very often we find housing associations becoming very ambitious. The money which is now going into the Housing Corporation is on a very considerable scale. I understand that about £400 million is going into the acquisition or building of property throughout the United Kingdom. The Housing Corporation is becoming a very powerful organisation.
      Mr. Sainsbury: Is my hon. Friend aware that there is legislation awaiting further consideration by the House which will enable the Housing Corporation to guarantee loans up to a total of £500 million? This gives another indication of the scale of the operations.
      Mr. Moate: That emphasises the growing strength of the Housing Corporation. That might or might not be a matter to
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      be applauded. However, in housing terms the Housing Corporation is gaining a very powerful place in British society. It could be that it might decide to buy and sell property. It might have such a substantial interest in a certain locality that it will buy and sell. Estate agents locally might be rather upset about the fact that the local housing association would be able to do that without any constraints upon it at all. That is another unfair advantage of the public sector over the private sector. How can that be justified? I do not believe that it can be.
      I hope that the promoter of the Bill, the hon. Member for Enfield, North, will accept this point. I am not sure whether it is his Bill or the Minister's Bill because so much of this Friday legislation is Government legislation in a pretty thin disguise. I hope that whoever it is who is responsible for the Bill will accept that these exclusions are unreasonable.
      Before leaving the question of public authorities I should point out that we have also had a number of private Bills—Socialist measures—from local authorities seeking power to deal in estate agency activity. That means that the threat is real. This clause has been drafted to allow public authorities to deal in estate agency work. That is totally unjustified, and I hope that the hon. Member will agree to remove it from the Bill.
      There is one other fundamentally important group that has been excluded from the provisions of the Bill—solicitors. We had some exchanges in Committee about the principle of the inclusion or exclusion of solicitors. We trespass here on the fundamental principles of the legislation. But it will be seen by the outside world that estate agents will be constrained in the way they conduct their business, while solicitors will be able to carry on estate agency work without any constraints.
      No doubt the hon. Member will argue, as he has done before, that practising solicitors are covered by compensation funds and other rules. That is all right as far as it goes. I suggest that this legislation goes much further than that. If, at a later stage, he plans to control entry into the profession, to lay down minimum standards of experience and qualifications, that will not apply to solicitors. Despite this they will be free to carry on estate agency work.

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      Also we must consider the powers of the Director General of Fair Trading which go beyond the question of bonding and insurance, and even beyond accountancy questions. He has the power to prevent what he would describe as "undesirable activities" generally. But would a solicitor, who is excluded from the provisions of the Bill be subject to these powers? All through our discussions on this matter we have been talking about only a few individuals, and therefore we have to dream up examples of rogues and rascals. Thus, we must dream up the example of a rogue solicitor in a particular area who decides to go into the property business in a big way. Can the Director General, under this Bill, bring any action against that man and prevent him from dealing in estate agency, even if that man had got his bond and has a separate clients' account for all deposit moneys received? I submit that the exclusion of solicitors means that that man is free to carry on estate agency work. That is not fair.
      Mr. Ridley: Suppose the rogue solicitor had been convicted of an offence involving fraud, dishonesty, violence or sex or race discrimination in the course of estate agency work, presumably he could carry on as if none of those heinous crimes had been committed?
      Mr. Moate: I suspect that the answer given by the promoter of the Bill would be that the professional requirements placed upon the solicitor by the Law Society would catch up with him. But would these be as effective, and would they bite in the same way as the provisions of this Bill? I do not know. Would the Law Society act as quickly as the Director General, if a solicitor committed a misdemeanour related to sex or race discrimination in the course of estate agency work? The fact remains that he would be excluded from the Bill's provisions in that respect, and I cannot see any justice in that.
      11.45 a.m.
      Indeed, as evidence that the whole of the estate agency world feels that this is wrong, we have had a whole series of representations. I do not necessarily agree with everything that we have heard from all the institutions, but in this respect there can be no denying their general views. We have heard from the Incorpor-
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      ated Society of Valuers and Auctioneers which says:
      "The proposed exemption for solicitors is unjustified and should be deleted on the grounds that the current rules of professional practice of those concerned, as prescribed by the Law Society, do not afford the degree of protection which is available in terms of the draft Bill."
      That is the view of one very influential and important society.
      Then we have the view of the Corporation of Estate Agents which says:
      "it is manifestly unfair to exempt privileged groups from the application of the law. Solicitors and local authorities are, or frequently can be, in competition with estate agents for business. They should be subject to the same controls as estate agents".
      That is another important and influential body which supports our case.
      Then we have the view of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors which says:
      "It is the Institution's recommendation that Clause 1(4)(a) should be deleted."
      The Institution gives its reasons. These are just a few of the views of those bodies that endorse our claim that solicitors should be included in the Bill's provisions. There are others as well.
      I have no wish to apply more rules and regulations to other people who are engaged peripherally in activities that are not fundamental to their normal business. We do not want to put more bureaucratic conditions on the professions—on bankers, solicitors and others. But we must be fair about it. The public are entitled to be assured that estate agency work generally is covered, no matter who transacts it.
      If the promoter of the Bill does not intend to include a definition of estate agents, if he does not intend to license and control estate agents—and I go along with him in that—at least he should satisfy the public that estate agency work is covered generally. If he would stick to that proposition, without all these exclusions, he would have a better Act on the statute book.
      All he need do is create certain offences which, if committed by any individual practising estate agency work, are subject to action in the court. If he will not do that he will find himself with a mix up between licensing and non-licensing, between some sorts of estate agency work and not others. I feel very strongly that

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      all these amendments should be accepted by the hon. Member for Enfield, North. At least we look forward to hearing his explanations.
      Mr. David Hunt: I rise to speak to the amendments which relate specifically to the way in which the Bill will apply to the industry upon which it seeks to impose controls. I do so against the general background of very strong feelings that I, many of my hon. Friends and many people outside have that the House should not seek to legislate in specific areas and enter new fields of legislation until there has been the fullest possible consultation.
      It is a fact that this place still produces too many bad laws. We have far too much legislation. Therefore we must be very rigorous in scrutinising any new area of proposed law. This is one such area.
      Mr. Sainsbury: To save my repeating the point, will my hon. Friend not agree that, however well intentioned we may be, we produce too much legislation? It is rather difficult for hon. Members when we have 37 pages—as in this case—that are meant to deal with simple matters. When Bills are too long and the actual text turns into so many pages it is much more difficult to see how the legislation will impinge on people's lives.
      Mr. Hunt: I completely agree with my hon. Friend's comments. I shall want to return to that matter, because much of the Bill seeks to enact legislation by cross-reference. Indeed, many measures are referred to in the Bill which one has to have to hand when trying to understand what the Bill seeks to do. Surely this is one of the greatest hallmarks of bad legislation. One has in mind in particular the Rent Acts, because it is necessary to understand and comprehend a whole series of Acts before one can appreciate what the legislation is trying to achieve.
      I was about to say that I refer to this matter with some trepidation because in the last Session I proposed a Private Member's Bill which became known as the minibus Act. I seized on an area there where the law had changed and suddenly many voluntary organisations found themselves subject to an area of
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      law to which they had not previously been subject, and I took them out of it.
      This Bill seeks to bring into the area of law a whole new range of people—namely, those doing estate agency work. Because of that, it is important to get the definitions right. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) that one of the great defects in the Bill is that there is no definition of an estate agent. Indeed, that is what the amendment is about. Someone can still set up in business with a sign outside saying "Estate Agent", yet escape all the provisions of the Bill. The definition of those who are included is not as an estate agent but as doing estate agency work. The trouble in taking that kind of definition is that there is in the public mind a reputation established by estate agents, and there is some dispute as to what that means.
      The Bill seeks to set out a definition. But I can see a whole area of work—I declare my interest as a solicitor—which the Bill intends to encompass but does not encompass because of the difficulties of definition. I should be drawn much closer to believing in and supporting the Bill were it to name, by reference to the words "estate agent", the area of activity which it seeks to encompass.
      Amendment No. 1 seeks to delete paragraph (c) and the last part of Clause 1. I should like, first, to speak to the special circumstances of that amendment. The Bill seeks merely to enter into the arena of private transactions between members of the public—I shall come back to that when I deal with the other amendments—and to exclude certain other bodies, local authorities and professions. The Bill is restricted
      "to things done by any person … for the purpose of, or with a view to, effecting the introduction to that person of a third peson who wishes to acquire or, as the case may be, dispose of an interest in residential property".
      We then come to a form of words about which I should like some explanation from the promoter of the Bill, because, as soon as I see "things" in a Bill, it immediately crosses my mind that the parliamentary draftsman was at a very low ebb when he tried to pick out words to put in the Bill. To say "things done" is reaching the depths of definition. When, as a solicitor, I see "things" in a Bill, I

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      am immediately put on inquiry as to what it seeks to do.
      I am not satisfied with the words which follow, because the clause goes on:
      "and also to things done by him after effecting such an introduction for the purpose of securing the disposal or, as the case may be, the acquisition of that interest."
      It is not clear why those words are put in. Referring back to the first line, again there is the dreadful phrase:
      "This Act has effect with respect to things done by any person".
      One immediately realises that there has been a crisis of definition in the Bill, which my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury has highlighted by this amendment.
      Mr. Sainsbury: My hon. Friend is on to an extremely good point. But, bearing in mind that on Sundays we are concerned with things undone as well as with things done, should not the Bill say "with respect to things done or things left undone?".
      Mr. Hunt: The act of commission probably pales into insignificance in this area as does the act of omission. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Consumers expect things to be done, but often they are not done. I think that perhaps we should be addressing ourselves more to the consumer area than to any other area. We should view this Bill as a consumer measure. Indeed, in Committee, the promoter of the Bill, in response to an extremely constructive amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate), said:
      "In response to his amendment—which I understand to be a probing amendment about the extent of the Bill—I must emphasise that this is not an estate agency control or licensing measure, but a consumer protection measure, concerned with the activity of the purchase and selling of property."—[Official Report, Standing Committee C, 26th April 1978; c. 5.]
      It is clear that this is a consumer protection measure.
      Therefore, I turn my mind—and I am inclined to support the amendment because of this—to other Acts of Parliament which seek to protect the consumer, in particular the Consumer Credit Act 1974. I believe that many of the powers which the Bill now seeks to enact and to give to the Minister and to the Director
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      General of Fair Trading are already contained in that Act. I have carefully gone through the reports of the Committee stage and the Act itself. I submit that, by Orders in Council, it could easily be extended to cover the area which the Bill seeks to cover by utilising well-established legislation. The Minister is shaking his head. Of course, he knows a tremendous amount about this matter, because he has had briefs, but if he could enlighten me—
      The Minister of State, Department of Prices and Consumer Protection (Mr. John Fraser): I know a good deal about the Consumer Credit Act, because I have to administer it.
      Mr. Hunt: The hon. Gentleman very carefully avoided answering my question, as Ministers do from time to time. I hope that someone will be able to answer it later. The Minister said that he understood the Consumer Credit Act. I congratulate him, because he must be one of the few people in the country who does understand it.
      Mr. Fraser: Not for long periods of time.
      Mr. Hunt: The hon. Gentleman must not be modest. If he does understand it—perhaps there are people who will suddenly pass notes to him to explain this matter—will he explain where in the Act there is a provision which restricts him from exercising control over estate agents who receive money as deposit and, therefore, credit from their clients?
      Mr. Fraser: The Consumer Act controls those who provide and introduce credit. It does not apply the controls to those who receive the credit. That is the reason.
      Mr. Hunt: The Consumer Credit Act refers specifically to transactions. It does not exclude the deposit of credit. It specifically refers to the provision of credit, but it does not exclude the deposit of credit.
      Mr. Fraser: If the hon. Member wished to pursue that line he would have to license everyone who wanted to buy a house and had to pay a deposit as someone who provided credit to the estate agent. That is a ludicrous proposition.
      12 noon.
      Mr. Hunt: To disregard something because it is, in the Government's view, a ludicrous proposition would be to exclude most of their own legislation. There is an area of this Act which could refer specifically to estate agents who receive deposits. The Minister's point is not well taken. I am willing to enter into a dialogue with him on this subject, reluctant as he might be to enter into discussions on this complex area of legilation.
      It is right that we should exhaust all possibilities before a major Bill is introduced to restrict the application of the Act. That applies particularly to this amendment. It would not be necessary to restrict the application of the Act were it not for the fact that already so much law could apply.
      I understand that the part which my hon. Friend seeks to delete by the amendment would mean that Clause 1 would have a wide application, but no wider than it would be at the moment. After the amendment had been accepted, Clause 1 would read
      "This Act has effect with respect to things done by any person—

      (a) in the course of a business (including a business in which he is employed); and

      (b) pursuant to instructions given by or on behalf of any other person who wishes to dispose of or acquire an interest in residential property."

      It would include those public bodies to which I shall return later.
      I should like to hear from the promoter why he feels that it is necessary to introduce paragraph (c) and the last three lines of the clause which do not add anything. If Clause 1, line 1, refers to
      "things done by any person",
      why does one have to add the words at the end of the clause? The promoter might say that paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) restrict the words in line 1 and that therefore it is necessary to come back to them again, further to extend them. But that is not right because the Bill has effect with respect to
      "has effect, to things done by any person".
      If one takes out paragraph (c), which is what my hon. Friend wishes to do, one does not take out the essence of the definition. This is what is complicating Clause 1. It would be helpful if the promoter explained his reasoning.
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      I understand that the whole purpose of Clause 1, and, indeed, of the Bill, is to protect the consumer from those estate agents from whom he needs protection because some offence has been committed or is proposed. If that is so, and deposits which have been left with an estate agent have been retained by him contrary to the law, there are other recourses already open to that consumer.
      One of my constituents experienced a case such as this. It did involve not an estate agent but someone called an insurance credit and mortgage broker, who has now changed his name to a credit and mortgage broker and therefore does not come within insurance broker legislation. My constituent had left a deposit of £50 with the firm. He came to me and I immediately went, not just to the Minister—although that would have been enough—but to the Director General of Fair Trading. He instituted an inquiry and caused the return of that deposit.
      We are dealing with a fringe activity. The profession of estate agency in this country has not needed control. It conducts its affairs properly, above the law and directly in the interests of the consumer. It protects the consumer. I shall return to a slight addendum to that later.
      The Bill seeks to impose on the profession a discipline which it already accepts and for which there is no need. Adequate legislation, adequate penalties and adequate procedures already exist for controlling the recreant person who often does not call himself an estate agent but whose only objective is to take deposits. I can now see clearly the logic behind the amendment.
      I return to the question of consumer protection. If this amendment were passed, it would enable us, as further amendments show, to extend the Bill to an area where it is probably needed. But we should not do that without further consultation.
      Mr. Sainsbury: We are considering a group of amendments. Is my hon. Friend referring to all of them, some of them, or one of them?
      Mr. Hunt: I am still referring to Amendment No. 1. I have yet to deal with Amendments Nos. 2, 4, 5 and 6.
      The consumer needs protection against gazumping. Such protection might be

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      provided if the amendment were passed. Already there are signs that estate agents are faced with an impossible situation which is not of their own making but a result of inadequate Government policies. Too many people are chasing too few houses as a direct result of the Government's land legislation. The supply of land has been restricted and many people are trying to buy their first home. They find that they put in an offer to an individual and then that individual does not honour what they believe to be a perfectly good contract. The contract is imperfect under Section 46(1) of the Law of Property Act 1925, because there is no memorandum in writing. This type of gazumping is a growing evil. Surely the public need protection against it. There is no adequate protection at present.
      If Amendment No. 1 were passed, one would be able to consider the matter. But we should not do this now. What is wrong with the Bill is that it introduces new law without adequate consultation.
      I received a letter this morning from an estate agent in my constituency. He said that he could see that parts of the Bill had merit, but he found, as I do, that the provisions are to be found in other Acts and that therefore they are unnecessary. He complained about the lack of consultation. He said that until he heard about it in the Press recently he knew nothing about it. Obviously he has not been paying full attention to the Press because reports appeared on Second Reading and when the Bill was introduced. The estate agent said that he had not realised that there was to be such a Bill. No meetings had been held in his area to discuss it. He felt that there had been inadequate consultation.
      From the experience that I gained from the Private Member's Bill which I piloted through the House, I know that consultation is onerous, expensive and difficult.
      Mr. Vivian Bendall: Is my hon. Friend aware that the promoter of the Bill has had no consultations with any of the professional bodies concerned?
      Mr. Hunt: I ask the promoter of the Bill to intervene. This is such an important matter that I should like to address myself to it. Perhaps the hon. Member
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      would like to tell me what consultations he has had.
      Mr. Bryan Davies: I could scarcely resist such a welcome invitation. It is hardly possible for me to have consulted every estate agent in the country, and I have no doubt that Conservative Members have estate agent constituents who feel that they have not been directly consulted. But that is in the nature of this kind of exercise when a large group of people is involved. I can assure the hon. Member, however, that the three major national bodies concerned with estate agency have been involved in close consultation. Each of them has separately written to all hon. Members indicating not only the degree of consultation but support for the broad principles of the Bill. I think I can therefore reassure the hon. Member on that cardinal point.
      Mr. Hunt: It is indeed cardinal. As I understand what the hon. Member said, however, he has not had sufficient time to engage in the sort of consultations that every promoter of a Bill should engage in. The aim must be to ensure that the professional bodies are not only notified but are notified in time so that they may then engage in consultations with the profession. There is no doubt that this Bill sprang out of the air for estate agents and they have not had time to consult, particularly about the very important Clause 1.
      The hon. Member has not answered that point. He may have consulted the professional bodies, but I presume that could not have happened more than a comparatively short time ago, certainly after the beginning of the Session. Since the Bill involves such a complex area of law and seeks to break new ground, I should like to be reassured by the hon. Member that he has had consultation particularly about Clause 1 which the amendment seeks to restrict. Perhaps consultations on the clause would have caused him to realise that the definition, which I have described as a crisis of definition, would have enabled him to deal with the point far more adequately than he has.
      Mr. Bendall: Is my hon. Friend aware that, although consultations have taken place, it appears that the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and the

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      Incorporated Society of Valuers and Auctioneers, which represent a most important part of the profession, have not been consulted?
      Mr. Hunt: I hope that the hon. Member for Enfield, North (Mr. Davies) will reassure us on that aspect. He said that three professional bodies had been consulted, but he did not name them. It would greatly help us if we could know which they were before we decided on the amendment. We could then decide whether the necessary consultations had been held.
      I described this situation as a crisis of definition. It is vital when one is introducing a Bill to cover a new area of law that one should know all the facts well in advance in order to be able to deal with the points that arise. Clause 1 determines the scope of the Bill, which is why it is so crucially imporant.
      Mr. John Lee: I am not anxious to prolong the hon. Member's dissertation but may I make a suggestion? If the definition were so condensed as to make the provision for disposal of any interest in land as defined by the Law of Property Act 1925, would that not at any rate mitigate, if not eliminate, the crisis of definition which seems to be exciting him so much?
      Mr. Hunt: I am most grateful for the hon. Member's support in seeking to promote the amendment, but for all the wrong reasons.
      Mr. Moate: Would not the sensible proposition that has just been advanced drive a coach and horses through Clause 1, which is the point made by my hon. Friend?
      Mr. Hunt: That is correct. I am most grateful to hon. Members for setting out so clearly the panorama behind this debate. When one is dealing with a new measure of this type, it is important to know exactly what its effect will be. The Bill will move on to another place, and that is one of the factors that gives me confidence. The scope and definition set out in Clause 1 may well receive greater scrutiny there. I hope that our debate today will enable those outside who have a particular view about Clause 1 to react and to make their views known.
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      It is most important that we should take them into account.
      I turn now to the question of solicitors. Being one myself, I notice that one of the least publicised facts about the profession is the code of practice under which it operates. I do not think that there is a more restrictive code, or one more calculated to produce the best for the consumer. Therefore, I regret to say that I have to disagree with my hon. Friend about the inclusion of solicitors in the Bill. My reasoning iswholly—
      Mr. Moate: Yes, quite holy.
      12.15 p.m.
      Mr. Hunt: My reasoning is wholly consistent with the argument that I put forward before because, as I said then, it is unnecessary to introduce legislation to areas where protection already exists.
      Mr. Ridley: Did I overhear my hon. Friend wrongly say "things done by solicitors"?
      Mr. Hunt: I wish that I could answer that point.
      I find that the consumer has greater protection under the law in his dealings with solicitors or barristers than with anyone else. There are already safeguards. The promoter of the Bill is therefore right to seize on the point about clients' money. Clients' money is the foundation of the practice under which solicitors operate. That money is sacrosanct and belongs to the client and can never be merged.
      I realise that the hon. Member's main objective behind the Bill is to introduce the same state of affairs into estate agency. However, this matter should be dealt with by voluntary regulation. Those in the profession to whom I have spoken feel that they must introduce that voluntary code which the hon. Member is seeking to embrace within a statutory definition. That statutory definition will probably do more damage to feelings within the profession than would a code of voluntary practice.
      The trouble is that when an hon. Member draws a high number in the Ballot his emphasis must be on producing legislation. He does not then seek to consult in a particular area with a view to winning acceptance of a voluntary code. Our

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      procedure imposes a demand on an hon. Member to find an area of law that he can change. That is a matter for another debate, but it is nevertheless a defect in our existing system.
      Mr. Moate: Before my hon. Friend leaves the question of the inclusion or exclusion of solicitors, will he answer a fundamental question? I accept what he said about the codes of conduct to which the members of the legal profession are subject. They would cover many of the aspects of consumer protection that are provided for in the Bill. Will he, however, look ahead to Clause 21 which deals with standards of competence and which contains powers to limit those who may or may not practise estate agency? The clause could lay down minimum standards of entry into the profession. If that became law, would not estate agents have the right to feel aggrieved that similar restraints did not apply to members of the legal profession?
      Mr. Hunt: I am not sure whether I am allowed to look forward to Clause 21.
      Mr. Speaker: Order. That confirms my view. I was doubtful, but I am not now.
      Mr. Hunt: A large number of amendments have been tabled and I would like to speak on all of them. However, I shall not have time to deal with them all in as much detail as I should like.
      As to whether solicitors should be included in the Bill, I am very much against statutory intrusion into the area of professional life, in particular as expressed in the Bill. Therefore, I could hardly logically be in favour of including solicitors, thereby extending the tentacles of the Bill into an area which does not need the regulation which I would like to see, on a voluntary basis but which the Bill seeks to impose on a statutory basis.
      I was asked by a constituent about the standard of practice, conduct and discipline in the legal profession in Northern Ireland. The constituent had had a lot of problems with a Northern Ireland solicitor. Fortunately, I was able to discover in the Library the Solicitors (Northern Ireland) Order 1976, Statutory Instrument No. 582. I am satisfied that this exclusion should remain for the
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      Northern Ireland solicitors. It is clear from the order, which was made on 12th April 1976, that Northern Ireland solicitors are subject to the same sort of discipline and professional standards which apply to the profession in England and Wales. Therefore, I see no necessity to include solicitors in Norern Ierland.
      I want to mention local authorities. I find definitions difficult in the Bill, but this one I find particularly difficult. Clause 1(3) says:
      "The reference in subsection (1)(a) above to a business does not include the activities of—
      (a) a local authority within the meaning of the Consumer Credit Act 1974;"
      What is the reason for the words
      "within the meaning of the Consumer Credit Act 1974"?
      If the activities of a local authority are included, why is there a need to define a local authority? If it is necessary to define a local authority, such a definition could be contained within the definition section of the Bill. Above all, why do we need to define a local authority within the terms of the Consumer Credit Act 1974? I found that difficult to understand, so I looked immediately at the Act to find out the definition of a local authority. Section 189 says:
      "'local authority', in relation to England and Wales, means the Greater London Council, a county council, a London borough council, a district council, the Common Council of the City of London, or the Council of the Isles of Scilly, and in relation to Scotland, means a regional, islands or district council, and, in relation to Northern Ireland, means a district council."
      If there were not the words
      "within the meaning of the Consumer Credit Act 1974"
      and the Bill merely referred to "local authority", I would know exactly what that meant. It would, after yesterday, mean every authority controlled by the Conservative Party—but that is a different point.
      Why include:
      "the Consumer Credit Act 1974"
      in what must be a most out-of-date definition? If we are seeking to enact good law in this place I should like an explanation from the hon. Member for Enfield, North—if we are to be convinced that we should leave in subsection (3)—of why he seeks to define "local authority" by reference to the Consumer Credit Act

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      1974. Why does he not seek to define "local authority" by reference to the Local Government Act or any Act of that nature? Has he some intention to include the Council of the Isles of Scilly or the Common Council of the City of London?
      If we are to have this legislation, which needs considerable revision—which I hope it will receive if not today next Friday, the Friday after or the Friday after that—and we are to have a Bill of which we can be proud and one which seeks to introduce the additional necessary matters which must be regulated by statute, why does it not apply to local authorities? There is a strong argument that it should.
      What does the Bill seek to do? It seeks to control the money that is placed by individuals in the hands of a third party with a background of a property transaction. There are many instances in which local authorities may receive deposits or negotiate with a sitting tenant or the owner of a house in a clearance area or in an area where there is to be a major road. Why should not the consumer have protection in those circumstances? I am not allowed to look forward, as you wisely pointed out, Mr. Speaker, to two clauses that impose regulations about conduct. However, when one considers what should or should not be included in the Bill, it is important that the conduct of a local authority should be regulated if the Bill seeks to control conduct that the promoter feels needs to be controlled.
      There are many instances of the sort of defects which the promoter of the Bill had in mind on Second Reading. I have read carefully through the reports of that debate and I can understand his reasons. One can envisage similar reasons for extending this measure to local authorities. It is not clear to me why local authorities should be excluded.
      Perhaps the hon. Member for Enfield, North will respond by saying that similar protection already exists under another Act of Parliament. With so many Acts going through this place, I trust he will forgive me if there is such an enactment of which I am unaware. I have tried to make a careful study of the ways in which local authorities and their actions are
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      already subject to some sort of code of practice, regulation or legislative safeguard, and I cannot find anywhere the sort of safeguards that he wishes to give to the public in the Bill as to the activities of a local authority.
      On the other hand, one finds many examples in the reports of debates in the House of a local authority being accused of having offended a consumer directly and having encroached on or taken away the rights of a property owner, in particular where it is alleged that the district valuer has valued a property at a figure lower than anybody professionally competent would have done. There are many examples in my constituency, in Birkenhead, of valuations of property that can now be seen, with hindsight, to have been far too low.
      There are instances around the country of people feeling aggrieved because they have not been dealt with by a local authority acting within the area of property transactions as they should have been dealt with. Therefore, why does the hon. Gentleman seek to exclude local authorities when by including them he would probably be acting in the interests of what he believes to be the consumer? It would give real consumer protection. If such protection is to be given in the Bill, why is it not to be extended to local authorities?
      12.30 p.m.
      I feel as strongly as my hon. Friends about the exclusions of the Housing Corporation, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, and registered housing associations. Why should persons doing estate work in housing associations be excluded? I am sure that they would say that they follow the highest possible standards, so what is the objection to including them in a Bill to meet standards to which they already conform? What is the additional onerous element in the Bill from which the promoter wishes to protect housing associations?
      If the promoter concedes that there are onerous elements—and my hon. Friends and I have explained why we believe the safeguards to be onerous—he starts to undermine the case for the Bill. The promoter must give a detailed explanation of why he feels that registered housing associations should be excluded.

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      It may be that, as with local authorities, there is some legislation of which I am not aware that imposes safeguards of this sort. The constitution of housing associations may lay down standards of practice and penalties to be imposed in relation to retaining credit. However, if that is the case, the idea of extending the Bill to estate agency work as defined at present is undermined by any admission made in that respect.
      We may not get such an admission from the promoter in this debate, but I hope that he has listened carefully to what I have said and will try to justify Clause 1 and the case against the other amendments if he opposes them.
      Mr. Sainsbury: As this is the first time that I have spoken on the Bill, I declare an interest as a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. To avoid any doubt or misapprehension about my professional competence, I should point out that I am a non-professional associate of the institution—the equivalent of an honorary member. According to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission report in 1975, there were 13,129 fellows and 23,765 professional associates of the institution. I would not claim their degree of competence or the experience of my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Stechford (Mr. MacKay) and Ilford, North (Mr. Bendall), but I claim some involvement with that important institution and some knowledge of the industry.
      I suppose that we should all declare an interest as persons who have acquired and probably will acquire interest in residential property as defined in the Bill. Therefore we are the beneficiaries or otherwise of the legislation.
      The third interest that I should declare is that I am happy to say that the communications I have received from the president of the National Association of Estate Agents comes from his office in the heart of my constituency in Church Road, Hove.
      I wish to concentrate on Amendment No. 5. Most hon. Members must be aware of the long and somewhat dismal record of municipal enterprise. Indeed, it would be better to call it municipal lack of enterprise on many occasions, and it should not be surprising that when local authorities try to adopt an entrepreneurial or professional role, they find
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      themselves ill-suited to it. The staff of local authorities are not chosen or trained to carry out such functions and the members who give so generously of their time and skill in the conduct of the affairs of local authorities are not elected on the basis of their skill to act as estate agents, restaurateurs or to operate municipal fish shops or other activities. Therefore, it is not surprising that, generally, those who have failed to benefit from these activities have been the consumers on the one side and the ratepayers on the other.
      The Bill is concerned with improving consumer protection, and while we are always anxious to do that, we must ensure that the proposed improvements are not counter-productive by restricting what can be done for consumers.
      There seems to be no reason for not extending to the person acquiring interest in residential property the same protection when dealing with local authorities as when he is dealing with estate agents. If a local authority were so unwise as to set up a municipal estate agency—and we know that a number of Labour controlled councils have sought powers to do this, and to waste ratepayers' money—why should persons dealing with that agency not be entitled to the same protection as those dealing with other estate agents, particularly on such matters as interest on deposits and declaration of interests?
      There is nothing to prevent a Labour-controlled local authority—though fortunately there are not so many now—operating a municipal estate agency under the name of Smith, Brown and Black. The unsuspecting purchaser would not be aware that lurking behind that pseudonym was the district council. If he were buying or selling property with the alleged assistance of this firm of estate agents, he might find that the purchaser or vendor was the local authority or someone associated with it. In all fairness, local authorities should be included in the Bill if they indulge in these activities.
      I hope that we shall make progress with the Bill. It is a well-intentioned piece of consumer protection, but I hope that the promoter will expedite progress by giving an indication whether he is prepared to accept some of the more important amendments.
      Mr. Moate: The question of the exclusion of local authorities raises

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      important matters that the promoter must deal with. We know that if a member of the public suffers a loss as a result of actions of the employee of an estate agent, he will be protected by the compensation fund or the guarantee fund. Are we similarly assured that if the employee of a local authority or housing association estate agency causes a loss to a member of the public, he will still be protected? The exclusion of the Housing Corporation, housing associations or local authorities would exclude their employees, who might commit some of these offences. Would the public be protected?
      Mr. Sainsbury: That is a good additional point. All these points show that Amendment No. 5 at least should be accepted.
      Amendment No. 4 is wider, since it would exclude the whole of Clause 3 and bring within the legislation the Housing Corporation, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive and registered housing associations. The same arguments apply to them as to local authorities. I have fewer reservations about the Housing Corporation or registered housing associations acting as estate agents—although that activity is ill-defined—than about local authorities. I cannot express a view about the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, but I take it that it is the equavalent of the Housing Corporation or a registered housing association or both.
      Mr. Moate: I have no greater knowledge of the subject than my hon. Friend, but am I not right in thinking that the Executive undertakes most of the housing functions of a United Kingdom local authority?
      Mr. Sainsbury: I am sure that my hon. Friend is right. In that case, perhaps an amendment should have dealt specifically with that subject, because it should fall under Amendment No. 5. The consumer is entitled to the same protection in respect of the Housing Corporation and housing associations. The importance of that protection is increased by current housing association schemes—rightly promoted by the Housing Corporation—for equity sharing or leasehold participation, which amount to 50–50 ownership. A re-
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      gistered housing association develops property for sale, but instead of conventionally selling the whole property to the purchaser, the scheme is designed to facilitate the first step on the ladder of home ownership. The purchaser buys less than a 100 per cent. interest—normally perhaps 50 per cent.—and rents the other half of his home.
      These schemes have many attractions. The purchaser can later buy the other half. The Housing Corporation can guarantee loans to facilitate the original purchase. We have not seen that happen, but it is possible. If these bodies are getting more fully into the sale of property—particularly to first-time buyers—the protection of the Bill should be extended to that area.
      Amendment No. 2 relates to insurance brokers. I agree with what has been said and will vote for the amendment unless the promoter can relieve our minds. Amendment No. 3 has not yet been properly discussed.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Murton): Amendment No. 3 is not selected.
      Mr. Sainsbury: Then I shall not direct my thoughts to that.
      I am worried by what has been said about Amendment No. 1. The Bill proposes consumer protection. I am concerned whether Amendment No. 1 might not damage that intention. This is a mixed bunch of amendments. While some are designed to improve consumer protection, Amendment No. 1 seems to go the other way. I am particularly in favour of Amendment No. 5 and of Amendment No. 4. Amendment No. 2 seems worthwhile but Amendment No. 1 gives me some reservations. Perhaps the promoter will be able to put our minds at rest.
      12.45 p.m.
      Mr. Michael Neubert: I wish to speak to Amendment No. 5, which seeks to remove the exemption of local authorities. In undermining their privileged position, I might be thought to be showing hostility, but on the morrow of the local elections, and believing, subject to confirmation, that all 19 seats in my constituency were secured by Conservative candidates, I know that the sound of "local authorities" is sweet in my ears. Since I am the vice president

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      of the Association of Municipal Authorities—a body, as from this morning, Conservative-controlled—it might be thought that in this case I am not doing them proper service. That is not so. The number of local authorities likely to do estate agency work under the Bill's definition is very small. But this poses more than one threat.
      We can deal only with local authorities. My hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) was apprehensive about someone turning himself into a solicitor or a housing association and escaping the provisions of another clause. However, I am sure that he would not fear that someone could turn himself into a local authority. We are dealing only with such institutions as are already well known and which come within the Consumer Credit Act 1974.
      It is legitimate to question whether local authorities which have the potential to engage in these activities should be excluded. I doubt it, when other legislation provides the same safeguards in other areas as this Bill seeks to create. We know of the intention of local authorities from time to time to engage in enterprise well outside the generally understood conception of the activities in which a local authority should engage on behalf of its resident ratepapers. For example, the West Midlands Bill sought vast ranging opportunities of engaging in municipal enterprise impinging on many private enterprise activities, including, one would think, potentially the operation of estate agencies.
      This amendment has been tabled to counter those threats, for it is clear that local authorities, with their very special privileges, could in these circumstances be in competition with private enterprise and have an unfair advantage. As public institutions, local authorities obviously have advantages not given to ordinary estate agents. Local authorities have the benefit of public funds in inexhaustible supply. By that I mean that subject only to elections every four years, they can levy extra money from the ratepayers to meet their ends. Local authorities have the privilege of their prestige as public bodies. They have the opportunity to cross-subsidise costs. In these and other ways they could be in unfair competition with others legitimately earning their
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      livelihood as estate agents in private enterprise.
      It may be thought that as public institutions the reputation of local authorities is so high that there is no possibility of any breach of the standards that the Bill seeks to confer upon the profession of estate agency. That may well be so in many cases. It may well be that the integrity of local government and public service in Britain is well respected, for good reason.
      However, from time to time there have been examples of even public institutions, acting on behalf of—in this case—their residents, breaching the standards imposed by the Bill. For example, local authorities might trespass in areas such as discrimination which are thought to be sensitive. Who is to know whether within housing departments there is the opportunity for discrimination either on grounds of sex or of race? Whether or not one agrees with the provisions of the Bill, it is possible that in the administration of a housing department such discrimination is exercised. If local authorities were to move into estate agency work, they might show the same inclinations.
      Only today it has been shown that the Department of Health and Social Security has failed to meet the legitimate claim of war pensioners for compensation. Apparently this was done deliberately in the full knowledge that it was wrong. Yet it was done in the name of public service by public servants. So, although we may have a very high regard for our public service, we cannot believe it to be right in what is does in all circumstances. The amendment therefore seeks to remove the exemption of local authorities.
      My hon. Friends have sought to go further. I would not go so far as to exclude the other bodies set out in subsection (3), but there is clearly a temptation for anybody involved in housing, by the acquisition of expertise and all the facilities available to him, to think it wise to extend his activities into estate agency work. The average local authority is engaged in the construction of houses, in the letting of property, and in the assigning of property. From time to time local authorities acquire property already built in the private market. Some authorities—probably more as from today—actually seek

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      to sell the properties in their ownership, but generally the policy is to sell them to sitting tenants.
      It is only a short step from those activities to engaging full time in the practice of buying and selling residential property. Often local authorities, according to their political persuasion, will seek to do this. It is proper to question whether they should be within the provisions of the Bill. The amendment has that purpose.
      Mr. Bryan Davies: I respond, first, to the major point made by the hon. Member for Wirral (Mr. Hunt).
      I assure the House that, despite the enormous difficulties in satisfying everybody whose interests are affected by measures of this kind, the most serious and intensive efforts have been made to engage in consultation with the representative institutions. All the major bodies concerned have made contributions and submitted documents. One is always left with those who are practising but who are not members of any representative body. One's only response to that difficulty is that which is normally taken in the House, namely, to gauge the public interest and to identify the measures we propose to put forward in that light. I can assure the hon. Member that there has not been a lack of consultation on the Bill.
      I do not entirely accept the hon. Member's chiding that I did not relinquish my place in the Ballot in favour of a rather more consultative role for this year. I imagine that the hon. Gentleman, like myself, spends a great deal of time in a consultative role. It is not often that we are privileged to participate in a premier position in introducing legislation ourselves. I do not recall that he chose to turn down the opportunity he had to introduce a measure last year, a measure which I had the great pleasure of supporting. I am sure that he then engaged in the processes of consultation in the same way as I have sought to do.
      Tory Members have identified the difficulties that arise with any measure of this kind but have disagreed amongst themselves about how the difficulties can be resolved. The hon. Member for Wirral has said that there is a crisis of definition. That is a perennial problem for law makers. I recognise that the definition of
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      the activity of estate agency is critical to the Bill.
      These amendments question the exclusion of certain categories from the provisions of the Bill. The main thrust of the measure as a consumer protection measure is to include all who engage in this activity and whose services the public may engage, thereby becoming vulnerable as prospective house buyers or house sellers. The exclusions are few and are carefully delineated. They are included only if adequate protection for the public already exists.
      This is not a licensing measure for estate agencies and therefore the Bill does not deal with the problem of those who practise the work of estate agency but do not call themselves estate agents. Anyone who practises estate agency is caught by the Bill with the exception of the exclusions set out in Clause 1.
      The hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Sainsbury) raised a qualification about the efficacy of Amendment No. 1. I think he is correct that, if Amendment No. 1 were to be accepted, we should greatly broaden the range of activity of the Bill because we would not be concerned solely with the agency work or the introduction of buyer and seller. We would also potentially include other activities associated with house purchase—for example, conveyancing. I do not know whether some Conservative Members are in favour of fresh legislation on conveyancing. It would probably be recognised by some Conservative Members that that would not be an entirely desirable measure, although I detect strong pressures on the Government Benches. I do not think that it could be included in the framework of the Bill, which as a Private Member's Bill must necessarily have limited aims.
      1.0 p.m.
      Mr. David Hunt: I was trying to suggest to the hon. Gentleman that it would have been far better if he had introduced a Law of Property (Amendment) Bill rather than the Estate Agents Bill.
      Mr. Davies: I accept that there is a range of other measures that I could have introduced for the benefit of the public. I am not quite sure how that argument squares with the suggestion that I should not be introducing any measure that increases the amount of legislation. I assure Conservative Members that Amendment

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      No. 1 would greatly widen the scope of the Bill. As the clause stands, we are concerned with the central activity of estate agency that causes the public concern, namely, the purchasing and selling of houses.
      Mr. Moate: The hon. Gentleman has made a couple of assertions about Amendment No. 1 that require substantiation. He says that if accepted it would widen the scope of the Bill, yet as things stand it would seem that by deletion we would be narrowing its scope. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman said that conveyancing would be included. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will substantiate his claim. Why does he say that?
      Mr. Davies: I did not say that the amendment specified conveyancing. The amendment would take out the restrictive parts of Clause 1 that define the activity to be controlled. Potentially we would have a measure with greater breadth in terms of the activity with which it would be connected.
      As for the categories that Conservative hon. Members have raised and whether they should be entitled to exemption, we did, when dealing with the terms of Amendment No. 6—namely, the proposed exemption of solicitors—have an extensive debate in Committee. I am sure that we all want to guarantee adequate protection to the public. The hon. Member for Wirral indicated that he had noted the extensive debate in Committee. He expressed the view that in practice the Law Society's provisions dealing with solicitors are sufficient and broadly similar to the provisions set out in the Bill. In fact, in some respects the Law Society's provisions are rather sharper in their control functions than the provisions set out in the Bill. Because of that, I consider it accurate and right to exempt solicitors from the measure.
      I am not trying to create a privileged sector but I am mindful that the House is concerned that legislation should be as accurate and as limited as is necessary to effect its purpose. In terms of consumer protection, I consider that solicitors are suitably controlled by their own professional body. That has been recognised by some Conservative Members.
      I turn next to Amendment No. 2, which is concerned with insurance brokers. The hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate)
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      identified the area of insurance brokerage as his particular worry. He said that where insurance brokers are not engaged in the activity covered by the 1977 Act it may be that their insurance would not extend to the area concerned with estate agency. As they are not engaged in the activity covered by the 1977 Act, I consider that they would fall within the provisions of the Bill. It is where their activities are already governed by existing legislation that they are exempted under Clause 1.
      Mr. Bendall: Will the hon. Gentleman explain in what category an agent will fall who collects money for a building society? There are agents who collect a great deal of money for building societies which they hand over to the societies. It seems from the terms of the Bill and from our discussion that there is no protection in that area. I should declare an interest. I am an estate agent.
      Mr. Davies: I can reassure the hon. Gentleman. He will recognise that the Bill is concerned with estate agents who act in a certain capacity in introducing buyers to sellers. I am aware that estate agents carry out other activities. As there are others who may fail within the terms of the Bill because they carry out those activities, when estate agents are carrying out activities that do not fall within the Bill are not related to the definition in Clause 1 we are not seeking to control those activities.
      Mr. Bendall: The hon. Gentleman has said repeatedly that this is a consumer protection Bill. If that is so, we should try to achieve the consumer's protection. Given the terms of reference of the Bill, we are achieving only part protection.
      Mr. Davies: I have a feeling that the problem of definition could be endless. I want to promote consumer protection. I am sure that that is the aim of everyone. I am seeking to identify that there is a limited range of consumer protection for the buying and selling of houses that can be attempted within the scope of one fairly modest Bill, although it has 33 clauses and two schedules. The activity that the hon. Member for Ilford, North is identifying at this fairly late stage is something that would require a rather more ambitious measure. As I am being counselled by other Opposition Members

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      somewhat to restrict my activity, it seems that it is necessary to strike a balance when deciding what can be achieved in this area.
      Mr. Moate: I raise a technical point that is of some significance when dealing with insurance brokerage. The hon. Gentleman is relying on the fact that the definition of insurance brokerage would presumably exclude any extensive estate agency activities, and that if an insurance agency he would, therefore, come within the provisions of the Bill. I suggest that that might not be so.
      There is no definition of insurance brokerage within the Insurance Brokers (Registration) Act 1977. There is an EEC definition but there is no definition within the Act. That was quite deliberate. It is possible for an insurance broker to regard himself as doing estate agency work peripheral to his business, and he could so include it. The fact that the hon. Gentleman refers to the Insurance Brokers (Registration) Act rather than to insurance broking, which includes other activities such as consultancy work and insurance agency work, and regards the Act as the controlling factor implies that anyone registered under the Act could practise estate agency. I suggest that he may not be completely right and that it is something that should be examined again if the Bill were to proceed further.
      Mr. Davies: I listen to the hon. Gentleman's representations with great care on these matters as we know him to be knowledgeable in them. I think that I take him along with me in the other reservation that has been raised in considering the amendment, then the hon. Member for Wirral referred to the problems of deposits. The hon. Member for Faversham will know—I am sure that on reflection the hon. Member for Wirral will recognise that this is so—that deposits do not come within the framework of credit under the Consumer Credit Act 1974. The taking of deposits is an entirely different concept.
      I turn now to Amendment No. 5, standing in the name of the hon. Member for Romford (Mr. Neubert), which has been spoken to constructively by a number of Conservative Members. I am moved to accept the points that have been
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      made. Obviously, I had considered that local authorities were highly unlikely to engage in the malpractices identified as potential triggers which would alert the Director General of Fair Trading. I do not think that any hon. Member would consider it likely that local authorities would engage in such malpractices. Nevertheless, I accept the point made so persuasively that perhaps it is appropriate that local authorities should be under the same degree of control in this area of activity as other engaged in estate agency.
      On that basis, I contend that Amendments Nos. 1, 2, 4 and 6 should be rejected by the House but that Amendment No. 5 might well commend itself to hon. Members.
      Amendment negatived.
      Amendment made: No. 5, in page 2, leave out lines 16 and 17.—[Mr. Neubert.]

    Clause 2

      INTERESTS IN RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY
      Mr. Sainsbury: I beg to move Amendment No. 7, in page 3, line 2, leave out
      'or to a substantial extent'.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this we may also take Amendment No. 8, in page 3, line 4, after 'constructed' insert
      'or mixed hereditament with residential accommodation where the residential accommodation is not separately assessed for rating purposes'.
      Mr. Sainsbury: The effect of this amendment would be to alter the crucial definition—I am sorry that we are back to the vexed question of definition—of residential property, which obviously has great significance throughout the Bill.
      As Clause 2 says:
      "In this Act 'residential property' means land which, wholly"
      —then come the fine words which the amendment seeks to delete—
      "or to a substantial extent, consists of one, two or three dwellings or a site on which one, two or three dwellings are to be, or are in the course of being, constructed;"
      I draw attention to the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Bendall), whose experience and skill

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      we are glad to have, has tabled an alternative amendment which we are also considering and which, I suspect, might have the same effect as my amendment.
      I direct my words to the effect of my amendment. The first point to be made in its favour is that it seems that the words:
      "or to a substantial extent"
      are vague. We seem to be back to the "things done or undone" with which we started the Bill in line 1 of Clause 1. There is no definition of "substantial". In enacting legislation we ought to be sure that we leave those who have to implement it with clear guidelines as to what is intended.
      1.15 p.m.
      Unfortunately, the courts are not allowed to take account of what might have been said by the promoter on Second Reading in determining the meaning of the words
      "to a substantial extent".
      If the courts were allowed to do this perhaps we could leave the words in. The words are worrying because there is no definition and we are left in doubt whether "substantial extent" refers to area, value or the number of individual hereditaments, in which case two residential units would outweigh one commercial unit, however large or valuable it was. I welcome and support what the hon. Member for Enfield, North (Mr. Gould) said on Second Reading. He said:
      "The Bill proposes to regulate activities in an area where the consumer merits the greatest degree of protection. After all, the purchase or sale of a home is one of the most important transactions".
      I entirely agree and that is why we would like to see progress with improved consumer protection. The hon. Member talked later of the purchaser often having an understandably limited knowledge of the subject and said that his Bill would
      "guarantee that this … activity will take place within a framework of adequate consumer protection."—[Official Report, 3rd February 1978; Vol. 943, c. 885–6.]
      We must deduce that the hon. Member has in mind that we should protect people who are buying homes. The vast majority of such transactions relate to single properties, whether detached, semi-detached, individual flats or maisonettes. If that is
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      the category of properties we are dealing with I submit that the words
      "or to a substantial extent"
      are not only dangerous to the extent that they are vague but are bringing into the context of the Bill a range of transactions which it seems, whatever the need to improve consumer protection, was not the hon. Gentleman's intention.
      This matter was not discussed in Committee other than indirectly. There was a debate in Committee which is reported in column 38 of Hansard starting on an amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate), relating to the same part of the Bill but concerning the problem of planning permission. It is interesting to note that during that debate my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Mr. Neubert) pointed out that perhaps the phrase
      "wholly or to a substantial extent"
      did not make it altogether clear where the line would fall. As always, my hon. Friend had detected a weakness. At the end of the debate on that amendment there was one of those occasions when Members of the Committee clearly had doubts. My hon. Friend the Member for Faversham said:
      "We have left some obvious doubts lingering, but in view of the nature of the debate, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment."—[Official Report, Standing Committee C, 19th April 1978; c. 49.]
      Clearly, it is necessary to look again at this issue. The amendment then being discussed did not cover the principal point, which is whether we intend to bring within the ambit of the Bill a number of commercial property transactions. If we leave the words
      "or to a substantial extent"
      in the Bill, I submit that a wide range of transactions in property which would not normally be regarded as transactions in residential property would be included.
      As an example, farms would fall within the definition. If a farm is sold there is usually a farmhouse involved. If there are not more than one or two other residential properties there as well, as far as I can see the sale of a farm would fall within the definition of residential property. I do not know how many farms there are in Enfield, North. Sadly, there are not many in Hove. We can only boast of a half-farm. I know that farm

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      sales give rise to all sorts of problems about the valuation of tenant right and that sort of thing, and I should not have thought that it was the promotor's intention that the sale of a farm should be defined in the Bill as constituting residential property.
      Presumably, public houses change hands, and the same argument would apply there. If a restaurant had one, two or three units of residential accommodation above it, it could probably be included in the definition of residential property. On the whole, restaurant premises are neither very large nor very valuable, and therefore, by most of the criteria which one would expect courts to apply in determining whether a particular transaction fell within this legislation, they would include a transaction affecting a restaurant with one, two or three residential properties above it.
      I suppose that by far the biggest category of such properties would be shops. I do not know whether this would be an appropriate moment, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for me to declare another interest, as a director and a shareholder of a company with some substantial retailing activities. I do not know whether any of its properties might come under this definition. If they did, I should have thought it peculiarly inappropriate, because a transaction involving a supermarket and one, two or three flats would not seem to me to be ordinarily regarded as a transaction in residential property.
      It is a quite frequent occurrence these days for small office blocks to include a number of residential units. Once again, if there were only one, two or three of them, as the Bill stands it would seem that these transactions could, or indeed, would fall within the definition.
      One of the most powerful arguments that we can adduce in trying to restrict the definition of residential property, so that it applies to land which wholly consists of one, two or three dwellings on a site, is that if we do not—bearing in mind that I have itemised pubs, farms, restaurants, shops and offices as other categories of transaction which might be brought in—we shall surely end with legislation which is a great deal more complicated and more expensive.
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      I was gratified to read, in the speech of the hon. Member for Enfield, North (Mr. Davies), when he was proposing the Bill, the words:
      "The basis of my Bill is to minimise the degree of central bureaucratic control."—[Official Report 3rd February 1978; Vol. 943, c. 886.]
      I hope that those wise words will be borne in mind by the hon. Gentleman when he considers some of the other legislation which his hon. Friends bring before the House. I suggest to him that much of it seems to be going quite contrary to his proposal to
      "minimise the degree of central bureaucratic control."
      It seems to be the desire sometimes of the Government Front Bench—and of the Minister on occasions—to maximise the degree of central bureaucratic control, and we all suffer from it.
      If we are to bring in a lot of other transactions—which I should not have thought was the intention of the Bill or the understanding of the promoter—it will complicate the administration and make it more expensive, not just because we bring in additional transactions but also because the very nature of these transactions makes them a very great deal more complex.
      Once there is a commercial element in the transactions, there is the likelihood that, for example, goodwill will be involved. There are many other complications, perhaps, in regard to stock-in-trade. I have mentioned tenant right in respect of farms. There may be agreements relating to a proprietor who is carrying on a business or perhaps selling a business and opening up another shop to sell the same things in the same neighbourhood. That is a frequent occurrence.
      Apart from increasing the number of transactions which would be covered by the legislation—which in itself is undesirable—we would certainly increase the general complication of administration. Since that administration has to fall upon the local authorities, I strongly suggest that it would be undesirable also for that reason. Local authorities are understandably resentful of the number of occasions on which we in this House seem to pass legislation, well intentioned or not, which puts additional burdens on them. They are equally resentful about the number of occasions on which hon. Members on both sides of the House tell local authorities that they must be more

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      economical, that they must not put up the rates, that they must economise with staff, and set up joint committees to study the number of staff and so on. My local authority has asked me—and I would be surprised if other hon. Members have not had similar experiences—how it can be expected to be so efficient and economical in its administration if Parliament continually puts additional burdens on it.
      This is certainly one additional burden of consumer protection which we could simplify and reduce by accepting the amendment, and thereby taking out not merely a large number of transactions but a large number of relatively more complicated transactions. I am sure that the promoter will realise, when he looks through all the clauses which follow, that the complications increase every time, because each clause brings in another aspect which will have to apply to a wider range of activities. If we leave in this definition—which, as I have said, is crucial throughout the Bill if it defines what is to be held to be residential property—all sorts of anomalies will arise.
      There is, for example, interest on deposits. Whether this should be accumulated and payable in every case is a matter which we can properly discuss later. There are obviously arguments on that in connection with residential property. But I suggest to the promoter that there is certainly a different set of arguments about interest on deposits when these deposits relate to transactions on what is largely commercial property.
      Although the words that I am seeking to delete are
      "or to a substantial extent",
      as I have suggested, the "substantial extent" does not necessarily relate to the monetary value of the bits of the property, particularly when we take into account the problems which follow from the purchase of goodwill or stock-in-trade, or tenant right, and so on, which go with commercial property on a number of occasions.
      Even if the courts interpreted the words
      "or to a substantial extent"
      fairly strictly, based perhaps on rateable value we could still end with a situation in which, although the rateable value of
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      the non-residential part of the property was relatively small, or substantially less than half the total—which would quite likely bring that total property within the definition of the Bill—the actual money changing hands on the deposit or on the contract price for the total property would very substantially relate to the commercial part. In that case, legislation relating to interest on deposits for residential property would not be appropriate to commercial property.
      Problems of the same kind arise in connection with insurance and bonding, which come up in Clause 18. I should have thought that an agent who was required to have special insurance or bonding in connection with commercial propertise, because we caught them in this Bill incorrectly, might find a fresh set of difficulties and expenses being imposed upon him, and this would seem to be extremely undesirable. The same goes not just for the interest on deposits but for all the legislation on deposits and the extent to which they need to be kept separately.
      1.30 p.m.
      But some of the greatest problems arise when we come to dealing on one's own account. If we have such a wide definition of "residential property", the extent to which estate agents engaged in more or less ordinary commercial business may find themselves restricted is rather alarming.
      We know that solicitors can draft their own wills. Whether they are wise to do so is another matter. But there is nothing to stop them drafting their own wills and disposing in that way of any property which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been beneficent enough to leave them. Quite properly, they cannot draft other people's wills which include legacies to them. That is a very proper protection. But if we have legislation which says that an estate agent cannot sell his own office if it has one, two or three flats above it, we are getting to a situation where we say that a solicitor cannot draft his own will. All that the estate agent is doing is trying to dispose of his own property, and I am sure that the hon. Member for Enfield, North will agree that even the most generous-minded estate agent would find it undesirable if he were selling his office with one, two or three residential units

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      above it and had to have on that property the board of one of his competitors because he was not allowed to handle the transaction himself.
      Mr. John Fraser: The hon. Member has misread some of the later clauses. What the estate agent must do is hold the deposit himself. Exactly the same rule applies to a solicitor at the moment. But there is no restriction on an estate agent selling his own property.
      Mr. Sainsbury: I am grateful for the Minister's intervention. However, it is not confined only to that. We have a whole rigmarole of special conditions, declarations of interest, and so on which come in if we get to this stage. Even if they can all be overcome at a cost and at the expense of some delay, surely it is not the intention of the Bill to bring property transactions of this sort within the ambit of the Bill.
      I remind hon. Members of Clause 20 (5), where we read:
      "For the purposes of the section, an estate agent has a personal interest in residential property",
      which is why the definition of "residential property" is so important. If we want to know what is meant by "residential property", we have to look at the definition in Clause 2. If we are to have such a wide definition of "residential property", the estate agent could be held to have such an interest even if his employer or principal or an agent of his had an interest in any part of the commercial element of the residential property. I cannot believe that that was the intention of the hon. Member for Enfield, North in his excellent idea of improving consumer protection in these matters.
      There is one other aspect which we must take into account in considering this definition. Consequent upon the definition of "residential property", we have this idea of connected contracts. I can see that those who drafted the Bill did not want there to be a get-out from the protection of deposits and the purchaser's interest by it being possible to have a relatively phoney contract relating to the property, with the main transaction relating to the sale of, for example, the light fittings. It is proper to bring in connected contracts to ensure that ill-intentioned persons acting as estate agents, of whom happily
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      there are very few, do not try to avoid the intention of the Bill by such a device, especially as the use of such devices has occurred most in the sale of leasehold property in multi-occupation in inner-city areas—and in my constituency, where there is older property and where there have been some undesirable practices.
      I recognise that we must include connected contracts. But once we have brought connected contracts into the scope of the Bill and once we have brought in commercial transactions by this excessively wide definition of "residential property", ineviably connected contracts become excessively wide.
      I come back to the example of the restaurant which was referred to earlier. It is quite a normal transaction. There was a case of it the other day in my constituency. It is quite common for a restaurant to be sold with one, two or three residential properties above it and to have one of two connected contracts. One would say that the proprietor who was selling, because he was such a good chef, must stay on to be the chef, and there would be a connected contract to that effect. The other is when the good will that goes with the name over the door is what he purchaser is really after and he wants to make sure that the vendor does not set up in competition with him within, say, a mile, and so there would be a connected contract to that effect.
      The moment that we bring a whole range of commercial property into the definition of "residential property"—which seems to me to be silly, anyhow—we build up a vast range of problems in connected contracts.
      Bearing in mind that we wish to make progress with consumer protection and that time goes on, I summarise my arguments by saying that I take it to be the intention of the hon. Member for Enfield, North, from what he said on Second Reading, to strive to protect people who are buying their own homes. It is self-evident that the vast majority of those transactions involve single properties and no commercial element. I suggest that the words "to a substantial extent" are very vague and that we should always want to avoid doubt.
      Certainly we should try to achieve simplicity and economy of administration in

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      this legislation, as in any other, and we should try to remove from the Bill transactions in property which would be inappropriate to the nature of the control being proposed. Finally, I suggest that if the definition which I propose is said to be a little narrower than the ideal, surely that is to be preferred to leaving in a definition which is not only vague but is much too widely drawn.
      Mr. Bendall: I wish, Mr. Speaker, to move Amendment No. 8—
      Mr. Speaker: Perhaps I may assist the hon. Member. He may speak to Amendment No. 8, but only one amendment is moved at a time.
      Mr. Bendall: I am grateful, Mr. Speaker, for your guidance. In that event, perhaps I may be allowed to speak to Amendment No. 8.
      I am concerned with one specific area, which is where there are mixed hereditaments. Often there is a small corner shop where the living accommodation and the business use beneath it are rated as one, more often than not on a business rating. But it is usually the case that small corner shops, which are very poor commercially, are bought for the residential accommodation above them. I think that it would add to the essence of the Bill and clarify matters if some recognition of this fact could be written into the Bill in some way. I feel very strongly that these small corner shops and the people who buy them should benefit from being protected by the Bill.
      Mr. Moate: I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Sainsbury) for speaking about his amendment when I was not here to hear all of his case. There is something of a conflict between his amendment and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Bendall).
      Certainly it would be undesirable to bring within the scope of the Bill a whole range of essentially commercial properties. There is no doubt about that. Again, we are almost in a crisis of definition because this clause limits the nature of residential properties to one, two or three dwellings. We have had previous debates about where one draws the line.
      The hon. Member for Enfield, North (Mr. Davies) has argued very persuasively
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      that his intention is to limit the operations of the Bill to small residential transactions. That is a most desirable aim. However I am very sceptical about whether he is going the right way about achieving that aim. I doubt whether one can draw lines neatly like that in very undefined areas in legislative terms.
      However, if the idea is to apply the Bill essentially to residential properties, clearly it is undesirable to bring in restaurants and office blocks which could have two or three dwellings above them but which are essentially commercial in appearance and in the nature of their construction.
      Our concern is that we should not leave outside the scope of the Bill the type of property referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North. If we accepted the proposition of my hon. Friend the Member for Hove and deleted the words
      "or to a substantial extent"
      we would effectively cut out the small shop.
      Although I have no evidence to support this, it seems to me that problems could arise—particularly in London, where there is a large amount of buying and selling of small shops with residential accommodation attached—where there are agents who specialise in that particular type of property. It seems undesirable to leave that out of the scope of the Bill.
      Mr. Sainsbury: What I am suggesting is that at the moment one starts bringing in an ill-defined range of commercial property including shops, pubs, restaurants and offices, one is bringing in a whole new range of complications. In some cases one is bringing in, perhaps inadvertently, property transactions which are very substantially commercial, and which are not intended to be included within the protection of the Bill.
      Mr. Moate: It seems to me that, as frequently happens on discussion on this Bill, there is a clash between a social objective and the legal implications arising from it. Clearly, the hon. Member for Enfield, North does not wish to include general commercial transactions. On the other hand, he wishes to give protection to the small man buying a

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      residential property. Therefore, to a certain extent one has to trespass on commercial ground in order to protect the small buyer. This leads to some of the complications that have been mentioned.
      Mr. Bendall: That, of course, brings in the problem om business transfer agents and what evolves from them.
      1.45 p.m.
      Mr. Moate: I see the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North is making about the benefit of extending protection to people who buy the flat above the shop, people who are, perhaps, buying the whole property because they want the flat and are not all that interested in the shop. But if one tries to do this through the wording in the Bill defining residential property, one brings in a whole wide range of other commercial transactions.
      Surely it would be better to have a definition of this property—which is crucial to the Bill—which is a little too narrow than to have one which is far too wide. Perhaps there is not an ideal, but I believe that the present definition is certainly far too wide. There is a genuine dilemma here and one can see both sides of the case. To exclude the people about whom I am concerned is wrong because surely they are particularly vulnerable. Maybe the Bill could be redefined, although I do not know how.
      We are talking about tens of thousands of small businesses—essentially small shops plus living accommodation. To exclude them while one is trying to protect the home buyer is very wrong because these people are often committing much more than just a deposit. They are committing their whole lives and livelihoods—sometimes 30, 40 or even 50 per cent. of the cost of the property. They are very much at risk. Very often they get short-term mortgages with very high repayments. I would have thought that in some way or other we should extend the legislation to protect them.
      In Committee our fear was the reverse of that. We were worried whether the term "substantial extent" went far enough to protect these people. We were assured at the time that the term "substantial" did not necessarily mean that the majority part had to be residential. "Substantial"
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      could be even a 20 per cent. stake and the rest could be commercial. To that extent the words "substantial amount" did bring in the small shopkeepers.
      On the other hand—and here I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hove—it brings in other commercial areas that we do not intend to protect. I do not claim to know the answer. However is incumbent upon the promoter of the Bill and Government Ministers to look at this problem and to see whether a clearer definition can be established. I would not have thought it would be too difficult for the promoter to do this. One feels that he has tried to avoid definition of estate agency work and of estate agents. I think that it would be desirable to try to achieve clearer definition. Perhaps in another place they will look at this more painstakingly and carefully. Perhaps they will not allow this sloppy legal definition to go through.
      Mr. Bendall: That is exactly what I was trying to achieve with my amendment.
      Mr. Moate: I have some sympathy for my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North, and on this occasion I am not inclined to accept totally the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Hove. I can see the dangers which could arise. Surely it is not too difficult for the hon. Member for Enfield, North to find a solution to exclude substantial commercial elements. If he could do that he would meet a genuine point of view.
      I wish to express concern about whether the Bill really does properly cover large multi-occupancy blocks. I presume that if an estate agent buys an old house which might be sub-divided into six or seven units, the purchase of that house would be outside the scope of the Bill. If he resold these units as individual dwellings, of course he would be within the terms of the Bill.
      We must bear in mind that we are talking about big business in the buying and selling of multi-occupancy units. It is not inconceivable that the estate agent would not resell them to individuals but perhaps retain ownership to a degree. We must remember that we are talking about fairly ingenious people. Is it satisfactory to limit protection to one, two or three dwellings, and perhaps to exclude the very wide-ranging practice of having

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      large houses broken down into a large number of units? I am not totally satisfied that the Bill is not too narrowly drawn and will exclude large areas of residential property, multi-occupancy old houses or, indeed. purpose-built flats.
      Again this is not a satisfactory definition. If I had to err at this stage, I would err on the side of the amendment proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North rather than that of my hon. Friend the Member for Hove It is almost a choice of evils and I am not sure that the promoter should have put us in this position.
      Mr. Bryan Davies: I emphasise that I recognise the difficulties which have been raised by Opposition Members in terms of these two amendments. Clearly, it is recognised on both sides of the House that the intention behind the measure ought, if possible, to extend beyond the strict residential category and to take into its scope the points made by the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Bendall) regarding the small shop and the small business. That seems entirely appropriate. We are dealing with a class of consumer who is similar to the residential owner-occupier, and I am seeking within the framework of the Bill to cater for that category.
      How to do that without raising the fears of the hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Sainsbury) that I have broadened a category which it is difficult accurately to define or to create the extreme difficulty of having to deal with all areas of property, in which the issue of consumer protection scarcely arises with the same degree of force as it does with residential property, is the great difficulty.
      Mr. Sainsbury: I wonder whether it might help to shorten the hon. Gentleman's remarks and enable us to make progress if I say that, on reflection and in the light of what has been said, it seems to me that Amendment No. 8 meets both the points that have been made. If it is to be a mixed hereditament, it would exclude the wider commercial transactions which I believe complicate the Bill, but bring in those small shops and, indeed, properties which are shops but where the residential accommodation is of an interest to the purchaser, because normally a mixed hereditament would have no separate access. It would be a very small
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      commercial element. Therefore, looking at the matter in that light, I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman might perhaps accept Amendment No. 8 if Amendment No. 7 were to be withdrawn.
      Mr. Davies: I am grateful for that indication from the hon. Member for Hove. I am not sure that I can go with him all the way in terms of accepting Amendment No. 8, because that raises problems about the accuracy of definition. We are in a tricky area whilst at the same time being united in the objective of what needs to be covered. I give the assurance that, if hon. Members for Hove and for Ilford, North are prepared to withdraw or not move their amendments, I shall consider them further with a view to putting down a more satisfactory definition in another place.
      Mr. Sainsbury: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

    Clause 3

      ORDERS PROHIBITING UNFIT PERSONS FROM DOING ESTATE AGENCY WORK
      Mr. Moate: I beg to move Amendment No. 9, in page 3, line 39, leave out
      'the Director is satisfied that'.
      Mr. Speaker: With this amendment, it will be convenient to discuss Amendment No. 12, in page 4, leave out lines 4 to 7.
      Mr. Moate: My hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) has had to leave temporarily However, he expressed the hope that I might move the amendment for him. I do so, albeit somewhat inadequately compared with the way in which he would have moved it.
      The amendment concerns a relatively small but important point which requires some clarification. Indeed, perhaps the amendment is acceptable because, as the Bill stands, these words would seem to be unnecessary.
      Clause 3 gives the Director General of Fair Trading power to make an order prohibiting unfit people from doing estate agency work. That, broadly, is the intention of the clause. The Director General is obviously restricted in the way in which he exercises that power, and clearly we

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      should be concerned that he is properly restricted.
      One of the circumstances in which he can exercise that power is where an individual has been convicted of
      "an offence involving fraud or other dishonesty or violence".
      The clause then goes on to refer to "any other offence" which might have been committed which would give grounds for an order by the Director General. So far so good. These are clearly specified circumstances. But why do we have the words:
      "the Director is satisfied that that person—
      (a) has been convicted"?
      Why are we giving any element of discretion to the Director General of Fair Trading with regard to a conviction? Either there is conviction or there is not. Surely it is enough to say that this power shall not be exercisable unless that person has been convicted of an offence. To say that the Director needs to be satisfied that an offence has been committed, with regard to clear convictions, is totally unnecessary and that phraseology could come out.
      If we try to find out why that wording is in the clause, we have to look further, and we come to areas which we shall be considering in later groupings, so I shall not pursue them at length now. For example, we come to the committing of
      "racial or sex discrimination in the course of estate agency work".
      It concerns me very much that the Director General simply needs to be satisfied that the estate agent has
      "committed racial or sex discrimination in the course of estate agency work."
      That should be a matter of fact which can be tested in some other way. Surely it cannot be right to leave it to the Director to satisfy himself that such discrimination has occurred. The inclusion of the words
      "the Director is satisfied that"
      is, I should have thought, totally unnecessary and in some respects could be positively damaging. It is a simple matter. I hope that we may have a clear answer, explanation or acceptance of the proposition that these words be deleted.
      Amendment No. 12 proposes to leave out another of these wide-ranging powers
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      that have been inserted—the extra clause to cover any loopholes which perhaps the draftsman has not thought about.
      Subsection (1) (d) reads:
      "in the course of estate agency work has engaged in any practice which has been declared by order of the Secretary of State to be undesirable."
      That kind of provision concerns me very much. Admittedly, the order would in future be subject to the affirmative procedure. Both Houses would have the opportunity to consider such an order and, in theory, to reject it. But in practice, as opposed to theory, we know how difficult it is to get such orders taken on the Floor of the House and to consider them at any length. We cannot amend such orders once they are before the House. Very few affirmative orders are withdrawn or negated. I am glad that the Minister of State had experience recently of having to withdraw some orders in face of House of Commons and public opposition. But, generally speaking, that is not the case. Therefore, it is not much of a safeguard. Yet we are suggesting that in future the Secretary of State can declare other practices to be undesirable.
      Surely we now know what these undesirable practices are. We are dealing with specific offences. The promoter of the Bill has tried to prescribe certain offences and the means of dealing with them—the deposit powers, bonding and so on. Therefore, why must we have this blanket additional power that in future the Secretary of State may declare any other activities as being undesirable.
      I can think of examples in relation to estate agency such as misdescriptions of properties, and so on. But are not such matters covered by other statutes—the Trade Description Act, and so on? The Minister shakes his head. I suggest that it is important to specify what we are trying to prevent. If we can specify such matters, why not specify them in the Bill now rather than leave it in this vague form? We should try to be specific rather than vague. This is a vague proposition. It is undesirable to leave it in this form. The House is entitled to an explanation.
      2 p.m.
      Mr. John Fraser: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) for his brevity. I make an appeal to

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      him and he understands why I hope that we can make some progress on the Bill so that it can be considered by another place.
      The hon. Member talked about the Secretary of State having the power by order to declare certain practices undesirable. I understand his anxiety about the Secretary of State exercising an arbitary categorisation of undesirable practices. That power is limited by the obligation to consult. It might be best to give an example of what might happen if a practice were considered to be against the interests of consumers and if it were agreed by the profession that a particular practice should be outlawed.
      The exercise of that power would not be dissimilar from, for example, the Law Society saying that ambulance chasing by solicitors was undesirable. The estate agents and consumers might at some time in the future decide that a practice which is not a breach of the criminal law is nevertheless something which should not be practised by a reputable estate agent. I am hypothesising.
      Let us suppose that somebody engages in the practice of soliciting recently bereaved widows with a view to selling their property within a short time of death. That could cause a great deal of upset. That might be the type of practice which, after consultation and agreement with consumers and estate agents, might be enshrined in a code of practice. It might be agreed that that is not the type of thing that any reputable estate agent should do.
      Given that that type of practice would be involved and given that any agreement would follow consultation and scrutiny by the House, it is fairly reasonable way of dealing with practices which we cannot anticipate but which could arise. In essence the situation is not dissimilar from the powers in the Fair Trading Act under the consumer protection advisory committee procedure which specifies those practices which might be against the economic interests of the consumer which can be prescribed in future but which are not illegal now.
      The hon. Member also raised the issue of the Director General satisfying himself that the events have taken place. I make it clear that the Director General can make no judgment about whether racial
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      tary of State exercising an arbitrary cateor sexual discrimination has been practised. That is delimited by Schedule 7 of the Bill. There must have been a finding by a court or industrial tribunal or a non-discrimination notice against which there has been no appeal. Those events must have taken place in the same way as a conviction in a court. The Director General has to satisfy himself that there has been a conviction or find-
      The Director General has to investigate and come to a judgment after giving the estate agent a chance to make representations. The right to make those representations set out. He must listen to the representations and pleas which are put to him before he comes to an opinion. If, in the opinion of the estate agent, he comes to the wrong conclusion, there is an appeal of a judicial nature. It is not to a court but it is subject to the control of the Council on Tribunals. Without the word "satisfy" a nonsense would be made of trying to make a judgment on the general fitness of the estate agent. This is really the converse of not having any form of licensing.
      This strikes a fair balance. There is adequate protection against any practice being proscribed arbitrarily or capriciously by the Secretary of State. I hope that my remarks reassure the House.
      Mr. Moate: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
      Mr. Neubert: I beg to move Amendment No. 13, in page 4 leave out lines 8 and 9.
      Mr. Speaker: With this we may discuss the following amendments: No. 14, in page 4 line 8 after 'has', insert
      'been adjudged by an Industrial Tribunal or a court of law to have'.
      No. 27, in clause 5, page 6, line 39 leave out subsection (5).
      No. 32, in clause 9 page 11, line 1 leave out subsection (6).
      No. 64, in page 33, line 1 leave out Schedule 1.
      Mr. Neubert: The amendment involves a feature of the Bill to which many people have taken exception. I do not mean only hon. Members, although that

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      would be important enough, but I include those professional bodies who would otherwise give unqualified support to the Bill and wish to see it enacted without delay. I put the matter in perspective. We must recognise that the Bill introduces a concept of negative licensing by which estate agents are not subject to bureaucratic control and registration and all that that entails but are required to fulfil certain standards of practice and, in Clause 21, minimum standards of competence.
      In seeking that strengthened self-regulation estate agents are following in the path of many other professions, notably medicine and the law, and more recently, credit and insurance brokers. The Bill seeks to regulate the profession with its agreement as expressed by its professional institutions at one remove. To do that it requires certain sanctions. Those sanctions are conferred on the Director General of Fair Trading, who is given considerable powers under the Bill. The principal penalty—which is severe—is the loss of livelihood. The estate agent will be banned from continuing his work if he breaches certain standards or commits certain offences.
      Not all of those offences, which cover a wide range, are directly relevant to estate agency as a business activity. The clause goes wide in other subsections. Not only does it include offences of a criminal nature, such as fraud and other dishonesty or violence, but it makes allowance for any other offence as defined by the Secretary of State. It allows for offences against the Bill itself, which is logical. Finally, it gives the Secretary of State the opportunity to declare that certain practices are undesirable.
      The catchment of the clause is extensive. It includes—and this is its most objectionable feature—that if an estate agent is found guilty and convicted of racial or sexual discrimination, in addition to the normal penalties provided under current legislation, he will be subject to a further penalty—the loss of his livelihood. It is that to which estate agents and their institutions naturally take exception.
      It is also objectionable on three counts. Whatever the merits of the race and sex discrimination legislation and whatever attitude one takes to it—and I have a
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      marked lack of enthusiasm—it cannot be right that certain people should be singled out for a particularly severe penalty under those provisions. What is the justification for it?
      Objections are made because, first, it provides for a duplication of the law which, if not stopped, will develop and increase the complexity and abundance of legislation. This tendency is one of the most frequent and familiar grounds for complaint by the public and professions. If we provide in every subsequent Bill for offences which are already the subject of the parent Act to be the subject of further penalty in different areas of our everyday life, where will it end? If that happens every Bill concerning consumer protection or the regulation of professions to ensure higher standards could include such a provision even if the Acts in question are recent. The Sex Discrimination Act became law in 1975 and the Race Relations Act in 1976. Yet here we are being asked to add a further layer of legislative provision to penalise those who are guilty of offences of this nature.
      The second main objective must be that the Bill provides a form of double jeopardy for estate agents. They are at risk not only in their everyday lives, just as everyone else is, within the terms of those Acts, for any offence that they might commit through discriminating on grounds of sex or race, but in their work as estate agents where they risk incurring the steep penalty of losing their jobs and their ability to work.
      That puts them at a disadvantage with other professions because, although it may be argued that the other professions are subject to similar limitations on their practices, those limitations are contained within voluntary codes of self regulation. It is different in the case of solicitors and medicine where, quite rightly, critical conditions are imposed upon practitioners, but they are at least self-imposed penalties. The Bill provides an unwelcome innovation in that the law will provide such penalties for estate agents.
      My third objection is that this practice in one way diverts the House of Commons from the true intent, purpose and extent of legislation to which it is asked to give its support. By that I mean that when considering the 1975 and 7976 Acts the House of Commons took them at their

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      face value as offering an offence in certain circumstances against people either in their business or other lives. If it had been known then that further layers of penalty would be made there might not have been support for those original Bills. It is worth considering whether if subsequently these Acts are to be built into much more formidable legislative monuments to this principle, we could find ourselves holding back legislation for fear of what it would bring in its trail. Here, no more than two or three years after the original legislation, we have further turns of the screw.
      For those three principal objections I continue to resist the idea that the estate agents should be subject to this special penalty. If the sponsor of the Bill were to seek to withdraw that provision he would have the gratitude of myself and of the estate agents, many of whom have been consulting him and have made the point to him directly.
      Mr. Barney Hayhoe: My hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Mr. Neubert) has made a formidable case on the questions of double jeopardy and of individuals or a profession being subject to a new series of penalties under the Bill, and it deserves careful consideration. Like, I am sure, the vast majority of hon. Members, I abhor discrimination on racial or sexual grounds. Nevertheless, I feel that this provision deserves to be looked at more carefully.
      I wish to deal principally with my amendment, Amendment No. 14. which is of a more limited nature. A constituent who is a leading member of the profession, who is actively engaged in estate agency and is a former president of one of the professional bodies and an office holder in some of the others has written to me on a point of concern about the clause.
      2.15 p.m.
      He suggests that a firm against whom a complaint of, for example, racial discriminational had been made might inadvertently fail to attend the hearing before the Commission for Racial Equality when the complaint was being heard. The Commission could then form a view that an offence had been committed. Through failing inadvertently to turn up to defend the action the defendant could find subsequently that a non-discrimination notice
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      had been issued against it. That not being wholly understood, the end result on a quite minor matter might be the loss of livelihood for the individuals concerned.
      It would obviously be wrong—and I am sure it is not the sponsor's intention—that the Bill should contain a power which, as my constituent has said, would
      "give the ability to put a man out of business because somebody has formed the opinion that he has committed an offence".
      I am sure that that is not intended, but that might be how the Bill would operate. I hope that either the sponsor or the Minister will examine this point, because it surely must be important, even if an acceptable answer is given on the substantial points of concern advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Rom-ford, that the clause should be drawn tightly enough to prevent unfairness and injustice in the way that I have suggested. I hope that we may have an undertaking that this matter will be looked at in the other place and a clarification made if necessary.
      Mr. Andrew Mackay: I wish to declare an interest as a practising estate agent and builder. I have given the Bill general support throughout its stages, but I have considerable reservations about this clause. For that reason I wish to associate myself with the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Mr. Neubert). What does such a provision have to do with estate agency? On the whole this is a good Bill which will help the consumer and respectable and far-sighted estate agents. I am anxious that it should gain all credit outside this place and should be fully accepted. But this is the clause to which so many members of the profession and other observers have strongly objected.
      Sex and race discrimination are just two of many crimes, so why have they been specified in the clause? I hope I am not being too churlish when I say that it appears to some of us that these might be the pet interests of the sponsor of the Bill and his colleagues. We can see no justification for their inclusion when other crimes are omitted.
      If individuals break the law in these respects they will be brought before the courts and appropriate penalties imposed

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      if the defendants are found guilty. I am not sure that in a just society people should have to pay twice for a crime, particularly when the second penalty is deprivation of livelihood. If the hon. Member for Enfield, North (Mr. Davies) is not happy with the punishment set out in the original Acts, he should seek to increase that punishment, not in a Private Member's Bill which will then impose further burdens on somebody who has already paid his debt to society.
      I was taken with what my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mr. Hayhoe) said about an estate agent being reported to either the Commission for Racial Equality or the Equal Opportunities Commission, often not realising that he should attend and then being found guilty without having been present.
      There are often many reasons for selling property to somebody. It is not always because he has offered the highest price. On many occasions one rejects an offer from somebody who is offering more in favour of somebody offering slightly less who can complete the transaction faster. Alternatively, if a person does not have a property to sell, he may be preferred to someone who offers more money. Somebody who has a property to sell may have problems and delays. An estate agent may accept the offer of somebody of greater financial standing who will have a better chance of raising the finance for a mortgage. All those factors have to be taken into account.
      When we say to somebody that we cannot accept his offer and the person is a single lady or a member of an ethnic minority group, occasionally he or she will say that the reason for our accepting the offer is that that person is female or coloured. Nothing could be further from the truth. Any self-respecting estate agent discriminates only against one person, and that is the bad purchaser in favour of the good purchaser. I cannot imagine there being estate agents who are worried about the colour of a person's skin or his or her sex. Estate agents are interested in getting the best possible price as quickly as possible for their clients—and their commission and fees therefrom.
      Therefore, it is easy to become enmeshed in race relations legislation and the equal opportunities legislation when one is an estate agent without discrimina-
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      tings, but acting only in the best interests of one's client. I ask the hon. Member for Enfield, North to reconsider whether the clause is necessary. I do not necessarily ask him to withdraw it now, because I never hope for too much. However, will be perhaps give it further consideration when the Bill goes to another place? Will he take into account the genuine concern on this side of the House and in the profession, not of people who are racialists or male chauvinist pigs but of people who wish his Bill well and those who are practising estate agents who want to be able to act in the best interests of their clients without undue Government legislative interference?
      Mr. Bryan Davies: We had a debate on this issue in Committee. I am grateful for the opportunity today of meeting some points expressed by Conservative Members.
      I stress that the intention of the clause is not to punish the estate agent for the second time, deliberately to create double jeopardy or to single him out as a person who ought to suffer twice. The intention is to ensure that the major thrust of the Bill is sustained in terms of a genuine form of consumer protection.
      Conservative Members will note two extremely important points about race and sex discrimination. First, the Director General can begin to act—and then he does not act automatically to punish an estate agent—to consider the man's fitness to pursue a practice only after a finding has been arrived at by a properly constituted body. In other words, the Director General is not the person who defines whether the initial offence has been committed. Surely, in our society now we should recognise that the concepts of racial and sexual equality should be sustained adequately in the crucial area of the purchase and selling of property.
      Mr. Sainsbury: It seems to me that nobody who has spoken in the debate has disagreed with the need to sustain the campaign against racial and sexual discrimination. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mr. Hayhoe) pointed out, we have legislation on the statute book to do just that. If a shopkeeper refuses to serve somebody because of race or sex and is prosecuted for that—quite rightly—and is found guilty, he can go back and open the shop

      697
      again the next day and carry on trading. Why should the estate agent be treated differently?
      Mr. Davies: The hon. Gentleman has anticipated the second point that I was hoping to make in order to sustain the main burden of my argument. The buying and selling of property is of greater substance and import to society than that of a shopkeeper who is concerned with the buying and selling of goods. The consequences of the transaction in the selling of property—this is why consumer protection is necessary—are fundamental to the nature of our society.
      Hon. Members on both sides of the House favour the development of owner-occupation. It is an important development in our society which helps substantially to determine social relations. Conservative Members ought to express great sympathy with the concept in the crucial area of the transfer of property. Racial or sexual discrimination can, and sometimes do, produce more detrimental effects on the health of our society than do more orthodox and trivial transactions.
      Mr. Neubert: Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that his point was foreseen at the time of the passing of the original Acts and was the ground for the introduction of those Acts? Why are we now to duplicate the point?
      Mr. Davies: One should recognise how racial or sexual prejudice can emerge and be translated into action. An advantage in this part of the clause, which would ensure that estate agents did not practise discrimination, is that estate agents will be better able to resist the pressure that is often acknowledge to come from certain sections of the public that they should act in an unfair and discriminatory way. The estate agent has a responsibility to his client, the relationship is one of trust and the estate agent acts as the agent of the seller, and in meeting that professional obligation, he may be subjected by his client to the kind of pressure which society as a whole and we, as legislators, regard as unhealthy. Within the framework of the clause, estate agents will be better equipped to resist such unfair pressure.
      2.30 p.m.
      Mr. MacKay: Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that existing punishments for
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      contravening race relations and equal opportunities legislation are not a sufficient deterrent to stop the estate agents contravening those Acts?
      Does he not think that the fact that an estate agent can be brought before the courts is sufficient for him to tell a client who tries to bring undue pressure to bear—and this sort of pressure is occasionally put upon an estate agent—that if he did as the client asked, he would be brought before the courts? In such circumstances, I have always said that a client cannot expect me to break the law and that has always been enough to enable me to act correctly.
      Mr. Davies: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would be able to resist such pressure with ease, but I am sure that he recognises that, from time to time, estate agents come under intense pressure. In consultations about the Bill, it has been put to me on a number of occasions that the difficulty is not that estate agents would act in a discriminatory way but that they have an obligation to clients who can sometimes make it a particularly difficult obligation to fulfil. The Bill gives estate agents a greater capacity to resist the development of discrimination in an area of housing where we want to see discrimination ended. That is the basis of the clause.
      I recognise the point made by the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mr. Hayhoe) and if the consequences could be as he suggests, that would be quite unsatisfactory. If he will withdraw his amendment, I undertake to look at the point again to see whether this problem can be met.
      Mr. Moate: I am disappointed with the hon. Gentleman's reply. When he started his speech, I thought that he was about to acknowledge the force of the arguments and that he would accept the amendments. He said that he would go a long way to meeting the various points that had been made, but he did not.
      The hon. Gentleman gave a helpful answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mr. Hayhoe), but that was on a technical point. I should have thought that it was elementary that someone should be adjudged by an industrial tribunal or a court of law

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      to have committed racial discrimination. That is not much of a concession, though it is welcome for what it is.
      The fundamental arguments have not been met. The hon. Gentleman should have tried a little harder to meet the general proposition that an individual should not have to pay twice for the same offence. Sometimes people do have to pay twice, but we do not legislate to achieve that end. If a person is found guilty of sexual or racial discrimination, no doubt his business and reputation will suffer, but it is not for Parliament to lay down a second penalty.
      The hon. Gentleman argued that such discrimination is a more serious offence than dealing in groceries—
      Mr. Sainsbury: It is not an offence to deal in groceries.
      Mr. Moate: I see that I have said quite the wrong thing to my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Sainsbury). I am not sure that I should even try to correct it, but I hope that my hon. Friend understands what I meant.
      Clearly, misdemeanours by estate agents could have more serious implications for the victim than the offence in the sale of goods from a small shop, but if there are graduations of seriousness of crime surely that has been taken care of in the original legislation or can be dealt with in the courts. It does not warrant a second attack on the very livelihood of the estate agent who will presumably already have suffered some penalty under the original Act. The hon. Member for Enfield, North (Mr. Davies) has not begun to make out a case for including an extra penalty.
      But it goes further than that. The discrimination Acts have such an uncertain effect on our society and are such experimental measures that to impose these, of all Acts, as the basis of a second layer of penalties is totally wrong. Estate agents are vulnerable to accusations of sexual or racial discrimination and they have some reason to be afraid of the extra power given in the Bill to the Director General of Fair Trading.
      The danger is that, instead of protecting the consumer against serious frauds by a tiny minority of estate agents, we shall create such a range of offences that
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      we would give the opportunity to every petty complainant to bring pressure to bear on estate agents, to take more and more accusations to the Director General, and to pester legitimate agents with a series of trivial complaints. Indeed, the threat of such complaints could bully an estate agent into accepting a contract that he may not deem to be correct.
      We are opening the dor to thousands of complaints, while not necessarily protecting the consumer. The hon. Member for Enfield, North suggested that the Bill would give an estate agent greater power to resist undue pressure from his client. I presume he is referring to a client who is racially discriminatory and tells an agent that his house should not be sold to a member of another racial group. The answer to that is that there are already statutes to give the estate agent protection. If he is being bullied in that way, he should tell the client that he is prevented from doing what the client wishes because of the Race Relations Act. If the hon. Member believes that the penalties are not adequate, he should direct his attention to the original Acts and not try to deal with the matter in this Bill.
      I am sure that the hon. Gentleman understands the strength of feeling on this subject. Almost every estate agent and most professional bodies and hon. Members have asked for this provision to be taken out, yet he is reluctant to do so and has given no convincing arguments for retaining it. Every hon. Member who has spoken has said that he wants to see sexual and racial equality as a general practice, but the provisions in the Bill would exacerbate the problems unnecessarily and would alienate the people whom the hon. Gentleman is most keen to support. I do not know why he is taking such an obdurate attitude.
      Estate agents are in a difficult position. For example, a lady may wish to purchase a property, but the estate agent may feel that she is less likely than another, a male, purchaser to get a mortgage. That might be no reflection upon her status with a building society; it might simply mean that the other person had higher earnings or some other legitimate commercial consideration. The estate agent would be in some difficulty if she, or equally a man, could allege unfair discrimination. But her power would be

      701
      even greater if she could threaten that he would lose his livelihood.
      Mr. Brian Davies: Only if the finding of the appropriate body was definitive.
      Mr. Moate: One accepts that the process might not result in a conviction, but would not anyone go to great lengths to avoid being taken to these tribunals? Most people would give in long before that.
      The same problem arises with racial discrimination. Even their firmest supporters believe that these two Acts have not worked very effectively. Perhaps one cannot expect that in so short a time. Most prosecutions have been on trivial matters and have not brought the legislation into great repute. There are areas of human opinion and patterns of behaviour which have taken root over many years.
      I am not saying that these attempts to legislate were wrong, but they are still experimental. To impose further penalties is wrong. The hon. Gentleman could have met the views of the House and outside opinion. He would not undermine these powers because they exist elsewhere. It is unfortunate that he has refused to do so. That reflects on his desire to carry the legislation through in a non-controversial way. One still hopes that he will change his mind, but one is not encouraged.
      Amendment negatived.

  ROYAL ASSENT
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Murton): I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified Her Royal Assent to the following Acts:

  1. Gun Barrel Proof Act 1978

  2. European Assembly Elections Act 1978

  3. Shipbuilding (Redundancy Payments) Act 1978

  4. Medical Act 1978.

  ESTATE AGENTS BILL
  As amended (in the Standing Committee), again considered.
  ESTATE AGENTS BILL
    Clause 3

      ORDERS PROHIBITING UNFIT PERSONS FROM DOING ESTATE AGENCY WORK
      Mr. Sainsbury: I beg to move Amendment No. 15, in page 4, leave out lines 13 to 15.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: I understand that it will be convenient to discuss at the same time the following amendments:
      No. 21, in page 5, line 7, leave out '(d) and insert '(c)'.
      No. 22, in page 5, line 10, leave out 'or paragraph (c)'.
      Mr. Sainsbury: Amendments Nos. 21 and 22 are purely consequential on Amendment No. 15, which is designed to remove the Secretary of State's power to prescribe by order further practices as grounds for prohibiting persons from doing estate agency work. Those powers are subject to affirmative resolution, but I suspect that all hon. Members—more particularly those who make up the Opposition at any time—recognise the limitations of that procedure. Sometimes Secretaries of State who might be moved to do things which are not reasonable would find it possible to do so by the affirmative order procedure.
      2.45 p.m.
      If we are to give such vague and wide powers, even subject to that procedure, we must be sure that it is necessary. Mr. Smith, the great authority on our constitutional and administrative law, warned against Parliament delegating to Ministers the power to make regulations on matters of general principle
      "unless it lays down in the enabling Acts standards delineating the boundaries of the delegate's discretion."
      In this case, we have no standards and no indication of the sort of matters about which the Secretary of State might wish to bring in orders.
      Mr. Smith said that this power should be used only to deal with a dire emergency or an exceptional situation. I am sure that the promoter will not suggest that that should apply to the estate and

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      agency world, but the paragraph starts with the words
      "in the course of estate agency wok".
      That is a relief, because presumably it means that an estate agent cannot be debarred for his table manners or football hooliganism, but even with that limitation a number of matters could be the subject of directions which I am sure the hon. Member does not intend.
      In the near future, when we have a Conservative Secretary of State for the Environment vigorously and effectively promoting the widespread sale of council houses—something that the public want—a doctrinaire Labour-voting estate agent might not wish to co-operate. As the Bill is drafted, it would be within the Secretary of State's power to say that anyone doing that work must take on commissions relating to the sale of council houses.
      Mr. John Fraser: The hon. Member does not do himself justice with that example. Behind this matter is the sort of practice that his own profession lists as undesirable. It would certainly be the intention to let the initiative come from the professions and consumers, not from the Secretary of State. That is a bizarre example. Secondly, it should be clear—if not, it can be looked at—that this power is for the protection of consumers.
      I hope that the hon. Gentleman will try to deal with some of the real possible problems which his own profession debars, rather than somewhat fantastical ones. If it is necessary to say that this should be only for the protection of consumers, it must be subject to consultation in the first place. We would probably make more constructive progress that way.
      Mr. Sainsbury: It is always reassuring to hear such words from a Minister, but we do not know that the Minister of State or the present Secretary of State will be those responsible for administering this legislation. If the Bill were to be enacted, we are fairly confident that they would not be responsible for more than a very short time.
      Parliament must have regard, quite properly, to what is being put on the statute book and what may follow from it, including the abuse of far too widely
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      drawn powers. The Minister of State says soothingly that the power will never be used for that purpose, but he did not say that it cannot be used for that purpose. There is nothing in the Bill to prevent its being used for that purpose. Indeed, the opposite situation could operate and a Conservative estate agent could object to something concerning the Community Land Act. Practically every estate agent—whether of any political party or of no political party—objects to that useless piece of legislation. There is nothing in the Bill as drafted to stop this power being used in connection with activities of that kind.
      The Minister of State blandly says that there will be consultation. I wish that he were right. However, subsection (5) says:
      "the Secretary of State shall consult the Director and any such bodies representative of persons carrying on estate agency work and of consumers as he thinks fit".
      The Secretary of State does not have to consult anybody if he does not think fit. The Bill does not say, as the Minister somewhat misleadingly suggested, that the power would be used only at the behest of the institutions. A later amendment of mine suggests that at least the name of the leading institution should be included in the subsection.
      If the Bill said that an order would be made only at the request of the institutions, to which the vast majority of the members of the estate agency profession belong, it would be possible to view this far-ranging power in a different light. But the Bill does not say that. The initiative to introduce an order is left with the Secretary of State. It leaves entirely with the Secretary of State the extent to which he shall consult any bodies other than the Director General of Fair Trading who is, anyway, an appointee and I would scarcely have thought he could be regarded as being independent.
      The order is to be approved by affirmative resolution and, therefore, will eventually have to come before the House, but it is not impossible that a Secretary of State who behaved unreasonably would be able to get members of his party to support his unreasonable behaviour, particularly in a vote on an affirmative resolution.

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      As I am conscious that a large number of amendments must be dealt with in a relatively short time, I will not detain the House for long on this. Surely we would need to have, if we are to approve the inclusion of these wide-ranging discretionary powers, clear evidence of why this provision is necessary. Why is it necessary to include it? If something so drastic occurred as to make it necessary, I am sure the House would be prepared to consider further legislation. The House would always be ready to consider legislation proposed from the Back Benches or from the Government Front Bench, whatever Government were in power, if something affecting the protection of consumers buying homes proved to be necessary.
      The Bill is all-embracing. Some of us find it too all-embracing. What is delaying its progress at present is the attempt of the hon. Member for Enfield, North (Mr. Davies) to include everything—belt, braces and even sitting down in case they do not work. Unless there is good reason for the inclusion of this subsection, I suggest that we would do without it and that then quicker progress would be made with the Bill.
      Mr. John Fraser: As I said, I think that the hon. Gentleman was being a little bizarre in the examples he gave. The purpose of the subsection is this. It is an essential concomitant of the philosophy of not having positive licensing and registration but leaving the regulation of the profession to estate agents themselves. I believe that to be right. The less bureaucracy and interference we have the better.
      Secondly, if it is sought to put too much detail into primary legislation—this has been a great mistake, in my view, in the great detail of the Consumer Credit Act—a lack of flexibility emerges which can prove most unfortunate in the future.
      Thirdly, I gave an example earlier of the type of practice which could be characterised as undesirable. It would be, for example, the soliciting of a bereaved widow very soon after her husband's death, or the attendance at funerals by estate agents. If it were the general view of estate agents and consumers that were consulted that such practices should be stopped. that could eventually be declared to be an undesirable practice.
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      I say at once that nothing follows from the fact that such a practice has been listed by the House of Commons as an undesirable practice. That is only a trigger event. There would have to be a representation to the Director General that the undesirable practice was being followed. The Director General would have to be satisfied that there was material in all the circumstances that the carrying on of that practice made the estate agent unfit. The estate agent would have to be given the opportunity to make representations before an order was made and he could even then contest the matter under an appeal system to be set up under the Bill.
      Mr. Sainsbury: May I remind the Minister that he said a few moments ago that he wanted to reduce bureaucracy? Let him reflect on what he has just said in the light of that.
      Mr. Fraser: That is bizarre. I do not believe that the protection of rights, whether of estate agents or anybody else, by means of an appeals system is bureaucracy. I define that as justice.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: I want to correct something. I thought that the Minister of State was intervening. I did not realise that the hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Sainsbury) had completed his speech. I assume that the House will take it that I have proposed the Question on Amendment No. 15.
      Mr. Moate: It was good to hear the Minister declare his belief in the need to reduce bureaucracy and to say that legislation had been too detailed, particularly in consumer affairs.
      Mr. John Fraser: I did not say that particularly. I am all in favour of reducing bureaucracy, eliminating forms, and so on. The more we can do that, the better.
      Mr. Moate: The Minister referred to the Consumer Credit Act. If he did not say so, most other people would say that in consumer protection matters bureaucracy had gone a little mad. If at this late stage the Minister is asserting his belief in the fact that bureaucracy should be reduced, it is a very welcome repentance. But I do not think that he can escape a great deal of the blame for the mountain of consumer protection legislation which

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      in essence does not contribute much to the protection of the consumer but which imposes tremendous burdens on business which, in turn, means higher costs for the consumer. If that philosophy of cutting down bureaucracy were to express itself in some of the regulatory powers that may be taken under the Bill, it would be welcome.
      However, good intentions are one thing; legislation is another. We have often heard splendid statements of intent from the Dispatch Box, but the mountain of legislation, far from getting smaller, has got higher and higher.
      It was interesting to hear the Minister's observation on the importance of having general legislation rather than detailed legislation that ties the hands of the Department to too great an extent. Surely the principle of what he is saying is that we should have not general wide-ranging powers in legislation, leaving the details to regulations, but less fiddly laws. We should not have so much interfering bureaucracy, whether it comes in the original statute or the regulations. It is just as bad to have wide regulatory powers in the original legislation and then a flood of regulations. The net effect on the person at the receiving end is much the same, and it might be worse, because regulations will contain much more pernickety detail than the original legislation.
      If I could opt for one course or the other, I think that it would be far better to specify as far as possible all the significant matters in the original legislation and not to trust that the secondary Statutory Instruments would do the job more sensibly. However, at present we have to consider the impact of the Bill on the consumer and on the estate agent and not trust the good intentions of future Secretaries of State.
      Efforts have been made to reassure us that orders could be enacted only after there had been consultation with the Director General of Fair Trading and other representative bodies. That is clearly provided, but those bodies are selected as the Secretary of State thinks fit. That is not totally reassuring. If we think of other comparable legislation, we can all remember that disputes have taken place between different bodies. There are disputes when individuals claim
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      not to have been consulted. There are disputes when individual groups claim that too much weight has been given to one organisation.
      3.0 p.m.
      When the regulations are introduced, it is likely that the Secretary of State will say, for example, "I discussed them with the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors". Another body will say "We do not believe that our views were properly heard". The House can do little about such disputes. Likewise, individual estate agents may say "You did not listen properly to me. You listened to the large organisations". That is the fundamental problem. That is why it is important to get matters right now.
      In an earlier debate we questioned whether extra power was necessary. We questioned whether there was a range of possible unspecified offences that might arise from time to time. The Minister referred to the possibility of high pressure selling tactics being applied to those who have recently been bereaved. If that is a real danger, surely we should be considering it now. If there is the danger of high pressure doorstep selling, surely it should be specified within the Bill. If it is felt that that is a danger, surely there is a duty to prevent it from happening. If it is not considered to be a danger, a hare is being started for us to chase.
      A more fundamental point is that the Minister said that the power to prescribe other offences is an essential concomitant of having a Bill that does not seek to license estate agents. I can understand the logic of that. If we are not seeking to lay down minimum standards—
      Mr. John Fraser: We are seeking the maximum degree of self-regulation by the profession.
      Mr. Moate: I accept that, but that does not alter the argument that I was about to advance. If we are to have no regulatory powers, I suppose that it is sensible to say that there should be a wider range of offences that can be committed. I agree with that as a philosophy because I would much prefer to prescribe the offences and take people to court when they are committed than to provide a licensing system. However, the Bill embodies a potential licensing system and it is not being fair to the House to say that

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      that is an alternative. It would be an alternative if Clause 21 were never exercised.
      Mr. John Fraser: We shall come to that
      Mr. Moate: I have no doubt we shall. However, we cannot disregard the fact that the Bill has regulatory powers within it. If Clause 21 is to be exercised and if the philosophy of the Bill entails the possibility of laying down codes of conduct, the point that he is making would come under a code and not under offences. It is not true to say that it is not a licensing measure, or that it is a measure that does not impose conditions of entry. It could be and it might be. Judging from the comments made by some organizations, that is what they would like it to be. That is the sort of pressure that we would be under.
      If I am right in that respect—and I believe that I am—the argument is lost for having the general power to prescribe other offences that are not criminal offences. Surely it would be generally undesirable to leave in such wide-ranging powers. My hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Sainsbury) has made a strong case. On the other hand, if we are to be told that Clause 21 is to be dropped and that the regulatory powers are to go, I wholeheartedly agree that that would be a better way of doing things. The hon. Member has not argued that yet. Until we hear that case put forward, I believe that the Bill would be better off without this provision.
      Amendment negatived.
      Mr. MacKay: I beg to move Amendment No. 19, in page 4, line 38, leave out 'shows' and insert:
      'can show that the act was done without his connivance or consent, and'.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this we may also discuss Amendment No. 20, in page 4, line 46, after 'him', insert:
      'unless he can show that the act was done without his connivance or consent'.
      Mr. MacKay: This is a minor but important amendment. I trust that, despite the smiles from the Minister of State, it will be fairly non-controversial, and that we can approve it quickly and move on to the other amendments. Hon. Memb-
      710
      bers will note that in the Bill the words in question are to the effect that an employer must show
      "that he took such steps as were reasonably practicable"
      to prevent an employee from committing an act which would bring the agent before the Director General or the courts.
      This wording is worrying because in many practices there are agents or employees who take on responsibilities even though they do not hold a senior position. We all know that there are malevolent employees who, acting from unfortunate motives, can discredit their employer, the partner or principal in a firm. I do not want to make it easier for the partner, the principal or the manager of an estate agency practice to avoid his responsibilities under the Bill. I seek to ensure that there is no way in which, through the act of a malevolent employee, such a person could be brought before the Director General.
      This minor amendment, enabling the person to show that the act was committed without his connivance or consent, is sensible and would clarify the position. It in no way changes the general sense of direction of the clause but simply clarifies the point further. It will be in the interests of everyone.
      Mr. John Fraser: The Bill reflects the normal principle of the vicarious liability of an employer for his employee unless the employer can prove that he took reasonably practicable steps to deal with the situation. I know that it is not the intention, but the effect of the amendment is to put a massive and intense burden upon the employer. Not only would he have to prove as a defence that he took reasonably practicable steps; he would have to provide detailed and intricate proof that he was not acting in connivance, in cahoots, with the employee. That would impose a great burden upon him.
      I am sure that that was not the intention of the amendment, but it would be the effect of it. The hon. Gentleman would be well advised to withdraw it.
      Mr. Mackay: Bearing in mind the Minister's statement, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
      Mr. Sainsbury: I beg to move Amendment No. 23, in page 5, line 12, after 'Director', insert
      'the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors'.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this we may take the following amendments:
      No. 24, in page 5, line 12, after after 'bodies', insert 'and persons',
      No. 58, in Clause 19, page 22, line 28, after 'bodies, insert 'and persons'.
      No. 62, in Clause 21, page 24, line 39, at end insert 'and persons'.
      Mr. Sainsbury: I have already declared my interest as a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Perhaps I should repeat it, as I am specifically asking for this institution to be included by name in the Bill.
      I was interested to hear the Minister say—I take it that the promoter shares his view—that maximising the degree of self-regulation was one of the intentions of the Bill. He could have fooled me, in view of the pages of non-self-regulation with which we are landed here. I should have thought that there were easier and more economical ways of maximising self-regulation.
      But the fact that we have retained in the Bill Clause 3(1) (d), with its wide-ranging powers for the Secretary of State, subject to affirmative resolution of the House, and the fact that the Minister, in defending the inclusion of the clause, referred to the importance of that power being used really at the behest of the institutions, makes this small amendment very much more desirable and, I hope, acceptable to the promoter or the Minister. Indeed, if at some later stage or in some other place the inclusion of the Incorporated Society of Valuers and Auctioneers, or any other leading institution, were also proposed, I certainly would not oppose that. But I suggest that the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors is the leading professional body associated with land and property, and particularly with the training of people who are to engage in that sort of work.
      For that reason, it seems to me appropriate that, whatever else the Secretary of State may do when he is using his discretion as to whom he consults, he should, as well as consulting the Director Gen-
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      eral of Fair Trading, consult the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Let me assure the House—and the Minister, if he is worried on the point—that we would not be establishing a precedent.
      The Minister will be familiar, I have no doubt, with the Metropolis Management and Buildings Acts Amendment Act 1878, the centenary of which we shall be justly celebrating this year. I wonder what arrangements, if any, are being made to this effect, while seeking to economise all the time, of course, in public expenditure. That measure was the first to contain statutory recognition of the existence of the institution, and it seems to me that to perpetuate that recognition in the centenary year would be laudable and entirely desirable. I hope, therefore, that the idea will commend itself to the promoter.
      Mr. Neubert: My hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Sainsbury) has spoken to his amendment. I should like briefly to speak to mine. I suspect that his amendment is perhaps not as worthy as mine, in that
      "bodies representative of persons carrying on estate agency work"
      could be taken to include the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
      In all our discussions we have assumed that the three principal bodies are the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the Institution of Valuers and Auctioneers and the National Association of Estate Agents. The three of them comprise, we are told, 70 per cent. of the profession. My amendment seeks to include in the consultation those who comprise the 30 per cent. not represented by those institutions, and for whom provision is not made in the Bill.
      It seems reasonable that in any matter affecting their livelihood, individual estate agents who, for reasons of their own, choose not to be members of the association should be involved in any consultations that the Minister might undertake.
      In Committee, the hon. Gentleman indicated the difficulty of consulting individuals. However, all that I seek to ensure is that that point of view, which would be different from the institutional point of view, would be represented in any consultations that the Minister might have under this clause.
      3.15 p.m.
      Mr. John Fraser: It would be quite inconceivable not to consult the Royal Institution, but it would be a little unfortunate to name one of the very reputable professional bodies without naming the others. It is not usual to do it in legislation. But I give the absolute assurance that it would be totally inconceivable not to consult it.
      Secondly, as I explained in Committee, there is a difficulty about consulting representatives of those who for one reason or another object to joining any body which is representative of them.
      I should like to consider widening the consultation provisions so that the Secretary of State is required to consult other persons. The words "think fit" appear so that the consultation process is not justifiable. It is not capable of being tested in the courts. It remains a House of Commons matter.
      I shall not reopen the debates that we had last week on another Bill, but that is the reason why the words appear. I suppose that we could substitute
      "such bodies or persons as appear to him to be representative of the profession and the consumers",
      although when we come to the unattached agents there is a real problem. But I shall certainly consider an amendment elsewhere to include consultation with persons as well as bodies. I hope that that meets the thinking behind the amendment.
      Mr. Moate: I wish to comment briefly on the two amendments because they raise a matter of considerable importance. With regard to whether we should specify the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, I feel that it would be invidious to select one organisation, no matter how august or distinguished it might be. As I said earlier, it is often disputes between different bodies which cause as much difficulty and argument about the consultation process as whether there has been any consultation. So I am inclined to accept the view expressed by the Minister that the term
      "any such bodies representative of persons"
      must include the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors as well as the other well-known estate agents' organisations.
      The danger occurs, of course, when other organisations come into existence
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      as soon as institutional arrangements come into being. The individuals who do not wish to band together nevertheless form some consultative body so that their viewpoint can be heard, and sometimes they are not given the voice which they should have in ministerial circles.
      However, I am much more concerned with this problem of individuals. I welcome what the Minister said about consulting persons generally, recognising the difficulty that this creates. I go back to my previous experience on the Insurance Brokers (Registration) Act where the strong organisations asked for legislation but where one got the distinct impression that several thousands outside who were not substantial enough or were not members of these large organisations did not have their voice heard.
      The Minister used the word "difficulty". It is difficult to consult such people. However, I do not think that we can dodge the problem because of that. If Parliament chooses to provide regulatory powers which we argue are dependent on the good will of the practitioners themselves, it is incumbent upon us to discover whether the majority truly want the legislation and not just the establishment. I feel very strongly that we should devise some sort of machinery—it may be that it comes down simply to extensive advertising in the national Press—so that we can secure the views of the individual practitioners and not just those of the large organisations and those who happen to read the trade journals.
      Mr. John Fraser: This often arises on consultation. Although one cannot define exactly how it is done, in practice we meet the problem, and on Second Reading I gave the House the undertaking that we would institutionalise the arrangements for consultation with unattached agents to meet exactly that point.
      Mr. Moate: That is a helpful assurance. In view of it, I shall not detain the House any longer, other than to say that it did not work with the insurance brokers. If it had done, I do not think that we should have had that legislation. It seems that the Government Departments, especially the Department of Trade, find ways of consulting large numbers of small greengrocers and others, and they ought to be able to find some way of communicating with all small practising estate

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      agents who are not attached to any of the significant bodies. However, I place on record by appreciation of the sentiments expressed by the Minister, and I hope that the Government generally will always follow that precept.
      Mr. Sainsbury: In the light of the Minister's very firm assurances I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

    Clause 4

      ORDERS WARNING AGAINST CONTINUING CERTAIN PRACTICES
      Mr. Ridley: I beg to move Amendment No. 25, in page 5, line 33, leave out Clause 4.
      Clause 4 deals with orders warning against continuing with certain practices. I believe that this clause needs a certain amount of inquiry, and that answers must be given by the sponsor or the Government.
      The Director General of Fair Trading is given power to condemn any practice in the profession of estate agency, and he will be able to ask persons to desist from carrying out that practice. That is a very wide power. I do not like the idea of the Director specifying which practices are within the law and which are not. I do not like the idea of his deciding that a certain estate agent has not fulfilled his obligations and therefore ultimately can be disqualified from practising.
      I think that we should have something much more firm in the Bill so that people will know what is right and what is not. Clause 3(1)(b) does specify which practices are allowed and which are not but they are not spelled out very clearly. Schedule 1 gives a whole list of possible malpractices which are subject to every sort of interpretation and not clearly defined.
      Also, I am not sure that I agree with many of them as being undesirable. This is not the moment for a general discussion of Schedule 1, but I have very grave doubts about the type of legislation embodied in Clause 4. I do not adhere to the principle that because someone may have done something wrong—and we all do wrong things from time to time—it is automatically regarded as
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      giving the authorities power to disqualify that person from carrying on his business. This clause gives power to the authorities to remove peoples' right to carry on a trade just because they do something wrong, and this is happening more and more in legislation.
      An example of this is the 714 certificate. If someone fails to pay tax on the due date or is what is called a bad taxpayer generally, he is not made to pay up his tax as a result of the commission of his sin, but he is refused the right to continue his job as a labour-only subcontractor.
      If one engages in malpractices in estate agency, the proper penalty should be meted out but this does not necessarily mean that the Director should have power to consider that person unfit and therefore strike him off the list of persons qualified to practise. It may be a minor or a major offence which should be prosecuted under the law for fraud, or some other malfeasance.
      But it is just too easy a remedy to disqualify a person. We should contrast this with the provisions made available to those in industry who misbehave. If there is a wildcast strike or some thoroughly offensive restrictive practice, nobody would ever suggest that the persons concerned should be immediately stopped from following their employment.
      It is too easy with professional people, in order to make them behave, to exert discipline over them by saying "We shall threaten them with removing their right to practise". We should make the punishment fit the crime. But the idea that the Director should have power to outlaw certain practices and to strike people off the list should be checked. Therefore, I do not like the clause, and that is why I have suggested that it be left out.
      Mr. Moate: I think that I am right in saying that this was the new clause inserted by the hon. Member for Enfield, North (Mr. Davies) in response to strong representations made in Committee. Therefore, it would seem churlish to oppose one of the few concessions that he felt able to make during our earlier proceedings. [An HON. MEMBER: "That is not true."] The Minister says "That is not true."
      Mr. John Fraser: No, I did not.
      Mr. Moate: I do not think that the Whip could have said it, because I understand that Whips do not speak. At any rate, somebody said that it was not true. However, we have not had many concessions. Had we had more concessions, I think that we should have got through the proceedings rather more quickly than we are doing. Nevertheless, this was a concession.
      I certainly do not oppose the principle of the clause, but that does not mean that we should not question in detail whether the hon. Gentleman has met the views that were expressed in Committee. Unless I have misunderstood the clause—the hon. Gentleman will correct me if I have—it does not seem to go very far to help the House.
      The principle of the clause was that we should avoid the full rigours of the law as applied by the Director General of Fair Trading being applied immediately. We urged that, in effect, there should be a warning notice. We argued that if the Director General construed that a person had been guilty of some malpractice under a whole range of possible offences—sex discrimination, racial discrimination, violence, fraud or on any other grounds that could give cause for an order to be made—it would be wrong to issue an order immediately. We suggested that there should be a period of possibly 30 days before the order came into effect. The suggestion was that we need not apply the full rigours of the law if the individual concerned gave an undertaking that the practice which was decreed as unreasonable would cease. That was our request and requirement.
      Does the clause carry out that request? It does not. The clause provides:
      "(a) in the course of estate agency work any person has engaged in such a practice as is referred to in section 3(1)(d) above".
      It is limited to Clause 3(1)(d). That is the regulatory power—something for the future—which we discussed earlier. I understood that to be the fall-back provision—the power of the Secretary of State in future to designate undesirable practices which we were not yet able to specify. So far from it helping us, it is a rider to the fall-back power which might never be used, unless, contrary to what we were told before, it is to be exercised soon and is to cover all kinds
      718
      of offence about which we have not been told.
      If we are to limit the clause to future practices of which we have no knowledge at present, what is the use of it? Am I right in saying that the Director General would not be able to use Clause 4 to issue a warning notice for other offences, such as sex discrimination, racial discrimination, fraud, violence or any of the other matters specified in the clause? In Commitee there was no question of relating it to this future regulatory power of the Secretary of State.
      3.30 p.m.
      It is essential that the warning provision should apply to all estate agents' practices and to make it unnecessary for the Director General to issue an order unless an estate agent is totally obdurate and determined to persist in a practice which is deemed to be undesirable. Only in those circumstances should an order be made. This restrictive clause in no way goes towards meeting that general philosophy. I say that that philosophy is right.
      I am worried about how extensive are the powers of the Director General. I am sure that it will represent a great burden to the individual estate agent since he must look over his shoulder all the time at these penalties and provisions. If that is so, it must be right to limit the powers of discretion of a bureaucratic Director General so that he is obliged to take preliminary steps by giving a warning notice before he tries to apply the full rigours of the law.
      Mr. Ridley: My hon. Friend has a greater knowledge of the Bill than I since he was a member of the Committee. As I read the clause, if an estate agent were to sell a house to a member of the National Front and the Director General were to outlaw that transaction as being racialist, the estate agent could be put on a proscribed list. The width of the powers is without bound. Does my hon. Friend feel that we should seek to grant such power?
      Mr. Moate: I agree. We sought to argue that in a case such as my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) described, the Director General could not apply an order immediately to ban that person

      719
      from carrying on the business of estate agency because he had sold or failed to sell a house to somebody whom other people did not happen to like. I understood that the promoter of the Bill said that he would try to meet that objection. I thought that he would ensure that the Director General gave a warning first to the estate agent to desist from such practices.
      This would be an offence under Clause 3(1)(b), not under Clause 3(1)(d). If I have a greater knowledge of the Bill than my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury, that does not make me feel any happier. In fact it becomes depressing after a time. I do not believe that the promoter has met the objections. I cannot think why. It must be logical to apply a warning notice. It is a sensible system which applies in other legislation. It should be applied to all offences under the Bill, and yet the hon. Member has sought to limit it. He owes the House, particularly those who sat on the Committee, an explanation of why he has not carried out the intention that I thought he declared in Committee.
      A subsequent reading of the clause does not make the situation any better. Clause 3(1)(b) refers to a practice of which we have no knowledge because it has to be specified under Clause 3(1)(d). What is the point of that? I hope that the Minister will say whether Clause 3(1)(d) is likely to be implemented in the near future. I understood him to say that it was a fall-back provision for the future. If it is as remote as that, it makes Clause 4 even more remote. It does not help us to provide a more sensible system of regulations. We were hoping for more sane and sensible powers. The clause does not go nearly as far as I understood the promoter of the Bill intended. I thought that he was going to help us. I do not think that he has.
      Mr. Arthur Jones: My hon. Friends the Members for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) and Faversham (Mr. Moate) have been modest in their criticism of the clause and its effects. I would not have thought that it is a responsibility that is welcomed by the Director General of Fair Trading or the Secretary of State. I am sure that they would not want responsibility for making the type of judgment which they are re-
      720
      quired to make under this clause and the reference back to it to Clause 3(1)(d).
      My knowledge is limited, but I do not recall a precedent for a Bill to require decisions of this kind to be taken by a Director General of Fair Trading or within a Government Department and announced by a Secretary of State. It seems to me to be a wide-sweeping, unregulated and unwarranted power, and I cannot think that anybody will want the responsibility for it, because the character of the practices that will invoke this severe restriction against someone practising as an estate agent, whether the offence is civil or criminal, whether it is a matter of personal misbehaviour of some sort, is undefined.
      Mr. John Fraser: I do not want to respond on the question of paragraph (d). We have debated that and it would be unfair to go back on that now. The precedent of these powers lies in the Consumer Credit Act, and although that refers to the Secretary of State, there is an elaborate appeals procedure. Although the appeal is to the Secretary of State, it is heard by a tribunal appointed under the appeal provisions. I believe therefore that there is adequate protection.
      Mr. Jones: I am not sure that I share the Minister's complacency. As a practising estate agent and a member of the Incorporated Society of Valuers and Auctioneers, I find it difficult in my dealings with residential property to know just which decisions are likely to be taken by those who have the responsibility for determining what is fair trading under the Bill. The easiest thing in the world is to say that the provision will be generously applied, or that it will ensure fair treatment. The fact is, however, that a statutory requirement is being imposed and as far as I can see there are no safeguards for the individual.
      Mr. Nicholas Fairbairn: Does my hon. Friend appreciate that I was slightly horrified by the comparatively kind reaction that he made to the Minister's intervention? The Minister is saying that a person will be judged by a tribunal that is set up by another Department of State on criteria which no one knows anything about.
      Mr. Jones: Perhaps I did not use the extravagant language that the Minister's

      721
      reply warranted. The answer may be that I am incapable of using it.
      It is most disturbing that these powers should be created with regard to the handling of residential property. This provision is, after all, only to deal with a minor problem, but its magnitude is being developed in a way that is quite unjustified by the circumstances of estate practice. There is no indication of what is involved in personal terms or in terms of a practice generally. The powers being taken would deny a person the right to earn a living. One would think that the Government would be most cautious about introducing powers of that nature unless the reasons for invoking them were clearly defined.
      This is entirely unacceptable. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate). Let there be some system of warning or of giving guidance of people so that they may have some idea of what lies behind the Bill's provisions. For a Private Member's Bill to be enlarged in this way and to give the Government of the day or the Director General of Fair Trading these massive powers is unprecedented. I support the criticism that has been made of those powers.
      Mr. Bendall: These powers are very wide and cause me concern. At a time when we hear that the Government are trying to help the small business man, it would appear that by widening these powers they could be crucifying the small business man. The estate agent is acting as an agent—we tend to forget this—for somebody who has given him instructions. Are we now to assume that it is not all right for an estate agent, when he receives instructions from a client, to sell to an immigrant or a member of the National Front? If somebody comes to an estate agent and says that he refuses to sell to an immigrant, it appears that the estate agent may now be in trouble, whereas it should be the person who is selling the house who is in trouble. These points need clarifying. I can imagine estate agents having to qualify and put into writing matters which may go against the spirit of the Race Relations Act in any event.
      Mr. Fairbairn: I am extremely disturbed by the clause. I entirely support the amendment to exclude it. The Minis-
      722
      ter should not assume that because this is a comparatively minor Bill and that there is some minor precedent in another apparently decent Act, namely the Consumer Credit Act, it is unobjectionable. The principle of it is totally objectionable.
      Mr. John Fraser: Perhaps I ought to explain. Clause 4 was placed in the Bill in response to the requests of Members of the Committee. It is a mitigating clause. The allegation that might be made against the clause is that it is not mitigating enough. That is an argument for further changing it to provide warnings in all circumstances but is not an argument for taking it out. It was an attempt to meet some of the legitimate criticisms. It is a fair argument to say that the warning procedures should apply to other matters also, but it is not a fair criticism to say that it is a reason for taking the clause out.
      Mr. Fairbairn: I am even more astonished by that reply from the Minister than with that which he gave earlier. If it is a mitigating clause, let us understand what it says. It relates to any person
      "in the course of estate agency work".
      That means from dawn to dusk, whatever he is doing. It means taking lunch with a client. He may be engaged in any practice. He may be smoking a cigarette, not wearing a seat belt, talking to a Scotsman, joining the Scottish National Party, voting Labour or Liberal, or any of these other obscenities. If he is a Labour Secretary of State, he may be indulging in estate agency work, which such a Minister may find to be an offensive concept. That is a sufficient reason for declaring an estate agent not to be allowed to carry on the job that he wants to do.
      That it is a Private Member's Bill and is what the Minister calls a mitigating concept does not alter the fact that it is offensive for Parliament to legislate on that sort of principle and it is against any form of human right and concept of legislation that this Parliament has ever understood to be correct. The Bill is saying that the Minister shall have, by arbitrary decision—or on advice, if he cares to put it that way, by some Godforsaken tribunal of his creation—the power to say that the conduct or behaviour of a person on one occasion is a

      723
      reason for him to declare that that person shall no longer be entitled to do his job. I find that offensive. Have the Government not passed legislation providing that people should be warned about what behaviour shall be regarded as reason for dismissal from a job with one employer? That is not the same as being deprived for ever from carrying out that job with any employer.
      3.45 p.m.
      The Government are saying that a porter, for example, may be sacked by one employer but would be entitled to be employed by any other employer, but that they shall have the say whether one man shall for ever be dismissed from employment in his job by any employer. That is an offensive, evil and fundamental wrong to appear in any Act.
      I hope that the Government will understand that just because this is a comparatively minor measure, the extent of its frightfulness must not be misunderstood. I hope that they will agree to remove so offensive a statutory provision. If it has a mother, a father, a brother or a sister in another Act, that is no reason to have another illegitimate child.
      Mr. Bryan Davies: Most of the contributions from Conservative Members would have been directed more appropriately to Clause 3, because Clause 4 is a genuine attempt to meet a desire expressed in Committee for a half-way house by which appropriate warning could be given by the Director General in order not to trigger off action that is specified in Clause 3.
      The extent of the amendment in Committee was restricted, but there was a clearly expressed view from both sides that some warning system should be incorporated in the Bill, and this is what Clause 4 seeks to achieve. If the clause is taken out of the Bill, it will offer estate agents less opportunity for discussion and consultation with the Director General.
      Mr. Ridley: It is clearly a great personal tragedy for me that Clause 3 was discussed when I had to be out of the Chamber. If I can find such great fault with Clause 4, which is designed to mitigate Clause 3, what would I have
      724
      thought if I had been present in the discussion of Clause 3, which must be even more offensive than Clause 4? I very much dislike the powers in Clause 4 to make orders specifying practices, at present unheard of, that could force people eventually to be deprived of the right to pursue their livelihood. If this is mitigation, I am astounded.
      The fact that the clause includes a gentle tap on the shoulder and a warning to desist gives me no joy. The power itself is contained in Clause 3. If it were not for my ignorance that my hon. Friends, doing noble work in Committee, had striven to have a similar provision included in the Bill, I should feel like dividing the House.
      Mr. Moate: A great deal of importance should be attached to the claim that this is a mitigating clause. It appears so, but the fact that it relates to the least significant offence signifies that it does not meet the intentions of the Committee or the intention of the mover of the amendment. Does that not cast doubts even on the good intentions of the promoter of the Bill in proposing such a limited clause of this kind?
      Mr. Ridley: I understand that in Saudi Arabia, if one is convicted of theft, normally one's right hand is cut off to make sure that one cannot commit the offence again. I suppose that it would be a mitigating factor if it were said that, instead of cutting off the thief's right hand, we would cut off his left hand. To that extent this is a mitigating clause.
      In ignorance of what took place in Committee—and we owe a great debt to those who served on the Committee and have clearly highlighted many important defects in the shall not seek to press the amendment. However, if it were seen fit in another place to remove Clause 3, it would no longer be necessary to mitigate it; and perhaps their Lordships could also drop Clause 4. Clearly, one has not aimed high enough at the target here. Both clauses should be removed but it would be wrong to remove this one without also removing Clause 3.
      In those circumstances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

    Clause 5

      SUPPLEMENTARY PROVISIONS AS TO ORDERS UNDER SECTIONS 3 AND 4
      Mr. Neubert: I beg to move Amendment No. 26, in page 6, leave out lines 29 to 38.
      There might appear to be an inconsistency between this attempt to remove the exemption of estate agents from the protected provisions of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act and my earlier amendment in relation to sexual and racial discrimination. If that impression exists, perhaps I might be allowed to dismiss it at the outset.
      The argument on the earlier amendment was that estate agents should not be subject to the extra penalty for offences of discrimination. If in the debates on the original Bills it had been argued that estate agents would face the extra penalty of losing their livelihood, the House might have held that to be unreasonable.
      However, this amendment seeks to discriminate against the estate agent. The earlier amendment was in itself discriminatory. If I am as successful as the sponsor of this Bill in the Ballot next Session, I may have to introduce the Estate Agents Discrimination Bill to correct the discrimination in this Bill. But this apparent inconsistency arises because, under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, some offences might be directly relevant, as sexual or racial discrimination is not, to the work of an estate agent.
      The principle of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, I think, was wrong. It struck at the principle of the truth. The truth is no longer a defence. If a man is guilty of an offence, that fact may not be stated against him in any circumstances when that offence is spent. I cannot agree with wiping the slate clean in that way. A man could continue in a career without inhibition or obstacle, but the past should be known and it should not be an offence to state the truth.
      I would therefore urge reconsideration of this provision in the Bill on the ground that, particularly in relation to the offence of fraud, it should not be a matter for concealment that a practising estate agent open. Fraud is a definite business offence That is surely germane to the business. It is not something to which we are all
      726
      open. Fraud is a definite business offence which could easily arise in the course of an estate agency.
      The clause should be withdrawn and reconsidered to ascertain whether such offences, which are very likely and directly relevant, should be covered by it.
      Mr. Fairbairn: Can my hon. Friend tell me of any other profession, trade, employment or qualification in respect of which it is provided that a conviction for fraud, dishonesty or violence outside one's employment, and for racial or sexual discrimination within it, is a bar to one's continuing to be employed in that profession or work?
      Mr. Neubert: My hon. and learned Friend reminds me of the point that arose earlier. It is perhaps a precedent that a profession should be subjected to this provision. I said earlier that the original statute is as recent as 1974. Here in 1978 we are asked to provide for exceptions to it. That is unreasonable as well, because Parliament is asked to consider the original legislation in the terms as defined in the draft Bill. If we are to have these further exceptions or exemptions or, as in the previous case, extra penalties, it means that Parliament is being asked, after the event, to add to the provisions of the Bill about which it was, perhaps, not happy originally.
      Mr. Bryan Davies: The hon. Member for Romford (Mr. Neubert) presented an interesting case. He will recognise that the number of exemptions from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act is small. We should be very careful about suggesting that, because estate agents hold public money, they should be made an exempt category from the Act in the same way as are members of the legal profession. It is a question of judgment as to which categories are included. I do not have strong views. The hon. Gentleman will recognise that the estate agents associations would regard this as detrimental to their interests.
      Amendment negatived.

    Clause 7

      APPEALS
      Mr. Bendall: I beg to move Amendment No. 28, in page 8, line 38, leave out 'in point of law'.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this we may also take Amendment No. 29, in page 8, line 38, after 'law', insert 'or fact'.
      Mr. Bendall: I am disturbed that under the provisions of this clause it will be possible to appeal to the High Court only on a point of law. It may be that the Director General has made a decision which does not involve a point of law—it may be a matter of opinion. Under the clause the person against whom the Director General finds will have little chance of appeal, certainly not to the High Court.
      Mr. Ridley: I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Bendall). Often when dealing with one's constituents' affairs one advises them, when they have reached the end of the road on a substantive matter, that there is an appeal open to them on a point of law. Their faces fall a mile and they imagine that this will involve a major bill from lawyers. Ordinary people do not understand the difference between a point of law and a point of substance.
      I repeat that my hon. Friend is right to raise this point, because the attempt to provide that an appeal can be mounted only on a point of law provides an escape route for those who seek to deny the proper processes of law. An appeal should lie against all these provisions. To restrict an appeal to a point of law is very restrictive. Nor is it entirely clear what a point of law would mean.
      Mr. Fairbairn: My hon. Friend will remember earlier debates on Clause 3—
      It being Four o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
      Bill (as amended in the Standing Committee), to be further considered upon Friday next.

  EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION BILL
  Order for further consideration (as amended in the Standing Committee) read.
  Miss Jo Richardson: With the permission of the sponsor, Mr. Deputy Speaker, next Friday.
  To be further considered upon Friday next.

  EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION BILL

    EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION (AMENDMENT) BILL
    Order for further consideration (not amended in the Standing Committee) read.
    To be further considered upon Friday next.

  NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

  HAIRDRESSERS (REGISTRATION) (AMENDMENT) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Second Reading deferred till Friday 14th July.

  COMPANIES (QUALIFICATION OF COMPANY SECRETARIES) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

  FINANCE (REDUCTION OF TAXATION) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

  REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE (DEPOSITS AND NOMINATIONS) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Second Reading deferred till Friday 14th July.

  URBAN PARISHES BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

  ROAD ACCIDENT (COMPENSATION) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

  AGE OF COMPULSORY RETIREMENT BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

  LIQUOR PRIZES BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

  DEER BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

  THEATRES TRUST (SCOTLAND) BILL
  Read a Second time.
  Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Crouch.]
  Committee upon Friday next.

  SEXUAL OFFENCES (SCOTLAND) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Miss Richardson: With the permission of the sponsor, next Friday.
  Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

  SEXUAL OFFENCES (SCOTLAND) BILL

    LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT 1974 (AMENDMENT)
    Ordered,
    That Standing Committee C be discharged from considering the Local Government Act 1974 (Amendment) Bill and that the Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Clemitson.]
    Committee upon Friday next.

  STATNTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Murton): With the permission of the House, I shall put together the two following motions.
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 73A (Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.).

  STATNTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c.

    LANDLORD AND TENANT
    That the Agricultural Holdings Act 1948 (Variation of Fourth Schedule) Order 1978, a copy of which was laid before this House on 10th April, be approved.
    That the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 1949 (Variation of First Schedule) Order 1978, a copy of which was laid before this House on 12th April, be approved.—Mr. Graham.]
    Question agreed to.

  MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS (NAUDICELLE TREATMENT)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Graham.]
  4.3 p.m.
  Mr. Phillip Whitehead: In raising this subject, I do not want to be thought to be plugging a particular brand name or suggesting that Naudicelle is a catch-all cure for the scourge of multiple sclerosis. However, I believe that it is of fundamental importance that we and the Department of Health and Social Security give the closest attention to the dietary supplement containing a

  731
  committee on borderline substances and derived from the evening primrose, which is sold in this country under the name of Naudicelle, as I shall refer to it. We should look at reasons why an increasing number of multiple sclerosis sufferers are, in a sense, conducting their own trial and marking their own personal results by the money they have to spend on the preparation as well as the testimony they almost all give to it.
  I was first interested in the properties of Naudicelle by my constituent and friend, Mrs. Josephine de la Mare, secretary of the Derby Multiple Sclerosis Society. I regret to say that after a long illness, which was fought every inch of the way, she died last week. It is right that I should pay my own tribute today to this brave lady. She led me, in early discussions about dietary supplements, both to Mr. Joe Osborne of Newhall in Staffordshire, who has been working in the Burton-on-Trent area, linking Naudicelle dietary supplements with a proper regime of exercise, and to ARMS, the action group for research into multiple sclerosis.
  Mr. Osborne, through his own Member of Parliament, the hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence)—who has taken up his case energetically and who, I know, would have wished to be present today had he not been prevented by a prior engagement—and the ARMS group, in direct correspondence with the Department of Health and Social Security and the Medical Research Council, have been pressing for early publication of the results of recent trials at Newcastle, for further and wider trials of this substance and for support for the screening of close relatives of multiple sclerosis sufferers who may, it seems possible, be at greater risk, so that there shall be an early diagnosis of the disease.
  I shall argue that such wider study of a substance with no known harmful side effects and for which much is claimed, would be helped by the availability of Naudicelle on prescription at the discretion of the local general practitioner. Professor Field at Newcastle, who has been a pioneer of research into demyelinating diseases and in the screening of young people who may be at risk, is strongly of the opinion that Naudicelle can be of help to acute sufferers from
  732
  multiple sclerosis in reducing the number, severity and duration of the attacks which they incur.
  There have been earlier experiments by Professor Millar and others into the effects of linoleic acids which principally derive from sunflower seed oils as a dietary supplement. The test which is most eagerly awaited now is the double-blind trial carried out by Professor Shaw, also at Newcastle upon Tyne. This, I understand, covers two groups of patients, the old chronic and acute relapsing patients respectively. Professor Shaw wrote to the hon. Member for Burton on 13th February to say:
  "Our clinical trial has been completed but the results have not yet been fully analysed. Much of the statistical work has been done but there are still a few more calculations to be made before final conclusions can be drawn …. As you may recall, the results of the first part of the trial which were published in the British Medical Journal in October showed that Naudicelle had conferred no benefit on the treated patients. The part of the trial now under analysis deals with a different group of patients but I hope that no assumptions will be made about the outcome of the trial until the calculations have been completed. I am distressed to learn that in Italy Naudicelle has received wide publicity as an effective treatment for multiple sclerosis. This has raised hopes to a degree that is not in my view justified by the scientific information at present available."
  I include that last rider because it is important to stress very strongly that no one seriously asking for a wider study of the substance ought to claim, or ought to lead multiple sclerosis suffers to believe, that it is a cure for the disease. That is not what is claimed by those who have taken the greatest interest in it and, indeed, by the patients who claim, as I shall show, that it has many beneficial effects for them. It can, it is claimed, control the onset and severity of the attacks incurred by multiple sclerosis sufferers.
  The earlier the disease is diagnosed and caught, the greater the beneficial effects have been, it is claimed, in nonscientific trials. That is why we are all anxious to see the early publication of the second series of tests on acute relapsing patients being conducted by Professor Shaw. I spoke earlier this week to Professor Shaw. He told me that he will be calling together in London a group of his learned colleagues in the next few days to evaluate the results that

  733
  he has achieved in the second test, prior to publication.
  In the nature of balloting for debates on the Adjournment, Mr. Deputy Speaker, it is not always possible to predict precisely when the debate will come. In a sense, it might have been better had we been able to have this debate a week or two after the publication of Professor Shaw's finding. However, what I shall be saying today will be argued ex hypothesi on the basis that if we learn something from the second series of tests conducted by Professor Shaw, that will be an additional reason and, I submit, an urgent reason for the Department's taking a fresh look at the claims which have been made so widely for this substance Naudicelle.
  Hon. Members who have communicated with the Department of Health and Social Security—as I know many of them have—have had to rely upon the testimony of those already using the substance, and the many doctors and others who have been working in this field, such as Mr. Osborne, to whom I referred earlier, who have used it often in conjunction with concentrated programmes of exercise and physiotherapy.
  I think that in this short debate it would be right to quote from at least some of the testimony which is typical of that which so many hon. Members have received from individual sufferers from multiple sclerosis. I shall mention one or two of the letters as an example of the pressure which has rightly been brought to bear upon Members of Parliament to make the DHSS look again very carefully at this matter.
  I have a number of letters here from which I shall quote very briefly. First, I have a letter from Mrs. Williams of Burton-on-Trent, who has had the disease for a long time and whose husband has worked closely with Mr. Osborne in that area. She says:
  "In the space of 12 months—from 10th May 1977 to the present day, 4th May 1978—there has been no need for me to visit my GP from either attacks due to MS or, indeed, any other ailment. In fact, I have not lost one working day from my employment … Of course, there have been those days when I felt a little below par, but I think one would agree all normal people experience those. Looking back over these 12 months on Naudicelle, I will now stress more strongly where the greatest stability has been created. Firstly, there has been a tremendous improvement in my vision
  734
  … and a marked improvement in my circulation."
  Mrs. Williams then goes on to describe other beneficial effects of the treatment. She has had the disease for a longer period of time, and her letter is typical of many that we get expressing the general view that this substance is very beneficial indeed as a dietary supplement.
  The next letter is from a constituent of mine, Mrs. Mason, in Allestree, in Derby, who is talking of her husband. With this case, as with the previous one, I am following up a case which has been mentioned in the book published on the subject by Mr. Osborne. Clearly one wanted to look at such cases some months or a year later, to see whether this had been a false dawn in the case of the sufferers concerned. In each case that I have followed up it would appear that the improvement—or what they believe to be an improvement—has been sustained.
  Mrs. Mason, in talking of her husband, writes:
  "His wheelchair is now a thing of the past, now walking with either one elbow crutch or one walking stick, in the home on a very smooth surface he needs no aid at all, his arms are much stronger, his eyesight is better than it has been for years."
  She goes on to say that the doctor is very pleased by this improvement. To the amazement of the local Press, her husband entered the sports for the disabled recently and was able to win the discus competition, the shot put and the 60 metres freestyle walk. He will go on to compete at Stoke Mandeville in September.
  Mrs. Mason says in the course of her letter that she thinks that the capsules should be available to multiple sclerosis patients on the National Health Service. She adds:
  "It is cruel to deprive them of it. They are like insulin is to a diabetic, and where would they be without their insulin, and yet that is free for diabetics."
  I appreciate that there are very great differences between the need to provide insulin for diabetic sufferers and what is claimed and what is so far known of the gamma-linolenic concentrates. However, I feel that when people speak in those terms, although they may be using a figure of speech, they are expressing, in what is to them the clearest possible

  735
  way, the amazing effect that the treatment has had on them and on their own lives. They are lives which, I remind my hon. Friend, have been largely without hope because one of the cruellest features of the disease multiple sclerosis is that when it is initially diagnosed all too often in the past people have been told "I am sorry. There is no effective treatment. We can ease the downward progression of the disease, perhaps. We can make you comfortable for long periods of time. You will enjoy periods of remission. But the overall prognosis is pretty hopeless." That is what has caused so much despair and dismay amongst those who have had the disease diagnosed and why it is so important that we should look at every possible way of helping them.
  I have a number of other letters which it is perhaps unnecessary to quote at length because they all make the same basic point that their condition has stabilised and that some at least of the symptoms of this dreadful disease have been very much ameliorated over the course of months and years during which they have been taking this preparation as a dietary supplement.
  This is no scientific trial. I accept that. It could not possibly be. But it is of importance that we have the widest possible knowledge of these case histories, and I want to ask my hon. Friend to say how many submissions there have been from general practitioners about Naudicelle and about the beneficial effects of linoleic and gamma-linolenic concentrates of this kind, whether based on the evening primrose, sunflower or safflower oils.
  We need to know what the medical profession, directly in touch as GPs are with the average MS sufferer, is now saying about this, and I think that we also sould know whether there are any known harmful side effects to this preparation. I know of none, and I have been told of none. It is important that this should be established. If we argue, as I am in this debate, that it would be greatly in the interest of arriving at some kind of conclusion about the possible beneficial effects of Naudicelle if we were to have it more widely available so that there could be a test within the general population, we need to know whether it
  736
  has harmful side effects. I believe and I submit that it has none.
  The Department has said in letters to me, to the hon. Member for Burton and to a number of other hon. Members that Naudicelle is a food and not a medicine, that it will keep a benign eye on tests into the efficiency of dietary supplements, and that it has allowed Naudicelle a Medicines Act licence under the 1968 Act with all the usual limitations, but no more than that.
  The problem is that for the many thousands of multiple sclerosis sufferers time is very precious and hope is rationed. Many of the letters that I have mentioned speak of the utter despair of those who have had multiple sclerosis diagnosed. This is why, in terms of those who have it at the moment and even more so in terms of those many thousands who will have it diagnosed in the next few years, it is important that we should now have from the Department a promise of early action.
  With that in mind, the questions which I wish to ask are these. Will the Department undertake to act on the results of the Newcastle tests if these happen to show beneficial results for acute relapsing patients? Will it, in those circumstances, be prepared to go back to the advisory committee on bordering substances and to the MRC and to consider once more the possibility of putting Naudicelle on the National Health Service at the discretion of the general practitioner concerned? Will it further extend the field trials under its own auspices prior to such reconsideration? At the moment we know of the double-blind trial which is going on at Newcastle and we know of the immense random sampling, if it can be so described, which has come to the surface as a result of the work of laymen such as Mr. Osborne and many individual branches and arms of the Multiple Sclerosis Society. We should like to see the Department itself intervening and taking a hand.
  Finally, I wish to go slightly wide of the subject of this debate and ask my hon. Friend whether the Department will undertake to extend and further investigate the system of diagnostic blood testing which has been developed by Professor Field. It is in this area that there is the most hope for combating those forces which appear to act early on the

  737
  acute multiple sclerosis sufferer. If any of the claims for these dietary supplements have been justified, it is obviously in cases where the disease has not progressed through all its acute stages. In that stage most can be done by the dietary supplements.
  The badge of the Multiple Sclerosis Society is a key. We are all looking for the key which will unlock the mysteries of this disease. The most curious thing about the disease itself is that perhaps that key might be found in the seeds of that equally mysterious flower, the evening primrose.
  4.22 p.m.
  The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Eric Deakins): I am glad to have this opportunity of replying to the points raised this afternoon by my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead). I know that his interest in this subject—which goes back a number of years—is shared by other hon. Members. Let me say frankly at the outset that there is very little I can add to what my right hon. Friend the Minister has already said on this matter in reply to hon. Members who have written to him and put down Questions in the House.
  The reason for this is that in all fields of treatment and prescribing of medicines one must tread most carefully and cautiously and, as I hope I can show to the satisfaction of my hon. Friend that, in this area particularly, there is very good reason indeed for slow progress. Let me first explain something of the general context in which treatment under the National Health Service occurs.
  Family doctors, under the National Health Service, are free to prescribe any drug or medicine they consider necessary for the proper treatment of their patients, though they may be asked to justify their prescribing decisions, if the cost appears excessive, or if the substance may not be a drug. Only the doctor concerned can decide whether something is necessary for the treatment of his patient and whether that substance is something that should properly be prescribed as a charge on the National Health Service.
  If there is any doubt on the latter point, the doctor will consider carefully whether he would feel able to justify the
  738
  decision to prescribe a substance if called upon to do so. If he is satisfied on this point, there is nothing to prevent him from issuing the prescription and it being dispensed in the normal way.
  I emphasise that it is the doctor, and only the doctor, who can determine which medicines or drugs should or should not be prescribed for a patient. It is certainly not the Department's job and it would be quite wrong for it or anyone else—including the patient—to attempt to influence the doctor's decision.
  My hon. Friend asked about representations from doctors. Over the course of some three years there have been 69 cases of family doctors who have defended their decision to prescribe Naudicelle for multiple sclerosis before their professional colleagues on the local medical committee. In 25 of these cases the doctor concerned was about to satisfy his colleagues that the substance had been properly prescribed in the circumstances.
  National Health Service legislation does not define a "drug". The question of which items or substances should or should not be regarded as drugs, which form part of the pharmaceutical services under the National Health Service Act, has been considered on several occasions by independent professional committees. Precise terminology has varied, but the basic conclusion of each committee has been that substances of a primarily nutritional nature cannot be regarded as drugs and, because they are therefore "foods", cannot be provided on National Health Service prescription.
  Often the question whether a particular substance is a drug depends upon the circumstances, and no definition could hold good for every case. However, for practical medical purposes, it is reasonable to expect that, where a substance is prescribed for a patient, the substance will have both pharmacological and therapeutic effect on the condition being treated.
  In certain conditions, a "food" may have the characteristics of a "drug". To advise on the circumstances in which items may be regarded as "drugs"—and therefore prescribable at National Health Service expense—the Department and the profession are very fortunate to have the services of an independent professional body chaired by Professor Barbara

  739
  Clayton of the Hospital for Sick Children. This body is known as the advisory committee on borderline substances.
  The advisory committee plays a continuing role in examining claims of therapeutic efficacy for individual substances and preparations in relation to particular conditions—that is, whether in particular conditions they may be regarded as having the effect of a drug. Such is the prestige of this independent committee of experts among their professional colleagues that any recommendation which is made is usually acceptable to all concerned. However, I must point out again that whatever the committee's recommendations, the final decision whether a substance should be prescribed for a patient's condition rests with the doctor.
  The practical effect of this is that if the committee recommends that a substance acts like a drug for a particular condition then, if the doctor prescribes it for that condition, the National Health Service pays for it. If the committee does not so recommend, decisions to prescribe that substance may be challenged, but—and to re-emphasise the point that I made at the beginning about the prescribing freedom of the family doctor—doctors can and often do successfully defend their prescribing decisions, through the machinery laid down in regulations for this purpose, notwithstanding an advisory committee recommendation.
  I have described this framework in some detail, because it is germane to the fundamental question raised by my hon. Friend why the substance known as Naudicelle cannot at present be provided at National Health Service expense in the treatment of multiple sclerosis at home. I say "at home" deliberately, because a patient in hospital is provided with all his daily needs. These include whatever food and toilet preparations may be considered advisable for him and which he would be expected to provide for himself as necessities of normal life if he were living at home.
  As those who have had anything to do with the disease will know—my hon. Friend stressed this matter—multiple sclerosis is a very distressing disease and one which is most difficult to treat. I understand its effects are so variable between individual patients and that the
  740
  course the disease follows is so erratic that often it is difficult for a layman to appreciate that a multiple sclerosis patient in remission is ill. I am told that many of the features of multiple sclerosis can present—variability, erratic and unpredictable developments—make every patient's case uniquely individual.
  That being so, formidable barriers are presented to those evaluating the efficacy of particular types of treatment. At any time patients may experience spontaneous remissions of the condition, sometimes of long duration, so that it can be most difficult to know whether encouraging changes are in fact due to treatment.
  Multiple sclerosis is the general term given to cover many symptoms of weakness and loss of use occurring in different parts of the body. Experts differ in their views on the disease, and for this reason no single method to treat the condition or alleviate the symptoms has been arrived at. One view is that if the proportion of saturated fat in the diet were reduced relative to unsaturated fat, it might help a patient's nervous system function more effectively. To explore the validity of this theory, multiple sclerosis patients have been given oils such as sunflower seed oil which contain the unsaturated fat, linoleic acid. An even less saturated fat, gamma linoleic acid is, I understand, found in the oil of the evening primrose, as my hon. Friend pointed out, and it is this oil which is contained in Naudicelle capsules.
  The capsules are a proprietary preparation manufactured by Bio-Oils Research Limited of Nantwich, Cheshire. From the outset it has claimed that the Naudicelle capsules contain a pre-digested form of linoleic acid which acts more directly and more quickly than other linoleic acid derivatives.
  This claim was included in the evidence submitted to the advisory committee on borderline substances in July 1974. At that time the committee convened a special meeting to consider in detail the whole question of the use of dietary supplements and linoleic acid and its derivatives in the management of multiple sclerosis. The committee examined in great detail all the available evidence published during the preceding years. In addition, it considered the written evidence from several consultants—some of

  741
  whom participated at the meeting—who were either known to the chairman or who had been recommended by the Medical Research Council as being or having recently been engaged in research into the problem. I am advised that the research for the meeting, the trouble taken to canvass informed opinion and members' keen interest and sympathy combined to make this probably the most carefully prepared exercise the advisory committee on borderline substances had ever undertaken.
  Reluctantly, after much deliberation, the committee decided that there was no evidence which could justify recommending that linoleic acid or its derivatives should be regarded as a drug in the management of multiple sclerosis. The committee was particularly concerned that any advice offered should be founded firmly on scientific evidence. It felt that it would be wrong to offer advice that might raise false hopes among multiple sclerosis patients, their families or friends, that an effective palliative or cure was close at hand—a point emphasised by my hon. Friend. Members noted that research into the value of unsaturated fats in the management of multiple sclerosis was continuing and expressed their readiness to reconsider their decision if and when fresh scientific evidence became available.
  Moreover, in October 1974 a conference on multiple sclerosis, arranged jointly by the Medical Research Council and the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reached broadly the same conclusion on the question of dietary supplements as the advisory committee on borderline substances. Furthermore, it is worth pointing out that the Medical Research Council's annual report for 1975–76 stated:
  "The evidence for a beneficial effect of linoleic acid supplements in the diet is unconvincing but the existing studies should be continued; meanwhile no further trials should be supported."
  I must take serious note of this view. It is an expert one and is endorsed by my medical advisers in the Department.
  To give the House further evidence of the Government's constant concern to leave no stone unturned in this matter, I should like to point to my right hon. Friend's meeting with a deputation from the Multiple Sclerosis Action Group early
  742
  last year. Particular attention was paid at that meeting to the claims that were being made for Naudicelle capsules and the superior virtues of their active ingredient, gamma-linolenate as compared with those of linoleic acid and to the need for further research. The deputation included a distinguished research scientist who, I understand, is engaged in the field of multiple sclerosis research and who explained the claims for gamma-linolenate very lucidly. However, my right hon. Friend had to tell the deputation that, having consulted the Department's medical advisers afresh about these claims and the value of further research, he felt that he would not be justified in initiating or supporting more research. He promised to ensure that any new scientific evidence that may appear is placed before the advisory committee without delay.
  I understand that, in addition to the research mentioned in the MRC report that I quoted earlier, a trial financed by the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain and Northern Ireland of dietary supplements, including Naudicelle capsules, has been undertaken at a hospital in the North-East. The results are expected shortly. The chairman of the advisory committee is in touch with the research teams concerned and hopes to convene at an early date a meeting of the committee, augmented by other experts invited for the occasion to consider these results. Of course, we can make no assumptions yet about the outcome of the trials.
  Since the submission to the advisory committee in 1974, Bio-Oils Research Limited has applied for and been granted a product licence for Naudicelle capsules under the Medicines Act 1968 as
  "dietary supplements where unsaturated fatty acids are needed".
  Aside from the researches sponsored by MRC and the Multiple Sclerosis Society, I understand that Bio-Oils Research Ltd. has been granted a clinical trial certificate to enable it to have its product tested in relation to multiple sclerosis. The certificate is valid until November this year. Naturally, if the firm were then to produce evidence of the efficacy of its product in relation to multiple sclerosis, it would be open to it to apply for its existing product licence to be varied so as to specify the disease.

  743
  If such a variation were granted there would be no question that Naudicelle might be regarded as a drug in the management of multiple sclerosis.
  The Government regard the promotion of health and the prevention and eradication of disease as a prime responsibility of my Department. However, we cannot will the results or the developments that we desire. I know of nobody who does not wish that a drug that would cure or alleviate multiple sclerosis were available.
  Certainly the moment any substance or preparation is shown scientifically to have a beneficial effect, then, whatever it is, it will be made available as soon as possible as a drug for the treatment of the disease. However, I am bound to remind the House, as I implied at the outset, that
  744
  the history of research into multiple sclerosis is one of repeated disappointments.
  My hon. Friend has raised a number of issues including early diagnosis and the possibility of the Department having field trials about which I shall write to him. In the meantime, let me repeat that the reason why Naudicelle would be challenged if prescribed by a family doctor at National Health Service expense is that we are advised that the only scientifically reliable evidence that we have does not justify the belief that dietary supplements such as Naudicelle capsules are helpful in the management of multiple sclerosis.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at twenty-seven minutes to Five o'clock.

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Preamble
The House met at eleven of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Guildford

HOSPITAL STAFF SHORTAGES
Baroness EMMET of AMBERLEY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the unoccupied beds and closure of wards in many hospitals are due to the lack of medical and nursing staff; and if so, whether this is due to their dissatisfaction over pay.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, beds in National Health Service hospitals may be temporarily unavailable for use for a variety of reasons. It is not possible to identify any particular factor to which local staff shortages may generally be attributed, but I have no evidence that it may be due to dissatisfaction with pay among those referred to in the noble Baroness's Question.
Baroness EMMET of AMBERLEY: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that Answer, which does not really get me very much further, may I ask whether he is aware that at present a very large number of hospitals are relying on agency nurses because their own staff is inadequate? Agency nurses must, of course, cost more than ordinary staff. Is this a wise way of going on?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I am not aware that a very large number of hospitals are dependent on agency nurses. It may be that many hospitals are, but the total number is not very great. The latest available figures show that the number of whole-time equivalent nursing staff—both qualified and unqualified—employed in hospitals continues to rise. At September 1976 the number stood at
528
something like 286,000 nurses. This represents—and I want to emphasise this—an increase of about 30,000 nurses since September 1974. and I am happy to say that the number of qualified nurses in that period rose by 18,000. That may not be enough. My right honourable friend has made it perfectly clear that, in the money that he has recently allowed for an increase of activities in the National Health Service, something over 9,000 jobs will be provided. More than half of those jobs will be for additional nurses and midwives.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, arising out of the noble Lord's reply, I wonder whether the Government can tell us whether a review body is looking into the question of nurses' pay and, if that body is sitting, when it will report?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: No, my Lords, I cannot say when it will report; but on the question of nurses' pay I think one must bear in mind that we have no evidence—and we have been at some pains to try to ascertain this—that there is any real dissatisfaction among nurses so far as their pay is concerned. Since the independent Halsbury Committee of Inquiry brought nurses' pay to levels comparable with other groups in 1974, they have had, along with the rest of the community, the various increases which have been available under the Government's pay policy. I do not think I can say more than that to the noble Lord, other than the fact that we do not think pay is a problem at this stage.
Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS: My Lords, since the noble Lord's reply concedes to some extent that there are unoccupied beds and closed wards, does not that confirm the mistake of phasing out pay-beds? Would it not be better if they were allowed to be used by people prepared to pay, and this at the same time would bring the consultants to make an even greater contribution to the good health of the country? Is not the Answer some confirmation that, even at this late hour, it would be a good thing to reverse that policy'?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I do not know how many times I have to go over this point in your Lordships' House. Now that we are running up towards an Election. I can understand that

529
noble Lords perhaps want to make some capital out of this. But I have said time and time again that a very considerable percentage of the pay-beds were never in use, and getting rid of a thousand of them in one fell swoop did not affect the situation at all. It was taking away beds that were not in use.
As the noble Lord wants to know something about bed occupancy, may I say that the average daily number of available beds in the National Health Service hospitals in England for all specialities during 1976—that is the latest year for which we have information—was 383,100 beds, of which there was a daily occupancy of 310,800 beds. This means that 81 per cent. of the total beds were in daily occupancy. Noble Lords may ask: why is it that 19 per cent. are not? I think the reason is that, when one patient goes out, another patient cannot be put in immediately. There is an interval sometimes of one, two or more days' delay.
The Earl of HALSBURY: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that the nursing profession can earn more outside than it can inside its professional sphere? There has been a very bad drift away from the situation from which I rescued them four years ago.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, that may well be; but I did indicate a short time ago that, since 1974, we have been able to recruit 30,000 nurses.
Baroness WARD of NORTH TYNESIDE: My Lords, could the Minister say whether there are any outstanding recommendations made by the Royal College of Nursing to him or to his Department which have not yet been met? Does he have regular meetings with them?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I am not in a position to answer the noble Baroness without notice. I just do not know.
Lord CARR of HADLEY: My Lords, in view of the interesting figures which the noble Lord gave about the closure of private beds, to the effect that those closed so far had virtually been those which were not occupied, can the Government assure us that they will not in the future close beds which are occupied?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, the whole question of the pay-beds is in the hands of the Health Service Board, and the Government are guided by the Health Service Board recommendation before taking any action at all.
Lord DRUMALBYN: My Lords, is what the noble Lord has said not fallacy, because it was always possible for pay-beds to be occupied by National Health Service patients when they were empty?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I have nothing further to add. The whole question of pay-beds is far wide of the Question I have been asked to answer, and your Lordships do not like Ministers departing from Questions.

"DISCOVERING AFRICA'S PAST"
11.13 a.m.
Lord WIGG: 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 the Leader of the House whether it is in accordance with the best traditions of the House that a Minister, in reply to a Parliamentary Question, should impute bias under the cover of Parliamentary privilege to Mr. Basil Davidson in his book Discovering Africa's Past.
The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Lord Peart): My Lords, it is certainly not in the best traditions of the House that a Minister or any other member of the House should hide behind Parliamentary privilege to make comments which would otherwise be actionable or which, even if not actionable, can be considered an unreasonably damaging attack upon the integrity of an individual. But, as the comments made by my noble friend in answering Lord Gridley's Question on 17th April do not fall into this category, the question does not arise.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, needless to say the Leader of the House will realise that I do not accept that. Is the Leader of the House aware that on three separate occasions Lord Donaldson alleged bias

531
about a book which, very clearly, he had not read? It is charitable to say that, because, is the Leader of the House aware that, if he has read it, he most certainly has not understood it? Would he be good enough to take into account what the Government themselves have done? The Ministry of Education, of which Department Lord Donaldson is a member, jointly published West Indian Community (Command 7186), in which the Government had put forward exactly the same points as Mr. Basil Davidson. Therefore, although Lord Donaldson is entitled to hold his view as an opinion, it is clearly improper to allege—will the Leader of the House accept?—
Several noble Lords: Speech!
Lord WIGG: My Lords, I am only asking for the same indulgence as is given to the other side in asking a question. I will put it again in interrogatory form. Is the Leader of the House aware that the bias alleged here is quite improper, because it clearly does not go beyond a difference of opinion about the book ?
Lord PEART: My Lords, my noble friend used the word "bias" in connection with the last 20 pages, and it is the use of this word which appears to have given the noble Lord offence. l think he made it clear in the course of his reply that he meant no more than was written forcibly, directly, or from a specific point of view. I think my noble friend Lord Wigg is taking this matter too seriously.
Lord BYERS: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that many of us feel that this is rather a petty attack on a Minister who has discharged his duties with distinction over quite a long period, and would he not agree that the word "bias" is subject to many interpretations? I am extremely biased in favour of the Liberal Party, and some of us are becoming extremely biased against people who put down this type of Question.
Lord PEART: My Lords, I am grateful for the remarks of the noble Lord representing the Liberal Party. May I just say that when my noble friend Lord Wigg told my noble friend Lord Donaldson that he regarded his remarks as derogatory, he at once wrote to Mr. Davidson
532
apologising for any offence that might have been taken. I think we can leave it at that.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, is the Leader of the House aware that he did not write immediately? But while it may be regarded as a petty matter in relation to Lord Donaldson, he has not got a reputation to lose. Is the Leader of the House not aware that Mr. Basil Davidson is a some-time professor in African history to a number of universities; he is a Fellow of Birmingham; he is an extremely distinguished writer: and to attack him in this way on the basis of a book which the Minister has clearly not read is outrageous?
Lord PEART: My Lords, I have read the book, and I think it is a good book. I do not think it was any attack on Mr. Davidson. I hope we can leave it at that.
Baroness GAITSKELL: My Lords, is the Leader of the House aware than when this question was raised, very few of us had read the book or had bought the book? I had read an article in the "New Statesman" from Basil Davidson which was extremely good. My noble friend Lord Donaldson had not read this article, and I had the opportunity to show him this article, and his comment was, "This is very fair". I think all this has some bearing on the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Wigg.
Lord PEART: My Lords, I take note of what my noble friend has said.
Lord SEGAL: My Lords, would it not be clearly in the best traditions of the House that this matter be not pursued any further?
Lord HALE: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that all of us know that he knows Mr. Basil Davidson—I used to know him very well but have not known him for years—and that he is a friend of Members on all sides of the House ? He is respected perhaps sometimes for not quite supporting the theory that Africa was founded entirely by the Firestone Tyre Company and Pepsi Cola and has a history worth writing about which can be instructive. We are grateful to the Leader of the House for giving expression to this fairly clear view.
Lord PEART: My Lords, I think we should proceed to the next Question.

UN SYSTEM: REFORM PROPOSALS
11.19 a.m.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they support President Carter's proposals for the reform of the United Nations system, including

(1) a Charter Review Conference;

(2) a United Nations Peace-Keeping Reserve;

(3) a United Nations High Commission for Human Rights; and

(4) associated status for very small new states.

The MINISTER of STATE, FOREIGN and COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (Lord Goronwy-Roberts): My Lords, the Government welcomes President Carter's report to Congress on reform and restructuring of the United Nations system. It contains some positive and imaginative proposals, which we are studying and on which we look forward to exchanging views with the American Government.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, is it not time that there was some consideration of the structure of the United Nations, and of its ability to carry out its decisions? While I welcome the new nations, may I ask whether it is not a repudiation of its authority that an island of 110,000 should have the same vote as a territory of 100 million? In view of the developing situation, Lebanon now, Zambia, Namibia, Israel tomorrow, is it not important that there should be a reserve peace-keeping force ?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords as my noble friend knows, we are playing our part, and a prominent part, in this special committee on the Charter and the strengthening of the role of the United Nations Organisation. The American proposals are in line with our own thoughts in very many important respects. On the subject of small States,
534
we have traditionally supported the principle that all States, small and large, should have membership of the United Nations if they so wish. There are proposals put forward by the President to Congress, under the appropriate Act, which invite consideration for associate membership for small States—small in their resources—and also for such procedures or provisions as weighted voting. These clearly need very careful consideration, and as I have said we shall most certainly be responding to the American invitation, with other countries, to consider these proposals.
On the question of peace-keeping, my noble friend and the House will know that we have put forward through the Western draft on the programme of action for the United Nations special session on disarmament certain proposals to improve and strengthen a peacekeeping capacity. This was co-sponsored by the United States, and I have no doubt that the President's invitation to Congress to consider this among other matters, which are written in the report, will be counterparted by their continuing support for the United Kingdom initiative on peace-keeping in the special session.
Lord DRUMALBYN: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether the proposals that Her Majesty's Government have put forward are available and, if not, whether he would lay them in the Library of the House? And will he recall the last speech of the late Lord Attlee in favour of a United Nations peace-keeping force? Are the proposals which are now being put forward in line with that?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I see no reason why the three papers which have been put forward in connection with the special session, and indeed our own proposals, should not be made available. I think some of them may now be available, and I will look into this and see that there is the utmost availability.
Baroness GAITSKELL: My Lords, would not the Minister agree that these four issues are highly complicated, that they have been looked at for many years and to make out that they are simple and can be dealt with at a stroke is highly misleading, both to this House and to the world outside it?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: Yes, indeed, my Lords. The report by the President to Congress is in accordance with provision by special enactment of Congress, and it is couched in suggestive and tentative form. It does not put forward definite proposals which would be regarded as being finalised United States' policy; but it is a valuable series of suggestions, mainly for consideration and study. In that sense we have responded, no doubt with other countries to which the United States has made available copies of this report, with a readiness to discuss, in the first instance with the United States Government and, secondly, with other like-minded countries, to see how far we can go on these important matters.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, while welcoming what the Minister has said about representation of the smaller State, may I ask whether the Government will consider U Thant's proposal for group representation rather than the proposal made by President Carter for associate membership?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I do not think that the President's report to Congress rules out any means of revitalising membership of the United Nations. Weighted voting, group association and selective membership in regard to various functions can all be considered. The report does not come down in the slightest in favour of any one more than another, still less does it rule out the consideration of any suggestion.

PROTECTION OF CHILDREN BILL
11.26 a.m.
Baroness FAITHFULL: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. My Lords, first may I say how glad we are that the right reverend prelate the Bishop of Guildford will be making his maiden speech in this debate, and we look forward to hearing him. On two occasions at Question Time in your Lordships' House, I have sought reassurance from the Government that there should be no further legislation, particularly relating to children, but rather
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that there should be consolidation of existing laws. On 1st March this year, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor gave reassurance on this point. It may therefore seem strange to your Lordships that I should be introducing the Protection of Children Bill in your Lordships' House today.
I do so, first, because I believe that this short Bill, which nevertheless means so much for the wellbeing of children, is urgently required now to fill a gap in the law; and, secondly, because a new situation is likely to arise following the amendment to the American Child Protection Act to which President Carter put his name in February of this year. Thirdly, not even for a day should the exploitation of a single child for sexual and pornographic purposes be allowed to continue in this country.
This Private Member's Bill had its Second Reading in the other place on 10th February. I would wish to pay tribute to the honourable Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Cyril Townsend) for the deep concern that he showed for the protection of children which led him to make wide-ranging inquiries and to devote much time looking into, to use his own words, "this distasteful subject".
It was cause for concern when, owing to an unfortunate incident in another place, the Bill could have fallen. The Prime Minister, sensing the widespread support for the Bill by Members of all Parties, enabled the Bill to receive its Committee stage in the other place. Amendments were tabled in the other place, but not debated. These will be debated in your Lordships' House.
This Bill is a children's Bill. It is not a Bill directed primarily against obscenity; it is a Bill to safeguard children. It seeks to prevent the exploitation of children—and by "children" is meant children under the age of 16. The nub of the Bill lies in Clause 1 which deals with indecent photographs and films of children. Any person who takes or makes an indecent film or photograph is guilty of an offence, whether or not the offence is committed for gain and whether or not it is committed in public or in private. The possession of such material, whether imported from other countries or made in this country, is an offence. It is laid

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down in this Bill that no proceedings should be instituted except by the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions. A person convicted under this Bill would be liable to a fine not exceeding £10,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years, or both. The Bill leaves to the courts the decision as to what is indecent.
In his speech in another place Mr. Cyril Townsend said—and I quote:
"If I were pressed to say what I consider to be indecent I would fall back on the famous legal definition of the noble and learned Lord, the late Lord Reid, who stated: It includes anything which an ordinary, decent man or woman would find to be shocking, disgusting and revolting '".
My Lords, where is the gap in the law? First, the Indecency with Children Act 1960 deals only with children under 14 years of age. The 14 to 16 year olds are not protected. Secondly, there are other Acts dealing with offences against the person, assault and sexual interference, but none of these Acts deals with a child who is not touched but is used as a model for pornographic photography or films. I should say that the taking of pornographic photographs or being photographed may incite a child or adult to sexual interference. At this later stage, but not before, there are other laws to be invoked. Thirdly, there are publications which I have seen which are made in other countries, mostly Denmark and Western Germany, which are imported, passed round and sold in this country, but which are not caught by the Obscene Publications Act 1959. I will return to this point later.
What chain of events has highlighted the need for this Bill? As I said earlier, President Carter put his name to an amendment to the American Child Protection Act to prevent the sexual exploitation and abuse of children. A total of 35 American states have passed laws prohibiting child pornography. This was achieved largely due to research and investigation on the part of Dr. Densen-Gerber, a doctor, lawyer and psychiatrist, working at the Odyssey Institute in New York. The findings of her research were deeply disturbing. There is not the time to go into this: suffice it to say that the use of children for pornographic films or photographs was emotionally damaging to those children.
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The production of pornographic magazines involving children is big business, running, it is estimated, to millions of dollars in the United States. Now, as from last February, this market is no longer available and it is reasonable to suppose that the British merchants of child pornographic magazines will seek to develop their own lucrative markets in this country using British children even more extensively than has been done in the past. Your Lordships will ask why the import of such magazines is not dealt with by the Customs and Excise. I have learned that much of a is material comes in—for instance, to quote one example—in big meat container lorries and, by the very nature of these means, the Customs and Excise officers cannot hope to catch the material so imported. There is a chain of underground distributors who are careful to have only 10, 20 or perhaps 30 copies in their cars, should they be inspected or their cars looked at. Clause 1(1)(c) and Clause 3 could deal with this situation.
I come to the magazines and glossies, some of which I have said are imported from abroad, some of which are compiled in this country. Of the hard porn magazines—by that I mean those which come within the late Lord Reid's definition —there is Children Love, printed abroad—and the copy I saw was bought in Waltham-stow. There is Juicy Teens, printed in America, which costs £3, bought in Soho. There is Lolita, printed in Holland, which costs £5.50, bought in Birmingham and Liverpool, and Sweet Patty, printed in Denmark, a copy of which was bought in Kingston in Surrey.
I know that many family photographers are worried about the Bill for fear that they should be caught within its orbit. In a letter to The Times, printed on 15th February this year, Professor Ivor Mills wrote:
"Let us not enact a law which will make normal parents liable to prosecution or, worse still, open to blackmail"
If Lord Reid's definition was applied, photographs and films by parents could surely be ruled out. Thus parents, relatives and friends taking delightful photographs of their children in the garden or on the beach could rest assured that the Bill would not affect them.
I now turn to those who produce these child pornographic photographs and films.

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We should perhaps look at two categories. First, there are those who sexually exploit children by taking these photographs or films, or arrange for them to be taken, or purchase them, or distribute them for financial gain. It is big business, and the porn organisers are smooth operators. The Chicago Tribune reported that child pornography and child prostitution have been highly organised into a multimillion-dollar industry, operated on a scale that few Americans have begun to comprehend.
Secondly, there is child pornography in this country which is—or has often been—private business: just one passing a photograph to another. Now there is evidence that pornographic magazines concerning children are produced in this country for gain. In Greater Manchester in 1977, 162,581 books, magazines and films were seized, with an estimated total value of £445,000.25p. Five per cent. of these books related to child pornography. Children as young as seven were shown in photographs having sexual intercourse with adults or each other, masturbating, and performing buggery. Of the 5 per cent. which related to child pornography, one quarter were reported to be home produced.
These figures show that the situation in this country may not be as widespread as in the United States, but I remind your Lordships that the United States porn commercial enterprises will be looking for new markets. These magazines cost from £3 to £8 each. I suppose it could be said that the commercial operators are the equivalent of the pushers in the drug industry.
There are others who possess and pass round "kiddy" porn. I quote from The Times of 20th February this year:
"There are those who prefer sensuality without the emotional complexities of an adult relationship. He or she, themselves immature people, use a child for sexual satisfaction"
In my experience as a social worker, some of these people—though not all—have themselves had childhoods devoid of the maturing effect of wise parenthood. I suggest that compassion rather than outright condemnation should be the attitude to this group. However, compassion for those unable, or who do not choose, to establish normal relationships should most surely not amount to accept-
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ance of sexual exploitation of children as a substitute. An understanding of such immature people and the upholding of values are surely not incompatible. From what I have said, I would not wish it to be thought for one moment that I tolerate the curious and distasteful activities of the paedophiles. I only wish to make the point that one must try to understand the causes in order to eradicate such activities.
Finally, we come to the children who are the central concern of the Bill. To know what is happening to them, Mr. Townsend has allowed me to see his papers, so that, through him, I have been helped by welfare organisations, the NSPCC, the National Abuse Campaign and the Festival of Light. I should add that 1½ million people have signed the petition calling for a change in the law. An action group has called for a ban on the sexual exploitation of children. We are grateful to the Press for the sympathy which it has shown, and I personally am particularly indebted to the Daily Mirror for the help which it has given to me, to the Thames Valley Police and, as I said before, to the NSPCC.
What of the children? It has been said that, before the passing of this Act, we should wait for the report of the Williams Committee, which is looking into the obscenity laws and film censorship. It would in any other set of circumstances make sense but not in this situation. The children who may be exploited cannot wait. I hope that the Williams Committee will take note of the Bill and regard it as a springboard and that it will make recommendations to amend, expand or change it if the Bill is not fulfilling the purpose for which it is intended or if circumstances alter.
The noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, will tell you of a child who has been exploited and whose mother she has met. Research and ordinary human sense indicate that a child wisely loved by its parents and relatives, and by the members of the community in which he lives has an image of himself which is an image of worth, of dignity and of a person loved and respected in his own right. When he is sexually exploited, his image is changed and diminished. His self-regard is stolen from him and he does not know what has been stolen. His life is slanted to sexuality without the accompanying human relationships.

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Life does not stand still. With the changed texture of feelings within and without, it has been shown by research in America that sexually exploited children may move to drugs, some to child prostitution and certainly to a life of hopelessness because the respected self-image has gone. A sin has been committed against the mind, the emotions and the spirits of a child and it is for such children that the Bill comes before your Lordships' House. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a(Baroness Faithfull.)
11.45 a.m.
Lord WIGODER: My Lords, I know that all noble Lords would want me to express at once to the noble Baroness our very real gratitude to her for undertaking the responsibility of introducing this Bill into your Lordships' House and of piloting it on its course through the House, at the same time expressing our congratulations to her for the extremely able and helpful way in which she has introduced its provisions to us today.
This Bill will no doubt receive a Second Reading today; I hope it does. It will then go into Committee stage. It is my hope that when it emerges from its Committee stage it will be very substantially amended, and that it will then be capable of being a modest contribution towards the plugging of a small gap in our criminal law. I see nothing in the Bill to warrant the slightly off-putting wave of hysterical enthusiasm with which it has been greeted outside your Lordships' House. I do not regard the Bill as being in any way a substantial step forward in the war against pornography or in the battle against the permissive society; nor do I regard it, on the other hand, as being a substantial step in the direction of censorship or towards a repressive society. It is a Bill that is designed to deal with one particular problem and it should, I think, be the concern of your Lordships, in looking at the Bill, at a later stage to ensure that it does that adequately and efficiently.
The Bill raises the whole question of the exploitation of children for the purposes of sexual gratification. This is not a new discovery. This is an age-old problem. It is not in the least surprising that in
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those circumstances there is a substantial amount of legislation that deals with precisely the problem with which this Bill seeks to deal. The noble Baroness has mentioned already the provisions of the Customs and Excise Act 1952, which seek to prevent the importation into this country of indecent material. The provision is there, but I accept entirely what the noble Baroness says, that in the very nature of things that provision cannot always be effective, and that as a result a quantity of indecent material comes into this country from abroad. Once that material comes into the country it is then subject at once to the provisions of the Obscene Publications Acts 1959 and 1964.
If your Lordships will forgive me, I will remind you just for a moment of the position under those Acts which are already on the Statute Book. If a pornographic photograph is taken of a child then under those Acts that are already on the Statute Book any person who published it would commit a criminal offence, whether he did this for gain or not, as would a person who had it for publication for gain, or with a view to publication had it in his ownership, possession or control. The word "publish" is defined very widely in the Act as meaning distribute, circulate, sell, let on hire, give, lend, offer for sale or to hire, show, project and various other verbs of that sort.
So the position is this. If one looks at Clause 1 of this Bill in its present form one sees that, with one comparatively small exception, all the people who could commit an offence under Clause 1 of this Bill in fact come into the categories of people who would commit an offence under the Obscene Publications Act.
The Earl of LONGFORD: May I interrupt the noble Lord? He is quoting to some extent from the Act, but not wholly. He is paraphrasing the Act and giving it an interpretation, if I may say so respectfully, which is all his own.
Lord WIGODER: My Lords, I have not been paraphrasing the Obscene Publications Acts; I have been quoting them with precision, word for word.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, will the noble Lord quote the passage

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about the photographing of children in that Act?
Lord WIGODER: I did not hear the noble Earl, my Lords.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, will the noble Lord quote the passage about the photographing of children in that Act?
Lord WIGODER: Indeed, my Lords. I was only seeking for the moment to show that, if there were an obscene photograph of a child, that would be covered by the Obscene Publications Act in almost the same detail as in this present Bill now before your Lordships' House. We shall no doubt be assisted in due course by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, who, with rather more research facilities at his disposal than I have, might be able to help your Lordships about this. The only practical distinction that I can see between the Bill now before your Lordships' House and the Obscene Publications Act is that the Bill before your Lordships' House would catch the photographer who took pornographic photographs of children for his own private purposes. My Lords, that, as I see it, is the gap in the criminal law. It is the gap that was pointed out in the case of The Queen v. Sutton. It is the gap with which this Bill will deal. Because of that, I welcome this Bill. I say so at once, because it helps to deal with that particular gap.
To what extent this is a very substantial gap I venture to doubt. In the very nature of pornographic photographs, they are taken by the photographer for his, own private amusement, and he does not even seek, in the terms of the Obscene Publications Act, to publish them to his own friends. But there is a gap in the law. As I have said, this was indicated in the case of The Queen v. Sutton and it is, I believe, that gap with which this Bill deals.
Even where the photographer is taking an obscene photograph for his own private purposes, he may very well be caught by other provisions of the criminal law. If he ventures to touch the child in any circumstances of indecency, that would be an indecent assault under the Sexual Offences Act. If the child were under 14
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and, for the purposes of the photograph, were incited to commit an act of indecency with another child, with an animal or with an adult—whatever it might be—that would be an offence under the Indecency with Children Act 1960.
I would not want it to be thought that, in the year 1978, a vast area of abuse of children for sexual purposes had suddenly been discovered, having remained unknown to the criminal law in past years. It simply is not so. What has happened is that there is this one gap where a person is taking photographs for his own private amusement, and with this the Bill will deal. To what extent the gap is a significant one will, I think, remain to be seen, but it is certainly one with which it is worth dealing in the course of this Bill.
I find it very difficult personally to estimate how much of this "kiddy porn", as it is being called, is in fact around in this country. I know that estimates are made by loquacious chief constables. Estimates are sometimes made by other people who are equally loquacious. If I may bring myself into that category for a moment, I can only venture to say that I have had the misfortune to be involved in court in one way or another in a substantial number of cases where pornographic literature by the ton has been produced. It may be entirely my good fortune, and I expect it is, that I cannot recall a single case in which obscene photographs of children have been involved. I accept that those photographs do, of course, exist and magazines circulate, but I would not want it to be thought that your Lordships' House was exaggerating the extent of the danger at this stage.
In that situation, your Lordships will in due course want to come to consider this Bill on Committee, and I would not want to make points more suitable to a Committee stage today. We would want to look in due course at Clause 1 which uses the test of indecency, rather than the test of obscenity which is the test in the Obscene Publications Act. This is a matter which I think would need to be looked at with some care. I suppose that indecency is a rather lesser standard of dirtiness, if I may use that expression, than obscenity. I suppose that indecency means liable to shock or outrage, whereas obscenity means calculated to deprave or corrupt.

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Whether, in leaving Clause 1 as it stood, we would thereby be amending the Obscene Publications Act by a rather backdoor method, is a matter that your Lordships will no doubt want to continue to consider in due course. Personally I am a little unhappy about the use of the word "indecent". I think there are far too many people outside your Lordships' House who have a sort of fig-leaf mentality and who blush a bright crimson whenever they stand in front of any of the masterpieces of European painting or sculpture, and who would regard any such representations of the human form as being indecent within the terms of this Bill. That is a matter which will have to be looked at.
I would suggest that Clause 1(4), which deals with the question of the age of the child photographed, is not at the moment very aptly expressed. One might think that Clause 3, which deals with the powers of seizure and destruction, is quite excessively and unnecessarily wide. Clause 4(b) deals with possible defence to a charge under the Bill which I would suggest is not very happily expressed and might be substantially improved. Those are all matters of detail that can be looked at in due course.
My conclusion, if I may put it in a sentence, is simply this: that of course I would accept entirely that it is possible for a photographer, by the taking of filthy photographs of this nature, to corrupt a child model. Therefore it is right that this Bill should deal with that problem. We are dealing with it from the point of view of preserving and protecting the child, not from the point of view of protecting the ultimate onlooker who may decide that he wants to purchase the magazine and look at the photographs.
Looking at the existing law, it seems to me that the overwhelming majority of cases of pornographic photographs of children are perfectly adequately dealt with, but I entirely accept that there is this one gap; there are a few cases which are outside the provisions of the law as it at present stands. I venture to minimise the number of those few cases. May I say of course that. I do not minimise their importance. I would entirely accept that, in a sense, the number is not important in this context. The saving of the well-
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being of a few children, however few it might be, is a matter very properly of the greatest possible importance.
For those reasons, I would venture to hope that that is an abuse which your Lordships will find it possible to deal with perfectly adequately in this Bill by amending it at an appropriate stage when your Lordships come to deal with it subsequently.
11.59 a.m.
Lord REDESDALE: My Lords, I should like from these Benches unreservedly to welcome this Bill which I, along with many other noble Lords, believe is definitely needed. I should also like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Faithful], for her very good exposition of the Bill and the need for it. I, too, would like to thank Mr. Cyril Townsend for working so hard to get this Bill brought to the Statute Book. It has, after all, had a rather chequered career in another place and got off to a false start.
Before coming to the Bill, may I say how very much I am looking forward to the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate, as I am sure it will be something that we shall all wish to remember. I was rather disappointed, and somewhat saddened, to hear the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, whom I admire immensely, not only as a friend. I felt that he was taking an attitude which was rather complacent, and also one that very much played down the need for this Bill.
At this stage, I should like to run over in a very brief fashion what I believe to be the situation at the moment. I think it would be very wrong, as the noble Lord opposite said, to overstate the situation regarding child pornography in this country. The problem is not so much as it is at the moment, but what it could be. The American laws could have a very drastic effect on the importation of porn into this country and, in some ways, the increasing in size of child porn production in this country.
It is rather interesting to note that no article or speech was made by a Minister before Mr. Richard Luce raised the question in another place some seven months ago. I am not saying that there has been a violent explosion of child porn in this

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country, but it certainly has been increasing rapidly. This has, I believe, taken place—although I cannot, unfortunately, like so many things, prove this—and has started to grow at an increasing rate over the last two years. At the moment, if one takes the Manchester example, it probably amounts to some 5 per cent. I am sure the noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong, and he probably has facts to prove it. But from what I believe, it could amount to around 5 per cent. at the moment. Most of that is probably on male homosexual pictures of boys.
The real problem is that we want to avoid any explosion such as that which took place in the United States—and I think the noble Lord will agree that it did explode in the United States over the past two years, which has resulted in the laws being produced over there. It has had a very worrying effect in America. Figures are subject to doubt, and a number have been given which are perhaps overstated. But the figure of 1 million child prostitutes in the States has been bandied about. This may be on the high side, but there are certainly a great many over there. This number has been swelled to some extent by child pornographic photographs, especially perhaps in Los Angeles. If the noble Lord feels that there are so few, I believe that there are in fact 296 child pornographic magazines in the United States. I am afraid I do not know how many there are here, but there are numbers, possibly under a hundred, in different titles.
One point that should be cited is that the amount of pornographic material that was seized last year by the Metropolitan Police—I am referring to all pornographic material—amounted to 375,484 pieces or articles. Most of these were magazines. However, this figure has leapt to over 1 million pieces seized so far this year, and they are still counting. I am not saying that this is entirely one big jump, because I believe that the main reason for this big increase in seizures has been a direction to seize Briitish-produced pornographic material, but certainly very much more material has been seized so far this year in London than was seized last year. The problem in the States does exist and it has been tied up, as I have said, with child pornography, child prostitution, drug abuse and venereal disease. It has reached
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such an alarming state that the laws that have been passed have really been quite severe.
My Lords, I will be brief, because I know that there are many speakers who will cover other aspects of this Bill. What I should like to emphasise is that we are most keen that this Bill should be passed. I am the first to agree that changes will have to be made in Committee. I would just add that I am not keen on expanding the Bill to cover the written word, because I feel that the problems of definition are hard enough if it is, and if the written word was put in we might be in danger of losing the Bill altogether.
I should now like to come on to a few aspects of the Bill which I hope the noble Lord could clarify for me. I know that some people feel that, to make it effective, the onus of proof of age should be put on to the publisher. I am told that the Bill or, possibly Amendments, might cover this. I felt that this was perhaps not fully stated, but here I speak as a layman, and I should like to hear more from the Minister on this particular point.
There is also the question of search warrants. I am sure that will be raised later. On this point, it seems that the police have their hands slightly tied at the moment, in that if they apply for a search warrant under the Obscene Publications Act they could not actually search for material which would be covered by this Bill should it become an Act. Then there is the question of films. I feel that there might be an opportunity in this Bill to clarify the situation on search warrants without, perhaps, indulging in tacking. I feel that the situation of the police could be helped over search warrants, and that it would assist the courts as well.
The noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, raised the question of parents taking photographs of their children, and that someone might perhaps consider that these were indecent. Obviously this is a problem, and perhaps the Bill at present does not cover it. Therefore, I hope that it is something that will be looked at during the Committee stage.
Finally, I should like to say yet again that I believe this Bill is needed, not so much as the situation is at the moment, but to prevent a situation which might

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come about. Therefore I should like, from these Benches, to welcome the Bill, and hope that it is given a Second Reading in this House.
12.8 p.m.
The LORD BISHOP of GUILDFORD: My Lords, it may seem at first sight a strange topic on which to make a maiden speech in this House, but I am grateful for the privilege of speaking this morning. I do not speak in any way as an expert on these matters, for social responsibility is not a particular brief which I hold in Church House. I speak rather as someone who, in ordinary, everyday life, has both admiration for and gives support to societies such as the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, the Responsible Society and the Order for Christian Unity, and who admires them for the work that they do in seeking to maintain high moral standards in our national life. It seems to me that we owe them a great debt for the enthusiasm and the integrity with which they pursue their causes.
If at times their presentation seems somewhat exaggerated, I think that is because of the depth of their caring, and also because often it is only in this way that they are able to claim public attention. I am glad today to be able to play a modest part in supporting one of the causes which they have espoused, and one which has been taken up so vigorously by others in another place, as well as, I anticipate, in this House today.
My Lords, in attacking moral issues, however, it is never entirely simply a question of right versus wrong. Society as a whole always must bear some responsibility for evils within it. We must always be sensitive to the issues of personal freedom and responsibility without which mature and good human relationships cannot grow. I must confess that in this particular matter of child pornography I was at first somewhat anxious lest emotive and exaggerated reactions to it might harm the very people whom the clause was seeking to protect. I thought that excessive publicity might, on the one hand, introduce some to practices and productions of which they would not have been otherwise aware, and, on the other, instil fear and shame in those who were perhaps least able to cope with these pressures. Such a fear could pre-
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vent many parents from helping their children to acquire that open and positive attitude to sexual relations which is needed for real human maturity.
However, the case for the Bill has been clearly demonstrated both in another place and today through the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull. I, for one, am deeply grateful for the lucidity and clarity with which she has made this case. The Bill seeks to protect children from attacks on their integrity which have been shown to be of real substance, and which I hope your Lordships will believe to be so serious and harmful as to call for protection in statute form. Pornography of any kind degrades and diminishes the humanity of those involved in it, whether as producers or consumers, and it is clearly right to protect children from its evil influence in any way possible. It would be inappropriate in a maiden speech to comment on the details of the Bill, but I hope that these will be considered at the Committee stage, and particularly the question of whether the Bill ought to include reference to the text of pornographic literature as well as to the pictures.
I am glad also of this opportunity to put the record straight about the attitude to the Bill of the General Synod Board for Social Responsibility. Your Lordships may recall that The Times of 31st January carried a report that the General Synod was told by the Bishop of Truro, Chairman of the Board for Social Responsibility, that it did not support the Private Member's Bill on child pornography which was being promoted in another place. That was a misleading, because inadequate, report by The Times of the right reverend Prelate's answer to a question in the Synod on the previous evening. On the following day, my noble friend in a personal statement said that his answer had been made in the light of the fact that his Board had not yet had an opportunity to consider the Government's inquiries into this matter. Your Lordships will be glad to know that, at its meeting on 28th February, the Board for Social Responsibility considered the Protection of Children Bill and issued the following statement:
"The Board reaffirms its opposition to the evil of pornography and the exploitation of children for this purpose. It accepts that there are gaps in the law which the Bill seeks to remove, and for these reasons the Board welcomes the Bill, whose intention it supports. The Board strongly urges Her Majesty's Government to

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ensure that adequate time is made available for full discussion of the details and its speedy enactment".
Your Lordships will, I am sure, be glad to have that information. The Board's statement concurs with Cardinal Hume's words in addressing the same General Synod, which were used to such good effect when the Bill was presented for its Second Reading in another place.
I have spoken to this point in general terms. I hope that your Lordships will now allow me to give two personal reasons why I hope that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading. First, it is important that we should stand in line with other advanced communities in outlawing the exploitation of children for pornographic purposes. A particular responsibility lies on countries such as ours and the United States simply because of the facilities which we have for the easy production and circulation of this material. There do not appear to be grounds for thinking that the problem is as widespread here as it is, for example, in the United States, but it is important to heed the warnings of those who suggest that, if these practices are suppressed by law in the United States, those who practise them may turn to English-speaking Britain for the production of pornographic material, and even more to find outlets for its sale.
Your Lordships may recall a similar case last year in which a particular film director was seeking to make a pornographic film of the life of Jesus Christ. He journeyed from country to country in Western Europe, seeking facilities for the production of the film, and it was only because of a united stand by Western governments, often under public pressure, that he was in the end forced to give up his attempt. In this country, we have a proud tradition of giving asylum, but we do not wish to give it to this kind of refugee.
Lastly, and more positively, I support the Bill because lying behind it is the problem of how to secure for children room and time to grow. A person's life passes through clear stages, and it is of the utmost importance that children should have time to enjoy childhood, and thus to acquire that inner treasure of spontaneity, innocence and modesty
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of which the pornographers, by their actions, rob them. The more mature relationships of adult life find fulfilment only when they are built upon, and grow out of, a secure childhood which has had time to develop warm and loving relationships with others. Truly joyous experience in all its variety, including that of sex, comes most easily when there has been such an unhurried growth in awareness of and response to others.
The Bill seeks to protect those children who are exposed to particular dangers, and it would be easy for us to suppose that, in protecting children from these specific dangers—that is, from those who would exploit them in a pornographic way—we have discharged our duty in this respect. However, we live in a world in which, through the media—and, indeed, through the development of education—children are exposed to experiences and made aware of possibilities in a way which is very different from that of a generation or so ago. Increased leisure and affluence and the heightened expectations of personal relationships all play their part in lowering the age at which children cross the threshold into youth and adulthood. The problems are particularly acute in the inner cities and in areas of poverty, deprivation and bad housing.
All these factors place particular stress on today's children and hurry them too quickly into the world of youth and adulthood. Thus these problems place a heavier responsibility on today's adults. More attention needs to be paid to the problem of securing the widest and most extended time possible for all our children to grow without undue haste towards maturity. For these reasons, I beg to support the Bill.
12.20 p.m.
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: My Lords, I am sure that you will join with me in congratulating the right reverend Prelate very warmly indeed on his maiden speech. As befits an occupant of those Benches, he was clear in voice and mind, and his message was particularly clear. It is a great addition to our discussions, and on a matter of this kind I see no reason why the right reverend Prelate should not regard this as an occasion for making his maiden speech. I dissent from the company he keeps,

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though I fully endorse the general philosophy and the case for morality in dealing with this difficult and delicate issue. I am sure we shall look forward in future to further contributions from the right reverend Prelate on matters of common concern.
My Lords, I am a case of mistaken identity, which is why my name was deleted from the list of your Lordships who wished to speak. My noble friend Lord Halsbury, for whom I was mistaken, had unfortunately to leave. Probably mine will be the only dissenting speech of the day. The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, may have been disappointed with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, but he will be a great deal more disappointed with mine. It does not matter; it is just a point of view. But if your Lordships' House cannot listen to a dissenting voice, then what is the point of it at all?
This is what I would describe as a buffalo Bill. It is a stampede. This is not legislation, this is a rush; and one wonders how it started. What is the evidence upon which these proposals rest? Has the evidence been produced? Has it been examined? Can evidence be distinguished from propaganda and from pressure? If your Lordships want to know where some of this started, I can tell your Lordships.
I have here a cutting from the Catholic Herald of 27th January of this year, and the banner headline is: "Your Child is in Danger, Act Now". "Your child is in danger"—not some children, not other people's children, not American children—"your child is in danger, act now". It asks that people should collect signatures to support the Bill to be given a Second Reading in another place on 10th February. At the bottom it calls upon the Catholic Herald, the Catholic Teachers' Federation and all concerned, including workers in the Catholic Church, to collect signatures on a form and to bombard their MP with letters of protest to protect the children of this country from pornographers. Not "write to your MP", not "approach your MP" —bombard your MP.
This is pressure, my Lords. This is not evidence. This is aggressive pressure upon Members of Parliament, and there
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has been much more in similar vein in the Press and elsewhere. I do not believe that the evidence that we have had from any noble Lord or the noble Baroness who has spoken this morning, provides the case for this Bill. There are no grounds for this feverish condition, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, I think did a great service to this House this morning in putting this Bill in the context of other provisions to safeguard the people of this country from pornography of all kinds.
Lord REDESDALE: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Would he not just agree that even if one child is put at risk he should be protected? We know that there are in existence photographs of children taken in pornographic situations. Should those children not be protected?
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: My Lords, that is not the basis for legislation, if I may respectfully say so. That is not the basis for providing fresh opportunities for raids by the police to ransack bookshops and to intrude upon the personal lives of parents in order to discover one case of alleged abuse of children for pornographic purposes. This is not the basis upon which the laws of England have been constructed. One child may be at risk because of some failure on the part of parents or guardians. It does not require an Act of Parliament to alter the behaviour of some parents: indeed, no Acts of Parliament will alter the behaviour of some parents. No; I think one has to justify this Bill on grounds of the public good and of the protection not of one child but of a lot of children. There is no evidence that has been produced of this.
In the Second Reading speech in another place there was heavy reliance upon the evidence of the chief constable of Manchester, Mr. Anderton, and upon an American lady who came over here, apparently, specially for the purpose, a Dr. Denson-Gerber. With regard to the reference to the Americans, the Americans are our friends. I myself deplore the apparently irresponsible way in which we refer to the moral decadence of people in the United States. Things may not be bad here, we are told, but they are, of course, worse in the United States.

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Estimates are made in this House of the number of child prostitutes in the United States. On these occasions of pornography we freely use criticisms of Denmark, Holland, friendly countries, and now the United States, to justify steps which we are asked to take to protect our own moral standards. As a matter of fact, the evidence by the chief constable of Manchester that was so heavily relied upon by the Mover of the Bill in another place, turned out to be most unreliable because he was reported as having said—and I am quoting now from column 1831 of the Official Report of another place on 10th February:
"It is estimated by my Vice Squad officers that of all the material seized from 'hard porn' book shops in Greater Manchester approximately 5 per cent. of it relates to child pornography".
The Minister of State, Mr. Brynmor John, who made the one sensible speech on the Bill in another place, said—and I quote now from column 1845:
"When we checked with the chief constable personally, yesterday, he said that he had no hard figures to back that up. We are trying to get from him hard facts to check the position".
So that when the chief constable was asked on the telephone on the day before the debate to provide some evidence of the statement that he was alleged to have made, he had no hard facts to back it up.
I think that it is a strange piece of legislation, giving new discretion, new rights to the police for intrusion upon the lives of the citizens, that has not been examined in detail as to the evidence and justification for it. When one thinks of the committees and the commissions that examine matters of concern and of intricate detail, requiring evidence and witnesses, and upon whose reports little or nothing is done, and here, by contrast, we have a Bill before this House in support of which there is no previous examination of the evidence at all, I think the sensible thing to do would be to refer the Bill to a Select Committee in order that that evidence may be obtained.
When I refer to the strange condition of this Bill coming to your Lordships' House this morning, may I refer to the so-called Committee stage of the Bill in another place. The noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, said that Amendments were down for the Committee stage but
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they were not debated. But, strange to relate, the Committee stage of this Bill in another place went through on the nod. There was no Committee stage, despite the fact that the Minister and others in debate drew attention, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, has done this morning, to matters which must require attention during the Committee. The House of Commons provided no such examination of the details of provisions of this Bill in Committee. It has been sent up here without amendment and without debate in the Committee stage of the Bill. This is a very strange procedure in my long experience of this Parliament. One might say in passing that perhaps we are not so useless after all! Indeed, the Home Secretary said, in reply to a Question in another place as to what was to happen to this Bill:
"As the hon. Member will know, with the co-operation of the Government, the Bill has passed its remaining stages in the House of Commons. We shall assist in putting the Bill into a more workable form during its proceedings in another place ".—[Official Report (Commons), 24/4/78; co1.419.]
But the House of Commons made no attempt to put this Bill into workable form at all—none whatever—and I think that that alone is a valid criticism of the manner in which the Bill has been dealt with.
Baroness FAITHFULL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he can give me reasons why that happened in the House of Commons?
Lord HOUGHTON of SOWERBY: My Lords, I can only conclude that the House of Commons was in such a state of mind about the Bill that it wanted to see it on its way. It did not wish to delay the matter any further, and, of course, as it was a Private Member's Bill there were certain risks if it did have a Committee stage in the House of Commons. There was a procedural as well as, I think, an emotive inspiration behind sending this Bill here without examination in Committee. But it shows how unsatisfactory it all is from the point of view of legislation.
As to the Bill itself, I shall be very brief now because much of the Bill must undergo serious consideration. The noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, drew attention to one small gap—as he puts it, only one small gap—that this Bill will cover.

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But, as I understand it, that small gap will cover the behaviour of a parent in relation to his child in private. When the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, said that those who take photographs of their children in the garden will have nothing to fear, can she really be so sure? Has she really examined Clause 1 of the Bill? Has she looked at subsection (2)?
"A person is guilty of an offence under subsection (1) whether or not the act constituting the offence is committed—

(a) for gain;

(b) in public or in private".

"Whether or not," The governing main clause is a person who takes an "indecent photograph". The taking of the indecent photograph, whether in public or in private, whether or not for gain, is caught within Clause 1.
What about prurient neighbours who see a father taking a photograph, of his child in the garden one afternoon? They say, "Look at that man! He is taking an indecent photograph of his child. Ring up the police. Get them here at once. We will catch him red-handed." Then what happens? The police will have the right of entry. The police will have the right to attempt to recover any other photographs he may have on the premises. They may, in fact, arrest a person. But they cannot charge him, because the Director of Public Prosecutions will decide whether a charge should be brought against him. But the damage may be done. He may wait for months for the Director of Public Prosecutions to decide.
The Chief Constable of Manchester has reported with apparent pride, that his vice squad have raided well over 200 bookshops in the Greater Manchester area and he is very pleased, apparently, that he has put 13 or 14 of them out of business altogether. The police can go in and remove practically the whole of the stock, and in many cases the shopkeeper cannot get his goods back except by application to a court. No charges are made against him. The goods are kept for weeks on end, and the shopkeeper has no remedy except to go to the court for the return of this alleged pornographic material. In the meantime, his business is virtually ruined, and his own state of mind is reduced to that of acute anguish.
Bear in mind that on some occasions the cure can be a great deal worse than the
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disease. Need I refer to the protection racket of the Soho porn shops and the complete corruption of that section of the Metropolitan Police? I was on the Royal Commission on Standards of Conduct in Public Life. I heard the evidence of the Chief Commissioner. We heard all about this, and we learned what he was doing. When shopkeepers are exposed to the risk of this kind of raid and the irreparable damage that it may do to their business, no wonder rackets begin and pornography flourishes because the police have been given something to refrain from raiding. The raid is the thing which can destroy the livelihood of a shopkeeper and destroy his reputation. But this Bill enables the police to intrude in conditions of far greater domestic intimacy, and I think we have to be careful before we provide for that in a Bill of this kind.
My Lords, I have finished. I think that the plea for caution in adopting further repressive measures, giving further rights to the police, should be observed. We want to be careful that we are not exposing citizens to further inroads into their privacy and their rights as responsible people. If I may say so, hysteria is no condition in which to legislate.
12.38 p.m.
Baroness ELLIOT of HARWOOD: My Lords, I have listened with great interest to the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, and if I compare the speech of my noble friend Lady Faithfull, who spoke quietly, gently, with no great emphasis, backed up by very careful study, putting (as I think she did) the case in a very quiet and gentle way, with the somewhat, perhaps I should not use the word "hysterical" but anyway very, very fierce manner in which the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, has put his case against this Bill, I think that the accusation of hysteria on our side is possibly a little exaggerated. I do not know about myself—I may get quite hysterical, I cannot say; but most people have put the case very quietly and very gently and have backed it up. If the noble Lord reads Lady Faithfull's speech afterwards I think he will find that there is a great deal of backing for all that she has had to say.
I am sorry to disagree with the noble Lord. He takes tremendous interest in animal welfare, not, by any possible

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chance, doing anything which can possibly injure or hurt an animal. Apparently he is not nearly as interested in not injuring or hurting a child. It is a funny thing in life. Some noble Lords will have had this experience. If one is trying to raise money for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, one will get far more money for animals than for children. This has happened many times in life. It is just one of those peculiar things, that the British public sometimes has very strange views.
I should like to congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford on his speech, which I found very interesting. I am so glad to find that, in speaking as he did today, he is giving the support of, I am sure, the majority of his fellow Bishops and of the Synod of the Church of England on this. I am sure I could say the same for the Church of Scotland, and for any people who really care about these matters. I should like also to congratulate Lady Faithfull. As I have said, I thought her presentation of the case was most quiet and most gentle, and really persuasive.
I did not follow what happened in the House of Commons, but I understand that there was some problem with a Member of another place, who took steps on that Friday morning which made it impossible for the Bill to go through, or to be debated, as the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, would like it to have been debated. I think that we all would like it to have been debated in another place; but it was the wish of a number of MPs, and the encouragement of the Prime Minister who no doubt feels that this is a Bill that he would like to see discussed and debated in both Houses of Parliament. I feel encouraged by the fact that there are people on both sides of the House who will be anxious to see this Bill discussed and passed, albeit with amendments; that we are not disputing.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, who said that any form of cruelty and abuse to children is something that we want to stop. All of us who read history know of the abuses against children that took place in the Victorian age. We all know how abominable the employment of children was in the nineteenth century.
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It has been done away with, and quite rightly so. But if you find, in the twentieth century, some abuses that have not yet been done away with, or are in fact new, in that the methods used for this photographic pornography of children is new in the sense that it probably has not existed for more than five or six years, surely that is something which is just as important to stop as the abuse of child labour at the age of eight, nine or 10 in the Victorian age.
I did not have the pleasure of meeting the American lady who has succeeded in persuading the American Congress and the Senate representatives to adopt a Bill to stop the pornographic photography and other pornographic horrors perpetrated on children. It is important to realise, as Baroness Faithfull said, that if these loathsome people can make money from their horrible methods, if they cannot make it in America they will try to make it in other countries. I do not want them to be able to make it here in this country.
I have read the Bill with some care. As I understand it, it identifies one of the abuses which, under all the many Acts of Parliament, is not protected. If that is so, I see every reason for backing the Bill. I can speak of one case which was brought to my notice. I shall mention no names, nor make any identifiable remark about it, because I have since learned that the case is sub judice and will be coming up in the courts. I saw the mother of a boy between the age of 13 and 14. This boy had been persuaded by a man connected with the area in which they lived to have photographs taken, advertising sportswear. The boy was very keen on sport and he was offered money to be photographed wearing different kind of sportswear. The boy, quite unsuspectingly, responded. He went to this man, who took photographs of him. When they began to take photographs, he was told to take off his clothes, which he did. The obscene photography which went on after that was most upsetting for the child. He could not get out of it; he was being blackmailed by the man, who threatened him with telling the police and having him up. The case had the most devastating effect on the child and, of course, on his parents. At least a year of the boy's schooling has been wasted because he has been through

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these terrible experiences. He is now frightened to work with his companions. He is still at school, but he wishes to be separate from all the others. The effect on his mentality has been very detrimental. He is now a year behind in his educational work. This is a very tragic case. It is only one case, I know, but I have seen the woman and I was greatly saddened by what she told me.
If the Bill can do anything to prevent pornographic photography being used, first, to make money, secondly, to frighten children, and, thirdly, to ruin families, because it is very upsetting for the family, then I think that we should definitely back the Bill in order to stop it. This is a subject on which I have never taken up any cases because they have never come my way. I am trying to play everything down, because I agree that one does not want to become hysterical on these matters. But I have seen the texts of the written material which accompany some of these photographs, which are published and distributed privately, and really the texts are worse than the photographs; they are quite awful. I realise that the Bill cannot deal with that because it can be dealt with only under the laws of blasphemy; and the Williams Committee has been given the job of analysing the obscene writing which accompanies some of these revolting publications. But the text can be just as degrading as the photography, judging from the one or two pieces of material which I have been shown.
As I have said, I am not one who has taken any part in problems arising from pornography or obscenity, but I feel very deeply that if we are to stop up a gap in our legislation which could be used for these disgraceful and revolting ends, we are doing something which will protect not only those young people, boys and girls, who have had such an experience but we can take it impossible for anybody to do it in the future. I hope very much that the Bill will go through this House. I should like to see it applied to both Scotland and Northern Ireland, as this problem will not be confined to only one section of the United Kingdom; and if we are to have legislation, I think that it should cover both. Scotland and Northern Ireland. If I can do anything to make that possible, I certainly will. I support
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the Second Reading of the Bill most wholeheartedly.
12.50 p.m.
The Countess of LOUDOUN: My Lords, I too welcome the opportunity to help the Bill on its way. I think that it is a pity that it is restricted to the filming and photographing of children and it will not put an end to the sale of the co-called "kiddy" porn in this country. We are protecting the children of England and Wales—those we can—as best we can. The Bill will prevent the corruption of these children for profit in this particular way, but it still allows profit to be made from the corruption of children on other countries, by continuing to allow the importation of pornography featuring children. We are supporting their corruption just as surely as if we were actively taking part in it.
When we eat meat, we too take part in the killing of innocent and gentle creatures without ever stepping inside the slaughterhouse. Our money is the force behind the knife. Can we continue to allow the distribution of "kiddy" porn because it is prepacked and imported, because the anguish and slaughter of innocents takes place in another country, when our money is still the driving force behind it? There seems to be a current philosophy—I regret the ugliness of the phrase—that everyone has the right to do his own thing and that no one else has the right to interfere. But freedom to choose for oneself may become, as it does in this case, an interference with another's life, a licence to corrupt.
I have letters criticising my views, but I think that even the extremes of opinion that may be expressed here contribute to the overall soundness of the legislation, showing the edges of argument. I have had letters criticising my right to restrict the freedom of others. As a private person, I have no such right but, as a member of the legislative assembly, we together not only have the right but the responsibility and the obligation. It is for the law to say, "Let freedom take you so far but no further". Pornography has only become a national problem because of the vast profits that can be made. Take away the profits and the problem would nearly disappear. I should like to see a very heavy tax levied on the firms

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engaged in this trade. I see this Bill as a step in the right direction, small but very welcome.
12.53 p.m.
Lord DE CLIFFORD: My Lords, this is the first occasion on which I have spoken on a children's Bill. Before I start, might I join with others in congratulating the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford on his most clear speech, the example of which I trust we shall have often repeated in the future on other subjects. I came in here with a rather clear mind on this Bill, I thought. The first person who confused it thoroughly was the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder. The second person who rather confused it was the noble Lord, Lord Houghton. I have tried to restore the balance by looking at what the Bill is called, which is the Protection of Children Bill.
Despite what has been said, I must support the Second Reading of this Bill, and I think that my noble friend Lady Faithfull, is to be congratulated for taking it on. One of the things we do not want to happen in this Bill is that we shall produce something here which will become a lawyer's paradise. We are at grave risk, when I listen to these speeches, of producing a Bill which may just fill the lawyers' briefs and advice over the next few years. Nobody can say that this Bill is right. I should like to know from the noble Lord, Lord Harris, regarding the fears which have been expressed—that if we amend the Bill, the Bill will be lost—whether he could assure us that the Government will give it time when it has to return to another place and that time will be given for consideration of what we have said.
So far as the Bill itself is concerned, what worries me about it is this: apart from the fact that I do not feel that we should lay parents open to attack because they take photographs of their children in their gardens, which I think is a normal matter of family life, what is there in the Bill to catch the person who puts the child in the position where it is open to the offences which are in here?
With many members of the public, I have been greatly distressed reading in the media of the enormous number of
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children who get into great trouble and difficulty, who are nothing to do with family life at all. They are in homes which turn out to be run by people who should never have run homes. Those are the children we want to protect. I would be interested to know under the Bill, if children get exposed to the dangers outlined in the Bill from homes which are run (shall we say?) on behalf of councils or anyone else, whether those people who run those homes come under a body corporate. Are they as responsible for putting children in the position where they can be affected by this Bill or not?
One has read in the media and one has seen on television cases of children who have been taken into care and have been allowed to go out on prostitution. During the course of that, if they have fallen into a situation like this, who will be responsible? This is the Protection of Children Bill. They must be protected from getting into situations where this could happen. I would be interested to know from the noble Lord who answers the debate on this Bill whether this is covered in the Bill as presented. If it is not, I should like to have great thoughts to see how we could amend this Bill to ensure that it is covered. Apart from those few words, I completely support the Bill. Anything we can do to protect children in these days of rather liberal thoughts and actions I think we should do, and I shall heartily support the noble Baroness in the Second Reading.
12.59 p.m.
Lord ROBERTSON of OAKRIDGE: My Lords, I am grateful for having the opportunity to contribute to your debate. Before I do so, may I say how much I appreciated the speech of the right reverend Prelate and how much I learned from his sympathetic approach to the problem. The reading I did in preparation for this debate was something that I would not again undertake lightly. It is not just the nastiness of the material concerned, but rather that it makes one painfully aware of one's own vulnerability. The Bible quite rightly warns us that all men's hearts contain evil and mine is certainly no exception. I stand in need of the Lord's redeeming love just as much as anyone else. The particular danger of pornographic material is that it can bring that evil to the surface and set it loose.

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I welcome this Bill because it recognises that boys and girls under 16 need protection from those who would exploit their vulnerability and abuse their trust. May T join in thanking those who identified the gap in the law protecting children in this respect, those who alerted and mobilised public opinion and those who reacted to this by assisting the passage of the Bill so far. May I take this chance to pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, for the way in which she introduced the Bill.
It is right that the Bill should be restricted to its present scope, and we should not be wise to try to extend it. But we should be clear that it deals with only one small part of the problem of child pornography. I should like to offer a few thoughts, I hope in a helpful way, on some of the points not covered by the Bill to which attention must be given if it is not to be just a finger-in-the-dyke kind of operation.
The massive increase in pornographic material throughout the Western world and the consequent emergence of child pornography in the United States and in Western Europe have given rise to widespread alarm and outrage in this country, although I doubt whether many of the one and a half million people who signed the petition calling for action against child pornography realised quite how beastly the material concerned is. There are two main areas on which action is needed—and needed well before the Williams Committee can possibly report and subsequent legislation can be enacted. I look upon the Williams Committee and all that goes with it as a long-term operation. Now that other countries, notably the USA, have acted effectively against child pornography—this is not a criticism of the United States or of other countries; quite the reverse—this country can expect to be the target in the very near future.
First, as has been emphasised, the Bill is concerned only with the protection of children who might be abused in the production of pornography. It does not prevent the corruption of child readers and the stimulation of those who might want to molest children. These problems are outside the Bill, and children will still be unprotected in these respects. Secondly, the Bill is not concerned with textual material, which can be just as vile and
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graphic, and—should it be possible to identify the child—just as damaging to him or her.
These two points raise the whole question of the adequacy of the laws on obscenity and in particular the Obscene Publications Act 1959. That Act dealt with obscenity, and the problems that it has run into appear to arise from the definition of obscenity, which many would say has not provided a satisfactory control. Indeed, the very existence of the Williams Committee speaks for itself. There is a case for considering further legislation on these aspects on an interim basis and in advance of the Williams Committee Report.
It would be reassuring to know that the Government will consider these matters urgently and will not hesitate to introduce or to support interim legislation on these questions. The present controls can, of course, be made more effective at local level by chief constables who can allocate sufficient men and resources so that magistrates can regularly rule on the obscenity material on sale, and order its confiscation and destruction under Section 3 of the 1959 Act. This has been done with effect by the Chief Constable of Manchester. Of course, these questions are always a matter of priority, but, in view of what we have heard today, it might be helpful if the Government were able to indicate that they have reminded —or intend to remind—chief constables of their powers under the 1959 Act.
However, legislation and law enforcement can take us only so far. In the end, both will fail if the background climate of opinion and the state of the family are unsound. In particular, we need to be sure that we do not lose sight of the special qualities, limitations and vulnerability of children. In an age when so many of our traditional beliefs are being discarded or compromised, and when distinctions between right and wrong and even between men and women are being blurred, it is only too easy for us to think of children as young persons, not as children. How else could certain pressure groups who campaign for more permissive legislation on sex apply the word "consenting" to children under 14? It is a gross contradiction in terms. How else could the area clinic at Doncaster not only offer free contraceptives to

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children under 16—in itself an action of doubtful legality and common sense—but actually emphasise the fact that this can be done without the knowledge of parents?
Those two examples indicate an attitude to children which, apart from anything else, can only undermine parental responsibility, and that, in turn, can only damage the family. To damage the family inevitably puts additional strain on the public authorities and the forces of law and order and, incidentally, brings about the need for more police searches. It is a strain that these authorities may well not be able to bear. The merit of the Bill is that it recognises that children are children, and, as such, are entitled to more protection. I hope that this point will not be lost on those who are in a position to influence public attitudes and those who are able to encourage and assist parents to exercise their rightful responsibilities.
1.8 p.m.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, I agree with much that was said by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and in particular with his strong argument for a far reaching revision of the obscenity laws. I shall not take up the time of the House with that general issue today. In the 19th century, it was said of a well known health reformer; "England wants to be clean, but not to be cleaned by Chadwick" Today England might say that it wants to be clean, but not to be cleaned by Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick, who might appear to be my revered friend, Mary Whitehouse, and myself. At any rate, I am not trying to link this discussion with the wider arguments to follow.
We are all indebted to the noble Baroness Lady Faithfull, for introducing the Bill into this House and for the way in which she has dealt with the subject. I also congratulate the Member of Parliament to whose initiative we owe this eventuality. I in no way agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, who no doubt has more pressing engagements. I am afraid that I have been absent a good deal myself, and have therefore missed what was obviously a fine contribution from the right reverend Prelate. But I in no way agree with the suggestion that this does not make very much difference.
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Of course, if the noble Lord has his way and manages to change certain words, it may make less difference than it does now. That was really the thought behind my intervention. I do not agree with him at all. This is a far-reaching measure of much more significance perhaps even than the subject that we are tackling today. It is a flat-out attack on the producers of evil matter. Of course, indirectly, if the producers are stopped from producing pornography the consumers will be stopped from receiving any, but it is directly an attack on the producers and, in that respect, it is totally different from anything in the Obscene Publications Act or similar legislation.
I join the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, in saying that we must not be too hard on any of our fellow humans, even the consumers of child pornography. I have a friend—a very good-looking military gentleman—who for the purposes of an investigation was trying to obtain some child pornography. One of the pedlars of it informed him that it would be rather difficult for him to convince people that he actually required it for his own use. If it were straight porn, soft or hard, they were ready to believe that he might need it, but he was told that those who demanded soft porn did not look like him. Apparently they are gentlemen in pebble glasses, with sallow complexions, rather wispy beards and large pot bellies. So my friend was informed.
In this House many of us are bespectacled, some are a bit sallow perhaps, and some may be a little overweight. I do not think we have any "beardies" with us at the moment, but there are distinguished Members of this House who sport beards. I am not going to say that no Member of the House could ever be identified as a potential consumer of child pornography, but I am not aware of knowing any, though perhaps they are keeping it from me. At any rate, they are ill and, as the noble Baroness said, we must extend compassion to them and try to help them, but not to the point of allowing them to exploit helpless children to gratify their own desires.
This is a measure to deal with the producers and some of us who have been involved in this struggle for some time have not been unaware of the need to tackle the matter from that angle, although

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we have not done so effectively up to now. In the report in which I was involved—indeed, I was the chairman of the committee which produced it—and which was debated at great length here about six years ago, we made a proposal which, if it had been effective, would have stopped the exploitation of people of all ages—not just children—in the production of pornography. That proposal did not arouse very much interest and of course it went much further than the measure that we are discussing this morning. But at any rate what we are doing now points in that direction; I will not say more than that.
I am sorry that I missed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, and therefore do not know what liberal views he expressed. I know he is a great liberal, as well as being a great Socialist; he is everything except a great Conservative. I do not know what views he advanced, but if one is dealing with adults and trying to protect them from being exploited, one is met with the argument that they ought to know how to conduct themselves if they are grown-up and that they must be allowed to go to hell in their own way. Therefore, that makes it harder to deal with the exploitation of adults. But here we are dealing with the exploitation of children and nobody seriously argues—I am sure that nobody has argued this morning—that children ought to be allowed to destroy themselves in their own way. When we talk of them destroying themselves, we mean being destroyed by the vested interests at work.
Therefore, I am sure that this Bill will go through, and that it will go through without any amendment in the direction indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, said that he hoped the Bill would not be substantially amended. Personally, I should like to see the age of 16 raised. If we are saying that those under 16 must be protected, I would say that those around 18—to use my earlier phrase—cannot be allowed to go to hell in their own way, under the exploitation of vested interests. I hope that some amendment will be possible there. My Lords, leaving out that point and taking just the Bill before us, I congratulate all those who have been concerned with bringing it here and I hope and believe
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it will go to a Second Reading and a successful final passage.
1.15 p.m.
Viscount INGLEBY: My Lords, I also welcome this Bill. I am very grateful to its sponsor in this House and its sponsor in another place. In his opening speech, from which I will quote briefly, he said:
"An American doctor who is fighting this trade is reported as saying they"—
that is to say, the children—
"are destroyed by these experiences. They are emotionally and spiritually murdered".
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, in that there is a good case for saying that the onus of proof of being over 16 should rest with the publisher. I am not happy with Clause 5 which provides that all proceedings should need the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions. He is not Solomon, and in his old age even Solomon went astray.
I am not entirely happy with the defence of scientific and learned study. I think that this provision would need to be looked at carefully to make sure that it is not too wide a loophole. But these are matters for the Committee stage. I welcome the Bill and hope it will have an unopposed Second Reading.
1.17 p.m.
Viscount BARRINGTON: My Lords, when I get up in this House, which I am glad to say is seldom, I usually begin by saying: "At this time of the night, you will not want to hear much from me." I should just amend one word and say that at this time of the day you will not want to hear much. We all want to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has to say. I am slightly uncertain as to whether in fact there will be a Division on this. I very much hope that—as, with one exception, every speaker so far has said—this Bill will get a Second Reading; and that we can debate without hysteria some of the Amendments that will certainly be suggested.
This is a very difficult subject because it touches pornography on the one hand and children on the other. Both have been with us for a long time—since the beginning of the world—and, speaking as a bachelor (who is not even an illegitimate father) I very much hope that children

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will be with us for very much longer. However, I should like to emphasise a point made by Lord Wigoder in what I thought was a very balanced speech. I do not know how far I would agree with his Amendments, but I do agree with him that the purpose of the Bill is admirable. Some of your Lordships—and I would mention Lord Houghton—think that it goes too far; others like the noble Earl, Lord Longford, and the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, think it does not go far enough. I will not say which camp I am in, if I have to be in a camp, but I think it is generally known that I certainly do not think that it goes too far.
The purpose of the Bill is to protect children, and I think that is the point we want to remember. As I said, children have always been here and have always needed protection. Without taking up too much of your Lordships' time, I would take you back to ancient Carthage, where children needed protection from being put into a furnace for the honour of Moloch, the god of power, or even as far back as the Shaftesbury Acts of the last century, when it took a very long time, with some opposition in your Lordships' House, to prevent children from working in factories—often with the consent of their parents—for I forget how many hours a day in circumstances that we need not go into now. That was sacrificing children to Mammon.
I think most of us would agree that both of those were wrong, but now—and I do not think there is any need to produce evidence here, though it can be produced —children are being sacrificed to the god of pornography and/or sex. I do not know who that is. Perhaps it is Eros. I doubt if it is Aphrodite. But there I do not doubt that the menace facing us at the moment is the flood of "liberalism", which is one word used, though speaking as a Liberal I dislike that use of the word. "Permissiveness" is another one. In a society which restricts almost everything, including travelling abroad, taking drugs and other things, more perhaps than in any society before, I do not feel that "permissive" is a very good word, either.
However, I feel that the noble Baroness in introducing this Bill has done an immense service. If the point of it is, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, said,
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to stop a very small leak, I can only say that the smaller the leak is, the more reason there is to stop it, partly because it is possible to do so. To stop a very large leak is not always easy, as I know from unhappy boating experiences. The time to stop a leak if there is a leak is when it is small—and particularly when one knows that, in the words of a prayer we sometimes say in this House, "the floods have risen" all around and will be rising more so.
The various obscene publications Acts which are said to defend us from pornography do not and will not do so, of course, but I believe that to get one Bill through on these lines is something that this House can do. Owing to what the noble Baroness called "unhappy circumstances", in another place this Bill was not debated or even, as Lord Houghton pointed out, discussed in Committee. This is the place to do it, and I very much hope that your Lordships will accept it, with or without a Division. I know which way I would vote.
I should particularly like to thank the right reverend Prelate for the last part of his speech, which was I think echoed by Lord Robertson of Oakridge, in which he said that what we are trying to do is to keep children children. They are now at risk of being robbed not, in this case, of their lives or their money, but of their childhood. Of course children are going to lose their childhood anyhow, and quite rightly. They would have to give it up to adolescence or old age. Some, like myself, may be accused of remaining children after they have got into their second childhood. But children should not have their childhood raped from them in a way that is all too probably happening on a much larger scale than any of us thinks.
Mr. Graham Greene, who is not my favourite novelist, but whom nobody can accuse of being a sentimentalist, once wrote a book, partly of reminiscences and partly of essays, called The Lost Childhood. I have been racking my brains to remember who wrote the quotation from which he took that title, but at the beginning of the book were lines ending up:
"In the lost childhood of Judas, Christ was betrayed".
I think there is a very real risk of children being betrayed, and I hope that your

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Lordships will do something to prevent that betrayal.
1.24 p.m.
The MINISTER of STATE, HOME OFFICE (Lord Harris of Greenwich): My Lords, perhaps I may say two things at the outset. First, I warmly welcome the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford. I am sure we all enjoyed his speech, and we look forward to hearing him speak to us in future. Secondly, I welcome the temperate manner in which the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, moved the Second Reading of this Bill.
The Bill before us today meets public concern about one particular way in which children may be abused, and in which they need additional protection from the criminal law. The desire to defend our children from undesirable exploitation is universal, and it is entirely right that there should have been public anxiety at the possibility of young children being used for the purposes of pornography.
We in the Government have made clear, since allegations of the abuse of children were first made, our determination that there should be no defect in the legal measures against those guilty of these practices. Certainly no civilised society could tolerate the corruption of its children by their being subjected to degradation for the sexual pleasure of adults, or for the purposes of profiting from the perverted desires of others. We are in no doubt that the police and the courts must have every reasonable power that is necessary to bring to justice those who abuse children in this way. It is as a result of this that we have supported the principle behind this Bill. Indeed, it comes before your Lordships' House at this time—and my noble friend Lord Houghton of Sowerby touched on this point—because the Government made arrangements which prevented its being held up in another place by procedural difficulties. We hope that the principle will commend itself to your Lordships and that the Bill will indeed receive a Second Reading today.
Before I say anything else about the Bill, however, I should like to dwell for a moment on the background to it, and the problem with which it seeks to deal. I think it is important that we should try to
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look at this matter objectively, as to what is in fact the real problem that we are discussing. I say this not to suggest that there is any question of balancing the interests of pornography against those of children—I do not think there are two sides to the issue in that sense—but because some of the publicity which has attended this subject has, I think, to some extent done a significant public disservice. It has given rise to a considerable amount of public anxiety that the use of children in pornography is a widespread and growing practice, and that there is nothing whatever that the police or the law can do about it. That is a gross overstatement, as I shall endeavour to point out.
I should like to put before the House the situation as I see it. First, as to the existence in this country of a problem of children becoming involved in the production of pornographic material of the kind that has given rise to public concern. I would say at the outset that the Government have no evidence that this is of any significance. Cases have certainly come to light where individuals have sought to use children in this way, most commonly where the taking of photographs has been subsidiary to the commission of more serious sexual offences against children. There is certainly evidence of that. But no evidence has been produced that such practices are widespread, or that they are growing. The Home Office has made a number of inquiries of the Director of Public Prosecutions, of the Metropolitan Police and of a number of chief constables, as well as of some others, and has continued to do so since the Second Reading of this Bill in another place. What I have just told the House represents the consensus view that we have been given. I must make this also clear: no evidence to the contrary has been forthcoming. I do not think that those who have been urging the need for legislation would necessarily dispute that view, since I have noticed (indeed, this has been made clear in some of the speeches that have been made today) that it has been argued that we should act before the problem gets out of hand in Britain—the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, made this particular point in his speech—as it is argued that it has in some other countries.
I do not in any way deny the legitimacy of that particular argument that legislation

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should be aimed at a potential problem, rather than an actual problem now. What I want to do is to assure the public that the problem is more potential than actual. The second important consideration is, of course, the effectiveness of the existing law. Again, some of the publicity given to this subject has suggested that a major new problem has suddenly arisen for which no legal controls exist and on which fresh legislation is urgently necessary. The noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, dealt extremely effectively with this particular argument in his speech which, if I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, was in no way complacent. It seemed to me that the noble Lord was simply stating what the existing law was and, indeed, the noble Lord Lord Redesdale, made no effort to challenge the accuracy of the statement made by the noble Lord.
The existing law can in fact attack the mischief which we are discussing in two particular ways. The first is through the law on sexual offences against children, which may be those of the most serious kind or the lesser ones, such as indecent assault or indecency with children. The second means is through offences relating to pornography under the Obscene Publications Acts or certain other legislation. As with the question of whether a problem exists, the Home Office has consulted widely about experience in enforcing the law so that we may judge where the existing law is weakest and where it needs strengthening.
The clear message we have received is that for practical purposes the present law is capable of dealing with such cases as arise of children being used for pornographic purposes. We are assured by the Director of Public Prosecutions, for example, that it is very rare for an instance of this nature to come to light where charges in respect of one offence or another are not possible. This does not mean that the law covers all possible eventualities, but that in practice it has been sufficient to meet the circumstances of those cases which are brought to light.
The usefulness of the Bill is very much on the margins of this problem. It will make the law stronger to deal with the person who might decide that it is possible under the law as it stands, by proceeding
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with some care, with some considerable and deliberate care, to avoid committing an offence and to profit from so doing. The simple act of taking an indecent photograph of a child, unaccompanied by any aggravation, may be an offence under the Indecency with Children Act 1960. But the legal position is not settled, and, in any case, the Indecency with Children Act protects only those up to the age of 14, and many people certainly regard that as inadequate in the context of the commercial exploitation of children in pornography. The Bill will remove any possible doubts in this area and makes it plain that to take an indecent photograph of a person under 16 will constitute a criminal offence.
The main constraints on pornography are, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, said in his speech, provided by the Obscene Publications Acts of 1959 and 1964. In my view, there is, if I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Oakridge, no need for the Home Office to send a circular to chief officers of police to tell them of the existence of these two pieces of legislation; indeed, with great respect to the noble Lord, whose motives I have no doubt were of the highest, I think it would be regarded as a piece of gross impertinence by the Home Office to draw the attention of chief officers of police to two pieces of the criminal law when, of course, they are well aware of the contents. It would, I think, he almost as ill-advised to send them a circular on the contents of the Theft Act. Chief officers are well aware of the existence of this legislation, and I think require no reminder from the Home Office about its existence.
These Acts are supplemented by the prohibition on the importation of indecent or obscene material and on its transmission through the post. We have heard in the past months a good deal about extreme pornography depicting children in sexual activity, either with each other or with adults. Material of this kind, which does exist, does come almost exclusively from abroad. The Customs authorities and the police would have absolutely no hesitation in seizing it whenever it is discovered, as being in contravention of the import prohibition and of the domestic controls on obscene publications. Quantities of this material

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are in fact seized, along with other hard-core pornography coming from overseas, particularly from Scandinavia.
However, I must add this. Both the Customs and Excise and the Metropolitan Police have advised us that it is not their impression that the amount of such material in circulation has increased recently. That is their view. It is certainly not freely available in this country, though clearly Customs and Excise—this point was made by one of the speakers in the debate today—cannot stop completely pornography being smuggled into Britain, nor can the police prevent an undercover trade being carried on. In short, so far as the worst excesses of pornography involving children are concerned, the present law is adequate and the Bill will provide no additional means of attacking this kind of trade; but the Bill is likely to have rather more effect in relation to the less offensive forms of pornography involving children.
The trade in pornography is at present illegal if the material is obscene, but if a court judges that it is not obscene, its distribution and sale cannot be checked. Pornography involving children covers, obviously, a wide spectrum, with the extreme examples of which I was speaking just now at one end and fading at the other end into photographs which are almost totally inoffensive and indistinguishable from many which are no doubt to be found in family photograph albums. Somewhere along this spectrum photographs will cease to be obscene, although the uncertainty of the definition makes it difficult to predict precisely what a court will find to be obscene or not obscene. This may well mean that some material whose production has given rise to offences could still be sold quite lawfully; and indeed some anxious parents of boys who have become involved in pornography, where criminal proceedings have been brought against those responsible, have understandably expressed concern that photographs of their sons which are not themselves of an obscene nature could still be on sale.
By adopting the test of indecency, the Bill will shift the point at which the legal sanctions cease and will bring a larger range of material within the control of the law. In this area, I think there is always scope for debate about the proper
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limits of the law and what should be the criteria by which those limits should be judged. It is for this reason that the Government consider that substantial changes in the law should await the conclusions of the Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship which my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has appointed under the chairmanship of Professor Bernard Williams to review these very questions in, obviously, a much wider context. But the Government support the desire that the law protecting children against pornographers should be made as effective as possible without waiting for the report of the Williams Committee, and we are prepared to accept that the intention of the Bill, of adopting a more restricted test—that is, I repeat, of indecency—where children are concerned than in relation to pornography generally, where the test is one of obscenity, is a reasonable solution to this problem for the time being.
So far I have made it clear that although fresh legislation is not needed to deal with the central core of the problem, in so far as it exists, the Government regard the Bill as a useful one in ensuring the effectiveness of measures against the use of children in pornography, and that we accept the central feature of the Bill, which is to penalise the taking of, or the trade in, indecent photographs of children. We also accept it as reasonable that a child should be defined for these purposes as a person under the age of 16, following what is, in fact, the age of consent. Sixteen seems to us the right figure rather than either one lower or 18.
I must make it clear that there are a number of details in the Bill which seem to us to be unsatisfactory and which we should wish to ask the House to amend during its Committee consideration. The noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, who introduced the Bill, is aware, I know, of the points that we have in mind. Indeed, the Government tabled a number of detailed Amendments for consideration by another place but withdrew them in the interests of ensuring the passage of the Bill, on the clear understanding that the same Amendments would be put before your Lordships' House.
The Amendments we would wish to make do not in any way affect the principle or the central objective of the Bill. Their

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effect will not be significantly different from that intended by the Bill when it was introduced, but we think that the Bill is capable of being improved to make it a great deal more workmanlike and effective. A number of other detailed points have been raised in the course of today's debate which I think can more appropriately be dealt with when we come to the Committee stage. As I have indicated, quite a substantial number of Government Amendments will have to be tabled before the Committee stage of the Bill in order to achieve the objectives which I have set before the House. All I would wish to do now is to repeat the Government's support for the principle of the Bill and to express the hope that your Lordships will give it a Second Reading.
1.41 p.m.
Baroness FAITHFULL: My Lords, we are indeed grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, the Minister, for giving his support and the support of his Government to this Bill, although stating that there are several Amendments which—he is quite right—I have seen and I do know about. We have had a very interesting debate, and I should like to thank all Members of the House who have taken part.
I cannot forbear to mention just two points at the expense of keeping your Lordships from your lunch. Inevitably, I think I must turn to the one full-blooded, so to speak, opposer of the Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby. He livened up—if I may put it that way—the debate, and anyone who enlivens a debate we are grateful for. I cannot agree, obviously, with his arguments; the argument that it is an infringement of the private, individual lives of people I think is a false argument and legally not acceptable. The Bill particularly protects people who have taken photographs in the areas of their family. It is against indecent photographs that this Bill is directed, and it is directed, as has been said before, against people who make money and who use children for their sexual purposes. Therefore, this would not apply to the families to which the noble Lord referred.
To Lord Wigoder I would say—I offer this to the House with some diffidence—
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that I am prepared to take any noble Lord who considers that there is very little pornographic literature in connection with children to a certain place to see the literature. You will notice that, very carefully, I have not got it in my possession, but if any noble Lord does feel and think that this is a very small problem—well it may be as compared with many other things, but small problems grow. Here I should like to turn to my noble friend who says that those of us who sail do not think because we have stopped a small leak….This, I think, is what we think. We are very grateful to the Government that they support this Bill, and I should like to thank in particular the right reverend prelate for his speech today.
On Question, Bill read 2a and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

MEDICAL BILL [H.L.]
1.45 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Amendments be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons Amendments be now considered.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
[References are to Bill No. [57] as first printed for the Commons.]

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
1 Clause 1, page 2, line 21, leave out "temporarily registered" and insert "registered with limited registration"
2 Clause 1, page 2, lines 23 to 27 and insert "except that a person registered with limited registration shall not be qualified to vote at an election unless, during the four years preceding the election, he has been so registered for a period, or for periods which amount in the aggregate to a period, of not less than three years"
3 Clause 1, page 2, line 30, leave out from beginning to "nor" in line 33 and insert "registered with limited registration and, if registered with limited registration has, during the four years preceding the election, been so registered for a period, or for periods which amount in the aggregate to a period, of not less than three years"
4 Clause 1, page 2, line 35, leave out "temporarily registered" and insert "registered with limited registration"
5 Clause 1, page 2, line 45, leave out from "or" to end of line 3 on page 3 and insert "registered with limited registration and, if registered with limited registration, has, during the four years preceding his appointment, been so registered for a period, or for periods which amount in the aggregate to a period, of not less than three years"
6 Page 3, line 10, at end insert "or this Act"
7 Page 3, line 17, at end insert "and to the transitional provisions relating to practitioners with overseas qualifications contained in Schedule (Transitional provisions for overseas qualified practitioners) to this Act".
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 1 to 7 en bloc. At the same time, I should like to ask your Lordships to allow me to speak to a large number of other Amendments. I am very much afraid that your Lordships may, to say the least, find daunting the number of Amendments which have been made to this Bill in another place. However, I hope that I may be able to reassure your Lordships by explaining that of these 97 Amendments three-quarters are merely technical, in that they either improve or correct the drafting of the Bill, as your Lordships last saw it, or they amend the earlier Medical Acts to make way for a much-needed consolidation of the legislation in this field.
All the new clauses and some of the Amendments concern the registration of overseas doctors. They fulfil the undertaking which I gave to your Lordships' House during the Report stage of the Bill, when the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley agreed to withdraw his amendments on this subject on the basis and on my assurance that the Government would put down in another place their own Amendments which would reflect the principles and the spirit behind the Amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley.
Those noble Lords who have followed the passage of the Bill in another place—and I know that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, has been following it most closely—will know that these clauses and Amendments were well received by all concerned and have been accepted unaltered. This is perhaps not surprising since they were drafted after careful and close consultation with all the organisations involved.
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The other group of substantive Amendments which concern the electoral rights of overseas doctors and professional conduct and fitness to practice are all relatively minor and were nearly all made in response to points made by Labour back-Benchers or the Opposition or the Liberal spokesman in another place. They, too, are acceptable to all concerned.
In moving that the Commons Amendments Nos. 1 to 7 be agreed, I would seek your Lordships' permission to speak to a whole range of Amendments which come under this particular section. I would wish to speak to Amendments Nos. 12, 14 to 18, 30 to 44, 46 to 48, 51, 60, 68, 72, 79, 80, 82, 83, 88 and 92 to 96. In doing so, I should like to say—because I think it would be helpful to your Lordships in view of the complexity of this matter—that the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, with his accustomed and detailed thoroughness, I know has gone through the whole of the Bill and the Commons Amendments very carefully, and I think he will allow me to say that he himself and those he represents are in complete agreement with them. I think the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, would also allow me to say—and both of them can say it for themselves—that he too finds all these Amendments acceptable.
Therefore, I should like just to say one or two other things with regard to these particular Amendments, to which I have asked your Lordships to allow me to speak while I am addressing your Lordships on Amendments Nos. 1 to 7. All these Amendments—and they are numerous, as I have already pointed out—deal with three major themes. They contain a number of new clauses, hence the number of Amendments, but they deal specifically with three matters.
One is the introduction of English language competence as a precondition of registration. I know that it may cause concern to some people to think that we are going to impose an English language competence, but perhaps I can allay anxieties by saying that this condition has been accepted by the overseas doctors. If it is acceptable to them, with respect, my Lords, it is probably acceptable to your Lordships.
Secondly, once the Bill becomes an Act, it will ensure that doctors coming to this

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country who do not fulfil the necessary requirements for full registration can be given limited registration, for a specific period of five years. At the end of those five years, they must, if they are to continue in the medical services of this country, have satisfied the conditions for full registration laid down by the Bill, including the language competence.
I think that the only other point that I need touch upon is what is known as the reciprocity part of the Bill. Under existing legislation, the General Medical Council may only recognise for the purpose of full or provisional registration a qualification obtained in a country which provides reciprocal practice arrangements to United Kingdom doctors. The countries whose qualifications are currently recognised are Australia, New Zealand, some provinces of Canada, and South Africa. Other countries, for example, India and Sri Lanka, have qualifications recognised if granted before certain dates.
The Merrison Committee criticised this arrangement as not providing a proper basis for the recognition of qualifications, and said that in its view it should be ended. The Merrison Committee took the view that the basic criterion for recognition in future should be that the standard of the qualification should be that of a primary United Kingdom qualification. This is precisely what the Bill implements. It implements this particular recommendation and steps have already been taken to inform the various Governments concerned.
This again has been accepted by all sides in another place. I hope that your Lordships will feel that it is a desirable thing. I have mentioned the three important matters covering the whole batch of Amendments to which I have spoken. Subject to anything that the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, may wish to say, I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
1.54 p.m.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, first for introducing the Commons Amendments to your Lordships and,
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secondly, for his kind references to myself and my noble friend Lord Hunt of Fawley.
Before us we have a Bill, the Bill as first introduced to your Lordships' House, consisting of 39 pages, and the copy of the Commons Amendments, a total of 33 pages. This is a very remarkable story because, in the words of my noble friend Lord Butler of Saffron Walden,
"If the spirit is right, everything else will follow".
This is a remarkable story because the Government were diffident about introducing the Bill in the first place, because I think that they felt it unlikely that agreement would be reached among all parties. I am happy to say—and I know that my noble friend Lord Hunt of Fawley will agree with me—that not only have all those concerned in the profession, in the General Medical Council, in the British Medical Association, the Overseas Doctors' Association, the Royal Colleges, the Secretary of State, and the Department of Health, reached agreement; but these Amendments, fully discussed in another place, and first introduced in a large number of cases in your Lordships' House and then withdrawn, are now before your Lordships for final approval.
I should like to take this opportunity of thanking the noble Lord for introducing the measure. I shall take further opportunity later for personal reference to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, but I should like to say at this stage that he has so rightly dwelt on the major areas. I think that it would be for the convenience of your Lordships' House if we followed the practice when substantial numbers of Amendments are introduced together, and followed the blocks of Amendments so that short references may be made if necessary. I understand that my noble friend Lord Hunt of Fawley will not be making specific reference to each one, nevertheless the opportunity will be given by the Government as each successive block comes forward.
In closing these few remarks, I should like to say that some particularly difficult subjects have been agreed by very large numbers of people, skilled in interpreting the Bill. I believe that this is a triumph.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
1.58 p.m.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
8 Clause 4, page 5, line 37, leave out "the Medical Act 1950".
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 8. I should be grateful if your Lordships will allow me to speak again to another batch of Amendments. I refer to Amendments Nos. 49, 50, 61 to 64, 66, 67, 69 to 71, 73 to 78, 84 to 87, 89 to 91, and 97. They all deal with preconsolidation.
I think that I can say all that needs to be said in a few sentences. These are technical Amendments which pave the way for a much-needed consolidation of the Medical Acts. We are collecting a number of Medical Acts, and one of these days something will have to be done about consolidating them. These Amendments do two things: they either repeal some of the previous Acts or they replace a large part of some of the Medical Acts, the two Acts involved being the Medical Acts of 1969 and 1956. I do not think I need say anything further. It is preconsolidation and it will help the situation in the future. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amenment.—(Lord Wells-Pestell).
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
9 Clause 5, page 6, line 36, leave out "guidance" and insert "advice".
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 9. Again, I can take this briefly. It is advice to be given by the General Medical Council. Noble Lords will remember that in Committee questions were asked about whether the General Medical Council could not give advice to doctors on certain matters of professional conduct and medical ethics; that there had been a tendency in the past not to do so. Amendment No. 9 is a new clause empowering the General Medical Council to give advice on matters of professional conduct and medical ethics. I do not think there is any need for me to say anything more. I beg to move.
Moved, that this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Lord Wells-Pestell).
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
10 Clause 6, page 7, line 5, after "above" insert—

"(a) shall secure that a person who sits as a member of the Preliminary Proceedings Committee in the preliminary proceedings on any case shall not sit as a member of the Professional Conduct Committee or the Health Committee in any subsequent proceedings on that case; and

(b)"

Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 10. This is a matter relating to the Preliminary Proceedings Committee which I shall want to say more about in the next Amendment. This prevents members of the Preliminary Proceedings Committee hearing the case twice. If I may touch upon the next Amendment in order to clarify Amendment No. 10, your Lordships will remember that in the Bill provision was made for setting up two committees, one known as the Health Committee which would consider the health of a practitioner if it was called into question, and the other a Professional Conduct Committee which speaks for itself, which would concern itself with the professional conduct of a member of the profession if that was called into question.
I am talking really to the next Amendment. Before members of the profession went either before the Professional Conduct Committee or the Health Committee it would be necessary for the case to be considered by a Preliminary Proceedings Committee. The point of Amendment No. 10 is to make sure that people who have heard a preliminary complaint are not subsequently members of one of the other two committees when the matter is being heard in depth. Amendment No. 10 prevents that from happening. I. beg to move.
Moved, that this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
11 Clause 7, page 8, line 31, after "above" insert "by the Professional Conduct Committee or under section 13(3)(c) below by the Preliminary Proceedings Committee".
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 11. In so doing, perhaps your Lordships will allow me to speak to Amendment No. 13 and Amendments Nos. 19 to 23 inclusive. This Amendment gives the committee power to make an order of conditional registration for up to two months. This means that when a complaint has been made, the preliminary committee—and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, will put me right if I am wrong on this—before passing it over to the appropriate main committee like the Health Committee or the Professional Conduct Committee, can make an order for a period of two months stopping the member of the profession from practising because they consider the situation is rather serious and therefore some action should be taken to stop practice there and then. But their power to do so under this particular Amendment does not go beyond two months. Amendments No. 13 and Nos. 19 to 23 all hinge on this. I beg to move.
Moved, that this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment —(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
12 Clause 7, page 10, leave out lines 1 to 9 and insert—
"(8) This section applies to a provisionally registered person and to a person registered with limited registration whether or not the circumstances are such that he falls within the meaning in this Act of the expression "fully registered person"".
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 12. I have already spoken to this. The Amendment is consequential on Amendments Nos. 1 to 7. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment. —(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
13 Clause 8, page 10, line 25, after "above", insert "by the Health Committee or under section 13(3)(c) below by the Preliminary Proceedings Committee".
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 13. This is consequential on Amendment No. 11. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment. —(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
14 Clause 8, page 11, leave out lines 34 to 41 and insert—
"(8) This section applies to a provisionally registered person and to a person registered with limited registration whether or not the circumstances are such that he falls within the meaning in this Act of the expression "fully registered person"".
15 Clause 12, page 15, line 23, leave out from "Act" to end of line 24.
16 Clause 12, page 15, line 26, leave out "under section 17 or 23 of the Medical Act 1956" and insert "under any provision of the Medical Act 1956 or this Act".
17 Clause 12, page 15, line 29, leave out "under that section" and insert " under that provision or, if he was registered under section 23 of that Act and the direction is made after the repeal of that
18 Clause 12, page 15, line 30, leave out from first "of" to "shall" in line 31 and insert " the Medical Act 1956 and this Act as to the experience required for registration as a fully registered medical practitioner".
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 14 to 18 inclusive. These Amendments are consequential upon Amendments Nos. 1 to 7 which your Lordships have accepted. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
19 Clause 13, page 16, line 6, after "may", insert "subject to subsection (3A) below"
20 Page 16, line 9, at end insert—
"or
(c) they may, subject to subsection (3A) below, if satisfied that to do so is necessary for the protection of members of the public or is in his interests, make an order for interim conditional registration in respect of that person, that is to say, an order that his registration shall be conditional on his compliance, during such period not exceeding two months as is specified in the order, with such requirements so specified as the Committee think fit to impose for the protection of members of the public or in his interests."
21 Page 16, line 9, at end insert—
"(3A) No order for interim suspension or for interim conditional registration shall he made by the Parliamentary Proceedings Committee in respect of any person unless he has been afforded an opportunity of appearing before the Committee arid being heard on the question whether such an order should be made in his case; and for the purposes of this subsection a person may be represented before the Committee by counsel or a solicitor, or (if rules under paragraph 5 of Schedule 4 to this Act so provide and he so elects) by a person of such other description as may be specified in the rules."
22 Page 16, line 14, after "suspension", insert "or for interim conditional registration"
23 Page 16, line 26, after "suspension", insert "or for interim conditional registration"
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 19 to 23 inclusive. I have spoken to these Amendments with No. 11. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
24 Clause 15, page 17, leave out from "those" to "general" in line 18, and insert "engaging in such employment as is mentioned in section 15(2) of the Medical Act 1956"
25 Page 17, line 24, at end insert "and this Act—"
26 Page 18, line 10, leave out from "visitors" to first "of" in line 12 and insert "appointed under section 9(1) or 15(3A) of that Act and inspectors appointed under section 10(3)"
27 Clause 16, page 18, line 22, at end insert "but, in relation to any person who is provisionally registered under section 17 of that
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Act immediately before this section conies into operation, the said section 15 shall continue to have effect as if this section had not been passed."
28 Page 18, line 33, leave out from beginning to "such" in line 34, and insert—
"(b) that the combination of posts which he has held while so employed was"
29 Page 19, line 19, leave out from beginning to "with" in line 22 and insert—
"(c) a combination of posts which is accepted by their examining body as providing persons who have held the posts comprised in the combination"
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 24 to 29. In speaking to Amendments Nos. 24 to 29, I seek your Lordships' permission to speak to Amendments Nos. 45 and 65. They are Amendments to clarify drafting. There is nothing more in them than that. They have become essential for clarification purposes and, subject to anything the noble Lords, Lord Sandys and Lord Hunt, have to say—I know they have gone into this— I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Wells-PestelL.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
30 After Clause 16, insert the following new clause:
Replacement of provisions of Part III of Medical Act 1956.
".—(1) Subject to the provisions of Part I of Schedule (Transitional provisions for overseas qualified practitioners) to this Act, on the day appointed for the coming into operation of sections (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications), (Limited registration: erasure), (Register of medical practitioners with limited registration), (Full registration for persons with limited registration), (Full registration of visiting overseas doctors), (The Review Board for Overseas Qualified Practitioners) and (Functions of the Review Board) below—

(a) section 25 of the Medical Act 1956 (which provides for the temporary registration of medical practitioners), and the reference to that section in section 26 of that Act, shall cease to have effect; and

(b) the register of temporarily registered medical practitioners shall be closed.

(2) Subject to the provisions of Part II of Schedule (Transitional provisions for overseas qualified practitioners) to this Act, on the day appointed for the coming into

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operation of sections (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications), (Registration of further qualifications), (Experience required for full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) and (Provisional registration of practitioners having recognised overseas qualifications) below, sections 18 to 24 and 26 of the Medical Act 1956 (which provide for the registration of Commonwealth and foreign practitioners) and the Medical Practitioners and Pharmacists Act 1947 (which, so far as still in force, makes similar provision) shall cease to have effect.
(3) If the day mentioned in subsection (1) above is earlier than the day mentioned in subsection (2) above, the Medical Acts 1956 and 1969 and this Act shall have effect, during the period commencing with the first day and ending immediately before the second, subject to the provisions of Part III of Schedule (Transitional provisions for overseas qualified practitioners) to this Act."
31 Insert the following new clause:
"Full registration by virtue of recognized overseas qualifications.
.—(1) Where a person satisfies the Registrar—

(a) that he holds one or more recognised overseas qualifications;

(b) that he has the necessary knowledge of English; and

(c) that he is of good character;

and satisfies the requirements of section (Experience required for full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) below as to experience, that person shall, if the General Council think fit so to direct, be registered under this section as a fully registered medical practitioner.
(2) A person registered under this section shall, on being so registered, be entitled to have the recognised overseas qualification or qualifications held by him registered under this section.
(3) In this Act a "recognised overseas qualification" means any qualification granted outside the United Kingdom and for the time being recognised by the General Council for the purposes of this section as furnishing a sufficient guarantee of the possession of knowledge and skill corresponding with the prescribed knowledge and skill and as having been granted by virtue of the passing of an examination at which the standard of proficiency required corresponds with the prescribed standard of proficiency.
(4) An applicant for registration under this section has the necessary knowledge of English if he has the knowledge which. in the interests of himself and his patients, is necessary for the practice of medicine in the United Kingdom.
(5) The General Council may provide facilities for testing the knowledge of English of applicants for registration under this section.
(6) On registering a person under this section the Registrar shall issue to him an
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appropriate certificate of registration stating, in the form prescribed by regulations under section 4 of the Medical Act 1969 for entries in the register, the person's name and such other particulars as may be so prescribed."
32 Insert the following new clause:
"Registration of further qualifications.
.—(1) A person registered under section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) above who obtains any recognised overseas qualification shall be entitled to have the qualification registered.
(2) A person holding any other qualification granted outside the United Kingdom which the General Council determine ought to be registrable by virtue of this subsection as a further qualification shall, subject to subsection (4) below, if he is registered under section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) above or (Provisional registration of practitioners having recognised overseas qualifications) below or on becoming so registered, be entitled to have the qualification registered.
(3) A person holding any additional qualification (within the meaning of the Medical Act 1956) which the General Council determine ought to be registrable by virtue of this subsection shall, subject to subsection (4) below, if he is registered under section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) above or (Provisional registration of practitioners having recognised overseas qualifications) below or on becoming so registered, be entitled to have the qualification registered.
(4) If, in the case of any such qualification as is mentioned in subsection (2) or (3) above, the General Council determine that it ought not to be registrable by virtue of that subsection if granted before or after a particular date, a person holding that qualification shall not be entitled to have it registered if it was granted to him before or, as the case may be, after that date."
33 Insert the following new clause:
"Experience required for full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications.
.—(1) The requirements as to experience mentioned in section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overeseas qualifications) (1) above are the following.
(2) The General Council must be satisfied that the person claiming registrationx2014;

(a) has been employed as mentioned in subsection (2) of section 15 of the Medical Act 1956 and while so employed has held a combination of posts which was such as to provide him with the experience required by one of the prescribed patterns of experience and satisfies the conditions specified in paragraphs (a) and (c) of subsection (3) of that section; or

(b) has acquired experience in the practice of medicine, whether in the

593
course of employment in the United Kingdom or in the course of employment outside the United Kingdom, which is not less extensive than that required for a certificate under the said section 15.

(3) Subsection (6) of the said section 15 (alternative experience allowed in cases of physical disability) shall apply to a person prevented from embarking on, or completing, a period of experience required for the purposes of this section as it applies to a person prevented from embarking on, or completing, a period of experience required for the purposes of that section."
34 Insert the following new clause:
"Provisional registration of practitioners having recognised overseas qualifications.
.1—(1) The following provisions shall have effect for enabling persons delirious of satisfying the General Council of the matters specified in section (Experience required for full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) (2)(a) above to be employed as mentioned in subsection (2) of section 15 of the Medical Act 1956.
(2) A person who satisfies the Registrar of the matters specified in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) of section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) (1) above may apply to the General Council to be registered provisionally under this section and, if the Council think fit so to direct, that person shall be so registered.
(3) Subsections (4) and (5) (as well as subsection (31) of section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) above shall apply for the purposes of an application under this section as they apply for the purposes of an application under this section.
(4) A person provisionally registered under this section shall, on being so registered, be entitled to have the recognised overseas qualification or qualifications held by him registered under this section.
(5) A person provisionally registered under this section shall be deemed to be registered under section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) above as a fully registered medical practitioner so far as is necessary to enable him to be engaged in employment in a resident medical capacity (within the meaning of the said section 15) in one or more approved hospitals or approved institutions (within the meaning of that section), but not further.
(6) On registering a person under this section the Registrar shall issue to him an appropriate certificate of registration stating, in the form prescribed by regulations under section 4 of the Medical Act 1969 for entries in the register, the person's name and such other particulars as may be so prescribed."
35 Insert the following new clause:
"Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications.
.—(1) Subject to subsection (10) below and to section (Limited registration: erasure) below, where a person satisfies the Registrar—

(a) that he has been selected for employment in the United Kingdom or the Isle of Man as a medical practitioner in one or more hospitals or other institutions approved by the General Council for the purposes of this section;

(b) that he holds, has held, or has passed the examination necessary for obtaining, some acceptable overseas qualification or qualifications;

(c) that he has the necessary knowledge of English;

(d) that he is of good character; and

(e) that he has the knowledge and skill, and has acquired the experience, which is necessary for practice as a medical practitioner registered under this section and is appropriate in his case;

he shall, if the General Council think fit so to direct, be registered under this section as a medical practitioner with limited registration.
(2) In this Act "limited registration" means registration under this section limited in accordance with subsection (11) below in respect of the period for which and the employment for the purposes of which it has effect.
(3) An applicant for limited registration shall specify in his application the particular employment or the descriptions of employment for the purposes of which he desires to be registered and shall give such other particulars as the General Council may require.
(4) No person shall be registered under this section for a period, or for periods which amount in the aggregate to a period, exceeding five years; and in this Act the "permitted period", in relation to an applicant for registration under this section, means—

(a) if he has not previously been registered under this section, five years;

(b) if he has previously been so registered, the amount by which five years exceeds the period or aggregate of periods for which he has been so registered.

(5) A person registered under this section shall, on being so registered, be entitled to have the acceptable overseas qualification or qualifications held by him registered under this section.
(6) In this Act an "acceptable overseas qualification" means any qualification granted outside the United Kingdom and for the time being accepted by the General Council for the purposes of this section as furnishing a sufficient guarantee of the possession of the knowledge and skill requisite for the practice of medicine

595
under the supervision of a person who is registered as a fully registered medical practitioner.
(7) An applicant for registration under this section has the necessary knowledge of English if he has the knowledge which, in the interests of himself and his patients, is necessary for the practice of medicine in the United Kingdom; and the General Council may provide facilities for testing the knowledge of English of such applicants.
(8) What knowledge and skill, and what experience, is necessary for practice as a medical practitioner registered under this section shall be determined by the General Council in relation to each branch of medicine and to practice therein in the descriptions of employment for the purposes of which persons apply for registration under this section; and in subsection (1)(e) above the knowledge and skill, and the experience, which is appropriate in the case of an applicant means, subject to subsections (9) and (10) below, the knowledge and skill, or the experience, determined under this subsection which appears to the Registrar to be appropriate to the particular employment or the descriptions of employment for which the applicant desires to be registered.
(9) The General Council may, in the case of any particular application for limited registration, give to the Registrar a direction determining what knowledge and skill, or what experience, determined by the Council under subsection (8) above for the purposes of subsection (1)(e) above is appropriate in the case of the applicant having regard to the particular employment or descriptions of employment for the purposes of which the applicant desires to be registered or the Council consider they may grant registration under this section.
(10) The General Council may, in the case of any applicant or applicants of any description, give to the Registrar a direction exempting the applicant, or applicants of that description, from compliance with the requirements of subsection (l)(e) above as to knowledge and skill, or as to experience, or both.
(11) The limits of a person's registration under this section shall be defined in the direction by virtue of which he is registered in accordance with the following provisions, that is to say—

(a) the direction shall specify a period, not exceeding his permitted period, as the period for which his registration is to have effect; and

(b) the direction shall specify the particular employment or the descriptions of employment for the purposes of which he is registered under this section;

and, subject to subsection (12) below and to section (Limited registration: erasure) (1) and (2) below, that person's registration shall have effect for the period and for the purposes of the particular employment or
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the descriptions of employment specified in the direction.
(12) Where a direction specifies a particular employment as the employment for the purposes of which a person is registered under this section and that employment terminates before the end of the period specified in the direction by virtue of subsection (11)(a) above, the registration of the person under this section shall cease to have effect when that employment terminates.
(13) A person registered under this section shall be treated as registered under section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) above as a fully registered medical practitioner in relation to the following matters, namely—

(a) any employment in which he is engaged during the currency of his registration, being the particular employment or employment of a description for the purposes of which he is registered; and

(b) things done or omitted in the course of that employment; and

(c) any other thing incidental to his work in that employment which, by virtue of any enactment, may not lawfully or validly be done except by a fully registered medical practitioner;

but in relation to other matters he shall be treated as not so registered.
(14) A person registered under this section shall not, while engaged in the particular employment or in employment of a description for the purposes of which he is registered, work otherwise than under the supervision of a person who is registered as a fully registered medical practitioner.
(15) This section has effect subject to the provisions of Part I of Schedule (Transitional provisions for overseas qualified practitioners) to this Act with respect to the registration under this section of temporarily registered persons who are practitioners to whom that Part applies."
36 Insert the following new clause:
"Limited registration: erasure.
.—(1) The General Council may, on an application being made to them containing such particulars as they may require by a person who is registered with limited registration, direct that his name shall be erased from the register on his own application on such day as they may specify in the direction; but the fact that a person's name has been erased under this subsection shall be disregarded by the Council in deciding whether or not to grant limited registration for a further period to that person.
(2) If it appears to the General Council, having regard to his performance in a relevant employment, that a person registered under section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) above does not in fact possess the appropriate knowledge and skill, the Council may, subject to subsection (4)

597
below, if they think fit, direct that his name shall he erased from the register.
(3) In subsection (2) above, in relation to a person registered under section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) above—

(a) "a relevant employment " means a particular employment or an employment of a description for the purposes of which he is or has been so registered; and

(b) "the appropriate knowledge and skill" means the knowledge and skill which was required in his case in pursuance of subsection (1)(e) of that section in connection with the application for registration under that section by virtue of which he is so registered.

(4) No person's name shall be erased from the register under subsection (2) above unless

(a) the Registrar has served on him a notification of the grounds on which the Council are considering exercising their powers under that subsection; and

(b) the Council have afforded him an opportunity of making representations to them in the matter;

and paragraph 8 of Schedule 4 to this Act shall apply to a notification required to be served by this subsection as it applies to the notifications required to be served by the provisions mentioned in that paragraph.
(5) Until the coming into operation of paragraph 8 of Schedule 4 to this Act, subsection (4) above shall have effect as if for any reference to that paragraph there were substituted a reference to section 36(2) of the Medical Act 1956."
37 Insert the following new clause:
"Register of medical practitioners with limited registration.
.—(1) Registration under section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) above of persons granted limited registration shall be effected in a register, to be known as the register of medical practitioners with limited registration, which shall be prepared and kept by the Registrar and shall contain in addition to names and qualifications, the addresses and dates of registration of the persons registered therein and such other particulars (if any) of those persons as may be prescribed.
(2) Subsections (4), (5) and (6) of section 3 and subsections (1), (2) and (6) of section 4 of the Medical Act 1969 (which relate to the keeping of the register of medical practitioners) shall apply in relation to the register of medical practitioners with limited registration and to persons and matters registered therein as they apply in relation to the register of medical practitioners and persons and matters registered in that register; but any regulations under the said section 4 made by virtue of subsection (1) or (2) thereof may make different provision in relation to the register of medical
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practitioners and the register of medical practitioners with limited registration.
(3) On registering a person under section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) above the Registrar shall issue to him an appropriate certificate of registration stating, in the form prescribed for entries in the register of medical practitioners with limited registration, the person's name and such other particulars as may be prescribed.
(4) In this section "prescribed" means prescribed by regulations under section 4 of the Medical Act 1969."
38 Insert the following new clause:
"Full registration for persons with limited registration.
.—(1) A person who is or has been registered with limited registration may, on satisfying the Registrar that he is of good character, apply to the General Council to be registered fully by virtue of this section; and if the Council think fit so to direct, having regard to the knowledge and skill shown and the experience acquired by the applicant, he shall be registered tinder section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) above as a fully registered medical practitioner.
(2) A person registered tinder section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) above by virtue of this section shall, on being so registered, be entitled to have registered under this section the following qualifications held by him, that is to say—

(a) the acceptable overseas qualification or qualifications by virtue of which he was granted limited registration;

(b) any primary United Kingdom qualifications; and

(c) any qualifications for the time being registrable as additional qualifications under the Medical Act 1956."

39 Insert the following new clause:
"Full registration of visiting overseas doctors.
.—(1) A person who is or intends to be in the United Kingdom temporarily for the purpose of providing medical services of a specialist nature may apply to the General Council to be registered temporarily as a fully registered medical practitioner and if the Council are satisfied—

(a) that he holds one or more recognised overseas qualifications or acceptable overseas qualifications;

(b) that he possesses special knowledge of and skill in a particular branch or branches of medicine; and

(c) that the medical services he is to provide lie within that branch or one or more of those branches of medicine,

they may, if they think fit, direct that he shall be registered under this section as a fully registered medical practitioner for such period as they may specify in the direction.
(2) No person shall be fully registered under this section for a period exceeding twelve months.
(3) At the expiration of the period specified in a direction under subsection (1) above the registration of the person to whom the direction applies shall cease to have effect.
(4) On registering a person under this section the Registrar shall issue to him an appropriate certificate of registration stating in the form prescribed by regulations under section 4 of the Medical Act 1969 for entries in the register, the person's name and such other particulars as may be so prescribed."
40 Insert the following new clause:
"The Review Board for Overseas Qualified Practitioners.
.—(1) There shall be established a body to be known as the Review Board for Overseas Qualified Practitioners (in this Act referred to as the "Review Board") constituted in accordance with the following provisions of this section and having the functions conferred on them by section (Functions of the Review Board) below.
(2) The Review Board shall consist of—

(a) a chairman and a deputy chairman, not being members of the General Council, appointed by the President of the General Council having regard to the recommendation of such body or bodies concerned with postgraduate medical education in England and Wales, in Scotland and in Northern Ireland, as the Council may by rules prescribe;

(b) until the succession day—

(i) one member nominated by Her Majesty on the advice of the Privy Council, being a medical practitioner registered under Part III of the Medical Act 1956; and

(ii) such number of other members, being members of the General Council, as the Council may by rules prescribed, including at least one member elected under section 4 of the Medical Act 1956 and one member appointed under section 3 of that Act; and

(c) on and after the succession day, such number of other members, being members of the General Council and including at least—

(i) one elected member,

(ii) one appointed member, and

(iii) one member who is or has been registered under Part III of the Medical Act 1956 or under section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) or (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) above, as the Council may by rules prescribe.

(3) There shall be paid to the members of the Review Board such fees and such
600
travelling, subsistence or other allowances as the General Council may allow.
(4) The General Council shall provide the Review Board with office accommodation and secretarial assistance for the discharge of their functions.
(5) The General Council may by rules make provision with respect to the quorum and procedure of the Review Board.
(6) No rules under this section shall come into force until approved by order of the Privy Council.
(7) The power to make orders under subsection (6) above shall be exerciseable by statutory instrument subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament and shall include power to vary or revoke any such order by a subsequent order."
41 Insert the following new clause:
"Functions of the Review Board.
.—(1) Any person in whose case a decision falling within subsection (2) below is made by the General Council may require the Registrar to state in writing the reasons for the decision and, subject to subsection (3) below, may apply to the Review Board for that decision to be reviewed by the Board.
(2) The following are the decisions referred to in subsection (1) above, namely—

(a) a refusal to direct by virtue of section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) above that a person be registered under that section as a fully registered medical practitioner;

(b) a refusal to direct that a person be registered provisionally under section (Provisional registration of practitioners having recognised overseas qualifications) above;

(c) in a case where at the date of the refusal a person had been registered with limited registration for a period, or for periods which amount in the aggregate to a period, of not less than three years and six months, a refusal to direct by virtue of section (Full registration for persons with limited registration) above that he be registered under section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) above as a fully registered medical practitioner;

(d) in the case of a person who is or has been registered with limited registration for a period, a refusal to direct under section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) (1) above that he be granted limited registration for a further period;

(e) a refusal to direct that a person be registered with limited registration under section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) above by virtue of paragraph 4 of Schedule (Transitional provisions for overseas qualified practitioners) to this Act; and

601

(f) a direction under section (Limited registration: erasure) (2) above that a person's name be erased from the register of medical practitioners with limited registration.

(3) A person in whose case a decision falling within subsection (2) above is made shall not be entitled to apply to the Review Board for the decision to be reviewed where—

(a) the decision is such a refusal as is referred to in paragraph (a) of that subsection and the reason or one of the reasons for the refusal given by the Registrar is that the person does not satisfy the requirements of section (Experience required for registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) above as to experience; or

(b) the decision is such a refusal as is referred to in paragraph (a) or (b) of that subsection and the reason or one of the reasons for the refusal given by the Registrar is that no qualification which the person claims to hold is a recognised overseas qualification; or

(c) the decision is such a refusal as is referred to in paragraph (a), (b), (c) or (d) of that subsection and the reason or one of the reasons for the refusal given by the Registrar is that the person has failed to satisfy him that he has the necessary knowledge of English.

(4) On completing a review under this section of any decision, the Review Board shall determine whether in their opinion the decision ought to stand and shall notify their opinion to the President of the General Council or to such other member of the Council as the Council may appoint to act for the purposes of this subsection; and the President or member so appointed may, if having regard to the Board's opinion he thinks fit, direct that the decision be reversed."
42 Insert the following new clause:
"Knowledge of English to be a condition or registration under s. 18 or 23 of Medical Act 1956.
.—(1) As from the appointed day until their repeal by this Act, sections 18 and 23 of the Medical Act 1956 shall have effect subject to the modification that an applicant for registration under either of those sections shall not be entitled to be so registered unless he satisfies the Registrar that he has the necessary knowledge of English, that is, the knowledge which, in the interests of himself and his patients, is neiessary for the practice of medicine in the Ucnited Kingdom; and for the purpose of this subsection the General Council may provide facilities for testing the knowledge of English of such applicants.
(2) Section 24 of the Medical Act 1956 (which provides for appeals against refusal of registration under section 18 or 23 of that Act in certain cases) shall not apply in any case where an application for
602
registration under section 18 or 23 is refused and the reason or one of the reasons for the refusal is that the applicant has failed to satisfy the Registrar that he has the necessary knowledge of English."
43 Clause 17, page 20, line 2, at end insert—
""acceptable overseas qualification " has the meaning given by section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) (6) above;"
44 line 9, at end insert—
""limited registration " has the meaning given by section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) (2) above;"
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 30 to 44. These Amendments I spoke to on Amendments Nos. 1 to 7. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
45 Clause 17, page 20, line 11, at end insert—
""the prescribed knowledge and skill", "the prescribed standrd of proficiency "and" a prescribed pattern of experience " have the meanings given by section 15(6) above;"
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 45. This Amendment is consequential upon Amendments Nos. 24 to 29. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment. —(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
46 Clause 17, page 20, line 13, at end insert—
"or under section (Provisional registration of practitioners having recognised overseas qualifications) above;"
"recognised overseas qualification" has the meaning given by section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) (3) above;"
47 Clause 17, page 20, line 15, leave out from "that" to end of line 17 and insert "in relation to a person registered with limited registration,

603
it means the register of medical practitioners with limited registration"
48 Clause 17, page 20, line 22, leave out from "above" to the end of line 24.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment Nos. 46 to 48. These Amendments are consequential. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments. —(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
49 Clause 18, page 20, line 27, after "Act," insert "(which include enactments which are obsolete or spent)".
50 Clause 18, page 20,line 35, at end insert—
"(4) Paragraph (3) of Article 3 of the Medical Qualifications (EEC Recognition) Order 1977 is hereby revoked".
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 49 and 50. These Amendments are consequential on Amendment No. 8. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
51 Clause 19, page 20, line 39, after "above," insert ", section (Replacement of provisions of Part III of Medical Act 1956) of this Act".
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 51. This Amendment I spoke to on Amendments Nos. 1 to 7. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
52 Schedule 4, page 26, line 44, after "Committee," insert" or the General Council"
53 Schedule 4, page 26,line 45, after "Committee," insert "or the Council"
54 Schedule 4, page 26,line 47, after "Committee," insert "or to the General Council"
55 Page 27, line 1, after " Committee," insert "or the Council"
56 Page 27, line 1,line 4, leave out "or, as the case may be, the Health Committee" and insert ", the Health Committee or the General Council, as the case may be"
57 Page 27, line 1,line 6, after "Committee," insert "or Council,"
58 Page 27, line 1,line 7, after "Committee," insert "or Council"
59 Page 27, line 1,line 9, at end insert "or Council, as the case may be"
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 52 to 59. Amendments Nos. 52 to 59 are drafting Amendments. If the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, agree with me, I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
60 After Schedule 4, insert the following new Schedule—

PART I TEMPORARILY REGISTERED PRACTITIONERS
Interpretation
1. In this Part of this Schedule—
"a practitioner to whom this Part applies" means a person who either is registered on the repeal date under section 25 of the Medical Act 1956 in the register of temporarily registered medical practitioners or was so registered at any time within the period of twelve months ending with that date;
"the repeal date" means the day on which, by virtue of subsection (1) of section (Replacement of provisions of Part III of Medical Act 1956) of this Act, the said section 25 is repealed;
"temporary registration" means registration under the said section 25 and "temporarily registered" shall be construed accordingly.
Temporary preservation of status
2. A practitioner to whom this Part applies whose temporary registration is in

605
force on the repeal date shall, notwithstanding the repeal of the said section 25, continue to be treated until the end of the period specified in the direction by virtue of which he was registered under that section or the earlier termination of the employment to which the direction relates as registered as a fully registered medical practitioner in relation to that employment and to things done or omitted in the course thereof and the expressions "fully registered person "and" fully registered" in the Medical Acts 1956 to 1969 and this Act shall be construed accordingly.
Transfer to full registration
3. A practitioner to whom this Part applies who on the repeal date either holds or has been selected for an appointment on the staff of a hospital in the United Kingdom which appears to the General Council to he a permanent appointment of consultant status shall be entitled to be registered under section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) of this Act as a fully registered medical practitioner.
Transfer to limited registration
4.—(1) Subject to sub-paragraph (2) below, a practitioner to whom this Part applies may apply to the General Council to be registered with limited registration under section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) of this Act by virtue of this paragraph and if he satisfies the Registrar that he is employed or has been selected for employment in the United Kingdom or the Isle of Man as a medical practitioner in one or more approved hospitals or approved institutions the General Council may, if they think fit, direct that he shall be registered under that section as a medical practitioner with limited registration.
(2) Art application under this paragraph must be made within the period of six months beginning with the end of the period or last period for which the applicant was temporarily registered or, if the applicant was not temporarily registered on the repeal date, within the period of six months beginning with the repeal date.
(3) In the case of an application under and registration by virtue of this paragraph—

(a) section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) (4) of this Act shall not apply;

(b) section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) (11) to (14) of this Act shall apply with the omission in subsection (11) of the reference to the permitted period and of the reference to section (Limited registration: erasure) (1) of this Act.

(4) In this paragraph "approved hospital" and "approved institution" mean respectively a hospital or institution
606
approved for the purposes of section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) of this Act.
Subsequent grants of limited registration
5. In the case of a practitioner to whom this Part applies who is or has been registered with limited registration for a period by virtue of paragraph 4 above and who applies under section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) of this Act to be so registered for a further period, the following provisions of that section shall not apply, namely, subsection (4) and, in subsection (11), the reference to the permitted period and to section (Limited registration: erasure) (1) of this Act.
Rights in relation to elections or appointments to the General Council
6.—(1) In relation to practitioners to whom this Part applies who are registered with limited registration, section 1 of this Act shall have effect as if there were substituted for the words " so registered " in subsections (6), (7) and (9) the words " temporarily registered or registered with limited registration ".
(2) In relation to practitioners to whom this Part applies who are temporarily registered on the repeal date and are so registered at any time thereafter, section 1 of this Act shall have effect as it the references in subsections (6), (7) and (9) to persons with limited registration were references to temporarily registered persons.
Pending applications under s. 26 of Medical Act 1956
7. Section 26 of the Medical Act 1956 shall, notwithstanding anything in section (Replacetnent of provisions of Part III of Medical Act 1956) of this Act, continue to have effect on and after the repeal date for the purposes of the disposal of any application under section 26 by an applicant for registration under section 25 of that Act; and where an order is made under section 26 on the completion of the consideration of an application by virtue of this paragraph, the applicant shall be treated as having applied to be registered under section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) of this Act and as having satisfied the Registrar of the matters specified in paragraphs (a) and (b) of subsection (1) of that section.

PART II TRANSITIONAL PROVISIONS FOR OTHER PRACTITIONERS
Interpretation
8. In this Part of this Schedule " the repeal date " means the day on which, by virtue of subsection (2) of section (Replacement of provisions of Part III of Medical Act 1956) of this Act, sections 18 to 24 and 26 of the Medical Act 1956 are repealed.
Fully registered Commonwealth or foreign practitioners
9. Where a person is, immediately before the repeal date, registered under section 18 of the Medical Act 1956—

(a) he shall, on and after that day, be treated as having been registered under section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) of this Act as a fully registered medical practitioner; and

(b) any qualifications of his registered under section 18 of that Act shall, on and after that day, be treated as having been registered under section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) of this Act as if they were recognised overseas qualifications.

Provisionally registered Commonwealth or foreign practitioners
10. Sections 22 and 23 of the Medical Act 1956 shall, notwithstanding their repeal on the repeal date, continue to have effect on and after that day in relation to persons Nn ho were registered under section 23 immediately before the repeal; and a person who was so registered shall, on satisfying the General Council of the matters specified in paragraph (a), (b) or (c) of section 22(2), be entitled to be registered under section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) of this Act as a fully registered medical practitioner and to have registered thereunder as if they were recognised overseas qualifications any qualifications which he would have been entitled to have had registered under section 18 of that Act.
Pending appeals etc. against refusal of registration.
11. Section 24 of the Medical Act 1956 shall, notwithstanding its repeal on the repeat date, continue to have effect on and after that day for the purposes of the disposal of any appeal under that section; and where in consequence of a direction given under that section on the determination of an appeal disposed of by virtue of this paragraph a person would, but for the repeal of section 18 or 23 of that Act, be entitled to be registered under the said section 18 or 23 he shall—

(a) if he would have been entitled to be registered under section 18 of that Act be entitled to be registered under section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) of this Act as a fully registered medical practitioner and to have registered thereunder as if they were recognised overseas qualifications any qualifications which he would have been entitled to have registered under section 18 of that Act;

(b) if he would have been entitled to be registered under section 23, be treated for the purposes of paragraph 10 above as having been registered under section 23 immediately before its repeal.

12. Section 26 of the Medical Act 1956 shall, notwithstanding its repeal on the repeal date, continue to have effect on and after that day for the purposes of the disposal of any application made under that section; and where an order is made under that section on the completion of the consideration of an application by virtue of this paragraph, a person who would, but for the repeal of section 18 of that Act, be entitled in consequence of the order to be registered under that section shall be entitled to be registered under section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) of this Act as a fully registered medical practitioner and to have registered thereunder as if they were recognised overseas qualifications any qualifications which he would have been entitled to have registered under section 18 of that Act.
Persons registered under the Medical Practitioners and Pharmacists Act 1947
13. Any person registered as a Commonwealth practitioner or as a foreign practitioner by virtue of section 1 of the Medical Practitioners and Pharmacists Act 1947 at any time between the end of 1956 and the repeal of that Act by section (Replacement of provisions of Part III of Medical Act 1956) of this Act shall, if his registration is in force immediately before the repeal, be treated on and after the repeal as registered under section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) of this Act as a fully registered medical practitioner.

PART III MODIFICATIONS OF ENACTMENTS DURING TRANSITIONAL PERIOD
Interpretation
14. In this Part of this Schedule " the transitional period " means the period commencing with the day appointed for the coming into operation of sections (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications), (Limited registration: erasure), (Register of medical practitioners with limited registration), (Full registration for persons with limited registration), (Full registration of visiting overseas doctors), (The Review Board for Overseas Qualified Practitioners) and (Functions of the Review Board) of this Act and ending immediately before the day appointed for the coming into operation of sections (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications), (Registration of further qualifications), (Experience required for frill registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) and (Provisional registration of practioners having recognised overseas qualifications) of this Act.
Medical Act 1956
15. In section 54(1) of the Medical Act 1956 (in this Part of this Schedule referred to as " the Act of 1956 ") the definition of " fully registered person " as substituted by this Act shall have effect during the transitional period as if—

609

(a) for the reference to section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) of this Act there were substituted a reference to section 18 of the Act of 1956; and

(b) the words " or section (Provisional registration of practitioners having recognised overseas qualifications) (5) of the Medical Act 1978 " and " or under the said section (Provisional registration of practitioners having recognised overeas qualifications)" in paragraph (a) of the definition were omitted.

Medical Act 1969
16. In section 3 of the Medical Act 1969 (in this Part of this Schedule referred to as " the Act of 1969 "), subsection (2) as substituted by this Act shall have effect during the transitional period as if—

(a) for references to persons entitled or directed to be registered under section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) of this Act there were substituted references to persons entitled or directed to be registered under section 18 of the Act of 1956; and

(b) the reference to persons directed to be registered under section (Provisional registration of practitioners having recognised overseas qualifications) of this Act were omitted.

17. Section 7 of the Act of 1969 shall have effect during the transistional period as if—

(a) in subsection (1), as amended by this Act, the reference to Part II of the Act of 1956 included a reference to Part III of that Act; and

(b) subsection (3), as so amended, included a reference to an application for registration of persons or qualifications under Part III of the Act of 1956.

18. Section 8(1) of the Act of 1969 shall have effect during the transistional period as if in paragraph (a), as substituted by this Act, the reference to Part II of the Act of 1956 included a reference to Part III of that Act.
This Act
19. Sections (Limited registration of practitioners having recognised overseas qualifications) (13) and (Full registration for persons with limited registration) of this Act shall have effect during the transitional period as if for the' references to section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) of this Act there were substituted references to section 18 of the Act of 1956.
20. Section (Full registration of visiting overseas doctors) (1) of this Act shall have effect during the transitional period as if paragraph (a) were omitted.
21. Section (Functions of the Review Board) of this Act shall have effect during the transitional period as if—

610

(a) in subsection (2), paragraphs (a) and (b) were omitted and in paragraph (c) for the reference to section (Full registration by virtue of recognsied overseas qualifications) of this Act there were substituted a reference to section 18 of the Act of 1956; and

(b) in subsection (3), paragraphs (a) and (b) and, in paragraph (c), the references to paragraphs (a) and (b) of subsection (2) were omitted.

22. Paragraph 3 above shall have effect during the transitional period as if for the reference to section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) of this Act there were substituted reference to section 18 of the Act of 1956."
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 60. This Amendment is consequential upon Amendments Nos. 30 to 44. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
61 Schedule 5, page 31, line 15, leave out and (4) "
62 Schedule 5, page 31, line 16, leave out " and (2) "
63 Schedule 5, page 31, leave out line 18.
64 Schedule 5, page 31, line 22, leave out from "Committee" to the end of line 24.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 61 to 64. These Amendments are consequential upon Amendment No. 8. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
65 Schedule 5, page 31, line 35, leave out from " Any " to " person " in line 36.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 65. This Amendment is consequential upon Amendments Nos. 24 to 29. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment. —(Lord Wells-Pestell)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
66 Schedule 5, page 31, line 38, leave out from beginning to end of line 20 on page 32 and insert—
"4. In section 11(3) of the Act of 1956, the words "in medicine, surgery and midwifery " shall be omitted.".
67 Schedule 5 Page 32, leave out lines 31 and 32.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 66 and 67. These two Amendments are consequential on Amendment No. 8. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
68 Schedule 5, page 32, line 42, leave out from beginning to end of line 20 on page 33.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 68. This Amendment is consequential upon Amendments Nos. 1 to 7. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment. —(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
69 Schedule 5, page 33, leave out lines 23 and 24.
70 Schedule 5, page 33,line 30, leave out " paragraphs (a) and (b)" and insert " paragraph (b)"
71 Page 34, line 20, leave out from "omitted;" to " or " in line 23 and insert—

"(c) after the word " primary " there shall be inserted the words "United Kingdom"; and

(d) for the words from " is or will " to " Act of 1956 " there shall he substituted the words " does.".

Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree
612
with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 69 to 71. These Amendments are consequential on Amendment No. 8. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
72 Schedule 5, page 34, line 25, at end insert—

PART 1A MINOR AND CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS RELATING TO REGISTRATION OF OVERSEAS QUALIFIED PRACTITIONERS
Medical Act 1956
18A. For subsection (4) of section 8 of the Act of 1956 there shall be substituted the following subsection—
"(4) A person registered under section 7 or 17 of this Act who holds or obtains any recognised overseas qualiification (within the meaning of the Medical Act 1978) or any other qualification for the time being registrable as a further qualification by virtue of section (Registration of further qualifications) (2) of that Act shall be entitled to have the qualification registered."
18B. In section 16A of the Act of 1956, for the words from "it shall be sufficient" to the end there shall he substituted the words "it shall be sufficient for him to satisfy the General Council that he has acquired experience of the practice of medicine, whether in the course of employment in the United Kingdom or in the course of employment outside the United Kingdom, which is not less extensive than that required for a certificate under the said section fifteen."
18C. Section 33 of the Act of 1956 shall, until its repeal by this Act, apply to a person registered with limited registration whether or not the circumstances are such that he falls within the meaning in that Act of the expression "fully registered person"; and, in relation to a person who is registered with limited registration, references in Part V of the Act of 1956 and section 15 of the Act of 1969 to "the register" are references to the register of medical practitioners with limited registration.
18D. In section 57 of the Act of 1956, subsection (2) shall be omitted.
Medical Act 1969
18E. In section 1(2)(b) of the Act of 1969, the words from "or, as regards persons temporarily registered" to the end shall be omitted.
18F.—(1) in section 3 of the Act of 1969 the amendments specified in this paragraph shall be made.
(2) For subsection (2) there shall be substituted the following subsection—
"(2) The register shall consist of four lists—

(a) one, to be called the principal list, of persons entitled to be registered under section 7, 17 or 23 of the Act of 1956, or entitled or directed to be registered under section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) of the Act of 1978 or directed to be registered under section (Provisional registration of practitioners having recognised overseas qualifications) of that Act, but not entitled to be included in the overseas list mentioned in paragraph (b) below;

(b) one, to be called the overseas list, of persons entitled or directed to be so registered who by virtue of regulations made under section 4 of this Act are for the time being entitled to be included in that list by reason of residence overseas;

(c) one, to be called the visiting overseas doctors list, of persons from time to time directed to be registered under section (Full registration of visiting overseas doctors) of the Act of 1978; and

(d) one, to be called the visiting EEC practitioners list, of persons entitled to be registered from time to time under Article 7 of the Medical Qualifications (EEC Recognition) Order 1977."

(3) Subsections (3) and (7) shall be omitted.
18G. In section 4 of the Act of 1969, the following amendments shall be made—

(a) in subsection (3), for the words from " those registered as Commonwealth practitioners " to the end there shall be substituted the words " or under section (Provisional registration of practitioners having recognised overseas qualifications) of this Act of 1978";

(b) subsection (7) shall be omitted.

18H. In section 6 of the Act of 1969, for subsection (3) there shall be substituted the following subsection—
"(3) Where, on an application in that behalf by any person, a direction is given

(a) that he be registered with limited registration under section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) of the Act of 1978; or

(b) for his name to be erased from the register of medical practitioners with limited registration by virtue of section (Limited registration: erasure (1) of that Act,

the General Council may include therein a direction that the right to registration
614
or erasure conferred thereby shall be subject to the payment by him of such fee as may be specified in the direction."
18J.—(1) In section 7 of the Act of 1969 the amendments specified in this paragraph shall be made.
(2) In subsection (1), for the words " conferred by the Act of 1956 " there shall be substituted the words " of persons or qualifications conferred by Part II of the Act of 1956 and any right to registration of qualifications conferred by the Act of 1978.".
(3) For subsection (2) there shall be substituted the following subsection—
"(2) An application for registration of persons or qualifications under section 7 of the Act of 1956 made by virtue of subsection (1)(a) of that section, for registration of qualifications under section 8 of that Act or for registration of persons or qualifications under section 17 of that Act shall be made to the registrar of one of the branch councils."
(4) In subsection (3), for the words from " Any " to " 1956 " there shall be substituted the words " An application for registration of persons or qualifications under section 7 of the Act of 1956 made by virtue of subsection (1)(b) of that section, any application for registration of qualifications under any provision of the Act of 1978 ".
(5) In subsection (4), for the words " section 7, 17, 18 or 23 " there shall be substituted the words " section 7 or 17 ".
(6) In subsection (5), for the words " Schedule 3 " there shall be substituted the words " Part I of Schedule 3 ".
(7) In subsection (7), the words "temporary registration under section 25 of the Act of 1956 or to " shall be omitted.
18K. In section 8(1) of the Act of 1969, for paragraphs (a) to (c) there shall be substituted the following paragraphs—

"(a) the registration of a person or qualification under any provision of Part II of the Act of 1956; or

(b) the registration of a qualification under any provision of the Act of 1978;".

18L.—(1) In section 9 of the Act of 1969 the amendments specified in this paragraph shall be made.
(2) In subsection (3), for the words " section 7, 17, 18 or 23 of the Act of 1956 " there shall be substituted the words " section 7, 17 or 23 of the Act of 1956 or under section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) or (Provisional registration of practitioners having recognised overseas qualifications) of the Act of 1978 ".
(3) In subsection (4)(a)—

(a) after the words " in the register " there shall be inserted the words " or the register of medical practitioners with limited registration ";

615

(b) the words "or the register of temporarily registered medical practitioners " shall be omitted.

(4) In subsection (4)(b)—

(a) after the words " this Act " there shall be inserted the words " or under any provision of the Act of 1978 ";

(b) the words " or section 25 of the Act of 1967 " shall be omitted;

(c) after the words " the register " there shall be inserted the words " or with limited registration under section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) of the Act of 1978";

(d) the words " or temporarily under the said section 25 " shall be omitted.

18M. Section 11(2) of the Act of 1969 shall be omitted.
18N. Section 12 of the Act of 1969 shall cease to have effect.
18P. In section 19 of the Act of 1969 the following amendments shall be made—

(a) after the words " persons registered under" there shall be inserted the words " any provision of the Act of 1978 or of";

(b) the words " (including those temporarily registered under section 25) " shall be omitted.

18Q. In Schedule 1 to the Act of 1969, paragraphs 3 and 4 shall be omitted.
18R. In Schedule 3 to the Act of 1969, paragraphs 2, 3, 6, 7 and 10 shall be omitted."
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 72. This Amendment is consequential on Amendments Nos. 1 to 7. I beg to move.
Moved, that this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
2.10p.m.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
73 Schedule 5, page 34, leave out lines 42 to 44 and insert—
"22. For subsection (2) of section 8 of the Act of 1956 there shall be substituted the following subsections—
"(2) In this Act " additional qualification " means any qualification granted in a member State of the Communities other than a qualification specified in Part I or Part II of Schedule 3 to this Act.
(3) A person registered under section 7 or 17 of this Act shall be entitled to have registered any qualification specified in Part I or Part II of Schedule 3 to this
616
Act which he obtains in addition to the qualification or qualifications by virtue of which he was so registered.".
22A. In section 10 of the Act of 1956 the following amendments shall be made—

(a) in subsection (2), for the words body granting any primary " there shall be substituted the words " body in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland granting any primary United Kingdom qualification, primary Irish qualification "; and

(b) in subsection (4), for the words " examination to be gone through in order to obtain a primary " there shall be substituted the words examination held in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland which has to be gone through in order to obtain a primary United Kingdom qualification, primary Irish qualification "."

74 Page 35, leave out lines 3 to 5 and insert—
"(a) for subsections (1) and (2) there shall be substituted the following subsections—

"(1) Subject to the provisions of this Act, a qualifying examination for the purposes of this Part of this Act is an examination held by any of the bodies or combinations of bodies specified in subsection (2) below for the purpose of granting one or more primary United Kingdom or primary Irish qualifications.

(2) The bodies and combinations of bodies entitled to hold qualifying examinations are—

(a) any of the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle, Bristol, Nottingham, Southampton, Wales, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Dundee, the Queen's University of Belfast, the University of Dublin and the National University of Ireland, or a combination of any two or more of the universities specified in this paragraph;

(b) a combination of the Royal College of Physicians of London and the Royal College of Surgeons of England;

(c) a combination of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow;

(d) the Society of Apothecaries of London;

(e) with the approval and under the directions of the Education Committee, a combination of any two or more of the bodies specified in paragraphs (b), (c) and (d) above;

(f) a combination of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland."."

75 Page 35, leave out lines 11 and 12 and insert—
"(c) subsection (4) shall be omitted."
76 Page 35, leave out lines 21 and 23 and insert—
"25. In section 13 of the Act of 1956, the following amendments shall be made—

(a) in subsection (1), after the word " primary " there shall be inserted the words " United Kingdom or primary Irish "; and

(b) in subsection (3), the words from " and while such an order " to the end shall be omitted.

25A. In section 15(7)(a) of the Act of 1956, for the words "a qualifying examination " there shall be substituted the words " an examination "."
77 Page 35, line 40, at end insert—
"28A. In section 28(2) of the Act of 1956, for the words " British subject " there shall be substituted the words " Commonwealth citizen "."
78 Page 36, line 31, at end insert—
"34A. In section 52 of the Act of 1956 the following amendments shall be made—

(a) in subsections (1) and (2), after the word " enactment " there shall be inserted the words " passed before 1st January 1979" and after the word " shall " there shall be inserted the words " unless the contrary intention appears "; and

(b) after subsection (2) there shall be added the following subsection—

"(3) In any Act passed on or after 1st January 1979 the expression " registered medical practitioner " shall, unless the contrary intention appears, be construed to mean a fully registered person within the meaning of the Medical Act 1956."."
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House cloth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 73 to 78. They are consequential.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
79 Schedule 5, page 36, line 33, leave out " and " and insert " fully registered person " and " fully registered " and ".
80 line 38, at end insert—
" " fully registered person " means a person for the time being registered as a fully registered medical practitioner under section 7 of this Act or section (Full registration by virtue of recognised overseas qualifications) or (Full registration of visiting overseas doctors) of the Medical Act 1978 or as a visiting EEC
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practitioner under the Medical Qualifications (EEC Recognition) Order 1977, and—

(a) so far as mentioned in section 17(3) of this Act or section (Provisional registration of practitioners having recognised overseas qualifications) (5) of the Medical Act 1978, but not further, includes a person for the time being provisionally registered under section 17 or 23 of this Act or under the said section (Provisional registration of practitioners having recognised overseas qualifications);

(b) in relation to such employment and such things as are mentioned in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) of section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) (13) of the Medical Act 1978, but not in relation to other matters, includes a person for the time being registered under the said section (Limited registration of practitioners having overseas qualifications) with limited registration,

and " fully registered " shall be construed accordingly; "
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 79 and 80. These two Amendments are consequential on Amendments Nos. 1 to 7.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
81 Schedule 5, page 37, line 18, leave out " that Act " and insert" the Act of 1956 ".
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 81. I have to admit that this Amendment is to correct a drafting error.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
82 Schedule 5, page 37, leave out lines 20 to 22.
83 Schedule 6, page 39, line 3, at end insert—

"11 & 12 Geo. 6 c. 11.

The Medical Practitioners and Pharmacists Act 1947.

The whole Act.

14 Geo. 6 c. 29

The Medical Act 1950.

The whole Act."

Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 82 and 83. These Amendments are consequential.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
84 Schedule 6, page 39, line 11, column 3, leave out "(1) and"
85 line 13, column 3, at end insert—

"Section 11(4).

Section 12(2).

In section 13(3), the words from "and while such an order" to the end.

Section 14.

Section 15(4) and (5).

In section 17(3), the words from "and so far" to "1950".

Sections 18 to 26.

Section 28(1)(b) and (3).

Section 30"

86 line 14, column 3, at end insert—

"Section 48".

87 line 17, column 3, after "appearing" insert "paragraph (a)"
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 84 to 87. These Amendments are consequential.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
88 Schedule 6, page 39, line 18, column 3, after "words" insert "twenty-two, twenty-five,"
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment
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No. 88. This Amendment is consequential on Amendment No. 85.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
89 Schedule 6, page 39, line 20, column 3, at end insert—

"In section 51, the words from " or under sub-section (1) "to" section 11 of this Act"."

90 line 23, column 3, at end insert—

"Section 54(3)"

91 column 3, leave out lines 25 and 26 and insert—

"In section 57, subsections (2), (5), (6), (11) and (12).

Schedule 1.

In Part I of Schedule 3, in column 2, the words "licentiate in midwifuery".

Schedule 4."

Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I bee, to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 89 to 91. These Amendments are consequential.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
92 Schedule 6, page 39, line 31, column 3, at beginning insert—

"In section 1(2)(b), the words from "or, as regards persons" to the end.

In section 3, subsections (3) and (7).

Section 4(7).

In section 7(7), the words from "temporary" to "or to"."

93 line 33, column 3, at end insert—

"In section 9(4), in paragraph (a) the words "or the register of temporarily registered medical practitioners" and in paragraph (b) the words "or section 25 of the Act of 1956" and the words" or temporarily under the said section 25".

Section 10(7).

Section 11(2)."

94 line 37, column 3, leave out "13" and insert "12"
95 line 42, column, 3 at end insert—

"In section 19, the words "(including those temporarily registered under secttion 25)"."

96 line 43, column, 3 leave out "5" and insert "3 to 5"
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House cloth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 92 to 96. These Amendments are consequential.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amend-me nt s.—(Lord Wells-Pestell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
97 Schedule 6, page 39, column 3, leave out line 45 and insert—

"In Schedule 3, paragraphs 1 to 4, 6, 7 and 9 to 11."

Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 97—last but by no means least. This Amendment is consequential.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendinent—(Lord Wells Pestell.)
2.15 p.m.
Lord PLATT: My Lords, first, I should like to congratulate especially the noble Lords, Lord Wells-Pestell, Lord Sandys and Lord Hunt of Fawley on the enormous
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amount of work that has been put into this Bill. I should also like to ask a question as to whether something has been lost or whether it really was considered. When we discussed the Bill on a previous occasion, I asked why on earth the General Medical Council, which had been the General Medical Council for so many years, was now to be called the General Council—which might just as much have to do with waterways, industry, or anything else, as with medicine. I should like to know what happened to my suggestion, because I understood Lord Wells-Pestell to say that it would be considered.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My understanding is that it will continue to be called the General Medical Council, and that is all I can say.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, I hope I may take this opportunity at the conclusion of these Amendments to say a very warm message of congratulation from my noble friends on this side of the House to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell. We thank him not only for his great patience, his perseverance and his extremely long suffering throughout a continual period of investigation into certain matters of which he will be well aware during the course of the Committee stage in your Lordships' House, and at later stages throughout the discussions in the Commons.
This has been a protracted, difficult and, indeed, speedy discussion. The Bill has not been before your Lordships for many months, and I know the personal pressures which have been placed upon the noble Lord, on the Department, and on his right honourable friend the Secretary of State, whose assistance in this matter and in the convening of special meetings has been particularly valuable towards the final outcome.
Lord HUNT of FAWLEY: My Lords, I should not like this opportunity to pass without acknowledging how grateful I am to the Government for the generous way in which they have responded, amply, to the Amendments to the Bill which I have moved, concerning the functions of the General Medical Council in relation to medical education and overseas-qualified doctors.

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The Bill, which follows now so closely the recommendations of the excellent report of the Merrison Committee, appears to me to be almost entirely satisfactory in its expanded form. It will, I believe, be welcomed by the medical profession in general and by the General Medical Council in particular. It should provide a sound basis for the regulation of my profession for many years to come.
I too must thank particularly the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, and Parliamentary Counsel and other members of his Department who have, I know, spent hours and hours on this Bill. With Lord Wells-Pestell I must bracket my noble friend Lord Sandys and say how grateful I have been to them both for their friendly, patient and helpful co-operation with someone, like myself, so new to the perplexities of Parliamentary procedure. I am grateful also to the noble Lords, Lord Amulree, Lord Segal, Lord Winstanley, Lord Platt, Lord Hill and many others in your Lordships' House who have given us their help and advice. In guiding the Bill through another place, the Minister of State for Health, Mr. Roland Moyle, has been quite outstanding, ably helped by Dr. Gerard Vaughan, Mr. A. J. Beith, Mr. Robert Boscawen, Dr. Alan Glyn and many others.
The President and Registrar of the General Medical Council, Sir John Richardson and Mr. Martin Draper, have been of tremendous assistance throughout, as have Dr. Elston Grey-Turner (Secretary of the British Medical Association), the BMA Council, and the executive of the Overseas Doctors' Association in the United Kingdom. I want these people and many others to know how deeply indebted we are to them all.
My Lords, with your permission, there is one last point I should like to make. People have said, both here and in another place, that the Bill is, in some ways, a good example of the value of an Upper House. It was introduced here; and, although long and professionally complicated in the extreme, it has taken up only 80 minutes of Parliamentary time on the Floor of another place. But it was carefully scrutinised first by Standing Committee D which suggested useful Amendments. In future, I hope that this House may have the privilege of helping others of our
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Governments, when they are very busy and short of Parliamentary time, in the same kind of way.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I crave your Lordships' indulgence because, as the noble and learned Lord has already pointed out to me quite properly, we are out of order. He had put the last Amendment, which I had moved, and really the proceedings should have come to a close then. But I hope your Lordships will feel that it would be rather churlish of me if I did not say something at this stage.
I want to thank the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, for what they have just said, and to acknowledge their co-operation which was quite unstinted, their help, their courtesy and their consideration, without which this Bill would not have seen its final stages in this House today.
I just do not know whether it is or is not improper—it really does not matter so far as I am concerned—but I should like to take this opportunity to say that any praise or thanks coming to me is, in a measure, quite undeserved when the help, guidance and advice I have received from a large number of very competent, so-called faceless people—officials of my department —are remembered. One does not, I think, realise until one finds oneself in the position in which I find myself, how much skill and competence is available. I should like to take this opportunity, not mentioning names, to say how grateful I personally am to them —and I know I can call to aid the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley. I am grateful, my Lords,
Lord BOOTHBY: My Lords, on this question, I should just like to say one thing. This Bill has given a clear demonstration of the value of this House in the government of this country and I hope that nobody will attempt to fiddle about with it for many years to come.

SOLOMON ISLANDS BILL [H.L.]
2.22 p.m.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, that the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Goronwy-Roberts.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD ABERDARE in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Independence for Solomon Islands]:
On Question, Whether Clause 1 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: Perhaps this would be an appropriate opportunity for me to fulfil my promise to the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, on Second Reading to give some more information about the aid arrangements with the Solomon Islands on their assumption of independence and also on one or two other points he raised.
The amount of aid from the European Development Fund is likely to be approximately £6 million, payable over a period of five years from 1978 to 1982 inclusive. The following projects are being given priority by the Government and are under detailed consideration by the Commission: the telephone exchange scheme for Honiara, the capital; a fisheries training school and technical assistance in town planning for Honiara. The precise terms of the assistance have not yet been decided, but it will be partly on grant terms and partly on loan terms; the loan terms will be very soft indeed, at 1 per cent. interest repayable over 40 years and with a grace period of 10 years.
The noble Lord also asked whether the Solomon Islands would be considered for membership of the States which have acceded to the Lome Convention. The answer is yes. As he knows, Article 89 of the Convention provides for dependencies, on becoming independent, to have an automatic right to accede to the Lome Convention. The Solomon Islands Government have already expressed a wish to accede and they have been asked to make a formal application, which I understand is now in transit. At a meeting of the ACP countries, it was decided to inform the EEC Council of Ministers of their support for Solomon Islands participation and the Community has similarly welcomed the application.
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The noble Lord also asked about the electoral system in the Islands. The country is divided into 38 single-member constituencies on the basis of universal adult suffrage. There is provision in the Constitution for a General Election to be held every four years and, from Independence Day, the Legislative Assembly will be known as the National Parliament, but —and this was a point he placed commendable stress on—the electoral system will remain in independence as it is now, fundamentally the same.
Finally, the noble Lord asked for further details about the nature of the Constitution itself. We have had, on the margin as it were, certain exchanges on this point and I shall content myself with saying from this Box that this is, as he knows, a lengthy document. It is being printed and copies will be available to noble Lords who are interested. No doubt the noble Lord will raise any other point which he thinks I have left out, but I think those were the important points he raised on Second Reading which I had no time to answer.
Lord O'HAGAN: I am most grateful for the information which the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, has just given us. Perhaps he may be able to say at a later stage of the Bill when the Constitution w ill be generally available, or when it is thought that it is likely to be generally available and, therefore, when it will be possible for your Lordships to see it. Meanwhile, I thank him very much for the comments that he has made in elaborating the information that he gave on Second Reading.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 [Effect of independence on British nationality]:
The CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES (Lord Aberdare): I have to point out that, if this Amendment is agreed to, I cannot call the second Amendment.
Lord AVEBURY Lord AVEBURY moved the first Amendment:
Page 2, line 16, leave out subsection (4).
The noble Lord said: I was going to ask whether it might not be for the convenience of the Committee if we discussed

627
Amendment No. 2 at the same time as I am moving Amendment No. 1. May I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, for the comprehensive way in which he provided the information on the nationality provisions of this Bill immediately after the Second Reading and the references to the draft Constitution, which, as I understand it from his letter, is very unlikely to be materially altered between now and Independence Day. I must say how grateful I am to him for enabling me to follow these provisions much more readily than I would have been able to do solely from looking at the Bill. One really has to see the Constitution itself, as well as the Bill, to understand the full implications.
I am not in any way moving from the opinion that I expressed on Second Reading that we are dealing here with a very serious matter; that is, the creation of a constitutional precedent of depriving a person of citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies which he now holds without any right of appeal and the possibility that, once such a precedent is enshrined in the Statute Book, it might be applied to other and very much larger groups of people than we are dealing with here.
The noble Lord has explained in more detail than he did on Second Reading that the vast majority of the people living in the Solomon Islands are, in fact, indigenous and will obtain citizenship of the Solomon Islands automatically on Independence Day, but there are something like 5,000 non-indigenous people entitled to a grant of Solomon islands citizenship if they apply for it either during the period of six months prior to Independence Day or within two years after it, culminating in the date of the Bill, which is 7th July 1980.
In the notes which he has been kind enough to let me have, the noble Lord has explained that, out of these 5,000 non-indigenous people, there are something like 3,000 who would not be liable to forfeit their status as citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies in any case because they have a connection either with the United Kingdom itself or with one of the remaining dependencies; in fact, most of these people are persons who were born in the Gilbert Islands or whose
628
fathers were born there. So we are dealing with the residual minority of well under 2,000 persons who are non-indigenous and not entitled after the two years to retain citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies.
It is still not absolutely clear to me who these people are. I asked on Second Reading whether I was right in assuming that many of them might be people of Chinese ethnic origin who live in the Solomon Islands, although it did occur to me after making this suggestion that if possession of citizenship stemmed from their connection with Hong Kong, they would of course be entitled to retain it. If, on the other hand, any of them were refugees from Mainland China who had transited to Hong Kong and finished up in the Solomon Islands—I am speaking hypothetically here—then they would be non-indigenous; they would possibly have acquired citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies in some way or another but would not be entitled to retain it two years afterwards. So I am still not absolutely clear who are these people in this residual minority of 2,000 who are likely to be affected.
Looking at the Solomon Islands draft Constitution, it is absolutely clear that citizenship is given to any person having a connection with the Solomon Islands, as defined in the Bill; that is set out in some detail in Section 21. Then there are provisions which enable the Minister responsible for citizenship to extend the period beyond two years, where the applicant was unaware of his right of reply either by reason of his absence from the Solomon Islands, presumably throughout the whole of this period, or for some other reasonable cause. So the Constitution envisages the possibility that a person might be deprived of his citizenship automatically, and with no right of appeal. That is why the Minister is given the power to extend the period.
My Lords, with the greatest respect, I think that this would be, if it were allowed to stand in the Bill, a very illiberal provision, one which I do not think I have ever seen the like of in all the independence legislation which has come before Parliament during the 15 years in which I have been a Member of either House. I suggest that we ought to reconsider the matter very carefully before we take away

629
citizenship even from such a small number of people without providing them with any right of appeal.
Having said that, I assume that, although the Solomon Islands Constitution does not actually say so in terms, there would be the equivalent of an appeal to the High Court; if someone who thought they were qualified, who has a connection as set out in the Bill, and put in an application to be registered as a citizen, were refused it, there must be some machinery for that to be dealt with in the Solomon Islands courts. It would be interesting to know what that is.
The Solomon Islands representatives at the negotiations, I understood, wanted to draw a distinction between the indigenous and non-indigenous inhabitants, and this is the reason why we find these provisions in the Bill. That might be thought to indicate that they had some reservations, of however nebulous a character, about granting citizenship to non-indigenous people, and that, while it may appear to be perfectly clear in the Consititution that these people have an absolute right, when they come to exercise it some difficulties might be put in their way.
I suggest that we have got to consider three separate possibilities. The first is that somebody who claims to have a connection may nevertheless be refused, on the grounds that he has failed to prove that he comes within one or other of the categories mentioned in Section 20(3) of the draft Constitution. For example, a woman who says that she is married to an indigenous Solomon Islander may present her marriage certificate. The Minister responsible for citizenship then says that the marriage certificate is invalid, and that she is not a person who qualifies as being married to an indigenous Solomon Islander.
The second possibility that I could imagine is that an applicant, while in fact being a qualified person as set out in Clause 20(3), had not given all the information which is required under the following subsection, or had made some error in the particulars. The noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, will find, when he comes to examine that part of the Consitution, that no provision is made for this eventuality. Let us suppose that a person
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waits until the last moment before formulating his application, and that he has made an error in his date of birth, quite inadvertently. Is that going to invalidate the application? Could the Minister say that he has not made out a case for Solomon Islands citizenship because the particulars that are required to be provided under Clause 20(4) have not been correctly provided? The third possibility which occurs to me is that, within the two years before the deadline, the grant of citizenship to persons who make these applications might become discretionary rather than mandatory through an amendment to the Constitution.
I should like to emphasise that I am not suggesting that these matters are in the minds of Ministers in the Solomon Islands. But things do change rapidly: as we know, in other countries which have obtained their independence, another set of Ministers might take over who could amend the Constitution so as to deprive these non-indigenous inhabitants of the rights which they now possess. This is NV h y my second Amendment makes the proposal that if a person has formulated and submitted an application he must be registered as a citizen. It does not say that the application has to be in the correct form. It seems to me to provide some lesser safeguard than Amendment No. 1, which I very much prefer, as a more reliable way of securing the rights of the people about whom I am concerned.
I must say to the Minister that the second Amendment is very much second best, because it does not take into account the possibility I mentioned a few minutes ago, that a person could be unaware of the requirement that he should apply within two years. I repeat that it seems to me to be a very serious matter that a person should be deprived of United Kingdom citizenship. At the very least there ought to be satisfactory appeal procedures against unfair deprivation in this matter.
While there may well be provisions in the Solomon Islands Constitution which I have not examined, which allow the matter to be tested in their own court, we are after all discussing United Kingdom citizens, and it seems to me that from this Bill there is lack of any provision whereby the person whose citizenship is taken away from him can come to the courts of this country and see that justice is done.

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I hope the Minister will be able to give me some assurances on these points before we allow this Bill to go forward. I beg to move.
2.39 p.m.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for the temperate and, if I may say so without presumption, logical way in which he has advanced what I regard as very important points. He has not addressed himself in the usual manner to either of the two Amendments standing in his name, nor will I attempt the normal rebuttal of the Amendments, other than to say this: I believe he understands, although he does not accept, why Her Majesty's Government is unable to accept either Amendment. I do not think that I need to rehearse the reasons. But I wish to give him the fullest possible assurances on the principal points he has raised. They are important points.
I come to those points on the basis of what I said during Second Reading, and on the basis of the prolonged, very friendly but very closely argued independence conference that was held here last September. The provisions of the Bill with regard to citizenship arise from the insistent attitude of the Solomon Islands leaders, speaking for their people, that this is the way they want to do it. The point the noble Lord raised about this creating a precedent is therefore an important one.
I want to say at once that this is sui generis. This is applicable to this particular Bill, arising from the particular insistence that we met when we discusssed—again in a very friendly manner—all the matters relating to independence with our friends of the Solomon Islands. So I think I can say without reservation that this does not create a precedent. These provisions have neither ancestry nor posterity. I quite agree with the noble Lord that I cannot call to mind any previous independence Bill which contained quite this provision, nor can I envisage, knowing as I do what is in the offing with regard to certain dependants, a repetition of quite this arrangement. That is the first point of assurance I want to give to the noble Lord.
The second is this. He made a very strong point about someone—a non-
632
indigenous person—who had been refused Solomon Islands citizenship after applying in this way, asking whether he would have a right of appeal. Yes, there is a provision in the Constitution for the High Court of the Islands to determine questions of interpretation, including citizenship provisions. As to his point that there may be a right of appeal in the United Kingdom in relation to what he called "deprivation of citizenship", he will not expect me to answer that point immediately today, and it is not essential that I should attempt to do so.
I take the point very carefully on board. I believe I know the answer but it is of some consequence to the argument of the noble Lord and therefore I would ask him to allow me to inform him between now and Third Reading of the precise position about such an appeal. Suffice it to say that, if a person in the Solomons has not succeeded—and I find it very difficult to envisage any of the indigenous elements that we are dealing with not succeeding—and if all the provisions, including the provision for applying for naturalisation, which are in the Constitution somehow —and I used the word" accidentally " during the Second Reading debate—leave somebody footloose and possibly stateless, then the provision in Clause 2(4) would apply. I fear I cannot accept Amendments on that, mainly if not entirely because it was the desire of the applicant's dependency that the matter should be dealt with in this way.
Baroness ELLES: Will the noble Lord allow me to intervene? This is clearly a matter of great importance to the individual rights of any citizen, regardless of colour or ethnic origin, in the Solomon Islands. I wonder, while we are on this point, whether the Minister can tell us what measures are being taken by United Kingdom representatives to warn and advise citizens of their position. We have only to recall what happened in Uganda, when many thousands of British subjects were left stateless because of lack of clarity, lack of definition and lack of advice. I should be most grateful if the noble Lord could comment.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: I am most grateful for the interjection of the noble Baroness, as I also regard this

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matter as of immense importance. Succeeding Governments have learned from previous experience of these situations and I am assured that we on our part and the media in the Islands—through the radio and newspapers and by active information efforts—have taken every possible step to assure everybody of his position, his potential position and what he needs to do. This has been made known in various ways to Solomon Islanders who may be outside the country—and of course islanders are properly peripatetic. The arrangements are very good and the applications are coming in in a fair number and are being processed in good faith and with efficiency.
This brings me to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, concerning the numbers. He gave the numbers—very precisely, if I may say so—of a total population of a little under 200,000. About 90 per cent. are Melanesian and are of course regarded as indigenous. About 8,000 are Polynesian. This gives a non-indigenous population, as he said, of about 5,000, of whom fully 2,500 are Gilbertese, and their position in regard to their citizenship continues, as he said. They are Micronesian, not regarded as indigenous. There are about 1,400 Europeans, Australians and New Zealanders, and about 500 Chinese. In addition, there is a small number of people of Fijian and other descent. As I said, only the Melanesians and the Polynesians are regarded as indigenous. The indigenous —who I reckon amount to 97 or 98 per cent. of the total population—will automatically become Solomon Islands citizens at independence. The remainder will be required to apply for registration as citizens.
This brings me to another point, which is the third point of assurance I want to put to the noble Lord and to the House, because we are all concerned that these things should go forward properly. I have every confidence that the Solomon Islands Government will deal with the small minority so that the process of application to be registered as citizens will go forward in a fair and satisfactory manner. No doubt they will acquaint themselves with, or possibly be apprised of, the exchanges in this noble House. I think that they will read with interest, and indeed avidity, what has been said on this as well as on other points. It is good that two
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friendly countries within the Commonwealth—two Parliamentary Monarchies—should exchange their Parliamentary Papers in this way. I think, too, having regard to the worthy reputation of the noble Lord in the field of human rights, that the Solomon Islanders will regard what he has said as a further encouragement to proceed in these matters in what they, and we, call the pacific way, so that nobody is left abandoned and hopeless. If by. accident somebody were to emerge in that way, then we think the fair and sensible way to deal with it would be through the provisions of Clause 2(4).
Further, I want to say this to the noble Lord. He rightly raised the point of applications which might fail in the event of perhaps minor errors or an insufficiency of documentation. People in this country occasionally have to hunt for their driving licence and may find a certain difficulty in finding it, and it is perfectly possible that in the Solomon Islands—as the noble Lord very reasonably said—people may fall into default in their application because of minor errors or insufficiency of documentation. It may not be so easy to document an application in every respect. I can assure you that, if that happens, there is every possibility of a revised application; it can be put in again. Indeed, if they need assistance from any quarter in order to revive the application, they will certainly get it.
So I do not see that there is any real possibility of our ending up with the creation of a new, independent State within the Commonwealth where there is unfairness and hazard and difficulty for any of the people with whom we are dealing. I know that the noble Lord would wish it to be done in the traditional way. So would I. But, knowing how deeply the Solomon Islanders feel about this and having their full and conclusive undertakings of how they will operate this process of citizenship, I am completely confident myself that we can look forward, on the basis of this Bill, to the launching on an excellent basis of this State as an independent member of the Commonwealth.
If things continue as they are, we shall continue to have very strong links with them—I have mentioned a few this afternoon again in giving certain details to the noble Lord. And links join

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together to form chains, not of bondage but of co-operation. We look to them to operate this Bill in the pacific way. We are confident that they will. They look to us for continuing friendship and assistance, and they are assured of that. It is a two-way traffic and I have no doubt at all that the Chief Minister and his colleagues and, indeed, the entire population of these Islanders, view it in this way.
Having had those assurances and the overall assurance that what he has said will be very carefully studied and borne in mind by the United Kingdom Government and, if necessary, brought appropriately to the attention of the Solomon Islands Government, I hope that the noble Lord will agree with me that with the great boon of independence, I repeat, within the Commonwealth, sharing with us the same Head of State as a Parliamentary Monarchy, this great achievement for these people with us may not be impeded in its various stages because, here and there—as often happens with these arrangements—not everything is precisely as we would have wished it to be.
In this connection, before I sit down, as it is almost impossible to be out of order in your Lordships' House, I may drop a broad hint that, if these assurances are generally acceptable by the noble Lord so that he may withdraw his Amendment, that might enable me to go through the process of moving a further stage today. It is only a hint, and it arises from the need to utilise the next few weeks as expeditiously as possible in both Houses and in the third stage of legislative approval which is the highest—the approval of Her Majesty—so that there is no sense of frustration in the Solomon Islands that, because we perhaps were not as expeditious as possible in the stages in either House, the process was delayed. With those remarks, I hope that the noble Lord may accede to my suggestion.
2.55 p.m.
Lord O'HAGAN: Before the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, decides what to do about his Amendment or Amendments, or before he, as I imagine he will, formally withdraws them to facilitate the speed with which this Bill passes both Houses of Parliament, may I say a few words about
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this important matter of citizenship. Of course, the consideration of the citizenship provisions of this Bill is overhung by the general anxieties as to the evolving nature of British citizenship and what we expect to come from the Green Paper, so that, somehow, it was inevitable that the provisions of this Bill, which were putting into legislative form the wishes of the Solomon Islanders themselves—as we understand from the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts—should be considered by your Lordships, particulary in Committee, in a wider sphere, bearing in mind all the past dangers and difficulties into which our labryrinthine citizenship law has led us.
I wish to separate the general seminar on citizenship from the particular provisions which we are discussing now, because I do not think that what we decide today or later on should be in this Bill in order to implement the agreement reached with the Solomon Islanders, can really be considered to lay down firm guidelines one way or the other for whatever may be decided in a wider context at a later time. It may be; it may not be. But I do not think that we want to look at it in that light automatically, although there may be useful lessons to be learned from this particular instance.
I do not complain that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has raised these matters with his customary pertinacity and attention to detail. It is the implications of citizenship law for all those whom it affects that must be one of the main factors that we bear in mind when we are examining it. But I hardly think, if I may say so, that it is now for us in this House to come along to the Solomon Islanders and say, "We do not trust you. We do not think that you are going to keep your word. We do not believe that the provisions of your Constitution and the safeguards laid down in the Act are really enough".
While I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, was not suggesting that in his comments, there is nevertheless a hint behind what he said that the agreement that had been reached so far was not really adequate. What we must do now is to put our trust in the agreements which have been reached between the people of the Solomon Islands and

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ourselves, and hope that these arrangements will bear fruit. In view of the detailed assurances given by the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, I certainly can say yet again what I said at Second Reading. It is a fatal vice to quote oneself, but I did say that I hoped we could all add our voices, and so on, and that the Bill could become an Act as soon as possible.
In view of what we have heard today, we really should now allow the Bill to proceed through all its stages as quickly as we can, because the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, has given us some detailed explanations of why it is that these provisions are in the Bill and how it is that they are intended to work—the buttresses to them that are provided in the Constitution. Looking at those three safeguards for the people who will be affected by these citizenship provisions, I believe that we can really pass from consideration of this part of the Bill and speed it on its way.
3 p.m.
Lord AVEBURY: I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan. Nothing which has been said in this Committee should be allowed to give the impression to the Solomon Islanders that we do not trust them in any way or, indeed, that we are hesitant about joining with them enthusiastically in the progress towards their independence and wishing them every possible success. I also agree with him that we ought not to be considering the citizenship provisions in the Bill as if they were pre-empting any decisions that Parliament may take later on concerning the Green Paper. I am very glad he said that, because I want his words to be carefully marked and when we come to discuss the Green Paper let no one in your Lordships' House or elsewhere say to us, "But you have already come to this decision. You made certain provisions in the Solomon Islands Bill and naturally we just followed these through and incorporate similar measures in whatever we do regarding British overseas citizenship, for example"—which is one of the proposals that I particularly detest in the Green Paper.
So long as that is clearly understood, we are all right and should think the whole House must be very grateful to the noble
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Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, for saying that we are not creating any precedent here for any future independence legislation; for his assurance that someone refused his application for citizenship being a non-indigenous person will have a right of appeal in the Solomon Islands, and that that is contained in one of the other provisions of the Constitution—to which I should be grateful if, perhaps on some other occasion, he could refer me.
He also very kindly said he would look into the point I raised about the right of appeal in the British courts by someone who is deprived of his citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies, and he said in terms that where a person made an error in his application there would be a possibility of putting in a revised one. There is only one minor point I would make there, and that is that if someone comes along right at the end of the transitional period and the discovery of the error is made, let us say, at the beginning of July 1980 then there would be a time problem, and we will have to deal with the case where the person's application has been submitted and the officials have not looked at it until after the expiry date and then they discover an error. The question then arises, would the person be able to reformulate the application? Of course, I am not asking the Minister to let me have an answer to that question now, but at some time it would be reassuring to know that that person does not forfeit his rights.
The Minister said it was of concern to him, and to everybody else, to ensure that nobody became, as he put it, footloose and possibly Stateless as a result of provisions in the Bill and that is why there is the fallback that a person becomes a British protected person if he loses the status of a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies. I still consider that to be fundamentally unsatisfactory and Professor Fawcett, professor of international law at King's College, London, whom I have consulted about it, equally thinks that it is an unfortunate provision to be contained in an Act of Parliament. But the Minister has answered many of the objections with his usual meticulous care and thoroughness and I will not pursue the criticisms that I have to make of these matters on this occasion. I wish to do nothing that will delay or impede the provision of independence to the Solomon

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Islanders. I wish them well, like the noble Lords, Lord O'Hagan and the Minister, and I hope that the few remaining queries which I have put to the Minister this afternoon can be resolved before the Bill becomes an Act of Parliament. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Remaining clauses and Schedule agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment: Report received.

ROYAL ASSENT
3.6 p.m.
The Lord CHANCELLOR (Lord Elwyn-Jones): My Lords, I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:

Gun Barrel Proof Act,

European Assembly Elections Act,

Shipbuilding (Redundancy Payments) Act,

Medical Act.

COMMUNITY LAND ACT
3.7 p.m.
The Earl of KINNOULL The Earl of KINNOULL rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware of the negative and damaging effect the Community Land Act and Community Land Schemes are having on both housing and commercial development throughout the country; what policies they intend to adopt to encourage and stimulate the construction industry; and whether they propose either to amend or repeal the Community Land Act in the near future. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I am very mindful that at this unusual hour on a Friday afternoon I am unlikely to win many friends, particularly the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, if I should speak other than briefly on a subject which deserves a far better time and day to be discussed. I would only add that it was thought on good
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authority, before the date was fixed, that the debate would come on a good deal earlier than this time. I would say that I am conscious, as other Members are conscious, of the desirability of not keeping the staff of the House longer than is necessary, particularly after the last two gruelling days of what one might term fairly indigestible Scottish porridge.
I am equally grateful to the noble Lords and the noble Baroness, Lady White, for wishing to take part and, indeed, for being here still—and, of course, I include the noble Baroness, Lady Birk.
The Question on the Order Paper falls into two parts but both are related. The first question is: Is the Community Land Act proving a practical framework to encourage the good, positive land policies and land planning and, indeed, the release of land for development which is so vital; is it living up to the high objectives we were assured it would achieve when it went through Parliament two years ago? The second purpose of the Question is to ask: What positive steps have the Government taken to assist in the now far too long depressed construction industry—an industry upon which our housing, urban renewal schemes, our commercial developments and, indeed, the very survival of our environments in urban areas depend for existence? Not least, of course, are the countless jobs required in the industry.
In talking briefly on the Community Land Act I wish to avoid, if possible, trotting out any arguments which the noble Baroness can pounce on and dismiss as Party dogma or Party principles. I equally hope that she will be able to do the same. I have but one single objective today and that is to produce what I believe is evidence of those who are actually working within the framework of the Act —the builders, the professionals, the developers, the local councils—and to refer to certain practical pitfalls and what I would submit are negative inferences for the noble Baroness to consider in order to determine what might be done.
The Community Land Act came into operation, as the House will well remember, just over two years ago and its twin Act, the Development Land Tax Act, followed six months later. The House will recall that the Community Land Act had two objectives: first, to put the local

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councils into the driving seat to initiate positive planning and control of development in their areas, and, secondly, of course, to collect for the community the tax that arose from development under the Development Land Tax Act.
The framework was designed with the accustomed ingenuity of Whitehall, both in care and in complexity, and I think it would win an Oscar for its complexity. I often think that those of us who try to participate in this subject, possibly including the noble Baroness, are all loth to speak too technically on this Act in case we get it wrong.
Some may say that two years is a very short time to judge the framework of how an Act of this nature is working. I do not think that it is, particularly when one talks to those who are operating within the Act. The evidence from all quarters that I have sought—and I do not include Wales as I know that the noble Baroness will refer to it, and it is indeed a special case in a way—is that the Community Land Act framework, its ideals, its workings and its operations are considered all but dead; what is worse, it is having a very anti-social freezing effect on the developments that are coming forward.
The reason why the Act is considered moribund—not by the Government but by those who operate it—is not only because of severely rationed funds, funds which the Government have not been able to supply in recent years to local authorities, but, more, there is the growing universal hostility from so many of those who have to operate it. Many local councils believe, quite genuinely, that the Act is cumbersome and largely unnecessary; they already have existing powers which they operate under the Housing Acts. Developers see their energies and entrepreneurial skills sapped by what is now an 80 per cent. development fund tax; and builders find it increasingly difficult to get a reasonable supply of land. The professionals—and here I quote from a report of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors who are meticulous in being apolitical—see that the experience in the working of the Community Land Act is
"unhappy, unsupported, and needs either reform or repeal".
I am sure that the noble Baroness has the report produced by the Chartered Surveyors.
Few would disagree that one of our most urgent political compromises, for which Britain is so famous, is to reach a solution between the major Parties on a consensus of land policy; a consensus that allows a balance and partnership between the private and public sector; and a policy which offers co-operation and action, not hostility and frustration. I think that that consensus is not far away, in a funny way, with the development land tax. It is only different in the fact that at the moment it is 80 per cent. I think that the Conservative Party—and I hope that my noble friend will comment on this—accepts the need for a tax, but at a lower rate, to give an incentive but not a rip-off.
That consensus is important because once the private sector sees that both the major Parties are not far apart on the need for a tax, it can move forward with confidence; and it can move forward by building up its land banks ready for development. One has to recall that, like so many industries, builders have to work three, four, five or six years ahead. The development land tax is a vital ingredient in any land framework. The evidence that I have seen—and I know that the noble Baroness understands these arguments—is that the tax at 80 per cent. is throttling any hope of co-operation and incentive from builders and developers, and indeed from landowners in bringing forward their land.
I should like to raise a few points on development land tax of which I gave the noble Baroness notice. The Development Land Tax Office, which is a single office which operates at Middlesbrough, is not at present prepared to give any guidance to those who may incur the tax under a deemed disposal. It is not prepared to give any guidance before a deemed disposal takes place. I think that is very unhelpful because the tax is not easy to understand, and those who incur such a tax should at least be guided as to possible liability.
Secondly, it is extremely slow in producing the formula and the tax that is finally reached. I am told that it takes over six months from the date that the deemed disposal occurs, which is a very long time when one remembers that three months after that date it starts running interest on the tax due, even though the tax office has not yet been able to give the

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owner or developer the information that is required. I should like to ask the noble Baroness whether it could be looked into as to whether interest should be charged from the date of three months if the tax office, which is not dealing with many cases, has not notified the respondent beforehand.
Another problem of which I am sure the noble Baroness is aware comes with house builders. When a house builder develops a site of perhaps 20 houses, on each occasion that he sells a house he incurs a tax at that point. This is a complicated formula because the tax office has to recalculate on each house. There have been occasions when the house builders have become more and more confused about where they stand. I hope that the noble Baroness will urge the Inland Revenue to try to straighten out that tax situation.
I hope that the Government will, even at this stage, reconsider the matter of exempting charities from development land tax. I know that there was a long argument when the Bill went through, but we still feel this to be sensible. I hope also that they will allow the cost of the infrastructure payments which developers have to meet. At present it is not clear whether that can be charged against the tax. I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to look into these points, and that, even if she cannot answer them today, she will write to me later.
My noble friend Lord Ridley raised on 15th February an enlightening and helpful debate on industrial development under the Community Land Act. I do not intend to go over the same ground again, except to ask the noble Baroness this question. She said on that occasion — and, I suspect, has on many other occasions— that the Government were committed as a policy to a 99-year lease on industrial and commercial land; that they did not like to dispose of freeholds, they were prepared to lease only on a 99-year lease. They had chosen the 99-year period because, in her words, 99 years was a reasonable period of time when local councils could then reassess the use of the site.
Can the noble Baroness say whether what she means by that is that the Govern-
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ment consider that that commercial building 99 years old by that time, will then be redundant? Does the noble Baroness agree that 99 years represents three generations of councils, possibly four development plans and in my view, at the present time, at least four different buildings? Does she agree that the site will have been redeveloped four times during that period, and on each occasion the site can then be considered?
I am not suggesting that the lease should come down to 25 years, because obviously there would not be the security for the institutions to invest. But if that is really the argument and when the institutions are pressing all the time for 125 years, which in their financial eyes they regard as important, I feel that the Government should give way on this fairly minor argument about whether the period should be 99 years or 125 years. The noble Baroness also said on 15th February that it was of course true that in special circumstances the Government would extend from 99 years to 125. But she did not give the reasons or the circumstances in which it would be considered, and for anyone who reads these debates it would be helpful if the Government could make clear what sort of reasons will allow them to extend the period of 99 years to 125 years.
Finally, I should like to ask the noble Baroness about builders' licences. As the noble Baroness knows, in certain cases the local authorities issue builders with a licence to build on the land. Often they do not own the freehold, and when the house has been built it is then sold by the local authority which offers the freehold direct. This licence security creates, quite unnecessarily, many problems with banks and those who are financing the builders, and I hope that the noble Baroness will say something on that matter.
The Question I have raised refers to the negative influence of the Community Land Act on planning and development policies. I am sure that the noble Baroness would agree, even if she does not agree with other points, that our two most important problems are our over-complex planning procedures and the urgent need to release land in the right places. The planning procedures were, of course, examined with great care by the Dobry

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Committee and certain clear and fundamental recommendations were given. It would be helpful, as this is very pertinent to this short debate, if the noble Baroness could say what is happening the Dobry Committee.
As regards the planning procedures under the Community Land Act, I am told that, despite the hopes that were floated at the time that the Bill was enacted, many local councils view the procedures as only causing more paperwork more delays and more frustration. When one considers that the Government have had to issue 13 directives and 27 circulars, it is not surprising that local councils take this view. I know that my noble friend intends to amplify this point. As the noble Baroness will know, local councils tend to use the Housing Acts when acquiring land because they provide a simpler formula. I hope that she will refer to that.
As to the land release problem, there is clear evidence that, in certain key areas in the South-East—I am not referring to Lincolnshire or Devon or the many small single planning permissions that county planning officers like to count up to prove that there is sufficient release of land, because they are not operative: one is talking about builders who are looking for sites of 20, 30 or 50 houses—prices have risen to those of the 1973 boom days. We see prices in Essex, Kent, Hampshire and Surrey going to over £100,000 per acre. No one can be pleased with that because it is ultimately reflected in the house price. Ultimately, the only beneficiary is the Inland Revenue. Certainly, it smacks right against Mr. Silkin's hopes at the time when the Act went through that it would be an influence in reducing the cost of land.
What is the answer to all these problems? If the Community Land Act really does produce a unified hostility from those who operate it and is proving a negative influence on what should be a positive system, I suspect that the Government have two courses open to them: either they can repeal or reform, or they can introduce the second stage, laying a compulsory duty on all local councils to operate the Act. I hope that that will not be the answer that the noble Baroness will give. It would be a most unwise course. I hope that she will be receptive
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to the idea of seeking to improve what we all want, which is a better system of planning and simpler procedures to allow good and vigorous development. To achieve this, the Government must accept the need to repeal the Community Land Act, to modify the development land tax, and to set up simpler planning procedures.
3.25 p.m.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, despite the hour and the day, I am sure the House is grateful to my noble friend for bringing forward this Unstarred Question on a basis which has clearly encouraged all parties to participate. I am very glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, will follow me in this debate.
When I last took part in a debate, on 15th February on a Question of my noble friend Lord Ridley, the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, rightly said:
"I do not think it possible to discuss properly these issues and those raised by the noble Lord, Lord Middleton … without first recording their wider context: that is, the Government's policies generally for development land ".—[Official Report, 15/2/78; col. 1443.]
We take note of her remark. I refer back to that basic document, Command Paper 5730, entitled Land and dated September 1974. The very first paragraph makes this statement, which we know so well:
"We live in a small densely populated country, so the supply of land is not only fixed, it is also scarce".
The Government go on in the next sentence to draw the conclusion:
"This makes it doubly important that we should plan to use our land well".
They quote the counsel of perfection by the late Lord Silkin.
However, there is a central paradox here. Despite this early acknowledgement of the importance of land use, the second land utilisation survey, undertaken by Dr. Alice Coleman of King's College, London, which began in 1960, has not enjoyed financial support from a Government Department. I find it extremely surprising that a Party so much concerned with planning as the Labour Party should quote one of its elder statesmen so early on, and yet should rely on charitable support to promote this very important basic document. It is interesting that in 1977 the Sainsbury Charitable Trust made a grant for this very important

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survey, in which more than 3,000 voluntary surveyors are giving their time to the work and marking up no less than 6,500 maps of England and Wales. I understand that it does not extend to Scotland at present.
I leave that paradox and turn to the particular matters with which I know your Lordships will be concerned. Those are the complications which will arise from the Act and which lead to a point of almost total obscurity. When your Lordships discussed the Community Land Regulations on 17th February 1976, my noble friend Lady Young was pleased to say this:
"It is here that I should like to put in a plea for some much more readily understandable interpretation of ' excepted development '. It differs from exempt development ' in Schedule 1 which, as I understand it, is completely outside the Act, whereas excepted development ' is not".[Official Report, 17/2/76; col. 379.]
The plea must have gone unheard, or at least unacknowledged, for, when, almost a month later a very important circular—Circular 26/76—was issued on 15th March 1976, the important Annex C was more misleading than enlightening. That particularly important circular dealt with exempt development in classes of land Nos. 1 to 13. I do not blame those who attempted to write the circular, but I do think that it is part and parcel of the whole policy which the Government have adopted in promoting the Community Land Act with all its complications that they have discovered, since that first initial paragraph, that the counsel of perfection is almost impossible to achieve.
My Lords, I am indebted to Mr. Michael Latham, the Member of Parliament for Melton in another place, who has followed a very assiduous series of Questions to the Government over a period of several years on the working of the Community Land Act. I believe that your Lordships, even at this hour, would not find it unnecessary to quote the narrative, which I believe is important. My noble friend Lord Kinnoull has told your Lordships that the first appointed day was 6th April 1976, but the events that follow are surprising.
Mr. John Silkin, the noble Baroness's right honourable friend, once said that the Act would make life easier for house
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builders. He did not repeat it at a later stage, and I am not surprised. The original intention was that local authorities should present their land acquisition management schemes, better known as LAMS, by February 1976. In fact, on the 23rd of that month only 17 county councils had been able to do so, and by 1st April of the same year the Minister admitted that he had already imposed the scheme on four counties and was threatening to do so in 13 other cases.
My Lords, the question of loan sanctions is of special importance in that initial year, 1976–77. We have studied it with great interest. Loan sanctions should have been ready by 31st May, with a final date of 30th September. What was intended was to seek local authorities to promote rolling programmes covering five years. What happened? The Government reached a decision on 16th December, some two and a half months after the final date. They issued a very interesting guidance note—Guidance Note No. 12, called GNLA/12. This announced that borrowing limits for local authorities to buy land had been reduced from £76·5 million to £33 million for the year 1977–78 and from £102 million to £64 million in 1978–79; but if local authorities did not take up the loan sanctions and borrow the money, the opportunity would lapse.
The rolling programmes were abandoned, just like that, on 16th December, and a number of local authorities were left stranded, because of course, at that time, 36 county councils, two special planning boards, all the London boroughs and no less than 225 district councils had submitted a tentative five-year rolling programme proposal to the Minister. The Minister said, "These shall no longer apply", and no compensation was to be available for the time, money and effort incurred in so doing.
The first year ended, and the books were closed on a year's operation of the land scheme. It is interesting to note what happened. Out of £24,400,750 allocated, only one half, or £12,251,750, was actually spent. The Government claimed in a Statement by the noble Baroness's right honourable friend Mr. Reginald Freeson, that 1,571 acres had been acquired. It was not immediately apparent that this applied to the whole of Great Britain, because we understood it

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to be for England and Wales only. I believe— and the figures are perhaps interesting here—that only 21½ acres were disposed of for housing purposes, and resold to developers in Northumberland. Nine point four acres were disposed of to developers in South Yorkshire, and 1·3 in Surrey. That was the lot.
Baroness WHITE: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord for a moment? This figure does not apply to Wales. I shall he giving the Welsh figures later.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, I am very much obliged to the noble Baroness for adding to the discussion. I think it is very important that she did so at this point. I believe that this year, far from being a successful year for the operation of the Community Land Act, was little short of a calamity. The local authorities found out the extreme complication of operating the Act was very little development land brought forward for housing purposes.
We have already had a debate, alluded to already by my noble friend Lord Kinnoull, on industrial development land, so I will not therefore burden your Lordships with that matter. But I believe that there may be lessons to be learnt. I hope that the noble Baroness, in her reply, will acknowledge what I have said and, as she has not thought fit to interrupt or challenge me at this stage, I hope that my figures, if not wholly accurate, are what one might expect an Opposition to achieve.
Oppositions are under great difficulties in this matter. They have to rely upon Government circulars and information acquired by patient questioning in both Houses. Therefore the pattern evolved is not always the total pattern. I think a remarkable amount of information has been discovered, and I hope your Lordships will not have been bored to hear how the narrative has developed.
I am greatly indebted to the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors for their report, to the Royal Town Planning Institute for a very interesting study undertaken by their working party, and for the six-point plan which the Royal Town Planning Institute has put forward. I feel sure that the noble Baroness will already have received copies of all these
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documents, so perhaps it would be burdening your Lordships unnecessarily to refer to them in any detail. But I believe the six-point plan to which the Royal Town Planning Institute referred is worthy of merit. They recommend in the first item:
"That district policy statements setting out the criteria which planning authorities intend to apply to planning applications should be thought of very carefully";
secondly,
"That an easing of control in areas where local policies are well defined and concentration of control in special areas such as town areas and conservation areas should be considered".
Here I would pause in my argument, because one of the most interesting studies undertaken recently by the Civic Trust concerns the availability of derelict land, despoiled land and otherwise waste land in city centres throughout England and Wales. The noble Baroness will be aware of the Civic Trust report, which alludes to no less than 250,000 acres of such land. If one considers this in association with my earlier argument—that is, the second land utilisation survey being undertaken by Dr. Ellis Colman—it appears that an enormous amount of land available, perhaps in certain special cases and possibly not in others, is sitting there, available for use, held perhaps by local authorities, by agencies of the Government, by statutory bodies and others, and is doing nothing.
We on this side of the House do not believe that the Community Land Bill has achieved more than a very minute amount in its first and second years of operation. We believe that the Government were misguided in adopting this policy so wholeheartedly. Further, we shall seek the repeal of the Act in toto at the first opportunity.
3.40 p.m.
Baroness ROBSON of KIDDINGTON: My Lords, may I add my thanks to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for introducing this subject. While being fully conscious of the time, both of the day and of the week at which we are debating this subject, may I add my expressions of sadness that it is at this time in the week that we are discussing this very serious problem. It seems to me that it is a problem that is quite unique in many ways because it is one which is recognised equally by all political

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Parties, and there are certain matters upon which we all agree.
We all realise that we are a small island and that we have a finite resource of land. We also all agree that there is a general political agreement that the community should share in the land values of this nation and particularly in the development values granted through planning permissions. We all agree, because we are a small island, that development must be controlled. So there is a mass of agreement among us all. It is when it comes to the methods of how we achieve what we want to achieve that we occasionally disagree. The Community Land Act and the Community Land Tax Act constitute the fourth major attempt since the war that this nation has made to try to solve the problem.
I think we all agree that the first three were disasters and did not work. But our debate this afternoon is to talk about the effect of the Community Land Act coupled with the development land tax and the effect it has had on positive planning and development in this country.
Before going further, I should like to express my views on what we want to achieve by introducing legislation to control the development of land. First of all, like all Members in the House I want to achieve the release of land suitable for development at the lowest possible price and I want therefore to prevent the escalation of land prices which add to building costs. It puts housing prices out of the possibility of purchase for young people in this country, and commercial city centre development costs rise to such an extent that the users of the property cannot afford to rent it for business purposes. In the present context of our economic climate, we also want the legislation to give encouragement to the construction industry and to contribute to the reduction of unemployment in that industry. I believe, with previous speakers, that the Act has failed to achieve any of these aims.
I am fully aware that the Act and the legislation has been operative during a period of national economic difficulties in this country so that in many ways it is hard to judge to what extent it could have been effective. But I think we can draw
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certain conclusions. First of all, has it released for development any more land of the kind that we would welcome? I am assured by various statistics and by statements from the Department of the Environment that land is available for house-building for the next six years. I doubt whether that is a true statement. Much of the land that is available is in large lumps. For instance, there is a tract of land of something like 14,000 acres in Essex which is for a proposed new town development. Only 10 acres of that has so far been sold to a developer. If one takes away from the land bank we presumably have, which the DOE claimed could last for six years, no doubt it will last for six years; it will last for a lot longer, but it is not helping the problem of development at the moment.
In many other cases planning permission can be given for house building for large quantities, such as 1,000 houses. A developer, when he takes up—if he does take up—that kind of an offer must be a very substantial developer because he knows that probably he cannot market more than a maximum of 100 houses a year in that area, so he must be able to carry that expense for a long, long time. He has an additional problem facing him. In the development of his first 100 houses he is probably paid something like £5,000 a plot for the land. He then does his planning for his first 100 houses and six months later he arrives on site, having worked out the possible cost of sale of the houses when completed in a year's time. Then the district valuer arrives on site and decides that the land has increased in value and is now worth £10,000 per plot. He is then asked at that moment to pay the development land tax before he has done his development, at the rate of 66⅔ per cent. on the difference between his purchase price and the new estimated value up to the value of £150,000 in a year.
It may be that some large developers can afford to carry this expense, but what we surely want to do if we are to help the construction industry is particularly to help the small builder, because he is the one who will take up the greatest amount of the employment in the industry. I would therefore like to ask the noble Baroness whether the Government would consider levying the development land

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tax on a developer only at the time of sale of the development and not before he has started it.
The same applies to commercial property in inner cities. Here again, most of the land is owned by local authorities or national corporations. If one wants to develop the inner cities, which is something all of us are deperately concerned with at the moment, again the development land tax is payable at the start of the development, and this stops many of the leading institutions of this country who would be interested in developing the inner cities from taking an active part in doing so.
The noble Lord, Lord Sandys, has already referred to the Civic Trust Report of 250,000 acres of dormant land existing in Britain, and I believe that to be a very conservative estimate. If one compares that with the amount of acregae used to build Hatfield New Town—2,340 acres as against 250,000 acres of derelict urban land that is in our possession—we have not devised the right method to get the land used. The tragedy surely is that the legislation does not help us in any way. On the contrary, I believe that, because of the duty laid on local authorities to purchase land for development, because of the make-up and the kind of limited expertise that exists in local authorities on this issue, they are more likely in many cases to purchase what is good agricultural land because it is an easier development problem than to concentrate on solving the problems of the derelict land we already have.
Reference has already been made to the limited amount of land that has so far been purchased by the local authorities. I am told that in the first year 332 hectares were purchased and only 13 were sold, and that over the two-year period the Community Land Act transactions recorded a loss of £20 million for the taxpayer to cover. The small amount of land purchased is no doubt a reflection of the landowner's reluctance to sell because of what he believes to be—and I emphasise this—the swingeing impact of both capital gains tax on his first £10,000 from the profit on top of his base value, and the land development tax on the rest. I believe that many landowners are not fully aware of the impact of the tax, and many of them have exaggerated it, but it does exist.
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On the taxing of private landowers who are prepared to put their land into the community pool, I would also ask the noble Baroness whether the Government would look at the possibility of giving roll-over relief to compulsory purchase from private owners. In consequence, as a whole, I believe that the development land tax is probably the greatest bar of all to making any sense of either of the two pieces of legislation. I would ask the Government, therefore, whether they woud consider reducing the top rate of development land tax to 60 per cent.
This has been referred to, and I understand that the noble Baroness who is replying is going to mention it. I should like here to refer to the Land Authority for Wales, because I believe that it is generally agreed that the Welsh authority has had a much better record over the past two years. I am told that it has acquired 186 hectares and passed on for development 82 hectares. But, above all, it has done that and its assets exceed its liabilities by the sum of £2 million—and this is without any recourse to public funds and with minimal staffing requirements.
I should like to ask the noble Baroness whether there is not a lesson to be learned here. One of the main objections in the minds of many people about the Community Land Act is that the local authorities are required to be purchasers, planners and vendors. That is not so in Wales. I would be the first to agree that the local authorities must retain their planning role, although I agree too that the planning procedures must he enormously streamlined.
However, I believe that the other duties under the Community Land Act could be handed over to local government boards operating at regional level, to create a similar sort of structure to the one which we have in Wales. The members of such boards should include delegates from local authorities and from the private sector—that is most important. They should be under a chairman appointed by the Secretary of State for the Environment. Their job would be to seek out and assemble land, plan the development together with the local authorities, and then sell to developers. I believe that that would be a better system than the one we have. Of course, as Liberals, undoubtedly we would wish

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one day to see such regional boards directly responsible to elected regional assemblies.
3.53 p.m.
Baroness WHITE: My Lords, I am, of course, delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, because of her extremely complimentary remarks about the Land Authority for Wales. I have to declare a very direct personal interest as I am Chairman of the Land Authority for Wales. Having made a brief obeisance in the direction of Lord Addison, I still think that it is important that I should say something about the way in which the Community Land Act is operated in the Principality because it is so different. It is entirely the same in principle as the Community Land Act affecting the entire United Kingdom, but the pattern of organisation in Wales is totally different, and I think, as the noble Lady, Lady Robson, has so kindly indicated, that it is proving very much more successful. It would be improper for me to comment unduly on what is happening in the rest of the United Kingdom, but I think I can fairly try to explain to the noble Lords who have been good enough to stay late on a Friday afternoon some of the reasons why we think we are being more effective in Wales.
I thought that it might be appropriate if I quoted some opinions from other people rather than just singing my own song. I have brought with me just a few of the many references to the Land Authority for Wales which have been contained in the Press in the last year or so, particularly in the professional and trade press. Their tributes are peculiarly valuable because they come from those who operate in this field and who therefore may be regarded as being relatively objective and not taking a purely political, ideological view.
If I might perhaps quote from the Estates Gazette, which claims that it is the oldest journal devoted to land and land property investment. On 11th February of this year, various criticisms were made in the leading article on the administration of the Community Land Act in general. It proceeded:
"These strictures are not applicable to Wales, where the Land Authority operating rather
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differently is demonstrating that the concept of the Community Land Act is by no means unworkable, given a regional basis and the freedom to work outside the two-tier local government system".
I will comment on that in a moment because it is not entirely true that we work outside the system. We work with it but alongside it.
In a slightly earlier comment the Economist, having referred to Conservative suggestions that the Community Land Act should be scrapped root and branch, said:
"The English local authorities will thank Mrs. Thatcher for this, but she should have an eye to spare for the good bits of the scheme such as the Land Authority for Wales. In contrast to England, where the jam for the scheme has been spread too thinly over a large number of local authorities, the Government gave one dollop to the Land Authority for Wales and left it alone".
It then goes on to point out that, because of this and because we concentrate solely on the function of buying and selling development land, we have been able to do so to social benefit and also profitably. I will come back to that in a moment.
I have many other quotations with which I will not weary your Lordships. The magazine Planning (again, a professional magazine) says "Land availability, LAW" —that is Land Authority for Wales— "sets the pace". Building of February of this year—" Wales gets in on the Act. The Community Land Act is alive and well and working in Wales." Last week the Estates Times reported Mr. Patrick Troy, who probably knows more than anyone about the Australian Community Land Act, which is in some ways comparable with the one we have in this country. He considers that the system in England is expensive and bureaucratic, but that the Land Authority for Wales is on the right tracks.
Mr. Michael Latham, a Member of Parliament referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, and someone who has very great experience in this field, is quoted as saying, with reference to the Land Authority for Wales, that it is working quite well. He says:
"So fat the staff are pretty private-enterprise-minded."
I do not think that is entirely true, but I see what he means. He means that we have an entrepreneurial sense. Then, to complete his quotation:
"It has preserved the confidence of the builders and raised that of the landowners."

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That is a comment which I think is well founded.
Finally, may I quote from the magazine Building of 3rd February this year. Having discussed various aspects of our work, it goes on to say:
"The Land Authority for Wales reports to the Welsh Office, and the Department of the Environment may not be as fully aware as it might be of its activities and success. It could do worse"—
that is, the DOE—
"than to take a deeper interest. The Land Authority for Wales' performance appeals to be an improvement on the English authorities' record and could also be a viable alternative to the Conservatives' Back to Square One' approach.".
I hope you will forgive me for having blown the trumpet of the Land Authority for Wales, but I have done so exclusively from quotations from papers who have looked at us and have found that we were at least a very interesting administrative and social experiment.
I should like to take this opportunity of paying the warmest tribute I can to my own colleagues on the authority and to my staff, because I think we have done a quite remarkable job in a short time. I will try to explain very briefly in a moment why I think we have been relatively successful. We shall be publishing in about three weeks' time, I hope, a full account of our first two years of operation and we shall be holding a Press conference in London not too far from the Palace of Westminster. If any noble Lords would care to come and join us, or, for that matter, if they care to come to Cardiff—it is less than two hours by the fast trains—we should be delighted to welcome them and to discuss this matter at much greater length than is possible on an occasion of this kind. I think we are really quite worth studying as an example of public administration.
Just to get on the record the outline figures for the financial year ending on 31st March 1978: in that year we acquired or had by 31st March legally contracted to acquire, 498 acres of development land and had disposed of 208 acres in that time. Since then, I may say, we have disposed of some more but we had not been able to complete the full process by 31st March.
We reckon that at the end of the year ending 31st March 1978, as the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, indicated, we had what we would call a net worth —that is, assets as against liabilities —of about
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£2·8 million. We have not had a penny piece from any rates or taxes: all we had was permission to borrow at commercial rates of interest with a Treasury guarantee, but that is a double-edged concession. The Treasury make you borrow long when you want to borrow short. It would be improper, I think, to go into too many details on this point. We have shown that you can work this Act profitably—that profit, of course, will accrue to the community —but we also believe that we are performing a social function which is of some importance.
We are not a planning authority. We have excellent planners on our staff, but that is to enable us to discuss matters with the planning authorities who have the last word as to that they think is right in the way of development within their own areas We try to work very closely indeed with them and we are much in their debt in the matter of producing our land policy statement and the financial rolling programme for five years which accompanies it. I may say I have more faith in the land policy statement than I have in the financial rolling programme, but this is demanded of us by the Treasury.
Within about three weeks we shall be presenting the second edition of the land policy statement and the rolling programme and I would be happy to send copies to any noble Lord who might be interested in studying it to see how we tackle this in the context of the Principality. But, in parallel with our statutory duty to produce a land policy statement, we are undertaking a much closer analysis of the land availability position in the Principality not only with the planning authorities which are, of course, of paramount importance, but also with the other interests concerned. These include the other statutory bodies, especially the Welsh Water Authority, which is responsible for sewerage and other services; with the roads authorities, and also with the building and development interests, we are taking district by district—it will take us some little time to complete the exercise—collaboration with the local authorities, in a process of very careful analysis of the true availability of land for development within a five to 10 year time scale.
It is quite true that there is a great area of land in Wales, as elsewhere, which is

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designated for various development purposes. But when you come to look at it you find, for example, that if you wish to build a new housing estate the local sewerage system is already overloaded and that particular area does not come within the timetable of the Welsh Water Authority for (shall we say?) another 15 years. Therefore, that land is not realistically available for development at the present time. Similarly, it may not have adequate access for the type of development being sought.
Thirdly, and I think this is extremely important, it may be in an area which the commercial interests would regard as not marketable. I think that one of the great advantages we have in the Land Authority for Wales over the operation by a local authority is that we can bring in the commercial dimension much more effectively. We have a staff which is experienced in the market place. If one is in a mixed economy, one must know how the market place works. I believe that this is one of the basic reasons for our being so far at any rate, more effective than the other parts of the country. We have a team dedicated to one sole function in which they are experts. They have a sense of social responsibility on the one hand but they also have an understanding of the economics of the market place on the other. It seems to me that this combination is extremely important when dealing with the land situation.
We are very conscious indeed of the need to assist the construction industry, particularly after the difficult time through which it has passed. I was much interested that the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, should draw particular attention to the problem of the site which is too large for the smaller or middle-sized builder. We have tried—and I could give one or two examples—to meet this situation. For instance, we bought a site which has outline planning permission for housing just outside one of our larger South Wales towns. This was a site which was highly desirable for development, in a place where housing for owner-occupation was needed, but it needed to be planned comprehensively as one site.
We have done this in close consultation with the builders in the area. They
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formed a consortium and we are dividing that site into manageable areas for the individual builders, on licence if they wish it that way or if that helps their cash flow. We have a comprehensive outline for the entire site, so that the services, the internal roads and so on, can all be properly planned and then the individual builders can build within the framework of the site as a whole.
In other instances, for example in a site in Cardiff, we divided up the site. One site was sold to a housing association for single-parent families and the other was sold to a well-known commercial developer. We did, I think, a very successful balancing act between the totally commercial and the semi-social development of a housing association. I could give a number of other examples of that kind.
On the industrial side, I think we can do a very useful job in site assembly where both our expertise and the powers that we have in the background, even though we hardly ever use them, mean that we can bring together sites for commercial and industrial development which may have been sitting there—as the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, mentioned—either empty or badly run-down. Everybody has known for years that something should be done about them, but it is an awkward job to tackle and it has not been done. Again, I can point to two medium sized towns—Neath in South Wales and Rhyl in North Wales—where we have gone into a run-down commercial area and have pulled it together and made it available for fresh development
I must not go on. Noble Lords can see that I am an enthusiast for the matter and I am tempted to run on longer than I should on an occasion of this kind. I think we have had very great advantages in Wales because we have been blessed by a pattern of organisation which, quite truthfully, I wish very much could have been adopted for the rest of the country. I think we have the right sized unit and this is so important. The Land Commission failed partly because it tried to work country-wide and it simply was bogged down; it could not cope with something on that scale. The individual local authorities, even some of the larger ones, are not the right unit for this particular operation. We do not have regions in

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England, but I think it would not have been beyond the wit of man to have used economic planning areas for this particular function, if it had been realised in time that it is this kind of area which is effective for the particular purposes of the Community Land Act.
Although I was very sceptical when I was first appointed, I believed there is much to be said for separating the planning function, on the one hand, and the acquisition and disposal of development land, on the other. In practice, it really works very much better. I must not develop that, but I think it is true. I think, also, we benefit enormously, as the comment in the Economist which I quoted earlier on suggests, from having the resources concentrated for the whole of Wales instead of being spread thinly as in England over all the local authorities. It is much more effective to have concentration rather than dispersion of resources.
The other comment in the Economist quotation was that we were given one dollop and then we were left alone. There has been considerable relaxation very recently on the English side of the Border and I think the English local authorities in future will not only have greater resources but will also have considerably greater freedom of action. We did not have to, and have never had to, take individual transactions to the Welsh Office for sanction. We keep them informed of what we are doing, but we take the decisions: in other words, we negotiate as principals and I think that is absolutely essential. If you are working in the area of development land, you have to be able to take your own decisions and stand or fall by the consequences. That seems to me essential if you are working in a mixed economy in the market place.
I hope I have said enough to convince your Lordships that it is not the Community Land Act as such which is at fault, but that possibly a more favourable pattern of administration might be considered. I believe myself most firmly in the principles of the Community Land Act. I think we have groped and faltered so long, generation after generation, in dealing with land in this country. If we are going to maintain a mixed economy, then we must find methods of administration suitable for it, and I am very proud
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indeed to be the chairman of an organisation which combines making profits for the community with a social conscience.
4.13 p.m.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of the ENVIRONMENT (Baroness Birk): My Lords, I have listened very carefully to the speech by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and to the other noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I must say that the amount of information that has been packed into really quite short speeches on this very complicated subject has been not only admirable but a wonderful example which perhaps we could follow in some other debates. They raised a very large number of important points. I will try to deal with as many as I can in the brief time available because I do not really feel that, as everybody has said, this is the afternoon or the time to elongate it too much, but otherwise I will be very happy to write to noble Lords.
The noble Earl's Unstarred Question tries to relate two quite separate issues. He gave a swashbuckling condemnation of the Community Land Scheme and he also linked with that the current difficulties of the construction industry. First, I would say that we do not accept that the Community Land Scheme is having a damaging, or even negative, effect on development; nor, in the noble Earl's own words, that it is moribund. When the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, said that we all agreed with the principles, I think that there may be three of us taking part in the debate who agree with the principles. But, quite frankly, I do not think that this applies to the noble Earl and the noble Lord, Lord Sandys. During the progress of the Bill through this House they certainly made it quite clear all the way through that they did not agree with the principle, unlike the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, who said that he thought that there was a great deal of good in it. He made it quite clear, when I mistook him for someone else speaking in the last debate, that he certainly had not suggested it should be repealed. Both noble Lords have stated on this and on previous occasions, that it should be repealed, so they start from a different base from that of the other three speakers. I do not

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think there is anything in the point that there are two men and three women speaking in this debate. I do not think that this debate has any feminist or sex ingredient in it; the speakers are just broken down in that way.
The Community Land Scheme is already bringing land forward for development, so to take this completely negative view is a great pity. The noble Lord, Lord Sandys, produced a number of figures. I admired them and the way he produced them very much. I did not challenge them because, with the exception of one or two, they were quite correct. The only thing I felt was that they did not really relate all that closely to the Question. Nevertheless, he put them over extremely well.
I am also familiar with the Civic Trust report, to which my right honourable friend Peter Shore contributed a preface congratulating the Trust on making the surveys on which it was based. The recent Royal Town Planning Institute report, as I am sure he knows, is currently being studied.
I must first of all reject wholly the noble Earl's suggestion, and I think that of the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, that local authorities are failing to dispose of community land quickly. There is no evidence of that, nor could there be, because the scheme has existed for only two years. Most developers buy land much longer in advance than that. What I think the noble Lords probably have in mind is other land owned by the authorities which prospective purchasers would like to get hold of, but the future of which remains to be settled. There are a variety of reasons for this, and I am not by any means condoning the long delays that sometimes occur in various authorities. It has not anything to do with the Community Land Scheme. This is an entirely different thing, for which there are a variety of reasons, including, I think, as the noble Baroness mentioned, some planning delays.
Let us be quite clear that the Land Scheme was designed to eliminate the speculative scrambles for land that have created so much damage in the past, and to bring a degree of order and stability to the market and also to tie up, as my noble friend Lady White pointed out,
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the whole underlying principle of positive planning and the accruement of the increase in value to the community rather than to the individual developers. This must be beneficial to the construction industry where responsible opinion agrees that what is needed, what has always been needed, is greater stability in the land market. By this I mean greater stability of price, of demand and of supply.
The noble Earl and other noble Lords referred to the high prices recently paid for housing land. There has been quite a lot of sensational but selective publicity about this, but when one examines them in detail, these prices reflect a revival of the market for new luxury houses which has been dormant for some time. They do not represent the general market. Land prices have been stagnant for some time, despite the general rate of inflation, and even despite the fact that they have been rising recently; but the average is nowhere near back at the 1973 money level. The Land Scheme is still in its infancy, and therefore its effects on the market can only be very marginal at this time.
Commercial development, to which the noble Earl referred in his Question, has been at a particularly low ebb for some time. As I think the noble Earl must know, with his experience and qualifications, this has been due to the surfeit of floor space provided during the crazy boom which was regardless of true need. Construction fell because there was little demand. Again, this had nothing to do with the Community Land Scheme. There are now clear signs that demand is picking up even for commercial development.
What also intrigued me was that the noble Earl did not refer in his Question to industrial development, which we regard as having the first priority. Perhaps it was wise of him not to refer to it in the Question, because he probably agrees with me that industry has been leading the revival of demand for development. Last week's Investors' Chronicle, under the heading" Development climate has been transformed ", pointed out that there has been a substantial change on the industrial front, assisted by the fall in interest rate and the rate of inflation, coupled with an increase in demand from companies for further space. I claim

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no credit for the Community Land Scheme for this, but it certainly does not seem to be stopping it.
The noble Lord also raised the familiar complaint about our policy that local authorities should retain the freehold of land for industry and commerce. As lie pointed out quite rightly, we had a fairly lengthy debate about this when the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, raised it on 15th February. I do not want to go over all that ground again today, apart from saying that we firmly believe that the community, through local authorities, should have a share in future increases in land values, and be able, from time to time—this is very important—to reassess the purpose for which land is being used. This is why, unless there are special circumstances, we prefer leases of no more than 99 years.
We have no real evidence that this is deterring development, and certainly the facts do not bear this out. I do not believe that land tenure is the crucial factor in investment decisions, except in certain cases—and the noble Earl was right when he referred to certain cases of institutions. He asked me on what basis the extension from 99 to 125 years was given. It is on a purely commercial balance of considerations which governs these circumstances. Each case is looked at on its own, and it depends, as he must be well aware, on the investment prospects and the particular demand. But I would say that certainly by no means is it true that everyone offered a 99-year lease then asks for a 125-year lease. That is not the case.
Turning for a moment to the private house-building industry, here again demand is picking up. Over the past six months the number of private houses started has been increasing steadily, and is now about 20 per cent. higher than it was at this time last year. It is true that house-builders are complaining that there is a shortage of land—and this was referred to by the noble Earl, the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Sandys—and blame the Community Land Scheme, especially the development land tax. But even they do not claim that the alleged land shortage is seriously holding up current production, because it is land for use in a few years' time that they are mainly worred about. Nevertheless, about 150,000 private houses are expected
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to be started this year, which is certainly an improvement on the 135,000 started last year.
We do not accept, therefore, that there is a general shortage of land for house building. Nationally, there is enough land with planning permission for about six years' building, and the builders themselves tell us, through the regular Private Enterprise Housing Enquiry that, overall, they are maintaining their own stocks.
Of course, I accept that national figures can be misleading. I also accept that there are difficulties in some areas and among some builders. But there always are, and there always have been. It is for this reason that my right honourable friend the Minister for Housing and Construction has recently agreed to conduct joint local studies with the builders' national organisations in order to try to identify the difficulties, to discover where they are and why they have come about, and to see what can he done about this.
The noble Earl and the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, both referred to the deterrent effect of the development land tax. If it is at the moment a deterrent to the private landowner bringing his land forward to development, this is largely psychological. The noble Baroness put her finger on it when she said that, even if it was not so, people felt that it was so. So far, the transitional tax provisions have, in fact, often greatly reduced the amount charged, and it is very much a fear of the unknown and the uncertain that is the motivating force, rather than the financial facts.
Nevertheless, I am convinced that a tax of this sort is here to stay, and that is in spite of what members of the Opposition may say while out of office. If one looks not too far back, the last Tory Administration taxed development gains up to a rate of 83 per cent. Naturally, tax alters the market for development land and affects supplies. The difference between the Tory approach and ours is that we have taken steps to try to offset that effect.
Lord SANDYS: Will the noble Baroness allow me to say, in regard to the development land tax, that the present Government scheme allows for 100 per cent. development land tax at a later stage?
Baroness BIRK: First, we have not got there yet. I was making the point that we are discussing at the moment the question of what is happening at present. People are acting as though everything had gone into the future, when there will in any case be an entirely different set of circumstances. One cannot take it, with great respect, out of the present context. I probably should have finished the sentence before I let the noble Lord interrupt me, but what I was saying was that we have provided through the Community Land Scheme for local authorities gradually to replace the private supplier and bring land forward. The noble Earl also mentioned difficulties for developers because of the delay in getting tax assessments and the uncertainty in what is undoubtedly a very complex matter. To some extent this may be, as I have said, because the tax is so new and unfamiliar. I take his point about guidance, and I shall certainly look into it, because, as he probably knows, there is one thing that we do agree on: that wherever possible, on anything and particularly on legislation as difficult as this, one should give as much information and explanation as possible.
I also agree that there are real problems here and we have a duty to see if there is anything we can do about it. I have also noted what the noble Earl said about charities, which, as he pointed out, was gone into thoroughly during the passage of the Bill, and also his point about infrastructure. But, as he probably knows, my Department is in touch with the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors about this.
I was extremely interested in the glowing account that my noble friend Lady White gave of the progress made by the land authority for Wales. As I am sure she would be the first to admit, the circumstances in which one can compare Wales by size and so many other factors with England are so entirely different that one could not take the analogy and just fit it into England. I am sure that a great deal of the success in Wales is attributable to the leadership she herself has given. We are all impressed by her enthusiasm and by the powerful "commercial she provided, not, I might say, for herself, but for the Land Commission, and by the various invitations
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she issued to us all, both for London and Cardiff.
I do not think she was intending to say that Wales is the only place where the Land Scheme is working, but I think I must make it clear that it is more difficult in a much larger country with a greater variety of local authorities, a greater variety of approaches and probably a greater variety of talent, management and all the other things that help to make for success.
I also noted what the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, said about regional boards. This was partly answered by my noble friend Lady White. It is in many ways an attractive proposition, but nevertheless I believe that the elected local authorities are the better bet for England. This was gone into thoroughly both a long time before and during the passage of the Bill. Even to start talking about changing a machinery at this early stage I think would be a great mistake. I agree with her view of the importance of vacant urban land, and agree with her concern when I see great areas of land which is not being used or which is turning into derelect land. Special emphasis is being given to this in the inner cities, certainly in the first instance. This is one of the things about which I and my colleagues in the Department feel very strongly.
In the course of this short but productive debate noble Lords have raised a number of other points on the administration of the Land Scheme, also some other points which I have not dealt with on development land tax. But these were matters of relatively minor detail in the whole context of the scheme; and if they would like me to write on these points I will try to deal with them. I will certainly go through Hansard to see which points I have not picked up. There were also references to the planning system and to delays. We are well aware of that and we are not happy about it. This is where a confusion often arises between what happens as a result of the planning delays and where the Community Land Act is given the blame for something for which it is not responsible. The Government's recent White Paper on planning procedures specifically set out to deal with this. I do not think that I should go into it further now because it is under consideration. But we are aware of it and do not

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like the delays any more than anybody else here does.
I hope that nobody, even on the Opposition benches, seriously believes that they can blame the problems of the construction Industry on the Community Land Act. The problems there are due to the severe downturn in economic activity that we have experienced. But the Government's economic plans—and this was reflected in the Budget—are intended to provide a climate within which the industry can now grow sensibly. Last year, additional allocations of over £800 million were made for public sector construction work over the next two years. Taken together with nationalised industry and housing association investment, annual expenditure on public sector construction should total about £6¼ billion.
In his recent Budget statement, my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced measures which could add a further £97 million to expenditure on construction over the coming year. He also announced tax changes which will benefit the small firms to which the noble Baroness referred, and consultants engaged in work overseas. These measures should provide a stable pattern of public sector demand on which the industry can plan its activities more reliably than in the past; but the public sector provides only about a half of the
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contruction industry's total demand. The Government's plans deliberately allow for a faster rate of growth in the private sector, and the signs are encouraging. Industrial and commercial investment in construction rose by about 10 per cent. last year and the trend is expected to continue in 1978; and, as I have already pointed out, private house building is also on the increase. So, overall, the prospects are more encouraging than for some time.
Finally, the solution to the economic and social difficulties of the construction industry lies in a steady and sensible rate of growth. It really is sheer nonsense to blame the Community Land Act for the general economic malaise. We propose to sustain the Scheme because we believe that it has a vital contribution to make to the positive development of our built environment; and we are determined to develop it as rapidly as economic circumstances allow. I do not know whether it will have come as a great surprise to the noble Earl that I did not get up and say that we were prepared to repeal the Act in the short or the long term; and certainly there is no question of amending it in the near future. I hope that he will maybe not love it, but learn to live with it and help to make it work.
House adjourned at twenty-five minutes before five o'clock.