Sitting of 11 October 1993

Preamble
Reassembling after the Summer Recess, the House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Chester.
Viscount Runciman of Doxford—Took the Oath.

Car Theft: Tracking Device
Lord Campbell of Croy Lord Campbell of Croy asked Her Majesty's Government:
What progress is being made in encouraging the installation in cars of concealed tracking devices to enable them to be accurately located immediately after being stolen.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers): My Lords, concealed tracking devices are a valuable development in the fight against vehicle crime. All mainland United Kingdom police forces are making use of this new technology.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his reply, which is a helpful addition to the reply given to me on 22nd July. Is not the most effective deterrent against car thieves an increased likelihood of being caught? With the new devices, that could happen shortly after the commission of the crime.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I could not agree more with my noble friend.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, while I acknowledge the endeavours of the Government, which are extremely welcome, can the noble Earl say whether there is contact between the AA, the RAC and the relevant government departments to do something in regard to the point raised by his noble friend?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, it is not a matter for the AA, the RAC and the government departments. The police scientific and development branch evaluated the equipment and found it to be the most suitable. The Association of Chief Police Officers considered it. It advised all its police forces to acquire the equipment, which has been installed free of charge. It is now a commercial undertaking and people should purchase for themselves the relevant bits of equipment to install in their motor cars. I hope that as many people as possible will do that.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, does not the noble Earl agree that the devices referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, are preferable to the audible alarm systems? They continually wake us up and achieve nothing at all.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ezra. They are a remarkable advance on that technology. However, I would not underestimate the use of audible alarms even though they periodically and frequently go off when they should not.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, will the Minister accept that we are grateful to him for his second response to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy? We are delighted to learn that the Government believe that detection is the most important aspect in the control of crime, rather than increased sentences as was suggested in Blackpool last week.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I thought better of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey. He knows perfectly well that the Government have always said that detection of crime is essentially important. He should also know that it is essential that when people have been detected and convicted, they should pay the proper reparation for the damage they have caused.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, given that theft of and from cars amounts to 30 per cent. of the total

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of crime committed in this country, can the Minister give us some indication of the number of cars fitted with the tracking devices?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I cannot give the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, that answer. The instrument has been in use in the United States for six years. It was introduced in this country in July and was only put on sale from the end of August. My guess is that as yet there are not too many. However, if all noble Lords will be kind enough to give the same consideration towards fitting their vehicles with these instruments as they have given to the Question, no doubt the numbers will increase considerably.
The Viscount of Oxfuird: My Lords, can my noble friend give comfort to those of us who pay our insurance premiums regularly and suggest that it may not be a bad idea for the fitting of one of those devices to reduce one's premium?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the major insurance companies have already agreed to offer discounts on motor insurance premiums to motorists who fit the tracking device in their cars.

Nuclear Test Veterans: NRPB Report
2.41 p.m.
Lord Ashley of Stoke Lord Ashley of Stoke asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether there has been any delay in the scheduled publication of the National Radiological Protection Board's report on nuclear test veterans; and what is the proposed publication date.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Viscount Cranborne): My Lords, a report on cancer and mortality among nuclear test veterans was published in 1988 by the National Radiological Protection Board. The timing of the planned follow-up report is a matter for the NRPB as an independent body. I understand that publication is now expected early next year.
Lord Ashley of Stoke: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that Ministers in another place said that the second report would be published in 1991? They later said that it would be published in 1992 and then they said that it would be published in 1993. As we approach 1994 we are still awaiting that vital evidence on nuclear test veterans. Will the Minister recognise that for them time is running out? A nuclear test veteran who expressed his anxiety to me in regard to the delay told me that he is now dying and that his closest colleague died recently. Why cannot we get a move on?
Viscount Cranborne: My Lords, I wish to take this opportunity to congratulate the noble Lord on the remarkable results of his recent operation. The noble Lord was quite formidable enough when he had only four of his senses. Now that he has all five, I fear that the Government Front Bench had better look out even more. I have said to the noble Lord and to other noble Lords
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on many previous occasions that the matter is entirely one for the NRPB, which is an independent body over which the Government have absolutely no control. We expect this to go for peer review this autumn, and peer review itself, as the noble Lord knows, takes time.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, although the Minister says that it is an entirely independent body, the issue is surely one in which the Government are concerned. There must have been correspondence and an exchange of views with the board. Can he say why there have been these long, repeated delays in the publication of a report affecting a group of people who, as my noble friend has said, are getting older and have greatly suffered?
Viscount Cranborne: My Lords, underlying the questions from both noble Lords is the assumption that the nuclear tests conducted in the Pacific all those years ago were responsible for an increased incidence of cancer. I have tried in the past to answer noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Parry, on that matter and I shall not go over that ground again. All I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, is that he would not like an independent body, whose independence I am sure he values, to be influenced in any way by Her Majesty's Government. We value that independence as much as anybody else. It is not for us to interfere in that body's deliberations, much as we would like those deliberations to be brought to as rapid a conclusion as possible.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, does the noble Viscount accept that his replies, apart from his congratulations to my noble friend in which I join—I warn my noble friends that we must be careful of what we say about my noble friend behind his back—have been profoundly unsatisfactory? The Government may have no influence over an independent conclusion but they are surely able to ask the board to get on with it and to submit its report as soon as possible. To have this delay when people are dying or are in the process of dying is profoundly unsatisfactory to us all and I hope to your Lordships' House.
Viscount Cranborne: My Lords, if I may say so, the noble Lord makes exactly the same error as his two colleagues. I reject utterly his imputation that my replies are unsatisfactory. All the evidence so far suggests that up to a third of the population as a whole will be affected by cancer whether they went to Christmas Island or not. Just because someone is, sadly—and we all regret this—dying from cancer does not necessarily mean that the nuclear tests should be blamed.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, is not the Minister by what he has just said interfering with the independence of the board? How can he have reached that conclusion? Surely it is for the board to do so.
Viscount Cranborne: Indeed, my Lords, and I have said "all the evidence so far". In the previous report in 1988 that is the conclusion which the NRPB reached. We shall see what its new report says by way of conclusion when it is published.
Lord Ashley of Stoke: My Lords, the noble Viscount implies with confidence that according to

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present evidence there is no greater incidence of cancer among nuclear test veterans. But if he is so confident can he explain to the House how it happens that the Department of Social Security pays nuclear test veterans for some cancers but the Ministry of Defence does not? How does he account for the fact that the first report on nuclear test veterans stated that the incidence of two cancers is greater in nuclear test veterans, thereby torpedoing his whole case? How does he account for the fact that the United States Defense Department pays for 20 cancers while our Ministry of Defence pays for none?
Viscount Cranborne: My Lords, if I were to answer all those questions in detail I suggest that I would bore the House even more than I do already. I refer the noble Lord to col. 1204 of the Official Report of 9th June 1992, where all these points were addressed. The test veterans themselves, as the noble Lord well knows, were subjected to comparison with a control group. The control group showed no overall increase in the rate of cancer as compared to the Christmas Island veterans. That is the evidence so far. If the NRPB changes the evidence, we would be obliged to look at it again. I am certainly willingly give that undertaking. I can only repeat that there is absolutely no evidence so far.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, does the noble Viscount recognise that we are quite prepared to be bored by him if he wishes to answer properly questions put by my noble friend? Will he, since he does not wish to do so, be kind enough to write to my noble friend with the answers and perhaps copy them to me? Will he take it from me that the issue will not go away?
Viscount Cranborne: My Lords, I am well aware that it is well within the rights and indeed obligations of Members of the House to raise matters of concern. My noble friends on the Government Front Bench and I have given full answers to all these points. We have only half an hour to answer questions. I am merely repeating an answer that I have given to the noble Lord and other noble Lords before. I do not feel that it is incumbent on me to get in the way of other questioners to give those answers, which are complicated, as fully as the noble Lord demands. I would merely be repeating in exactly the same terms what I had said on previous occasions.

Radiotherapy
2.50 p.m.
Lord Ironside Lord Ironside asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether some 1,100 members of RAGE (Radiotherapy Action Group Exposure) have been injured by the effects of radiotherapy treatment in the United Kingdom following breast cancer surgery, and whether they are satisfied that patients in such cases are now receiving treatment best suited to their needs.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Cumberlege): My Lords, the Government cannot give an opinion as to whether members of RAGE have been injured by the
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effects of radiotherapy treatment since they have not had an opportunity to examine the evidence. If evidence is presented which does cause concern Ministers would wish to discuss those concerns with the medical profession to see whether the patients are receiving the treatment best suited to their needs.
Lord Ironside: My Lords, in thanking my noble friend for her Answer I should like to say how grateful I am to her for considering all the background information which I provided her with in recent weeks, together with some of the personal interest which I declared to her. In view of the nearly 2:1 variation in dosage for treating the same hypothetical lump in 54 different radiotherapy treatment centres in the United Kingdom—I do not believe that they can all be right—does my noble friend believe that there is a case for introducing national quality assurance standards, say, to the British Standards Institution BS5750, to ensure that the best techniques and practices are adopted throughout the United Kingdom, especially in view of the fact that at recent public meetings experts have said that a great many of the practices are sloppy?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, this is a very difficult area. As yet we do not have any definitive or right way to treat breast cancers despite the substantial resources and efforts which have been put into research and development. The treatment regimes have to vary depending on a range of factors including the size of the cancer, the stage which it has reached, the site and the overall health of individual women. I understand the point which my noble friend has made. This is an area which I would wish to discuss with the Chief Medical Officer to see whether we should take the matter forward.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, as several hundred patients are involved and have suffered greatly, is it not important and of some urgency that the department should give advice so that patients will know whether to choose radiotherapy or some other form of therapy, in consultation with their doctor? Can I have an assurance from the Minister that the women who have so suffered are receiving back-up support?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, women are receiving the back-up support which is necessary. But if there is a shortfall then clearly individual cases would have to be considered. As I have said, this is a very difficult area. Guidance on quality assurance in radiotherapy was issued in July 1991. It set out 18 requirements to ensure that quality is maintained. That guidance has been evaluated at two sites, and both centres have completed their final assessments. So the department is now considering how best to disseminate those assessments to other units.
Lord Rea: My Lords, does not the noble Baroness agree that much of this problem centres around the fact that the patients concerned do not feel that they were fully informed of the risks involved in radiotherapy treatment before they received that treatment? Is the Minister aware that there is an increasing burden on radiotherapists and that many of them feel that they do

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not have the time that they would like to have for full and frank discussion with their patients? Is she also aware that they are themselves pressing for an increase in their numbers which would allow for such provision?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I am not aware that the radiotherapists are under particular strain. But again, if there are specific instances then clearly the department would wish to know about them. As regards consent and informing women about their condition, that is a matter for the clinicians involved. But the Government have made it quite clear that they want people to be much more involved in their treatment and that clinicians should be as fair and as frank as possible so that women are fully informed. We believe that that actually aids recovery.
Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that as radiotherapy and acceptance of it often means the difference between life and death for many patients, it is absolutely essential that they should have confidence that if that form of treatment has been prescribed they can undergo it without some of the very frightening and horrible side effects which have been recently publicised?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right. We are increasingly seeing treatments being more and more successful so that now three out of four women treated make a complete recovery.

Maastricht Treaty: Part VI
2.55 p.m.
Lord Bruce of Donington Lord Bruce of Donington asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether in the foreseeable future they intend to proceed with the implementation of Part VI of the Maastricht Treaty on economic and monetary policy.
The Minister of State, Department of Transport (The Earl of Caithness): My Lords, once the treaty enters into force we will comply with its obligations.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, in expressing my gratitude to the noble Earl for his very brief and succinct reply, and in venturing to hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has by this time read the Maastricht Treaty and will doubtless be aware of the very great expenditure that will be involved in setting up the economic and monetary institute, together with all the ancillary staffs and other work which has to be done to make it effective, will he tell us whether the Government have had an opportunity of reading yet the excellent article under the Prime Minister's signature which appeared in the Economist on 25th September in which he stated:
"The plain fact is that economic and monetary union is not realisable in present circumstances and therefore not relevant to our economic difficulties".
The Prime Minister made a further observation:
"we cannot assemble for a special European Summit in October on the same, old, stale agenda. I hope my fellow heads of government will resist the temptation to recite the mantra of full
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economic and monetary union as if nothing had changed. If they do recite it, it will have all the quaintness of a rain dance and about the same potency".
Has that article yet penetrated into the realms of the whole of the Government?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I cannot answer for the other members of the Government, but I have certainly read the article. I am glad that the noble Lord has read it and that he agrees with so much of what my right honourable friend the Prime Minister says.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, is not the noble Earl aware that he actually answers for the Government?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, yes, I am fully aware that I have the privilege and responsibility of answering for the Government, but as I cannot tell the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, exactly which members of the Government have read the article, I could not give a definitive answer in the terms that he would have liked.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, in view of the explicit views of the Prime Minister which have now been quoted, would it not be a happy day for this House if we gave Maastricht a rest for six months?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, that is entirely in your Lordships' hands.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, does the Minister's Answer mean that the Government have not ruled out in the foreseeable future joining the economic and monetary union?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I believe that the noble Lord has forgotten that we have an opt-out clause.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, does the Minister recall that the Belgian presidency is reported recently as saying that when matters of social policy are discussed the United Kingdom will have to leave the room? Is the Minister's Delphic reply to be interpreted as saying that when matters of economic and monetary policy are discussed the United Kingdom will also have to leave the room?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I take great pleasure in the fact that I thought that I had managed to give what the noble Lord thought was a Delphic reply. It was a very straight answer. There is quite a difference between stage 2 and economic and monetary union, which is stage 3, and for which we have an opt-out. There is nothing Delphic about that.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the supplementary questions which we have just heard have nothing whatever to do with the Question on the Order Paper? Is he further aware that they are merely a tactic to try to keep alive a matter which it is believed will be electorally valuable at some time?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I believe that all noble Lords realise that the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, was rather wide of the Question on the Order Paper.
Lord Stoddarit of Swindon: My Lords, I know that the noble Earl has to speak for the whole of Government, but does he agree in particular with Mr. Lilley's statement at the conference that laws for the British should be made by Britons in Britain and not in foreign lands by foreigners?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, what I do know is that the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, and I are in agreement—and that the Government are in agreement—that at stage 2 economic policy remains firmly in the hands of the Government.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, surely the noble Earl is aware that when any member of the Cabinet speaks, he speaks on behalf of the Government as a whole. That is a doctrine which the noble Earl himself has frequently advanced in this House. There must be unity—unity at all costs. Is the noble Earl aware that his right honourable friend Mr. Lilley made an additional observation at the Tory Party Conference to the effect that the superstate has to be "rolled back" in a revision of the Maastricht Treaty in 1996 and that Britain should be given back powers which it has lost and should not be subsumed in a European superstate? Either the Minister's right honourable friend is talking for the Government or he is talking for himself. Will the noble Earl be kind enough to elucidate and will he consult with his Cabinet colleagues with a view to producing a united response to the question, if necessary by publication in the Economist over the signature of the Cabinet Secretary?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, the Government are totally united that when the Maastricht Treaty comes into force, which we hope will be in the not too distant future depending on the court case in Germany tomorrow, phase 2 will come into operation on 1st January 1994.
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that in a reply just now he committed the Government to stage 2 of the process towards economic and monetary union? Is he also aware that stage 2 contains within the treaty the commitment to entry to the narrow bands of the ERM? Is he thereby committing the Government to re-entry to the narrow bands of the ERM?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, no. It is for stage 3 that one needs to have been in the narrow bands for the previous two years.

Personal Data Protection: ECC Report
3.2 p.m.
Lord Slynn of Hadley Lord Slynn of Hadley rose to move, That this House takes note of the report of the European Communities Committee on the Protection of Personal Data (20th Report, HL Paper 75).
The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, the subject of the report referred to in the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper is one in which I must confess to finding some complexity, but it is of great and 10
growing importance. The importance of the subject can be seen from the number and standing of the bodies which gave evidence to the sub-committee and which are potentially affected by the proposals now being made: the professions, the media, the Stock Exchange, the BBC, the Association of Chief Police Officers, the National Council for Civil Liberties arid others.
The inquiry imposed a special burden on the members of sub-committee E and I am grateful for their assistance, tolerance and help during my baptism of fire as the new Chairman of the sub-committee. All members of the sub-committee are greatly indebted to the witnesses who attended and provided written evidence, but especially to Mrs. Eileen Denza, our legal adviser.
The subject is not a new one. The need to balance the right to privacy and the right to freedom of expression has been recognised for many years and has been the subject of very wide debate, particularly as the use of computerised information has spread. Before the 1970s national legislation existed in a number of states, but in the 1970s it was recognised that international action had to be taken if national laws were not to impose unacceptable barriers to trans-border data flow. That international recognition produced two documents: first, the guidelines of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development which set out principles relating to the collection, use, security and disclosure of personal data. Secondly, it produced the Council of Europe convention on the automatic processing of personal data, which was much supported at the time by British industry. The contracting parties reaffirmed,
"their commitment to freedom of information regardless of frontiers",
and recognised that it was,
"necessary to reconcile the fundamental values of respect for privacy and the free flow of information between peoples".
It was that convention which led to our own Data Protection Act of 1984, which is closely based on it. It created the office of the Data Protection Registrar to maintain a public accessible register and gave data subjects (that is, people about whom the data is recorded) the right of access, rights of compensation and rights to rectification of the data. During the inquiry several of our witnesses paid tribute to the work of the registrar and his staff, as we do for the way in which he assisted us by his evidence.
The 1984 Act was limited to computerised data, but other statutes in the United Kingdom which give rise to rights of individual access to personal data such as the Consumer Credit Act and the Access to Health Records Act are not limited to files held on computer. They, together with a number of other United Kingdom statutes, include manually recorded data.
If the Council of Europe convention had been given full effect, perhaps the present question might not. have arisen at this time. I stress "might not" because the recent report of the Comptroller and Auditor General shows that few data users—a relatively small proportion of data users—in this country have registered so it is difficult to check abuse. The report also shows that the number of complaints of abuse has increased rapidly in the past few years despite the fact. that it appears that many people are unaware of their rights in this matter.

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I stress "might not at this time" because I think that this question would have arisen for the Community at some time. It has arisen "at this time" because only seven of the member states of the Community have ratified the Council of Europe convention. They have implemented it in different ways. Indeed, four member states of the European Community have no data protection legislation at all.
Accordingly, the Commission produced a draft directive as part of a package of six related measures, including one draft resolution dealing with public sector files outside the strict ambits of Community law. Virtually all our witnesses agreed that there was a need for some form of Community measure on data protection. The Commission produced a first draft and appears to have received a considerable response with many suggestions for change. As a result, in a second draft substantial changes were introduced, many of which your Lordships' committee has approved, but discussion of the second draft still continues in the working group and it is unlikely that a common position will be reached before next year.
The committee hopes that its report will provide a contribution to focusing attention on some of the issues, even though we recognise from the evidence that we have received that many of the items still to be decided are controversial. Your Lordships will not wish me to go into the many detailed provisions of the directive or the many detailed comments which we have made in our report. I limit myself to drawing attention to a number of important points.
The committee accepts the need for a directive. We stress that the task is to strike a balance between the right to privacy and the right to freedom of expression. To that end, we have suggested that there should be prepared a directive that is simpler and less restrictive. We recommend that before the directive is finally adopted more reliable figures should be obtained as to the likely costs to data users of the adoption of the directive. The committee is glad to see in the Government's response to the report that its general approach and its recommendation in that regard are accepted.
We concluded, secondly, after much thought, that the Commission was right to include manually recorded data, as the Council of Europe Convention made optional, and, as I have already said, as a number of United Kingdom statutes already include, but it was on the basis that the directive should not be unduly onerous and should not be made retroactive in its effect. It seemed to the committee, after hearing the evidence and after much discussion, that the alternative of excluding manually recorded data altogether, although favoured by some of our witnesses, was unsatisfactory. We did not feel that it was right or practicable to distinguish between different sectors by including some and excluding other manually recorded data. I stress that our recommendation about manually recorded data was made on the basis that there should be a simplified and less onerous directive, and that the likely costs should be investigated before the directive was finally adopted. That was a much canvassed question, and we observe
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that in their response the Government do not accept that manually recorded data should be included in the directive.
Thirdly, we believe that the Commission was right, in its revised draft, to remove the distinction which existed initially between public sector and private sector activity. We understand the Government, in their response, to accept that that distinction should go. It seems to the committee that to have maintained that distinction was likely to lead to confusion. We believe it better that there should be one simplified and general scheme with few exceptions and few distinctions.
It was for that reason that the committee also welcomed the inclusion in the revised draft of charities and other non-profit-making bodies. We considered that the directive should apply to Community institutions. We did not consider that there should be a separate regime or provision for the media, but, again, on the basis that there should be adopted a substantially less onerous directive with no excessive demands placed on data users. The committee does not consider that, if those changes are made, the media will be in any way unduly hindered by the provisions of the type of directive we envisage.
Fourthly, your Lordships' committee considered that the requirements in the draft directive for information to be given to the data subject should be reduced substantially. We believe that the provisions of the directive are too complicated and too technical and we agreed with many witnesses who thought them onerous and unworkable, although we believe that it should be a part of the directive that a data subject should be consulted or informed as a rule before data relating to him or her are disclosed to a third party. We believe, on the other hand, that a distinction should be drawn between the categories or principles stated in the directive and that only those such as the fair and lawful processing requirements and the duty to keep data accurate and up-to-date should be enforced, with sanctions for non-compliance. It seems to the committee that the other principles which were stated in the directive are in the nature of principles and do not call for enforcement by sanctions.
Our report came shortly after the publication of Sir David Calcutt's report. We recommend that the directive should provide specifically that the fair obtaining of data should be so defined as to exclude the use of concealed devices such as telephone tapping and bugging. We understand that the Government will reply to that report in due course when our own recommendations will become relevant.
We heard much evidence about the importance of sensitive data (medical records, and information about racial, religious or ethnic origin). We concluded that sensitive data of that kind should not be permitted to be processed without the consent of the data subject, although we do not believe—I understand that the Government accept this—that it is practicable to require a written consent to the disclosure of such sensitive data, as the directive proposes.
Finally, we were impressed by the evidence which we received, in particular from the National Council for Civil Liberties, as to the harm which can result to

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individuals in some areas outside Community competence; in particular, those that arise from co-operation between police forces and other bodies responsible for countering terrorism. We believe it is important that the Council, when considering the directive, should consider at the same time the resolution to which I referred earlier for the extension of the general directive to public sector files outside Community competence.
When one reads of the incidents which have concerned individuals who have moved from one member state to another, and about whom inaccurate information has been given by one police force to another, and who have been subjected to detention or inconvenience, it seemed to us to be an important matter for the Council to consider. It seemed to us that was an area where the principles of the general directive, as simplified in the way we indicate, and, in particular, the obligation to obtain and to keep accurate information, and to update it, should be considered and adopted.
We note, however, from the government response that the Government consider that that is a matter for individual member states, and not something to be dealt with on a Community basis. Whether it is sufficient for it to be left to member states in that way is obviously a matter for debate. It seemed to the committee that all those matters needed to be aired since the aims and ramifications of the draft directive are of considerable importance to the citizen, to industry, the professions and government. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House takes note of the report of the European Communities Committee on the Protection of Personal Data (20th Report, HL Paper 75).—(Lord Slynn of Hadley.)
3.20 p.m.
Baroness Elles: My Lords, the report before your Lordships' House contains a valuable and clear analysis of the subject which has been adumbrated by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn. I too wish to congratulate the legal adviser, Mrs. Denza, on her magnificent work in preparing the report. The committee also had assistance from a wide range of witnesses. I also congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, chairman of sub-committee E, on the presentation of his first report to your Lordships' House.
All noble Lords will probably agree that certain principles exist with regard to the protection of individuals who may face risk as a result of the abuse and misuse of data bases. We have the Data Protection Act 1984, which has served us in good stead. With regard to the witnesses who came before the committee, I wish to add my congratulations and warm thanks to Eric Howe, the registrar appointed under that Act. He was most helpful in assisting us to understand some of the many difficult problems that can arise.
With regard to the principle of balancing the need for the protection of the individual with the right to information and freedom of expression, the European Parliament in its amendments to the original text has got that just about right. I wish to read Amendment No. 11,
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which is an amendment to Article 1. It was published in the Official Journal of the European Communities on 13th April 1992 and states:
"The Member States shall therefore reconcile a high level of protection in relation to the processing, collection and communication of personal data with the principle of the free: flow of personal data throughout the Community".
We must remember that balance as we deal with the different aspects of the draft directive.
I welcome the fact that, thanks to amendments which were carried in the European Parliament, both manual and computer-based data are included in this new form: of protection. After all, many forms of technology are being introduced which will also cover manual data bases with great facility; not only can computer-based. data spread quickly through the Community or, indeed, anywhere else. The draft directive provides a typical example of the law falling well behind scientific and technological development. It is difficult to produce simple and clear principles which will exist for a decade, without the need for amendment, in order to deal with new developments which are riot covered by such a draft directive. Therefore, I support the noble and learned Lord in pressing for flexible and broadly-based legislation which will not go too much into specifics.
The Council of Europe convention has provided such protection for some years. That was incorporated into United Kingdom law by the Data Protection Act 1984. We did not take up all the options available under that convention. I believe that that convention could have been extended rather than having the necessity for a new draft directive. Of course it is true that some member states have not signed the convention. But let us face it, there is no guarantee that those member states will observe the draft directive when it is adopted. Therefore, I do not believe that one should be too concerned that some member states have not ratified or signed the convention. In order to extend the Council of Europe convention, it would be helpful to the countries which are members of the Council of Europe and have applied for membership of the Community, which will be granted in the near future, and those countries which may take longer to join the Community. All are countries with which we trade and deal, with whom we have continuing relations and where data bases are in continual use.
We must realise the extent to which data bases enter our lives. I cannot believe that there is an adult in this country who is not concerned in one way or another with a data base. We are concerned with data bases relating to driving licences, medical records, inland revenue accounts and so forth. Considering the opportunities which could arise, there has been little abuse. As regards social work, a vast raft of information is continually processed, both manually and computer based, and individuals need protection. If we are to have the new draft directive, we must be careful about the way in which it is worded because it will cover almost every adult in the United Kingdom. Indeed, that applies to minors as regards entry to primary school and after, welfare benefits and so forth.
I wish to express some anxiety about the draft directive. I followed closely the recommendations adopted by the European Communities Committee and

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noted that at page 224 of the report appears the Memorandum by UNICEF, which is an experienced organisation representing employers throughout the Community. It is anxious that the draft directive might do more harm than good. It is not satisfied with the financial estimates which have been produced by the Commission. According to the Commission's report, the additional staff are to be only two C-level officials. That is incredible. If the directive is to come into force, it will encourage small businesses to be protected throughout the Community and to benefit from the single market. I find it hard to believe that the monitoring of that activity can be carried out by two such low-level officials and can be so restricted. The CBI has commented on the almost inestimable costs to business as a whole in introducing the measures which are envisaged in the draft directive.
However, as we are probably to have the draft directive, one must ask why the European Commission is so keen to accede to the Council of Europe convention. If the convention is any good, why do we need a draft directive? If it is not good, let the Community accede and let us not have a draft directive. The position is perhaps somewhat incompatible and illogical in that the Commission should wish, first, to accede to the convention and, secondly, to introduce a directive.
I wish to express a second anxiety. I understand that there is a reason for the directive. Indeed, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, has set out clear reasons why it would be helpful to give better protection to individuals. However, it is curious that the considerable costs have not been estimated. I wish to ask my noble friend a question but have been unable to give him notice because I arrived here only in time for the debate. What opportunities will there be for both Houses to debate the subject and to express their opinions about the effects of the measures in the draft directive? The measures will affect almost every person in the country.
The report before your Lordships' House is excellent and sets out many of the problems. However, I believe that another place should also have the opportunity to debate the subject before the directive is adopted. As we all know, once it is adopted it will become part of United Kingdom law and no one will be able to do anything about it except complain. Perhaps the Government will give serious consideration to how people will be consulted, how there will be an open debate and how people throughout the country who will be affected by the new legislation will be able fully to give their views before it is adopted in Brussels.
3.30 p.m.
Lord Reay: My Lords, I must start by declaring an interest as I hold a consultancy brief for the CBI. In that context, I should like to relay to your Lordships some of what I believe are the valid anxieties of industry with regard to the directive.
I feel tempted to question whether the directive is needed at all. Indeed, I am not quite sure that the Government really believe it to be necessary. Very few instances could be cited by witnesses who appeared
16
before the committee of the flow of information between Community member states being impeded as a result of divergencies among member states' data protection legislation or because of the absence of such legislation in some member states.
Moreover, as I understand it, one of the arguments for a directive mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley—the absence of legislation in a few member states—has been largely superseded because legislation has followed in Belgium and is on the way in some, if not all, of the other member states which have not had it.
I question whether the directive, even in its revised form, would ever have seen the light of day had the Maastricht Treaty, with its Article 3b on subsidiarity, already been on or near the statute book. At least I cannot believe that it would have incorporated such a high degree of detailed regulation and permitted such a low level of derogation for member states. In any event, I believe that the Government, in the Council of Ministers, should require the directive to be subjected to a test of subsidiarity. Both the need for a directive at all and the need for its more onerous provisions should, I suggest, be looked at again.
Some, if not all, of the difficulties of the directive doubtless derive from the Commission's decision to aim for a high degree of data protection. Like the Government, I believe that the Commission would have done better to aim for the standard of protection achieved by the Council of Europe convention with which we have all learned to live quite satisfactorily.
A case in point is the inclusion of manual files of personal data. The Council of Europe's convention leaves the decision open to the discretion of member states; and in the United Kingdom, the Data Protection Act 1984 excludes manual files. To bring in manual files now would produce a preposterous burden for some industries which have files scattered through thousands of offices which are doing no harm to anyone, which may do future historians some good but which fail to meet, in all the information they contain, the various criteria, relevance, accuracy and so on, set out in modern legislation. Banking and insurance are two such industries.
The committee wisely, ingeniously even, proposes that existing files should be excluded. The committee says—and I agree—that there should be no retroactive application of the legislation to manual files. That would help considerably. I am assured that without such an exemption, some large firms would have no option but to order a bonfire of files, risking the loss of important information in order to comply with the law. Such actions should not be lightly provoked.
But even with retroactivity excluded, the burdens for some industries will be great. In the insurance industry where a great deal of paper passes between firms and their customers, the creation of manual files is unavoidable. At present some 18 million new files are created per year, as the industry informed the committee. The costs of bringing such files within the scope of the legislation would be out of all proportion to any benefit likely to accrue to the user.

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Therefore, I do not follow the committee in concluding that the protection of privacy should as a matter of principle also be extended to manual files. I should prefer a conclusion based on practicality. The extension to manual files is an onerous requirement. We have lived very well without it. We should not be seeking to amend our legislation in that direction were there no directive. submit that we should resist it now.
One respect in which the directive is plainly defective is as regards the issue of prior consent. The prior consent of the data subject to the collection of data is desirable in principle, as the data collection registrar emphasised in his evidence. However, a way must be found to exclude obvious uses. The prospect of individuals having to be given information perhaps on the telephone and at their own expense, as required by the directive, under six headings before their theatre bookings can be accepted or airline tickets issued is evidently ridiculous.
A definition which needs clarification is that of a third party. What exactly constitutes a third party is not entirely clear in the directive. That is a matter of great importance for firms belonging to large groups which may not know with certainty to whom else in the group they are free to pass on data.
As regards the holding of sensitive data, the directive makes no provision for employers to hold data on criminal convictions of employees—actual, prospective or past—or on policyholders in the case of insurers, although such exemptions, as I understand it, could be provided at national level. As the committee found, such provision should be made in one way or another.
As the committee said at paragraph 139, those matters are of legitimate anxiety to actual and prospective employers as well as to insurers and prospective grantors of credit. Firms also need to be able to hold other forms of sensitive data.
I agree also with the committee that there should be an express statement in any directive that there are to be no limitations on the use or disclosure of material already in the public domain. It is of particular importance to some that access to the electoral roll and the register of county court judgments, which is now available, should not be lost.
One of the most lamentable features of the directive is that it comes without any estimates of the cost of complying with it. There is no fiche d'impact. I believe that the Government should call in the Council of Ministers for a fiche d'impact. As the committee says in paragraph 149, we should know the likely cost to data users of specific operations required by the directive before negotiations proceed further. Meanwhile, I should be interested to hear from my noble friend, when he winds up, what he considers would be the compliance costs for the public purse of this directive. So far as I am aware, that matter is not taken up by the committee.
I am grateful to the committee for paragraph 125. I believe that it is unreasonable to insist that data collected may be used only for the purposes originally intended and not for any other purpose.
I agree also with the recommendation in paragraph 153 that the Commission should not have rule-making
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powers conferred on it. I agree with the recommendation in paragraph 155 that the transfer of personal data to third countries should always be permissible with the informed consent of the data subject, and in certain other specified instances, where it must be in the subject's interest, even though his consent cannot be obtained.
I was interested that the committee should have contemplated the elimination of registration of data users as required in this country under the Data Protection Act. Like the registrar, the committee would at least like it simplified. It also sees no justification for making even a simplified version compulsory throughout the Community. For once, we are not going to insist that the way that we do things here is necessarily the best for everyone else. I believe that the whole question of registration, whether we have gone too far in this country and, if so, by how much we have gone too far, should be looked into on another occasion, perhaps in a forthcoming deregulation Bill, if we have one.
To sum up, I think that the need for a directive at all is not proven. I am not convinced that it should or would pass a subsidiarity test. The approximation between member states' legislation which has been achieved under the umbrella of the Council of Europe's convention seems, in practice, sufficient to guarantee the single market in information. However, if a qualified majority in the Council cannot be found against the directive, then we need one which is less detailed in its application, and which leaves more latitude to member states, along the lines which the committee has, for the most part, adroitly and comprehensively identified.
The committee has produced in concept a much improved piece of legislation—but to turn even that into reality, if it could be achieved at all, would no doubt require months of negotiation. I should like to thank the committee, under the chairmanship of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, for its work. I should also like to place on record the appreciation which the CBI has expressed to some of us for the responsiveness shown by the Home Office in its consultations with industry. I feel confident that the Government will continue to press for solutions much more acceptable to industry than those envisaged by the Commission, as I hope my noble friend in his winding-up speech will once again prove.
3.41 p.m.
Lord Renwick: My Lords, I, too, should like to thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, for opening the debate and for bringing the attention of the House to this important subject. It is the culmination of the excellent work undertaken by Sub-Committee E of the European Communities Committee under the noble and learned Lord's chairmanship. Evidence was taken from a wide range of witnesses. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, and his team should be congratulated on the thoroughness of their work and the excellence of their report which was issued in March of this year.
The Select Committee identified several areas of questionable logic in the Commission's proposed directive. But, overall, it seems that the proposal is welcomed. There is a definite risk that certain of the

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clauses could prove onerous and costly to business and industry, without providing adequate compensatory benefits to the individual. I quote from paragraph 159 of the report:
"A balance must be struck between the right to privacy and the countervailing right to freedom of information and expression, and the burdens to be imposed on data users must not be disproportionate to the benefits to be enjoyed by individuals."
Overall, the committee favours a simpler and less restrictive directive. As chairman of EURIM (a Parliamentary organisation which was formed earlier this year to investigate and report on information and technology matters emanating from the European Commission) I strongly support that view.
To consider the directive, it is necessary, first, to go back to the Council of Europe's Convention of 1981 which laid down a set of guidelines for the protection of personal data. That was welcomed as a step forward and has been ratified by all member states.
The UK was at the forefront of introducing legislation to meet our ratification, and the Data Protection Act 1984 was enacted. The UK approach was to concentrate on computer-related data, meeting the requirements from the convention, but avoiding any excessive restrictions on the use of data.
Not all of the EC member states were as diligent as the UK in meeting their obligations following ratification. Others have introduced legislation which is rather more far reaching than ours, but certain members have failed to follow up with any legislation at all. That has resulted in an imbalance in data protection across the Community. That imbalance has given some anxiety to the European Commission, and is generally agreed as being inconsistent with the need for pan-European movement of information. Faced with the need to bring all members into line, the Commission had two main options: it could either ensure that all members achieved the levels to meet the convention requirements, with some exceeding them; or, it could introduce a set of redefined requirements for all member states to meet. The latter was to be the more debatable, difficult, expensive and time-consuming option. It was of course the path chosen.
The first draft directive was issued over three years ago, and since then there has been intense debate, with considerable lobbying to persuade the Commission and MEPs to modify some of the more onerous clauses. A second draft has now been issued, and is considered to be much more palatable and acceptable to business. It is worth mentioning at this stage that the detailed benefits of the directive are primarily for individuals, with the necessary work and costs falling on businesses. There is undoubtedly a need to protect individuals; but there is also a need to avoid the stifling of legitimate business activities. Unfortunately, there are occasions where what is legitimate is a matter of opinion. A balance needs to be struck between placing a straitjacket on enterprise and allowing too much flexibility leading to varying standards of behaviour.
Much of the debate, particularly regarding the first draft, has circulated around the inclusion of manual data. The first draft aroused considerable objection. The second is rather more open, but could cause additional
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costs to many businesses. The directive is capable of some interpretation as to what is to be included as manual data; and, if taken literally, it could result in a significant additional burden to many businesses. If it is interpreted in a pragmatic manner—and I am sure that our fellow Europeans in other member states will take that approach—the major excesses can be avoided. The CBI has taken the view that manual data should not be included, if possible, or at least that it should be limited in its content, whereas the report of the Select Committee concluded that they could not justify limiting the protection of the individual and the right of individual access to information by excluding such data.
There is obviously much divergence of opinion on that point. I should like to ask my noble friend the Minister whether it is his opinion that manual files should be included within the scope of the directive, perhaps taking into consideration the fact that it seems it is only automated processing that is seen as a threat to individuals?
Another topic which has aroused considerable comment has been the inclusion of the need for expressed consent from the data subject to the processing of personal data relating to him. That is despite a proposal from the European Parliament that implied consent should be sufficient. Interpretation of the draft has been varied, and some organisations have accepted the draft as reasonable, whereas others consider the requirement to be onerous. The CBI view seems to be that it is wholly impractical and unnecessarily bureaucratic, and will result in significant inconvenience and eventually additional costs for the data subject. In my opinion, the Select Committee rightly concluded that a common-sense approach should be taken regarding the fair obtaining of information. In addition, members of the committee took the view, regarding the disclosure of information to third parties, that they are in general agreement with the EC proposal which set out the conditions under which disclosure may be made. There is some flexibility for national legislation, and we must be careful to ensure that we strike the right balance.
There is one area where the Select Committee concluded that the draft directive has not been sufficiently rigid. This is regarding exemptions, where the proposal is that member states shall prescribe exemptions from the directive in respect of the processing of personal data solely for journalistic purposes by the press, the audio-visual media and journalists. The Select Committee rightly believes that there should be no special exemptions for the media.
There have been changes introduced into the second draft which are welcomed. In particular, the change in the structure of the proposal intended to provide equivalent treatment for the private and public sectors, and the conditions covering transborder data flow, permitting the movement of data to countries without adequate data protection provided that the data subject has consented, that it is necessary for the performance of the contract and the data subject has been made aware of the lack of protection. There are also increased

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opportunities for member states to adopt procedures appropriate to their needs within the framework of common principles set out in the directive.
The original draft contained a restriction on the holding of information regarding criminal convictions. That would have caused considerable problems to those in the financial sector, leading to increased fraud, including money laundering. That restriction has now been modified by an additional clause permitting member states to lay down exemptions from the restriction by means of a legislative provision, including suitable safeguards.
The proposal places some restriction on the use of automated decision-making techniques. There has been considerable objection to that within the UK, but perhaps we should learn a little from the French. They have had restrictions in this area for some time now and have been able to manipulate their way round the regulations with typical Gallic pragmatism and with little restrictive effect on the use of the automated techniques.
There are further items which are cause for concern to business. It is essential that the major problem areas continue to be addressed as further improvements may be squeezed out of the Commission before the final directive emerges. Considerable activity is going on in this direction and must continue. It is also vital that we ensure the UK legislation which is developed for enactment subsequent to the final version of the directive being issued is in such a form as to maximise the benefits to the individual while at the same time minimising any onerous effects on our business and industry.
The formation of EURIM should help to ensure that UK parliamentarians have the opportunity to be made aware of issues related to information technology, including data protection, coming out of Brussels. EURIM was formed not only to investigate and report on IT matters emanating from the European Commission, but also to enable Members of your Lordships' House and honourable Members from another place better to understand the issues and influence the final outcome on such matters. The data protection directive clearly illustrates the need for such an initiative, and the continued support of Members from both Houses is needed to ensure that EURIM is successful in what it does.
3.51 p.m.
Lord Chalfont: My Lords, I follow other noble Lords in congratulating the European Communities Committee and especially the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, the chairman of sub-committee E, on this report. It is a comprehensive report. It is generally balanced and meticulously researched, as we have come to expect from the committee now chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham.
I also wish to congratulate the committee on emphasising the need for a less prescriptive Community directive, if indeed there is to be one at all. However, like the noble Lord, Lord Reay, I question the need for any Community initiative at all in this sphere. The present position, as I understand the situation from the
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CBI and others who gave evidence to the committee, presents no great difficulties for business and industry. Nor is there any evidence of damage to individuals caused by the processing of personal data. I wonder therefore whether there is any need at all to go beyond the Data Protection Act 1984.
In its evidence to the committee the BBC stated that there is,
"no public appetite for enhancing the Act"—
that is the Data Protection Act—
"which has shown itself to be adequate to the task".
There is no evidence that I can adduce to show that the differences in the level of protection between member states of the Community have inhibited in any way the movement of data across borders. The committee, however, has come to the conclusion that,
"Virtually all witnesses agreed that there was a need for some form of Community measure on data protection".
I wonder whether this need is quite so evident. In the course of the evidence that was given to the committee a number of bodies—including not only the BBC, which I have just mentioned, but also the Home Office, the direct marketing association, the British Medical Association and the Institute of Chartered Accountants—all expressed substantial reservations about this directive and the need for it at all.
Perhaps the most telling quotation is that made by an organisation entitled CHANGE which is concerned with charities and non-profit-making organisations. CHANGE stated in its evidence:
"We fail to see why it is necessary to have a highly intrusive European Directive in an area where the very nature of the subject calls for national approaches which respect varied cultural circumstances".
I have considerable doubts about a directive which is bound to impose costly and unnecessary compliance procedures which will have serious consequences for business operations in Europe. Therefore. I have some difficulty in supporting the committee's welcome for the Commission's initiative. On the other hand, of course, it provides an opportunity to debate this matter. As was stated in the report, and by a number of previous speakers in this debate, this matter concerns the delicate balance between the right to privacy and the countervailing right to freedom of information and expression. In this context I believe that the committee has been quite right to demand that this draft directive should be looked at again in some detail.
I wish to mention one aspect of the directive which I believe was referred to earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Reay; that is, the question of the definition of the term "third party". I believe that this definition is extremely obscure in the draft directive as it stands at the moment. If this directive is to see the light of day, it should make the term "third party" absolutely clear in such a way that all businesses are completely free to communicate within their own organisational structures. That matter is not clear at the moment. There is a real fear in some large multinational groups as well as national groups that the third party definition, as at present formulated, does not leave a business free to communicate within its own structure and does not allow companies to communicate with their branches. their separate locations, and their subsidiary companies. I believe that

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this definition should certainly make it clear that businesses are free to communicate internally without any inhibitions.
However, my real concern is with an aspect which does not figure in the draft directive at all, although it was clearly much in the minds of the members of sub-committee E when they took their evidence and arrived at their conclusions. My anxiety concerns the application of data protection principles to areas outside Community competence, such as police, intelligence and counter-terrorism activities. As these matters, by definition, cannot be dealt with by an EEC directive, the European Commission has proposed, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, said, a resolution by which member states would bind themselves as a matter of international law to apply the principles of the directive to their national activities, including the activities of the police, counter-terrorism, intelligence and defence. As I understand it, the committee welcomes this, subject to certain modifications in the draft directive. This seems to me to be a dangerous proposition. I do not know how many noble Lords will recall what a former Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, once said in the context of other matters concerning the European Community. He said that if one opened that Pandora's Box, one never knew what Trojan horse would jump out. I believe that that comment has a special relevance to this proposition. That there should be some kind of resolution which would bind this Government and other national governments to apply the principles set out in this directive to matters concerning intelligence, defence, the police and other criminal activities seems to me to be setting our feet upon a dangerous path.
The National Council for Civil Liberties gave evidence to the committee upon which the committee evidently placed a great deal of weight. The National Council for Civil Liberties believes that the present Data Protection Act—the 1984 Act—is inadequate to control the exchange of information between government departments. In its evidence to the committee, the National Council for Civil Liberties suggested that the files of intelligence services should be open to inspection by the nation's supervisory authority, overriding the need to safeguard national security. I need hardly emphasise the dangers that this would pose to those responsible for operations against organised crime, terrorism and other threats to public safety.
In its evidence to the committee the Home Office, perhaps predictably, took a very different view from that of the National Council for Civil Liberties. The Home Office representative told the committee that, rather than merely exemption from access by the subject of the data, the Home Office favoured the complete exclusion from the directive of national security, defence, criminal proceedings and public safety. The Government evidently regard those matters as entirely for national competence, and I entirely agree with them.
In conclusion, I have to dissent in some respects from the conclusions of the committee. I am not convinced that there is any need for a Community initiative in this field or that any such need has yet been sufficiently
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demonstrated. However, even if the directive gains favour and comes into force in some form, I certainly do not believe that Her Majesty's Government should subscribe to any suggestion of a resolution which would require its principles to be applied to matters outside the competence of the Community.
Nonetheless, as, I said at the beginning of my remarks, I congratulate the Committee on bringing these matters to the attention of Parliament. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Flies, I hope that they will become the subject of wide public debate.
4.1 p.m.
Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, I have read the report of the Select Committee on the European Communities with great interest and respect. Other noble Lords who are familiar with this important issue of the protection of personal data have commented on its recommendations with knowledge and expertise which I do not possess. Nevertheless, I am well able to recognise and pay tribute to the sterling work of the committee. However, the Government will need to balance the interests of data users with those of data subjects, and that is not easy. I fear that my inclination is to wish to see greater weight given to the needs of users.
First, with due respect to the committee, I must strongly support the view that extending data protection to areas outside Community competence—for example, co-operation on police and counter-terrorist work—must remain an individual government decision. I strongly support the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, in saying that. Such co-operation should not be inhibited. There are very real threats to order and security on which we need to work closely with other countries. It is wrong to have to work in the dark for lack of such co-operation where it is considered appropriate.
I would also favour sector by sector decisions in the public domain under the present Act. I would also support the provision in Article 8(3) of the existing convention allowing member states to make some exemptions on the grounds of important public interest. Valuable though harmonisation of action throughout the Community in this area of information may be, I agree with the witnesses for the Charities and Non Profit Groups in Europe (CHANGE) who believe that the very nature of the subject calls for national approaches which respect varied cultural circumstances.
I am also concerned about the needs and the problems of data users, and also by the point made by the witness who identified the right to privacy of the collector of information. As the committee was told, to extend the provision for computer data protection to manual records such as files would not only generate very large costs as well as requiring the creation of a vast bureaucracy to handle inquiries, it would also seriously inhibit the creation of records and archives which will one day be needed for research. Some of the most interesting subjects for biographies have led lively and chequered lives. Do we really want to create laws which may encourage institutions such as schools, colleges and universities to destroy files and to reduce their records on past graduates to the public fact that

25
they took a degree in such a year? I do not believe that the memorandum quoted in paragraph 40 is enough to reassure us on that question.
On a different but equally vital point, I agree that it is essential that those writing references should continue to be able to count on the absolute confidentiality of what they write. The committee picks up that point in paragraph 125 in its reference to information obtained in confidence. It evidently shares my concern that the Community directive apparently does not have regard to that point.
My strongest concern is, however, to reiterate my view that it would be seriously against the public interest were the resolutions proposing to widen the scope of the data protection directive so as to include defence, intelligence, justice and home affairs—all matters which, incidentally, are fully protected by the two pillars of the treaty—to be approved by the Council. For the sake of transparency and the perceived needs of the individual we should be putting national interests, which concern us all, at risk.
As the registrar has pointed out, a distinction must also be made between data protection legislation and freedom of information legislation. As the committee itself so wisely says, a balance must be struck between the right to privacy and the countervailing right to freedom of information and expression. The burdens imposed on data users must not be disproportionate to the benefits to be enjoyed by individuals. The need for transparency must surely not override the need for honest assessment and record and the protection of the national interest.
4.5 p.m.
Lord Hacking: My Lords, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, told us, this was the first inquiry conducted by sub-committee E under the good chairmanship of the noble and learned Lord. It was also the penultimate inquiry in which I was involved during my tenure on the committee. Of all the inquiries during the happy and interesting three years that I have been a member of that committee I would describe this as the most comprehensive and complex. Indeed, I have not held such a heavy report by sub-committee E as this one. Compliments are thus due not only to the noble and learned Lord—and I join in those which have already been paid to him—but also to our legal adviser, Mrs. Eileen Denza, who assisted us greatly in our inquiry and in the writing of our report.
As noble Lords have said, this report is concerned with a directive which in turn was directed to balancing the rights of privacy and freedom of expression. The directive set out one view of that balance. The committee chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, came to another view. It is clear from the contributions that have been made in this debate that some of your Lordships see the right balance differently.
While this is a very interesting subject, I should like to direct my remarks to some practical points which were taken up by the sub-committee in its report. The first is the need for a simpler directive with fewer restrictions. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, (who unfortunately has now left his place)
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would be much happier with the directive if it were both simpler in form and contained fewer restrictions. I believe that that would meet some of the specific anxieties which the noble Lord raised in the debate this afternoon.
I turn in particular to Article 6. Any noble Lord who is conscientious enough to have the report to hand may like to turn to Article 6, which deals with the quality of data. Five principles are enshrined in Article 6. However, as we.found in our report, not all are of equal importance. It was the committee's view that Article 6 would be greatly enhanced if it concentrated on only two of the five principles enshrined in the article namely, the principle set out in Article 6(1) (a) that personal data should be processed fairly and lawfully, and in Article 6(1) (d) that data should he accurate and if necessary kept up to date, and that every step must be taken to ensure that data which are inaccurate or incomplete (having regard to the purposes for which they were collected) are erased or rectified. I should like my noble friend on the Front Bench to comment specifically on the committee's view in that regard.
However, under Article 6(1) (c) it is stated that:
"data must be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purposes for which they are processed".
In the view of the committee and in my submission to your Lordships, that is not language which is helpful in construing the directive.
As mentioned to your Lordships, Article 6(1) (a) provides that personal data must be "processed fairly and lawfully". Under "Definitions" in Article 2, "processing" includes the collection of the data. In a communication from the Commission but not elsewhere there is a statement that the provision for obtaining data fairly would exclude the use of data collected by concealed devices. One of the points that sub-committee E of your Lordships' Select Committee made was that it would be helpful to have a specific definition for this.
Article 7 contains a lengthy list of requirements. It is directed to the principles relating to the processing of data. As sub-committee E stated, such a lengthy list leaves too much room for argument. We refer to that in paragraph 127 of the report.
I advance further the comment that the directive, would be improved if it were simpler in language Article 11 deals with the rules for information to be passed to the data provider at the time of collecting the data. Paragraph 128 of the report states that Article I I contains "a daunting list of six elements". The collection of personal data can arise under many circumstances and in ordinary daily life. For example., when one books a ferry one has to give details of one's passengers and, with younger passengers., their ages, details of one's vehicle, and so forth. For that information to be given lawfully under the directive, the ferry company taking one's booking has to go through that list of elements under Article 11:
"(a) The purposes of the processing for which the data are intended;
"(b) the obligatory or voluntary nature of arty reply to the questions to which answers are sought;
"(c) the consequences for him if he fails to reply;
"(d) the recipients or categories of recipients of the data;
"(e) the existence of a right of access to and rectification of the data relating to him;

27
"(f) the name and address of the controller and of his representative if any".
If the booking for the ferry were being made on the telephone, which is quite likely when one is in a hurry to make one's booking, I fear that time would have run out with British Telecom before all that information could be provided to the ferry company. One can think of a number of examples. We had evidence from British Airways and others on that.
I turn now to a subject that has been raised by several noble Lords, in particular by the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont. I am sorry that he is not in his place now because I wish directly to answer the points that he raised. We commented in our report about instances falling outside Community competence where information of personal data is passed to police authorities; and about the deprivation of personal liberty. The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, referred to our conclusion in paragraph 116. He also referred to the proposed resolution of the Council under which member states would bind themselves as a matter of international law to apply the principles of the directive to their activities—for example, police, counter-terrorism, intelligence and defence, which are not within Community competence.
We believe that that resolution should form an essential element of any data protection package to be adopted by the Council. The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, stated that that is a dangerous proposition. He spoke of a Pandora's Box; and of a Trojan horse coming out of Pandora's Box. Quite how a Trojan horse comes out of a Pandora's Box I do not know. The noble Lord spoke of dangers to public security and stated that he was not convinced that the case for such a resolution, had been sufficiently made out.
We received evidence from Liberty of some very serious instances. Paragraph 60 of the report refers to the case of a German woman mistakenly identified as a member of the Baader-Meinhof gang. The evidence was:
"Over a period of eight years, whenever she went to Italy she got arrested, usually at gunpoint, by the Italian police, usually late at night in her hotel room and dragged to the police station at gunpoint for hours of interrogation. Each time this happened it was admitted a mistake had been made … Although she was able to get this data corrected in Germany, where it originated, she was not able to correct it in Italy, where it had gone to".
We were given a number of other instances. I cite two. One relates to a long-serving and loyal employee at Stansted Airport who, five or six years ago, on holiday with his wife, when crossing the border from France into Spain gave a lift to a hitchhiker. It transpired that that hitchhiker may have been a member of the IRA. The consequence upon that employee was quite shattering. Just before Her Majesty the Queen was to visit Stansted Airport, his house was raided early in the morning. He was taken for interrogation by the police for the remainder of that day. Goods in his house were seized and examined by the police.
Another example relates to an English family on holiday in Portugal. The man was mistaken for a terrorist. There were were two young boys and his wife with him. The family were all bundled into a police car at gunpoint. I believe that it is right to say that it was
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three days before his liberty was returned to him and his holiday resumed. It was not perhaps a holiday that he and his family were able to enjoy any longer.
I suggest to noble Lords that those are examples, as the committee believed, to which attention should be paid. Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, in his absence from his place, that perhaps he was rather overstating the case when he referred to fears of damage to public security. There was one simple remedy available in all these cases the right to correct inaccurate information. It seems to me that that is in the public interest as well as in the interest of the individual. It can hardly be in the public interest for innocent citizens to be arrested at gunpoint and for the time of the public authorities to be taken up in interrogating them when there would be no grounds for this if the information had been correctly recorded in the personal data held by the state authorities.
In conclusion, perhaps I may refer to personal data which is particularly personal to me. I refer to my name. For the past three or four years I have read newspaper articles which state that "Hacking must be banned". My noble friends on the sub-committee were very sensitive about the matter. At no time in the report did they ever refer either to a "hacker" or "hacking", except to allow me to sign my name at the end of the report. Perhaps I may ask my noble friend on the Front Bench to assume that same sensitivity.
4.19 p.m.
Viscount Chelmsford: My Lords, in 1984 I was an employer. As the director of my company, I was charged with implementing the 1984 Data Protection Act. What I state today is clearly influenced by that experience.
We had then some 3,000 terminals across the UK and a culture of significant employee discretion. If one is to implement that Act, how does one achieve an effective system which controls what employees put into the terminals? One can write all the standard instructions one wishes but there is no way of stopping them from using the terminal for their own ends. Yet the Act holds the controller responsible for all personal data,
"processed by equipment automatically and which relates to a living individual".
Elsewhere, the Act states:
"Personal data held for any purpose … shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose".
To the extent that such data are held by a department charged with the responsibility, that is fairly easily handled. But to the extent that the odd item exists within the rest of the 3,000 terminals, how does one find it to extract it? And what is the cost of searching for what will certainly be less than 1 per cent. of any one individual annual computer file?
At that time, colleagues told me to stop worrying about what was impossible. From one point of view they were correct there has been no problem to my company since. But from another point of view surely they were wrong, because we should not have legislation which we cannot implement properly.
The EC amended draft directive is even more onerous to employers in this area than the 1984 Act, and

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thus I must be strongly supportive of the extra tolerance arid common sense in the Select Committee report. I agree with it that registration does not seem to be necessary. I support the statement that the requirements to provide information to the data subject when data are collected should be substantially reduced. In fact, I go much further. Why do we need to include the word "collection" within the definition of "processing"? Surely, it is the dissemination of collected data that causes the anxiety to individuals. Anyway, from what source can the data first be collected except from the individual himself or herself? Incidentally, the UK Act does not include the word "collection" in the definition of processing.
I now turn to Article 6, but not those articles already quoted. I refer to Article 6(e), which follows the UK and requires personal data,
"to be kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes in view"
There are two points here. Of course, companies can do this formally through their personnel departments. However, for example, take negotiations for hire and fire the more important the person being hired or fired, the more the senior company leaders will wish to be involved. They will have notes, letters and files which are informal, untidy and unstructured. Frequently those leaders will resent and try to prevent giving up those papers to some department which is charged with the responsibility for formal filing. They will say that the papers are too confidential to be released.
Up to now, that has not mattered because the files have been manual. But as computer-literate people become our leaders—which is increasingly happening now—that will change. There is a strong probability that such informal files will still be undestroyed long after Article 6(e) says that they are unnecessary.
The second point here has already been touched on by one of the Select Committee witnesses. An exception in Article 6(e) is "stored for historical use". How does one know what will become historical? Personally I am rather fortunate, I find that, having retired, I hold papers on two senior hires in 1979. I am fortunate because, since I hired them, both have risen to even greater things with the company. So the existence of those papers today can be said clearly to form part of company history.
However, by 1980, a year after I had hired the individuals in question, those papers were no longer needed for the purpose for which they were originally created. Had the Data Protection Act been enforced, had it applied to manual files and had I obeyed it, I should have destroyed those papers. Today, we would see that as a great shame.
I cannot understand why either the UK or the EC needs to focus so much on "collection". I repeat my belief that legislation should focus on the area of most concern the dissemination of the data after they are collected. Nor do I think that I can agree with the Select Committee's suggestion that legislation should be extended to manual data. The CBI view has been well put already, but I point out that there is one extra point which the CBI made in its most recent briefing paper. It is that, despite the "no retroactive files" proposal, there
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is still a great cost to checking the accuracy of past manual data. The CBI points out also that the need for legislation was born from the ability of computers to manipulate data in a manner not possible manually.
I now turn to the EC proposals for dissemination. I suggest that the following comments appear to be less important than those that I have already made, but surely, there must be something about us that we would be happy to see passed on to others without the need for our formal permission.
Good hotels note that we like wide beds and cornflakes for breakfast. Do they really need our consent before they tell other hotels? Can an EC country demand the particulars of my passport without my consent? Perhaps it can claim a special exemption, as proclaimed by a political body. Is my date of birth really that emotive? Are we to understand that, under Article 8, without my special consent no one may be told that my religion is Church of England? Should I really be required to give my consent before information concerning my medical condition can pass between my specialist and my GP?
I note, incidentally, that the UK 1984 Act is far more tolerant in this area. Part IV exemptions extend broadly to data for payrolls and accounts, for recreational purposes, for clubs and associations, for back-up purposes and for educational and/or examination purposes. All those are included, always provided that the data are used only for their authorised purpose.
Article 17 of the amended EC directive states that:
"controllers must take appropriate measures to protect personal data against unauthorised disclosure or any other unauthorised form of processing".
I think that this may be another extension beyond UK common law. I have always understood that it is a legitimate defence for an employer to claim unauthorised actions by an employee where—and only where—it can be shown that the latter acted in contradiction of written standing instructions. A colleague of mine had oversight responsibility for staff in another location which he visited unexpectedly. Not only was the manager absent, but my colleague found to his concern that the staff now had a 12-month computerised record of the manager's absences, and had extended it to include the time taken in his lunch break when he was not absent. The manager was dismissed. The date was prior to 1984, but, if it had been after the Act, I wonder what remedy this grossly negligent manager would have had against his employer for incorrect use of personal data. I repeat that there seems to me to be no way in which employers can control what their employees choose to hold on their terminals.
Article 19 at least refers to simplification measures and the Select Committee calls for simplification in several places. I hope that my comments will add fresh impetus to such statements. I also hope that the Government will look hard at their existing legislation and temper it to be more workable for employers.
Finally, perhaps I may say that, while I quite understand the motives behind the data protection legislation, I remain convinced that the final collapse of civilisation will not be due to any series of nuclear explosions but rather to man's increasing efforts to

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obtain total fairness for all people at all times. This leads to so much effort being spent on protection of the individual that there will soon be insufficient people and insufficient money to promote the wealth creation needed to pay for it. The problem, of course, is one small extra needle in the whole haystack of costs. But I think that that needle could be much smaller still if the EC and the UK cut out some of the frills surrounding the existing and potential legislation.
4.29 p.m.
Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, for his report and his introduction of the short debate this afternoon. I now have the honour to be a member of sub-committee E, but I was not so at the relevant time and was in no way involved in the production of the report. That means that, unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, and the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, I cannot bask in the reflected glory of the admirable report. However, equally, I suppose that it allows me to sound one or two critical notes which would be more difficult had I been a member of the committee at the relevant time.
One theme throughout the debate this afternoon—the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, first introduced it, but other noble Lords also referred to it—has been the need for a balance between personal privacy on the one hand and freedom of information and a free press on the other. That balance is more difficult constitutionally for this country because we have no specific constitutional guarantees, for instance, of a free press, of incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law, or of a freedom of information Act. On the other side of the equation, when it comes to privacy it is worth reflecting upon how much one can do, as it were, by the back door through data protection and how much needs to be done by the front door. It may be interesting when the noble Earl replies to the debate to know what are the Government's latest intentions on privacy legislation.
I have admitted to having concerns. Perhaps I may take a moment or two of your Lordships' time to talk about them. My first relates to journalism in the press, in television and in the media generally. I am sure that the Select Committee was right to seek a looser directive; but, wrongly in my view, it came down against any special exemptions for the media. Paragraphs 142 to 144 on page 39 deal with that.
Two dangers arise. First, a number of provisions may remain which, even in the context of a looser directive, would make the journalist's job more difficult. Second, comments upon media exemption could be taken and used out of the context of a revised directive.
I take the two issues of informed consent, and specially sensitive data. On the question of informed consent, dealt with in paragraphs 127–130, it is stated that the data subject should be informed before his data is disclosed to a third party. It means, for instance, that before including information on anyone in a television programme, that person would have to be informed of the intention to include him. For a news programme that
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would be clearly impractical. In documentaries the normal practice is to ask people to respond to criticism made of them or of their activities, and that is covered in the ITC code. But there may be many people covered in passing in programmes. I wonder if it really is our wish that anyone referred to in a programme, however fleetingly, would have to be informed before the programme was transmitted. I wonder what useful purpose that would serve. It would certainly increase the costs of the bureaucracy of programme-making; and it would certainly add to the risk of injunctions attempting to delay broadcast. Documentaries are already an endangered species on British television. We do not want to take any risks that might lead to their being killed off.
I turn to the question of specially sensitive data. As noble Lords know, this refers to information on racial origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, health or sexual life, and says that processing such information cannot be carried out without the express consent of the data subject. Mercifully, the committee says that information already in the public domain is excluded from the clause. In other words, a television company would not have to get Mr. Major's express consent to be able to report that he is a member of the Conservative Party. However, there are frequent occasions when someone's political opinions or support for a particular religious group, for example, are not in the public domain but are, rightly, of significant public interest. Let us take, for example, a possible investigative programme into the rise of the BNP in east London. A free press should surely be allowed to report that. I understand from the Government's response that they believe that there should be exemptions or derogations for the media. I should again be interested to hear from the noble Earl, when he replies, on this specific concern.
As well as the balance between privacy and freedom of expression, there is another balance to be struck, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Renwick. It is the balance between costs and benefits. That is an extremely important point. As the noble Lord rightly said, the benefits are those for the individual and, I believe one could also argue, for the public as a whole—for the general public interest. But in practice the costs will fall on government and particularly on companies, industries and associations of one sort or another. I am sure that, as the CBI very reasonably pointed out, and as the report says in paragraphs 148 and 149, we need more reliable figures of likely costs to data users before a decision is taken on the directive as a whole.
Finally, I come to a question which I do not believe noble Lords have so far addressed; namely, codes of conduct. There may be a case for subsidiarity and minimalism, as the noble Lords, Lord Reay and Lord Chalfont, so eloquently pointed out; or there may be the rather more comprehensive case for the protection of privacy which we would favour on these Benches, in line generally with the recommendations of the committee. Either way, there is a need for codes of conduct. Those codes should be devised sectorally. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, when he speculates that there is not much of a pan-European element in data use. Increasingly, in industries such as

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insurance, financial services, advertising and direct mail marketing, and in charities and NGOs for that matter, there is pan-European manipulation and use of data—perhaps only 10 per cent., but a growing proportion. Account has to be taken of that. But whatever the letter of the directive and the letter of the law locally, I am certain that we should be looking to sectoral codes of conduct to make sure that we have wholehearted action rather than reluctant compliance with the law.
4.36 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I join with other noble Lords in thanking the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, and his colleagues for this excellent report. Indeed I congratulate them. I do not often find myself in quite the position that I am in today. Very often the debates on the European Communities Committee reports are full of adulation of the committee and I find myself, perhaps for psychological reasons which do me no credit, expressing disagreement at the end. On this occasion I have listened to a whole series of speakers, some of whom have made quite severe criticisms of the committee's report. At the end of this exercise, I find myself even more strongly in support of the committee's recommendations than I did when I read the report, the evidence and the appendices over the weekend.
Data protection sounds like a dry subject, but that is a misnomer. We ought to look at this issue in the light of the fact that data protection is a special case of freedom of information. That point was helpfully and wisely made by the noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham. Unless we look at data protection as being the means by which we provide the proper balance between freedom of information and privacy in our society, first, we shall not understand the importance of data protection and, secondly, we are likely to be tempted to make the wrong judgments.
As I listened to the debate speaker after speaker in effect spoke on behalf of the users—namely, those who produce the data. It is our role, and the role of the party to which I belong, to speak on behalf of the data subjects, the punters. I believe that it is their interests above all that data protection legislation and freedom of information legislation is there to protect. Noble Lords who have spoken with great eloquence and great sincerity, not on behalf of the CBI, but who have expressed views which are shared by the CBI, and those who have spoken, for example, of the interests of the intelligence community, will forgive me if I do not pursue in detail the arguments that they have made. The report raises greater issues than the issues of the cost of collection of individual items of commercial data.
In trying to draw attention to those issues I should like to take as my theme the way in which the noble and learned Lord himself introduced his report. There is only one point where I find myself in disagreement with it. He argued, and the Government supported the argument, in favour of a simpler and less restrictive directive. We should remember that a less restrictive directive is almost by definition less protective in regard to the data subject. Unless it is shown far more clearly that there is no need for the detail into which the
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directive goes for the purposes of protecting the individual, then the arguments for a less restrictive directive need to be examined more carefully. However, the report goes into a great deal of helpful detail in that regard.
Secondly, the noble and learned Lord next raised the issue of manual data. I agree strongly with the committee that the inclusion of manual data is the right step to take. I was involved in the debates on the Data Protection Act 1984. One of the points that we made as powerfully as we could was that the elimination of manual data was illogical in terms of the purposes of data protection. Manual data are data. The way in which they are collected is neither here nor there. Data protection legislation is not required because of an increase in power relating to information technology; it is required because people have records about us which they can use to our disadvantage. We should be entitled to stop them and correct them.
The noble Lord, Lord Hacking, put his finger on the point when he spoke of the need and ability of the data subject to be able to correct errors in the data collected. The committee made a proper recommendation that the inclusion of manual data should not be retroactive. We would indeed be into collecting tens of millions of records if we were to make it retroactive. The committee also proposed some safeguards for data users which seem to me to be entirely sensible.
Thirdly, I agree strongly with the committee that the distinction between public and private data should not be sustained. In that regard the committee agrees with the directive. The most powerful argument for that is that in 1993 there is no longer a hard and fast distinction between private and public. What are we to make of those bodies like the Next Steps agencies which are not subject to parliamentary scrutiny in the sense that Ministers answer for them, yet they are funded by public money? There is now a whole spectrum running from private to public and it is no longer possible to make a clear distinction. Such a distinction should not be attempted in data protection legislation.
The committee recommends, and I believe rightly, that the demand for disclosure should continue to be based on express consent. It makes the wise proviso that the express consent need not be in writing. It would be found that most of the objections raised on behalf of industry and commerce would be dealt with if the express but not necessarily written formula were used.
The committee's support of the "fair obtaining" provisions in the directive is extremely valuable. In particular it is valuable because its implication is that bugging, telephone tapping and so forth would be covered and outlawed by data protection legislation. I know that the Government have other proposals on that which we may or may not see in the coming Session. If the noble Earl in his response were able to be sufficiently indiscreet to indicate what may happen in the next Session, that would of course be helpful. However, I do not expect it. Clearly the inclusion in data protection legislation of the fair obtaining provisions is a start for the safeguards we need against unfair obtaining of information.

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The sixth point made by the committee and by the noble and learned Lord in his introduction is perhaps the most important of all and one that drew a great deal of attention in the debate. I refer to the question of whether the directive and data protection legislation generally should cover matters outside the Community competence. What is meant by that—they are matters to which the noble Baroness, Lady Park, referred—are matters of defence, intelligence, justice and so forth. The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, regarded as dangerous any suggestion that they should be included in data protection legislation. In other words, he regarded that as a dangerous path to take in freedom of information legislation.
There are dangers. There are dangers which we have seen most recently in the Matrix Churchill case which has given rise to the Scott Inquiry. Under British law at present, where Ministers consider that there is an issue of national security, without any argument to the contrary or knowledge of the reasons, it is possible for them to declare it to be a matter of national security and thus exclude it from the purview of the law. Ministers attempted to do that by a certificate of immunity in the Matrix Churchill case which, if it had not been overturned by a judge, would have resulted in a gross injustice to three executives. I must be careful in what I say while the Scott Inquiry is still sitting. But those executives believed themselves to be acting in accordance with government policy as it had been communicated to them.
I suggest to the House that unless data protection and freedom of information legislation covers those matters, and unless those who are responsible for them are capable of being brought to account by the legislation, we will not be doing our job. In all sincerity I suggest to the noble Viscount, Lord Chelmsford, who doubted that it was a threat to him if personal information on him was held by other people, that it is all very well for him; it is all very well for me. It is all very well for white middle class and middle-aged males who are Members of the House of Lords. But ask my children and their friends what it is like to be a young black person on the streets of London today; being hauled into police stations for any or no reason whatever or finding themselves subjected to scrutiny on a profile held on the police national computer to which they have no access, which they have no way of correcting and from which they have no protection. If it is to mean anything, data protection must mean the protection of the individual from the unjustified, uncontrolled and undemocratic power of the state.
Lord Chalfont: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord will give way. I do not want to interrupt him in the middle of his argument. Would he suggest that the files of intelligence agencies, the police and so forth should be opened to inspection by data subjects?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I was about to declare my support for the view taken by the committee and which was proposed to it by Liberty that the files should be open to inspection by the data
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registrar. I believe that that would be a first and important step in providing accountability for those secret files.
I have heard the directive criticised for being complicated and imprecise. It takes up the right hand columns—half a page—of 30 pages. It seems to me to be expressed in clear, normally uncontroversial terms. It is short, simple and effective. I believe that the case for a directive of this kind, covering more than one country of the European, Community, has been well made. The agreement of your Lordships' committee with the thrust of that directive is a valuable move in the direction of greater freedom of information and protection of the privacy of the individual.
4.50 p.m.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, as one would have imagined, this has been an interesting debate. One of the things that has come out of it quite clearly is that the holiday has done the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, a great deal of good. He asked whether I would be indiscreet enough to tell him what would appear in the legislation next year. I can assure the noble Lord that I shall not be indiscreet enough as to say that but there will be plenty in it on which he can have cause to congratulate the Government.
The subject of data and data protection has a somewhat ethereal ring about it, and the size of the report of the committee of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, is in direct proportion to the complexity of the subject. I must say I admire—and I respect—the assiduity with which the committee has tackled its task. The House will be grateful to it for the work which it did in preparing the report and indeed to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, for giving us the opportunity to discuss it today.
Data protection is a subject which we debate only infrequently in your Lordships' House, but it is one which affects all of us as individuals. Not many, however, are affected as is my noble friend Lord Hacking. He was fussed about the way in which the word "hacking" is used. He said he hoped that the Government would be a little more sensitive. I would only tell him that "hacking" is bad when it is a verb; "hacking" is bad when it is an adjective, as in hacking cough; but Hacking is good when it is a noun, usually when it refers to my noble friend Lord Hacking.
We are all the subjects of the collection of information, information which is held by some organisation or another. Our banks; our insurance companies; the charities which we support; and, dare one say it, the tax man—they all have a legitimate need to hold information about us. This need, of course, extends right across the public, private and voluntary sectors. It covers every area of human activity. Throughout history, societies have always needed to hold some information about the people who live and work in them. No society would function efficiently without information about its members.
Even the ancient Romans held personal information for the purpose of tax collection—and I dare say that Matthew did too before sainthood overtook him. Maybe it is because of the records which were collected in

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Domesday Book that the Normans were such efficient rulers. So the collection of personal data is as old as society itself. It may not be the oldest profession, but it is one of the oldest habits.
However, the concept of data protection is of course relatively new. The last 20 or 30 years or so have seen huge development; in computer technology. In the public perception—and indeed it is a perception which I am bound to say that I share—computers appear to have almost limitless powers to manipulate data in any way in which they wish and to do so at great speed, and of course the public have to be protected.
Computers are undoubtedly a wonderful innovation. But every advantage carries with it a disadvantage, and computers retain the capacity for misuse and for abuse of the information which they hold. And of course it is in order to guard against the misuse of computerised information about individuals that data protection laws have been introduced.
As my noble friend Lady Elles reminded us, our own law—the Data Protection Act 1984—was introduced in response to the Council of Europe's Convention on Data Protection, which was produced in 1981. The convention lays down a set of standards for the protection of computerised personal data. Those standards balance the need—a need to which a number of noble Lords have referred—on the one hand, to protect individuals against the misuse of information which is held about them, with the need, on the other hand, to use information for legitimate purposes. The convention gives the individual the confidence to know that his personal information is being properly protected. At the same time, it endeavours not to hamper unnecessarily the proper conduct of business life or of public administration. In other words, the convention tries to get the protection of data about right.
The 1984 Act is closely modelled on the convention and, because of that, the United Kingdom was able to ratify the convention in 1987. By 1990, several of our partners in the European Community had also ratified the convention—but a number of them had not. It is obviously desirable that there should be a consistent level of data protection throughout the Community if free trade is to be properly and fairly carried out between the 12 member states—otherwise those countries which do have data protection laws would be reluctant to pass data to those countries which do not. And countries which do not have adequate data protection might attract business at the expense of those countries where data are properly protected. Therefore there has to be a community of effort.
The European Commission therefore decided to bring forward its own proposals for harmonising data protection laws throughout the Community. In 1990 it published its draft directive on data protection along with a number of other associated instruments. I do not propose to go into the history of the development of the directive since its publication. But the important point is that the first draft of the directive was very heavily criticised. The Commission then brought forward a revised version—a Mark 2—which is still under negotiation in Brussels. Meanwhile, all but two member states have now ratified the convention.
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The directive, as of course has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords, is a much more intrusive instrument than is the convention. Not only is its scope much wider, since it would apply to manual as well as to computerised data, but it is also much more detailed. It concerns itself with many points of detail which the convention leaves to member states to determine for themselves. For example, it sets very tight criteria on the processing of health and other sensitive data. It requires large amounts of information to be provided to people from whom personal data are collected. And it give countries no option other than to have a system for the registration of data users.
All this means that the directive, as drafted, does not satisfy the principles of subsidiarity—that wonderful word which your Lordships may remember occurred on a number of occasions during the summer and about which we all became so excited.
The requirements of the directive would make member states go far beyond the requirements which are necessary to achieve the stated purpose of enabling personal data to flow freely within the Community in the interest of the single market. And, in the view of the Government, those requirements which are justifiable are far too complex and leave inadequate discretion to member states.
It is for this reason, among others, that the Government have very serious reservations about the directive. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, said that the Government took the view that this is a matter which is more suitable for individual states than for the European Community to decide about. That is not strictly correct. We believe that there must be Community harmony, but in our view the Council of Europe's convention affords an adequate level of data protection. The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, saw no reason for us to go beyond the Data Protection Act. My noble friend Lord Reay said that in order to achieve the necessary level of harmonisation within the Community no more was needed than to encourage those countries which do not yet have adequate data protection laws to bring them forward and to ratify the convention. That is the view of the Government too. If that were done, in the Government's view—I agree with my noble friend Lord Reay—we would need no directive at all. And the United Kingdom is not alone in having difficulty in finding the directive welcome.
The European Community has been discussing the directive for nearly three years. And it is still a long way from reaching a common position on it. The directive touches every area of human activity. It tries to apply a single set of detailed rules, and to apply them to infinitely varied areas of human endeavour. It thereby inevitably creates a large number of difficulties both of principle and of practice for almost every member state.
Almost without exception, all member states think that significant changes are needed to the directive in order to make it acceptable. The difficulty, though—and in this of course, it does bear a perverse similarity to the arguments about the reform of your Lordships' House—is that everyone agrees that it should be changed but nobody agrees as to how it should be changed. The Select Committee has made a valiant study of the whole

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of this complex area. I should like to thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, and his colleagues for their quite outstanding work. The directive is far from being an easy document to digest and their efforts were not helped by the fact that the Commission decided to change gear in the middle of their deliberations and put forward a revised text of the document when the committee was part of the way through its inquiry.
In the circumstances, and indeed even in normal circumstances, the committee did magnificently and produced a well-reasoned and readable report. My noble friend Lord Hacking referred to Article 6. He said that it was not in very helpful language. I cannot abide indigestible language. One does not have to go to the European Communities directives to find some fairly indigestible language. Sometimes one finds it also in this country in all sorts of curious places. The words in the draft directive broadly affect the principles of good data protection practice which are contained in the convention and which are reflected in United Kingdom law. We are broadly content therefore with those words although we have argued that they should follow the wording of the convention more precisely.
We feel that the committee did a magnificent job and produced a very good report. But after what I may describe as that charming bouquet to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, I must tell your Lordships that the Government do not agree with the Select Committee in all of its findings. In general—and it is always dangerous to generalise over anything—when the committee disagrees with the directive, we agree with the committee. When it supports the directive we disagree with it but, like Haydn, there are variations on that particular theme.
We share the Select Committee's view—it is one which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, emphasised today—that in some respects the directive should be made more simple and less prescriptive. But the Government's own proposals for the modification of the directive, if there is one, go far beyond those which are recommended by the Select Committee. The noble and learned Lord said that the committee accepts the need for a directive, and the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, said the same. The Government do not share that enthusiasm. My noble friend Lady Elles asked what opportunities would there be to debate the new directive before it is adopted by Parliament. The original version of the directive was debated in another place when it first appeared. This debate is an opportunity for the House to consider the present version. I understand that the Select Committee of another place decided that there was no legal or political reason for further debate in that House. That is a matter for them.
No doubt your Lordships have already seen the Government's response to each of the detailed points in the Select Committee's report, and I shall not attempt to reiterate them all. I would, though, touch on just two important points. First, and most importantly, there is the question of manual data. The Select Committee recommends that manual data should come within the scope of the directive. My noble friend Lord Reay does not want it to do so. The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh,
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says that he does want it to do so. My noble friend Lord Renwick asked what the Government thought about it. I shall tell him. The Government do not share the committee's enthusiasm about this matter at all. I agree with my noble friend Lord Reay. We believe that the directive should not apply to manual data.
As I mentioned, earlier, manual records have been held since time immemorial. It is only because of the introduction of computers which have the power to manipulate data. at great speed that anxiety about the protection of personal data has been brought about at all. We should ask ourselves—
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the Minister has referred again to the fact that manual records have been held since time immemorial. Would he agree that the great virtue of the Domesday Book, to which he did refer, was that it was available to the public and therefore it does not come under any of the censure to which he referred?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, of course the Domesday Book was of enormous benefit to the public mostly because it was a constant record of what happened years ago. I believe the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, would also agree that had it not been for the advent of computers, the fuss about data processing would not have come about. Indeed, applying the directive to manual data would actually mean applying a very complicated set of bureaucratic procedures at very great cost and to no significant purpose. Our view is "Don't let us do that".
The Government have conducted a very wide consultation exercise, covering all sectors of activity, about the directive. The great majority of those who replied have had some problem or another with the directive. But the greatest area of difficulty is over manual data. The one change which almost all should like to see made is that manual data should be taken outside the scope of the directive.
Another important issue relates to the way in which the directive requires health and other sensitive data to be dealt with. The directive introduces a particularly tough set of restrictions on the use of these sensitive data. The Select Committee recommends that these restrictions should be eased in some respects. The Government welcome that suggestion, but we do not believe that the Select Committee's recommendations go far enough.
By far the largest single set of replies to the consultation exercise has been about this. Those who responded—namely, doctors, other health service professionals and medical researchers—are all very concerned about the implications that this would have for their work. We in this country have a proud and excellent record of medical research. For instance, important medical advances in what is called epidemiology, have occurred where researchers have been able to link information which has been gathered and stored years before about particular individuals, with the subsequent health records of these people. This helps to identify the contributory factors to health problems.

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Under the directive, though, it would be necessary to determine the uses to which data can be used at the time when the data are initially stored. It would prevent researchers from using material which had been stored for one purpose, for research which had not been identified at the time when the data were stored unless the researchers were to contact each individual. That would clearly be an absurdity.
For example, if researchers wanted to survey the population to see whether cancer was prevalent in particular areas, they would have to write to everyone whose record they planned to look at and they would have to get their consent in writing. I believe that most of your Lordships would think that that was wildly impractical and simply was not on. In addition, much of the information which could be available to researchers would, under the directive, be not now available as there would be a requirement to destroy the data once the purposes for which the data had been collected had been accomplished. But some of the possible side-effects of some drugs—and one thinks, for example, of the early contraceptive pills and drugs which are taken during pregnancy—are often not apparent for many years.
If access to these data were to be prevented, or if the data were not to be preserved at all, the consequences for individual and public health would be very serious indeed. The directive would also make it very much more difficult to manage the health service effectively—and Heaven help us from adding to these problems.
The restrictions on the use of medical data would impose severe additional bureaucratic burdens on doctors and health service managers. The cost of running the health service would increase enormously. Resources which should be devoted to patient care would need to go into bureaucracy—and Heaven help us from that too.
The directive would actually prohibit the use of administrative procedures which have been used in connection with the treatment of millions of patients in the health service over many years. Substantial changes will be needed to the directive if these important and legitimate anxieties are to be met. In our view, provided that the general level of data protection is satisfactory (and we believe that it is in this country) it is questionable whether any special provisions are needed for sensitive data at all. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, referred to the fact that the directive would be retroactive. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, did not want that.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: No!
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I am wrong. The noble Lord did. I am sorry. I must remember to write the word "not" in the appropriate place in my notes.
We have been concerned about this matter. In our view the Commission wrongly believe that it is not possible to run an effective data protection regime under the directive unless that directive applies to all existing data. Here I believe that I can agree with the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, although I hesitate to do so in case he says that I have got it wrong again. I believe that the provision would impose very heavy burdens on very many organisations. For example, the Law Society
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holds data going back for over 100 years and the directive would apply to that data. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, will know the Law Society well. It would have to register data, state the purposes for which they were held, and so on. It is clearly ridiculous for all these bureaucratic provisions to be applied to this data.
My noble friend Lord Reay was concerned that the directive does not allow employers to hold records of employees' criminal convictions. He thought that it should. The position is that the directive restricts those organisations which may hold criminal convictions data. It excludes the holding of such data by employers but allows member states to provide exceptions to that general restriction. One exception could be for employers.
My noble friend Lord Reay was also anxious about costs. The United Kingdom has consistently argued that the directive would add major costs to many areas in both the private and public sectors. We have argued that the Community must address those factors before negotiations on the directive are concluded. So far, there has been no comprehensive fiche d'impact, and we believe that there should be one. It is difficult and costly to produce accurate figures for the costs of the directive. The Commission has not even attempted any costing, but some information is available on the basis of which some estimates can be made. It is estimated that in the banking sector alone, for example, the directive would mean initial costs of £80 million to £100 million, with annual running costs of between £60 million and £100 million. We estimate that the cost for the public sector would be similarly high. Economists in the Department of Health are working out how much the directive would cost the National Health Service.
The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, was concerned about third parties. The directive defines "third party" very broadly. In effect, it is anybody other than the data subject, the data controller and anybody authorised to process data directly for him. Some respondents to our consultation think that that is too broad. It would mean, for example, that companies within the same group could be third parties. That would mean that they would have to meet the bureaucratic requirements of the directive before they could pass data to each other. We are pressing for a much narrower definition.
My noble friend Lord Renwick was anxious about transborder data flows. The convention provides for the free flow of data between convention countries unless the level of protection is not equivalent in any other country. United Kingdom law reflects the provision by giving the Data Protection Registrar the power to prohibit the transfer of data in those circumstances. The Select Committee broadly endorses that approach, making the point that the transfer should always be permissible with the informed consent of the data subject. We agree.
I recognise the anxiety of my noble friend Lord Chelmsford on the occasional need to keep data for extended periods. I think that we have got the balance right on this in United Kingdom law; but we are not satisfied that the directive would have the same effect.

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I have already referred to the problems in the area of medical research, and we are seeking to modify the directive to reflect those anxieties.
The noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, was concerned about privacy. He will be aware of the consultative document on privacy law that was recently published by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor. The Government have asked for comments by 15th October on the possibility of a new privacy tort. In the light of the responses to that exercise, we shall indicate our intentions on this matter and on the related question of the behaviour of the press which was raised by the reports by Sir David Calcutt and the Select Committee on National Heritage.
As the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, would expect, I am glad that he agrees with the view of the Home Office that data affecting national security should be exempt from the obligations in the directive, especially those requiring disclosure for the data subject. That is entirely right. I like to think that our representations were correct, and I am glad that the noble Lord agrees with them.
This is a complicated and technical area. It is one to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, and his committee have directed their minds to the great benefit of the rest of us. We appreciate all that they have done. The Government agree with much of what the committee suggests, but not with it all. With that happy compromise, if I might say so, I thank the noble and learned Lord and his committee for the substantial and public work which they have undertaken and for the masterly report which they have provided. Ideally, the Government would like to see the directive abandoned. I know that that would please my noble friend Lord Reay, and in this I know that we would part company with the Select Committee. We do, though, agree with the committee that if there is to be a directive, then some changes—and very substantial changes—are essential. We shall continue to argue within the European Community for the improvement of the directive—and we shall not be alone in that. I can assure your Lordships that the Government will study carefully all the points that have been made in today's debate as we proceed with the negotiations on this draft directive.
5.15 p.m.
Lord Slynn of Hadley: My Lords, I opened the debate by saying that this is a subject that is both important and complex and that some of the issues raised by the directive are controversial. The debate which has followed has established each of those three adjectives. I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have participated and attended the debate and I thank the noble Earl for his reply. I am grateful, on behalf of my committee, for the nice things that have been said about the report, but that does not mean that I do not appreciate the criticisms that have been made of it. The object of the exercise was to allow those various important issues to be raised. In the light of the Minister's robust if not total rejection of the recommendations of the report, I take some comfort from the fact that I read this morning that the
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Confederation of British Industry welcomed our detailed and balanced conclusions, subject to one or two points on which it obviously disagreed.
It would be inappropriate for me now to reply to all of the various criticisms that have been made. The answer to those criticisms is to be found in the report itself, to which I direct your Lordships' attention. I should, however, like to make three short points. First, our object was to seek a balance between the data user and the data subject, between freedom of information and the right to privacy. It was inevitable in reaching a conclusion that some of your Lordships would fall on one side of the balance and some on the other.
On the question of whether there should be a directive at all, I should like to mention two matters. The Data Registrar, who might be thought to have some experience in these matters, told us in his evidence:
"1 think you would need at least a Directive which set in place this mechanism"—
that is the mechanism of the convention—
"of ensuring there was commonality between approaches and, having gone that far, perhaps it is worth getting a commonality through the directive".
We have also received evidence from the CBI stating that although the convention was perhaps the better document,
"We believe that a directive is the only means of achieving such implemention".
My second point relates to manually recorded data. That has been a difficult question. With respect to the noble Earl the Minister, the committee did not express enthusiasm for the inclusion of manually recorded data. We looked at existing British legislation; we looked at the convention and we considered what, on balance, was the proper course. We had to fall off on one side of the line and we fell off in favour of including manually recorded data. With great respect to the noble Earl, I do not think that I can detect a great deal of enthusiasm in that paragraph of the report—rather, there is informed resignation.
Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, referred to the importance of protecting people who move around the Community from the use of inaccurate and wrongful information suggesting a past criminal record. With great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, I do not think that that aspect can be brushed aside quite so firmly or so easily—I use the word "easily" in a non-pejorative sense—as he would do. As the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, pointed out, there have been some serious cases requiring serious attention.
Having said that, I shall not do what I said I would not do and reply to all the other criticisms. I merely refer your Lordships to the report. I hope that what we have done has at least provoked and will continue to provoke a certain amount of discussion.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Services for People with Learning Disabilities
5.20 p.m.
Lord Rix Lord Rix rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether community care assessments of people with learning disabilities are, as intended, influencing decisions about existing services and planning for future services.
The noble Lord said The noble Lord said: My Lords, it is a great pleasure, immediately after the Recess, to look at the first six months of the new community care arrangements for people with learning disabilities. Let me say at the outset that "learning disability" here means what "mental handicap" meant when I first entered your Lordships' House but a fairly short time ago. I am grateful to those of your Lordships, from all parts of the House, who have come to speak, including the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, who will be firing his sighting shot immediately after me. No doubt the broadsides will follow in due course. I am also delighted that we welcome back the noble Lord, Lord Ashley of Stoke, after his successful surgery.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Rix: My Lords, I hope that I am not guilty of the sin of pride when I say how pleased I am that he has chosen to speak on this his first day back for months, but then, the subject is disability, and we all know the noble Lord's proud record in that respect.
Your Lordships too have a proud record, evinced yet again by the numbers involved today. Since there are so many of your Lordships speaking, I can be brief, and I shall resist the temptation to raise issues which others are likely to raise. I am also grateful to the Minister for the interest that she has shown. I hope that she will have some good cheer for us at the end.
In preparing for this afternoon, I was able to draw upon the expertise of my colleagues in MENCAP, including a member of the Secretary of State's User and Carer Group, and upon the personal experience of parents and their sons and daughters. Further, MENCAP staff have pored over community care plans, NHS trust applications, and assessment procedures. Unlike some, I am able and willing to reveal my sources, and their probity is undeniable.
My Question is about whether we are really moving towards a system in which individual needs, honestly appraised, determine what support people receive now, and what plans are made for developing services. Others will, I believe, be raising issues about people with multiple disabilities, community attitudes, the role of the NHS, early intervention, innovative schemes, housing, day services, respite care, nursing, funding and the position of local authorities. My short answer to my own question is that we live in hope, but do not yet see a great deal of evidence to justify that hope. For most people in most places, not a lot has actually changed, and there is apprehension about what successful implementation of the changes might mean.
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The Government did not invent community care. Most people with severe learning disabilities already live in the community; and throughout history most people with a severe learning disability have lived in the community. We can as confidently say that most people have always eaten food, which does not mean that most people have always, eaten well! The community for the majority, like the institutions for the minority, has often given a pretty lousy deal to people with severe learning disabilities, and to their families.
What the Government have done is to embark with great determination on changing how things are done, in the belief that somewhere down the road that will also change what is done. Those changes include the closure of the remaining mental handicap hospitals; a switch from the NHS to social services and from social security to social services; and a division of both health and social services between those who assess arid plan and purchase and monitor, and those who provide and sell. The familiar GP has been transformed into a new purchaser/provider hybrid, with funds in the practice safe and an information leaflet on the table beside last month's magazines. The relatively obscure processes of planning and deciding priorities have become fairly formal and public processes. Many of the people who provided the services have now moved or have new titles and new job descriptions.
It is not really surprising that those who have suppressed the cynicism which says that nothing will change are apprehensive about the quite strong possibility of everything changing. Their anxiety is to keep what is good while replacing what is bad with something better. The closure of the mental handicap hospitals is overdue; but those hospitals have been homes to some people for a lifetime, and have provided respite care and back-up for others. The professional skills of the NHS in hospital, and community homes, and in the community, are not seen as outmoded by those who depend upon them. Social security has given the beneficiaries some purchasing muscle of their own. The GP has often been seen as "on our side" against the system. The social worker has been seen as. an ally, if not always a very powerful one.
As regards the system, nobody objects on principle to plans and assessments; but plans which prioritise me out of existence, and assessments which decide that I do not need services that I have depended upon for the past 30 years, could hardly be seen as anything other than threatening. People are living under the shadow of that threat.
We now know, thanks to a legal judgment, that local authority complaints panels have teeth and cannot be lightly disregarded by the local authority. But people who feel that the system itself is stacked against them, may well be unsure what to complain about, or to whom they should complain, for they are no longer clear who is in charge. Local councillors tell them that central government pay the piper and call the tune. Their local authority itself may or may not exist the far side of local government reorganisation. Having just become used to new family health services authorities and to newly revamped health authorities, they find districts amalgamating, the family authorities joining with them,

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and the new creation becoming more distant as it becomes bigger. And from where will strategic planning for learning disability services come if regional health authorities, as predicted, do not survive? Indeed, is central government in Leeds where the NHS headquarters are sited or in London where the Department of Health is sited?
But if service users are apprehensive about success, so, it seems, though in a different way, are government. The word has gone out not to be too frank in feeding back to people what their assessment says about their needs. Neither area plans nor personal plans are to be allowed to raise "unrealistic" expectations. The All-Wales Strategy on Learning Disability, which did try to plan on the basis of need and put in resources to match, and which most people in and out of the Principality regarded as at least on the way to success, and a valuable precedent for other parts of the United Kingdom, seems to have dropped off the agenda. Social security benefits, which were seen at the time as among the outstanding achievements of the Conservative and Labour Administrations which introduced them, are now in question because they are helping a lot of people and, therefore, cost a lot of money.
I am realistic enough not to press this afternoon for a large addition to the resources available to families and individuals whose private debts are being increased by lack, and in some cases loss of services, and by charges for what there is, for I realise that that latter point alone could occupy your Lordships for the rest of this Unstarred Question, but I have some modest specifics to suggest.
First, I invite the Minister to seek help in providing the general public with a learning disability booklet to match the excellent booklet on mental health. Secondly, I invite her tangible support for MENCAP's own large investment in a rewrite of the unique and uniquely successful Open University course on learning disability that caters for all the partners in community care, including people with learning disabilities themselves.
Thirdly, there are innovative local schemes at very modest cost, both in the voluntary and the public sectors, and we would be glad to co-operate in a project to publicise such schemes. Fourthly, we have helped to publicise a rational system of housing needs assessment, and we hope that the Government will work with us on getting that adopted. Finally, since, in our field, domiciliary alternatives to residential care mean keeping people in their parents' homes, not keeping them in their own homes, we hope that it will, at least, be made quite clear that parental resources and attendance allowance care components are not to be taken into account in assessing charges for community care services, or in assessing entitlement to help with the costs of the aids and adaptations which enable people to live at home.
I look forward to hearing what your Lordships have to say and to the Minister's response. My Question was whether we will help people to live dignified and full lives by designing services for people rather than trying to cut people down to fit the services. In earlier days I wore a costume that was too large and shoes that were
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too tight, and I slept in a bed which was designed for penitents of diminutive stature. I cannot recommend the experience.
5.30 p.m.
Lord Rodney: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rix, for allowing me to break my duck and to speak in the important debate under his name on the Order Paper. Perhaps noble Lords present will be kind enough to allow me time to say that the first anniversary of my father's death is in two days' time. I should like to honour his memory by recalling the love, kindness and steadfastness that he showed to his family and to those that knew him well both inside and outside this place. He was held in real and deep affection during what still seems to me too short a life. He, of course, would have been a deal more pragmatic on the subject.
I first encountered people with learning disabilities in 1971 when for eight months I was employed by Westminster City Council as a student aide. I remember driving a young boy with Down's syndrome to a holiday home in Kent. He had never been to the country before and his interest and amazement in all the things that he was seeing for the first time was heart warming; although trying to explain why a cow was a cow really had me thinking. We duly arrived and I was worried that fitting into a new group would be beyond his capabilities. I introduced him to the headmistress and waited to sign the obligatory forms. To my amazement, while I shuffled round the notice boards like a first termer—which is much like I feel today—I glanced out the window and there he was playing football and laughing with a number of boys his own age. There were no problems at all. I learnt that if you give someone an even break they usually make the most of it.
I also unfortunately saw the prejudices and misunderstandings which arose when someone who looked different from the rest of us was the subject of public gaze, cold stares or pointing fingers. Small children still point but hopefully in a spirit of inquiry.
I am sure that all noble Lords taking part today are well aware of the difference between a learning disability and mental illness. I needed to be reminded. A proportion of people with severe learning disabilities also suffer from mental illness; the majority do not. Distinctions, unfortunate as they sometimes are, have to be drawn for the sake of greater clarity. I am certain that MENCAP's new image and manifesto, which was put out last year, will go a long way to achieving this. No more excuses for not knowing or needing reminders. I was particularly struck by the statement of intent made by its chief executive, Fred Heddell. It was:
"to make sure that everyone in Britain is aware of people with a learning disability, their potential and their needs".
There is not much equivocation about that.
I should now like to concentrate on two areas, the first being housing. Of the 160,000 adults with severe learning disability, 20,000 live in large hospitals, 40,000 in residential homes and the remainder, some 100,000, live at home with their families. The larger institutions may still have a useful function for some people, perhaps even people with severe or profound disability. I do not know whether studies have shown that these

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institutions are, as is generally accepted, more cost effective. Some evidence seems to suggest that a reduction in controlling drugs, the range of aids against challenging behaviour, plus the inevitable wastage of an institution would go a long way to reversing this assumption. If hard evidence could be gathered from around the country supporting this premise the "needs led" attitude could prevail. That is quality care at a discount.
For the present, and while the benefits of the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 begin to make themselves felt, perhaps more frequent use of the idea of building smaller units within an existing institution or building on sites within the grounds would be a useful interim stage. These smaller units could then be used as assessment homes leading to a move away from the institution if that was deemed beneficial to the individual and provided that adequate services were available in the community.
As regards those already living outside of the institutions, who are by far the largest proportion of those with learning disabilities, the creation of institutional housing is not an answer. People with learning difficulties would like to live like the rest of us. They are only too aware of the freedoms and constraints of their own particular disability and of our differing attitudes towards them. Services which encourage independence and offer choice with dignity will be needed throughout their lives. The National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 not only encourages but places a duty on local authorities, requiring them to take much more notice of the expressed needs of the user. That is to be applauded and reinforces what good practice is all about.
The second area I should like to touch upon is that of advocacy. If community care is to work it is of paramount importance that the user's needs are clearly represented and understood. It should be obvious to all that those with learning disabilities, who are often not adept at speaking for themselves, are at a serious disadvantage at the point of assessment. I respectfully ask the Minister to look again at the right to individual representation as stated in the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986 if lack of a formal personal advocate in community care assessments proves itself to be disadvantageous to a user's real needs.
This debate is about the future of people of all ages who, through absolutely no fault of their own, find themselves disabled. They should have no need to come to us cap in hand, as one young man succinctly pointed out. We should and will be there to help them with their choices when and if they ask for it.
5.36 p.m.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, those of us who were privileged to know the father of the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, and the constructive work in which he participated from time to time in your Lordships' House will not be surprised that his son has also chosen to participate in the performance of his public duties. We welcome the maiden speech that the noble Lord made today. Its whole tenor springs in part from his
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personal experience in the area of London with which I used to be familiar; in Paddington, which is now in the City of Westminster. Clearly, his experience as a servant of the Westminster City Council has led to his participation in today's debate. It is all the more significant for that.
We welcome the fact that he comes to this House at a comparatively young age compared with most of us who remain active in the service of your Lordships' House. His future contributions to our proceedings will therefore be noted with great interest. I venture to suggest that I speak for the whole House in congratulating the noble Lord in his first attempt—and a very fine one, indeed—to address your Lordship's House.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, the House will also be indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Rix. His contributions outside this House as regards those who suffer mental handicaps are well known to most of your Lordships. It was most thoughtful of him, and the House will wish to thank him for having drawn our attention to this important Question.
I am no expert on the subject of this debate and your Lordships will be relieved to hear that l intend to speak briefly. I shall address only the principles that are likely to be involved. They affect us as ordinary human beings and as those who have the additional responsibility of being part of the institutions of Parliament.
Over the past few years there has been a tendency to dismiss society as a non-existent factor. Happily, that is now becoming rather more relaxed. Once again, there is a tendency to put forward the proposal that society as a whole, acting as society as a whole, as it does through the state and local authorities, has a constructive role to play in social fields.
It is not always a question of value for money. The services provided for the public by organisations such as MENCAP and many others cannot be assessed in terms of value for money. They can be assessed only in the light of observations as to the effect of individual effort on the people concerned, whether the assistance is provided at the instance of private organisations, local authorities or government.
It is extremely difficult for people who are mentally handicapped, either through brain damage or for some other reason, from an early age. Children can be extremely cruel to one another. In the earlier years unintentional cruelties, which would not be perpetrated in later years, are very often inflicted on those who suffer from mental disability. Therefore, the mentally handicapped start at a considerable disadvantage in terms of experiencing the normal bouts of happiness and carefreeness that are, or should be, associated with our younger days. Nor do people always realise the enormous pressures facing those families on whom the prime responsibility falls to look after, raise, encourage and improve the lives of members of the family who are mentally handicapped. This covers the entire income spectrum. No one would wish to minimise the unhappiness and inconvenience that can be caused to a wealthy well-to-do family nor indeed, the extra personal

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effort required when a member of that family is mentally handicapped. No one would suggest that in well off families special care and attention should be withheld. But for the poorer families of our country—the one-third living in conditions which do not fulfil what are assumed to be proper living standards—the problem of caring for a mentally handicapped child or adult while living in conditions of poverty mean that those moments of happiness and serenity which are surely the aim, and many may think the right, of all human individuals, are very difficult to achieve. As MENCAP and other organisations have shown, many people go through life to an advanced age carrying the responsibility of looking after, and encouraging, someone, a member of their family, with mental disability. Those people are denied the serenity that normal individuals with comparatively healthy families take as a matter of right.
The question arises in those circumstances as to how far the state, either as the state or through local authorities, should come to the aid of the individual. I mention that because of a remarkable assertion by Mr. Portillo, a member of the Government, who said in the course of a meeting last Thursday:
"You cannot increase the role of the state without diminishing the scope of the individual".
In all my experience of Parliament, I have never heard such complete nonsense and such a complete travesty of what is truly the position. I am not for a moment saying that the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, for whom I have the utmost regard, has any illusions or would endorse those views. But they exist and are authoritative in government circles.
In circumstances of mental disability, two kinds of assessment become necessary. The first is the degree to which an assessment can be made of the real extent of the disability, its intensity, its peripherals and how it can best be dealt with. An accurate assessment is necessary in order that curative or at any rate ameliorative treatment and conduct can be adopted by those in charge. That is an extremely costly process. We must make sure—and it should be the duty of the state to make quite sure—that accurate means of assessment are available, sometimes through associations like MENCAP but otherwise by local authorities in order that the parameters can be established, bearing in mind that, on the latest estimate, there are some 30,000 children and 160,000 adults who are technically mentally disabled.
The other need to be determined is the finance required by local authorities in order to obtain skilled assistance and to make available, in association with outside organisations, sufficient manpower or woman-power to be able to undertake the necessary functions. At present the Government prepare standard spending assessments of the requirements of local authorities. I fear that they are not always accurate. It is to be hoped that when the Government consider that question, as I am sure they must, they will not be niggardly in their response to the real needs of local authorities. Whether or not there is ring fencing is entirely immaterial for that purpose.
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When the noble Baroness replies, I hope she will not confine herself to the amount of money spent in the past and to be spent this year and over the following years. We require rather more than that. I suggest that the temperament of the noble Baroness adapts itself well to conveying to the House the genuine human regard which the Government have with respect to mentally disabled individuals.
5.49 p.m.
Lord Redesdale: My Lords, I join other speakers in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Rix, for initiating the debate. I should also like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, on his well-researched maiden speech and to welcome him as a younger Member of the House. I do so especially because I feel that he has now swelled the numbers from which I can recruit for the parliamentary rugby team. Many of the members are here after our unsuccessful tour to South Africa.
As the subject matter of the debate covers such a large area, I must apologise for the fact that I shall speak briefly on one particular area of which I have personal knowledge; namely, respite care. Respite care, or short-term care, is a subject which I believe is very largely overlooked. Although on a number of occasions in documents that have been put forward the need for respite care is classed as a priority, it is the easiest to cut and it always seems to be the first to be cut under any local authority policy.
As the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, pointed out, there are 100,000 people in this country with learning disabilities. That means that the number of people affected by such learning disabilities is very large indeed. I say that because for every person who is living with his family in the community—which is a very good thing—a large number of people are also affected because they are caring for that person with learning disabilities. Indeed, everyone in the family is affected when one member has learning disabilities. The pressures and the strains created can be quite enormous.
Respite care is actually very under-utilised. The figure that I have been given shows that only 20 per cent. of children and adults actually use the service. After dealing in respite care myself, it seems to me that many people believe that it means, in a way, giving up the responsibility for the people for whom they are caring rather than an immediate break—that is, a chance actually to recharge one's batteries and the opportunity to have a break from the close and sometimes destructive situation caused by the long-term nature of caring. Because respite care is difficult to get and considered something of a luxury, it is seen by many people as almost an emergency service only to be used when things break down and the carer has to go into hospital. The situation is, perhaps, not as it should be.
One of the big problems with respite care is that it is a very costly enterprise. For technical reasons, looking after someone who is severely disabled is very labour intensive. Behind every person with a severe disability, there are at least two or three carers who may need to use respite care.
My experience of respite care was gained while I ran a number of mentally-handicapped groups, as they were

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then called. The first one I ran, Pendower Junior Gateway Club, took place on a Friday night. We went around Newcastle picking up everyone and took them to a community hall. The aim was twofold. First, basically it allowed the children and adults a chance to get away from their families if only for two or three hours. Secondly, it gave adults, parents and friends the chance to put up their feet for a two-to-three hour stint. I must admit that I found it hard work because I was in fact the bus driver. After pricking up 12 wheelchairs in a row, delivering them and then doing the same about an hour and a half later, I usually found that my back was put out by the end of the day.
The experience really brought home to me one of the big problems which many carers face; namely, that there is a great deal of lifting and carrying involved in helping people with severe disabilities. Many carers, especially among families, are much more elderly than one would expect. I know that in a few of our groups, some members of the club were in their thirties while their parents were sometimes in their sixties or seventies. To try to shift someone around who may weigh 12 or 13 stone, together with a wheelchair, can be very taxing on someone who might be approaching the age of 70.
I know that to ask the Minister suddenly to throw a great deal of money at respite care would be a waste of time. Respite care is one of a long list of priorities. Indeed, it is only one of many necessities upon which local authorities have to spend their budget. However, I should like to point out that respite care is not a luxury. It is not something that is being given; it is not a holiday period in a foreign place where one can rest in the sun. It is a very necessary and important period away from such responsibility.
Before I conclude, I should like to draw attention to one concern that I believe the Minister could rectify. I have in mind one voluntary group which provides much respite care in clues throughout the country. I refer to the student community action groups—the SCAs of the universities and polytechnics. I know that SCAN (Student Community Action Newcastle) which I ran, had at least 80 students who were regularly involved during the student year in respite care groups. I was very disappointed and quite alarmed when I noticed that, under the new proposals of reorganisation for student unions, the student community action groups were left out of the core funding. It would be a great loss to voluntary groups which rely quite heavily on student volunteers if that was to be the case.
5.57 p.m.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale: My Lords, we should all be grateful to my noble friend Lord Rix for tabling the Unstarred Question this evening. As some noble Lords may be aware, my noble friend succeeded me as chairman of MENCAP. When I saw that my own predecessor as chairman and president of that organisation, the noble Lord, Lord Renton, had also put down his name to speak, I wondered whether MENCAP's contribution might, as it were, be a little out of proportion. However, in the event, the unusually long list of names of speakers for an Unstarred Question
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removed my doubts and demonstrated how important those underlying issues are, cutting as they do across party lines.
Thinking about the Question caused me to look back at the debates on what is now the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990. 1 should like to touch briefly on three changes which we then suggested and which have some direct relevance to the matters under discussion this evening. I made two attempts to bring into force Sections 1 and 2 of the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986 at the same time as what is now Section 47 of the 1990 Act dealing with assessment. Those two sections of the 1986 Act relate to the appointment and rights of authorised representatives of disabled persons.
My noble friend Lord Henderson of Brompton made a similar attempt to bring in Section 3 of the 1986 Act dealing with the procedure of assessment—a section for which there is actually a saving in Section 47 of the 1990 Act. We were fobbed off and, to this day, those sections have never been brought into force. I know that they were in a Bill originally introduced by a private Member, but they are in an Act of Parliament. I cannot help thinking that it would make quite an interesting study to work out the scale upon which the executive thwarts the decisions of the legislature simply by leaving provisions unused on the statute book. I must confess that when I was a civil servant I never quite took in the full potentialities of this simple device.
However, to go back to the 1990 Act, I had another amendment designed to give a specific right of initiative in asking the local authority to carry out an assessment. It was agreed on all sides that assessment was the gateway to community care, but I argued that the Bill was lacking in clarity as to the precise route to that gateway. The amendment was not accepted and the obscurity, which to my mind still remains in the Act, has had to be clarified by guidance which. alas, has not commanded universal approbation.
Then, I successfully moved an amendment that the money for community care should be ring-fenced. That is perhaps more important than the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, was prepared to admit. The Government would not have it, but in the bargaining that followed they agreed that in addition to the special grant for the mentally ill, there should be a similar grant for those dependent on drugs or alcohol. I put in a plea for the mentally handicapped but that plea was not accepted.
I suppose the most remarkable thing about the 1990 Act was the belated decision that those responsibilities should be put onto local authorities. This was at a time when the Government seemed to be set on destroying local government as we have long known it. That is a procedure on which, as far as I can see, they are still engaged in relation to education and the police. The Government came to that decision about community care when the authorities were still wrestling with the new order of things created by the Children Act.
I can well remember, though, the horror with which we heard a rather embarrassed Minister telling us, a week or two after Royal Assent had been given to the 1990 Act, that despite various assurances that had been

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given there would now be a three-year wait before the Act came fully into operation. I do not think anyone troubled much at the time to disguise the fact that a prime reason was the fear of adding to the poll tax which was already in deep trouble. But, looking back, it is doubtful if local authorities could have coped with immediate implementation. As it was they did not know for some time how much money there would be, and when they did know, it was not enough. It never is. The present omens, both for local authorities and for ensuring a sound financial base for a thriving and innovative voluntary sector, are not especially propitious.
I am well aware that there has been progress, as I am sure the Minister will not be reluctant to explain. For one thing, a year ago the Secretary of State announced a ring-fenced temporary special transitional grant using words which make distinctly odd reading of some of the ministerial arguments used when we were discussing ring-fencing as regards the 1990 Act. However, I should add that this grant forms part of financial arrangements which would have earned a warm nod of approval from those practitioners of labyrinthine complexity who flourished in the Byzantine empire. I have also read the Government's response, which slipped out rather quietly the other day, to the report from the House of Commons Health Committee on community care. I find that document falls a little short of the highest standards of crisp, crystal-clear clarity.
In making my modest addition to the list of questions to be put to the Minister—I appreciate that she may not be able to deal with them all tonight and may prefer to respond in writing to some of them—I begin by asking whether the Government are resolutely opposed to a long-term ring-fenced community care core budget. It still seems to me such a sensible way to proceed.
Further, I thought it disappointing that although a great many words were used in response to the House of Commons committee's recommendation for a community care charter, Ministers simply could not bring themselves to say "yes". I am still puzzled to know why. In the Minister's view is the guidance which has evidently been given to the effect that social services departments need to provide assessments only when they can then provide a relevant service—I hope that I have got that right—consistent with the legislation? Is she satisfied that for those with learning disabilities there is as yet adequate co-operation between social services departments, the health service and those responsible for special educational, transport and housing needs? I know that the NCVO is particularly uneasy about this because of the reports it is receiving. Is the Minister satisfied that in the absence of specific statutory provision there is reason to suppose that all those who need assessment, even within the guidelines, are somehow being picked up?
I have only two more questions. If the Government are to proceed with their review of the regulation of nursing and residential homes, will they please consult fully with all the interests and not just with providers? There again the NCVO is most concerned about that matter.
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Finally, is the Minister satisfied that, in the absence of any provision for representatives of people who may not be able properly to speak for themselves—I pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, in his notable maiden speech—the assessment procedure ascertains the individual's real needs and the best way of satisfying them within the available resources?
No one underrates the problems, but there are legitimate causes for anxiety even after the comparatively short experience of the new arrangements. The Minister's response, whether that given this evening or at a later date—and I know that she has gone to a great deal of trouble over this matter—will be received with great interest and studied with great care.
6.8 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I also wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Rix, for raising this subject and introducing this debate. The expression "learning disabilities" is now being adopted as a more felicitous one for mental handicap. Besides being chairman of MENCAP, the noble Lord, Lord Rix, was, in the Year of the Disabled, an energetic and successful executive of that organisation. I presume that the title MENCAP is being retained as the general public will not have caught up with the special meaning of the new wording.
There are, of course, other learning handicaps such as dyslexia and deafness. I am vice-president of the Royal National Institute for the Deaf. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, is to follow me in this debate. I understand from the newspapers that he may be able to hear some sounds coming from me now but that I may sound like a croaking Dalek with laryngitis. I congratulate the noble Lord on the outcome of his treatment. Over 25 years ago in another place he could hear me clearly before the onset of the illness which resulted in his deafness. We were both then engaged on subjects that affected disabled people.
The noble Lord, Lord Rix, suggested that I should contribute to this debate on the subject of mental illness because most other noble Lords would speak about mental handicap. I am glad to do so. It is a distinctly different disability, requiring different treatment.
Unfortunately both mental handicap and mental illness are found together in a number of cases. Care and treatment of those cases are especially difficult to arrange. I draw the Government's attention to those cases and suggest urgent examination as to whether they are being catered for adequately.
The Department of Health is, of course, the lead department with its Ministers but it has no functions in Scotland, where the Scottish Office Home and Health Department is the equivalent and has been for many years. The Secretary of State for Scotland is responsible for health and the National Health Service in Scotland, as I have good reason to know. Therefore, I trust that the Minister replying will ensure that the record of this debate is seen by other health departments in the United Kingdom, although I do not expect her to reply tonight to the points which I raise. Naturally I am familiar with the scene in Scotland, where I am involved with various organisations for the disabled, including the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, Scotland.

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Under the community care system, hospitals and wards which have accommodated both mentally ill and mentally handicapped people, are being reduced. The intention is that those who can be cared for in the community will be transferred to new arrangements. That process is happening more quickly in England than in Scotland, but both north and south of the Border there is anxiety about whether places are being properly found in the community before individuals are released.
In principle, the system of community care was generally accepted. It was made possible by advances in medical knowledge and treatment. There was also general agreement in the country, and certainly in Parliament after the Griffiths Report, that the elected local government authorities should assume this additional responsibility. However, there is no question of a complete transfer. This is a change of system and duties. Many people with mental disability were already being cared for in the community.
Most relevant for the mentally ill, enough hospital places must be retained for those who cannot survive outside or where their own safety or the safety of the public is at risk. Enough hospital places need to be kept for those who have relapses or stop taking their medication, which often happens wilfully. I understand that the most recently available figures show that between 80 per cent. and 90 per cent. of admissions to hospitals of mentally ill people were readmissions—over 80 per cent. I am close enough to those who deal with these problems not to be surprised by that figure. It is, however, causing problems.
Where schizophrenics are concerned, relapses have to be expected. An individual may be living in the community for weeks or months and then suddenly have to return to hospital. At present it appears that this has not been fully provided for, although it must be expected.
I come now to the incidence of violence, which has recently been reported quite widely in the press while we have been in recess. This debate is not the place to go into the procedures for detaining or restraining individuals whose mental disability appears to require restrictions because they might be dangerous. Procedures differ north and south of the Border under the Mental Health (Scotland) Act and the equivalent for England and Wales. However, the press informs us that the Government intend to make changes in England following the unfortunate, violent incidents involving schizophrenics which were headline news. No doubt before long we shall have the opportunity to consider the proposals, which I understand involve a community supervision order.
I must emphasise that only a small minority of schizophrenics are violent. The recent incidents created an impression that all schizophrenics may be violent. That can undermine the confidence of the public in the new community care system. That is why assessment and subsequent arrangements are vital. The violent few must be treated in a way which minimises possible danger to the public. In most, if not all, cases it is not difficult to identify them.
There is also the further sad subject of suicide. Most of those who have committed suicide have not been
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outwardly violent. Rather have they been overcome by depression and despair. Last Friday the National Schizophrenia Fellowship issued figures from its research relating to England only. In 28 months between dates in 1991 and 1993 no fewer than 164 schizophrenics committed suicide.
Schizophrenia is the single mental illness for which the community care system will increasingly have to provide. I remind your Lordships that the illness does not usually appear until the teens, the cause is still not known and a cure has not yet been discovered, though much can be done to alleviate it. Most people now suffering from schizophrenia are living in the community. Many are young, in their late teens or twenties. Their state is highly volatile. They can suddenly experience very bad patches when they need urgent attention or treatment. That is in contrast to mental handicap which usually produces a steady state.
Schizophrenia has been called the forgotten illness. I believe that that is not strictly apt because most of the general public had never heard of it until recently, or if they had they thought that it was a Jekyll and Hyde phenomenon. They had nothing to forget. I believe that it should be called the hidden illness. In the past parents and others kept quiet about sufferers, who were out of sight in institutions. Now the more that is known about mental illness the better. Attitudes have changed, advances in medical science have enabled lives to be spent outside institutions and care in the community is expected to look after most of those cases.
I congratulate the Government on ring fencing the grant for the mentally ill, which is now the mental illness specific grant. Because so little has generally been known in the past about the subject, local authorities might have used some of the money allocated for other purposes. We are told that the Government are carefully monitoring local authorities' community care plans. If a plan is considered to be seriously deficient, Ministers have the power to give a direction. I trust that Ministers will not hesitate to use that power if necessary.
6.17 p.m.
Lord Ashley of Stoke: My Lords, I begin by adding my warm congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Rix, not only for initiating this very important debate but also for the fine speech he made in doing so. Many of us are in no doubt that the noble Lord has accomplished more for people with learning disabilities than any other single person or group of people in the country. Thousands of people outside this House are indebted to the noble Lord for his efforts. I know that many people both in this House and in another place are also indebted to him.
I congratulate too the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, on a fine maiden speech. That is the traditional thing to say, but it is sincerely meant. The noble Lord's speech was impressive in that it dealt with the vital issue of the right to individual representation. That is of outstanding importance. If people with learning disabilities are denied individual representation, in many cases they have no voice. I am delighted that the noble Lord. Lord Rodney, highlighted that important issue. I take it that

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the Minister listened very carefully, made comprehensive notes and intends to act immediately on his comments.
I wish also to comment on the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, in relation to respite care, which is very important. Although the noble Lord says to the Minister that he is not asking for large amounts of money, I believe that he ought to do so. We all ought to do so. We need the money for respite care. It is the Minister's job to fight her corner with the Secretary of State in the department and with the Chancellor. I hope that she will press the point about respite care. When people labour for 24 hours a day with very severely handicapped people, it leads to breakdowns in health. It is an important issue.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, for his kind comments on my operation. Obviously, I cannot deal with that issue at present but his remarks are appreciated. We have been old comrades across the Floor of the House in another place and now in this Chamber in fighting for disabled people. I welcome his co-operation on the issue of people with learning disabilities.
My complaint is that while it may be true, as the Government say, that they are listening, they are not reacting. Too many Ministers concerned with the issue are substituting bromides for constructive action. It is tragic that the delicate and tenuous chain of assessment and planning is breaking. Once that chain is broken those people with learning disabilities will suffer. It is sad that assessment takes place against a background of local authority poverty. That is the direct responsibility of central government. Plans are described by MENCAP as "wish lists". How right MENCAP is. Provision has become a question of "priorities" or even of "exclusion". There are too few mandatory requirements and a plethora of voluntary codes. Those have led to an intolerable variation throughout this small country. All are at the expense of the most vulnerable in our society.
The increasing gap between what is needed and what is delivered is deeply disturbing. There can be no excusing the gap, let alone the lengthening of it. The network of necessary services which is so vital to people with learning difficulties may now fall apart under the increasing pressures. If that is too large a statement, I hope that the Minister will correct me and give me an assurance that the network is not falling apart; that it is firm and strong and that the Government are committed to strengthening and improving it. I hope that we can have that commitment, or the acknowledgment from the Minister that what I have said is true.
I wish to focus on one aspect affecting severely disabled people. I refer to housing. It is a key to people's independence, dignity and privacy. Where people live determines largely the quality of their daily lives. Many people with learning difficulties have multiple problems for which specialised housing is required. A number of Acts have been referred to in the debate. Section 2 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 imposes a duty on local authorities to arrange for adaptions or additional facilities needed by all disabled
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people to secure greater safety, comfort and convenience. We know that that duty is discharged by housing departments giving disability facilities grants (DFGs). Those grants were introduced in the 1989 Act. They are crucial in securing suitable housing for those people whom we discuss under the Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Rix.
The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, complained that Sections 1 and 2 of the 1986 Act have not yet been implemented. He indicated that the Government were cheating by not implementing those two sections. Of course they are cheating. It is quite wrong to pass Acts of Parliament and then to refuse to implement important sections of the Act. However, the situation is far worse than the noble Lord made out. Some Acts on the statute book have been neglected by the Government. The Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation recently issued a report on a two-year project about the enforcement of Section 2 of the 1970 Act to which I referred. The report points out that in the project's first year RADAR received 500 complaints from disabled people who experienced difficulties in obtaining Section 2 services from local authorities. One of their major difficulties was in obtaining house adaptions and special equipment.
We have a law clearly stating that those provisions should be made for severely disabled people; and that law is being neglected. The noble Lord, Lord Allen, was guilty of an understatement in complaining only about sections of an Act not being implemented. That 1970 Act has been enacted and implemented, but is neglected and ignored by the Government. That is a shocking state of affairs. The people who suffer as a consequence of the Government's neglect are the most vulnerable in our society. I am disturbed by the way that the Government are conducting the whole business.
The picture is even darker. Under the disabled facilities grants system, there is a mandatory means test which takes account of the income of all the people who have a legal interest in the property. But no account is taken of the expenditure for, and additional costs of, disability. Fancy that, my Lords ! The Government completely neglect that heavy burden on disabled people but they charge everyone who has an interest in the property. The balance is all wrong. The Government should redress the balance in favour of disabled people rather than the other way round.
I have a sheaf of notes. It contains some points which are stronger than those I have made already. However, I believe that 10 minutes is long enough for anyone speaking in the debate.
The noble Lord, Lord Rix, made a powerful case for the people he so admirably represents. He has support from all sides of the House. It behoves the Government to take note of the points made in the debate. The Minister is always helpful on these issues. I hope that she will do what she can. More than kind words and sympathy from her, we want action in her department.
6.28 p.m.
Baroness Cox: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Rix, on introducing this important debate which draws attention to the

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seriousness of the issues confronting all concerned with care in the community for this vulnerable group of people. I wish to add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Rodney for a very moving and therefore memorable maiden speech. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ashley of Stoke, for his great courage in speaking so soon after his operation.
I begin by declaring three interests. I serve on West Lambeth National Health Service Community Care Trust; I am a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing; and I am a patron of Rescare which is the National Society for Mentally Handicapped People in Residential Care. I shall briefly try to reflect some of the anxieties of each of those organisations.
The experience of colleagues in Lambeth suggests that the theory behind the present system is plausible. In other words, the results of assessments should start to feed into both the local interagency client-based joint planning teams as well as into the community care co-ordinating group which has the remit to take a strategic overview and to produce community care plans for the following year.
However, the success or otherwise of the process is impossible to evaluate as yet, as the care managers for this client group have only been in post for a few weeks. Moreover, Lambeth, like many other social service departments, is undergoing radical restructuring in order to reflect the purchaser-provider split. This is a complex process, fraught with difficulties and delays. The problems are exacerbated by a backlog of assessments and a flood of new referrals. The present situation is, therefore, far from satisfactory, as delays in undertaking assessments cause great difficulty for this immensely vulnerable client group and for their carers. It will only be possible to assess the situation and to identify gaps in service provision, and thus to begin to take measures to remedy them, once that backlog has been cleared.
Information from the Royal College of Nursing echoes some of the concerns expressed by those in the frontline of the provision of care in Lambeth. While recognising that community care assessments were intended to give clients and carers the opportunity to influence the care and support they receive, nursing colleagues emphasise that it is far too early to obtain an accurate picture of the extent to which the new system will influence current or future services.
However, in these early days, the picture is variable. Some authorities are more enthusiastic than others. Among the problems identified so far are delays caused by the bureaucratic system in social services compared with the National Health Service. Those are often delays in responding to urgent needs caused by the local authority committee system and the need for decisions to be ratified by councillors.
There is also anxiety over the assessment of clients' health needs in contrast to their social needs and whether social workers or others who are making the assessments are qualified and therefore able adequately to assess the clinical needs of clients, especially those with multiple disabilities or those suffering also from mental health problems. I am glad that my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy raised the problems of those who suffer from both mental health problems and
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mental handicap problems. Inevitably there are also concerns widely expressed over the extent to which budgetary considerations will take precedence over the provision of an adequate range of options to serve clients' best interests.
The failure of the present system to respect clients' wishes is a major concern for the charitable organisation, Rescare, which represents many mentally handicapped people and their families. I use the term "mental handicap" out of respect for the families who have themselves expressed a strong preference for that terminology as being less ambiguous and more appropriate than the current "in-phrase" of "learning disabilities". I personally believe that professionals and policy-makers should respect the wishes of those they serve and not impose their own language for professionally, ideologically or politically correct reasons. So while I am speaking about the Rescue concerns, I shall reflect the preferences of those whose interests I am privileged to try to represent. I shall continue to use the term "mental handicap".
Rescare's overriding anxiety is the failure of the present system to give an adequate range of choice to the mentally handicapped and their carers. The closure of many hospitals which had provided long-term residential care has resulted in the discharge of increasing numbers of mentally handicapped people into the community.
I must emphasise that the experiences of many have been happy, especially of those less severely handicapped who constituted the first groups to be discharged. I have visited houses in various places where new life in the community has been appreciated., with all the independence and autonomy it has given to those who were previously institutionalised.
However, for many others the situation has not been a happy experience. As the numbers discharged from hospitals and long-stay institutions increase, they include those who are more vulnerable and highly dependent. They are people for whom life in a three- or four-bedroomed house in a busy high street can be intensely lonely and far more restrictive than life in the larger, more homogeneous community, with all its facilities which they had to leave and which may have been the only world that many of them could ever remember. That point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Rix.
Rescare advocates the establishment of village communities as one option for the mentally handicapped, arguing that they can provide more companionship, relatively greater freedom and a wider range of facilities at relatively less cost than many small houses in the community. That is especially so for the profoundly and/or multiply handicapped. Last year, the Government had listed village communities as one of the options to be provided for the mentally handicapped, However, unfortunately it has been dropped from the latest government circular. There is no reason to suppose that the current system of community care assessments, which the Question before us addresses, will promote that option.
The failure to provide that choice is especially tragic, as many parents of profoundly handicapped sons and

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daughters believe that a village community would provide the best possible quality of life for their loved ones, especially when the parents become too old to continue caring for them or when the parents die. Moreover, cost is not an argument that can be used against the village option. The cost of good quality residential accommodation and the provision of facilities is considerably cheaper there than comparable provision in a house in the community.
Thus I believe that there is a strong case for at least a number of pilot village communities to be established. They could evolve within existing hospital sites. If the Government could provide some financial help to allow the development of at least a limited number of such communities, they could be evaluated independently, according to the criteria, first, of care effectiveness; secondly, of cost-effectiveness, and, most important, the extent to which they meet the needs and wishes of clients and their carers. That would be a rational and fair way to proceed in the light of the strength of views and the actual experience of many of those involved with the provisions for the mentally handicapped under the new legislation. I wish to ask my noble friend the Minister whether she will consider these proposals seriously.
That addition to the repertoire of services is particularly important since current provisions are tragically manifestly failing to provide adequately for many mentally handicapped people. There has been a disturbing number of cases where mentally handicapped people, discharged from mental hospitals or other long-stay residential institutions, have suffered from neglect and/or abuse. I give just three examples: first, a 32 year-old man who had been discharged from hospital to a private home. He wandered out and was killed crossing a road. But he had already wandered out on many previous occasions; he was a danger to himself and others. Clearly, the support and supervision he was given were totally inadequate. Secondly, a 47 year-old man, discharged from hospital five years ago, was left to cope for himself in a flat, with no visits from care workers. He wanders around the grounds of his former hospital, saying that this is where he has friends and that "it is wrong of them to close it". Thirdly, there was a mentally handicapped woman aged 37 who set fire to herself outside her own home.
I could cite many more examples, but I fear that those cases, which are a small sample of many more reported in the press, are just the tip of an iceberg of lonely, neglected mentally handicapped people for whom the reality is that the community does not care and that provisions made for them after discharge from hospital or other residential care have been woefully inadequate.
Rescare's staff are undertaking a survey of mentally handicapped people and their families. They have found that so far, out of a sample of 1,400 replies, well over 60 per cent. want residential, village-style communities as an option for their relatives. But unless purchasing authorities carry out unbiased, systematic surveys of families to ascertain their wishes, they will continue to fail to satisfy many clients and their carers. The present arrangements for care assessment policies to influence decisions about existing and future services will fail
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lamentably in their intended objective of enhancing choice and responding to the needs and wishes of those they are intended to serve. If the possibility of some kind of residential and/or village community is not even offered as an option, it will never feature as a choice and will not be taken into account in planning new services.
In conclusion, I must say that sometimes it can be gratifying if one's predictions are proved correct. But I cannot think of any situation in which I would be more pleased to have, been proved wrong. As the National Health Service and Community Care Bill was passing through this House I expressed grave fears that the community care provisions would lead to the kind of problems that we are now seeing, although the concept of community care was well intentioned.
Although new arrangements are working well for many mentally handicapped people and their families—and I want to emphasise that point—there are still too many flaws in the concept and too many deficiencies in the system, including arrangements for care assessment and strategic planning; and too many vulnerable people are suffering as a result. It has been well said that a society can be judged by the extent to which it cares for its most vulnerable members. There can be no more vulnerable group than this.
I therefore ask my noble friend the Minister to reassure noble Lords and all those concerned that the Government will address these problems as a matter of urgency. I specifically hope, and ask, that measures will be taken to clear the backlog in assessments and to provide a genuine range of choice reflecting the needs and wishes of clients and carers, including the option of village communities, which are a proven success in this country—for example, the Camp Hill village communities—and abroad, for example in the Netherlands, which is famous for being in the vanguard of provision for disabled people. I also ask my noble friend to give us some assurance that there will be provisions for clients' health needs as well as their social needs to be adequately assessed and met.
Unless appropriate measures are taken, and taken quickly, more tragedies will hit the headlines and the iceberg of hidden suffering will grow. Anyone who has had the opportunity to meet some of those suffering from the present disjunction between need and provision would feel as passionately as I do that our society is failing to fulfil the requirements of compassion and justice and that urgent measures must be taken to rectify this tragic situation.
6.41 p.m.
Lady Kinloss: My Lords, I am pleased to support my noble friend Lord Rix in his Unstarred Question this evening.
With regard to community care, for persons with learning disabilities there are three basic requirements. There is of course the most important question of somewhere to live; then something to do, preferably paid, even if it is only a small amount. This could make such people feel that they have something of their own for which they have worked. There is also the difficult question of friends to share things with. I shall return to that point in a minute.

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For people of working age the norm is paid employment. In fact, only a few persons of working age with severe learning disabilities are in paid employment. It is possible that more could be. So I congratulate the Government on their determined attempts to improve the take-up of the new disability working allowance, which is one of the ways in which people with severe disabilities can combine disability allowance and earnings. One problem with the uptake of the disability working allowance is the rule that makes it less accessible and less beneficial if one goes through a period of approved training before one starts work. I believe that the Department of Social Security is aware of the anomaly. Can the Minister say whether that is so, and whether anything can be done about it? I would have thought that approved training would be a sensible prelude to starting a job, especially if one had never worked before.
There are several ways to help people with learning disabilities to get into paid employment. One is Pathway Employment Services, which is run by MENCAP. It was started in Cardiff in 1975 and has since become one of the national services developed by MENCAP. Funding for each service is usually either by the local authority or health authority, and in some cases from both.
In York, MENCAP's employment service, which is funded by North Yorkshire County Council, has already succeeded in placing seven people in open employment using the DWA. None of the seven had been in paid employment before; they had spent most of their adult lives in training centres.
A video has been produced by the Department of Social Security and MENCAP featuring Pathway in York, called "The Way to Work", and showing the use of the DWA to get people into jobs. This video shows how their lives were changed and, hopefully, will act as an encouragement to other local authorities, voluntary organisations and employers to create similar opportunities. It is estimated that if the York experience were repeated across the country, it would create real employment for 5,000 people with learning disabilities. This would surely prove that people with learning disabilities can thrive in open employment. Sadly, the official launch of the video had to be postponed in April because of the illness of the Pathway employment officer, but he tells me that it is now hoped to launch it either this coming November or December. I wonder whether that point has yet been brought to the attention of the Minister.
This brings me to the point I mentioned earlier; namely, the case for friends. It has been found that those who are in open employment have made friends with their fellow workers and are therefore much happier and more settled. Indeed, Pathway has a scheme whereby an employee in the company is asked to befriend a new employee for the first few weeks to guide him or her through all the problems of being newly employed. A small gratuity may be paid to the foster worker as a token of appreciation.
I have a young friend who attends one of the day centres in York, Yearsley Bridge centre. I have visited it myself, and was very impressed. It is very well run.
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The centre is administered by the social security department in York on behalf of the North Yorkshire County Council social security department, which funds it. She has made many friends there and is now living in Howe Hill residential hostel in York. She is with many of her friends from the day centre, which they still attend. That is just, one example of enabling them to make friends, especially those who have ageing parents or a single surviving parent and who may be unable to cope. As the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, has already said in a most interesting speech, there is no respite care available for the carer. Therefore it would seem to be much better for her to be with her contemporaries, gain stability with them, and retain and improve the skills that she has obtained.
There is another comparatively small group of people, about 21,000, in the United Kingdom who often need an intensive level of support over a long period of time. This is a group of people who are born deaf-blind—not usually totally deaf or totally blind; the combination can cause problems in developing skills and understanding the world. They need careful assessment, especially in education and continuing education, to help them maintain skills that they have acquired and to enable them to have as independent a lifestyle as possible. There is great concern among parents of today's young deaf-blind people who have received a good education provided by teachers skilled in working with deaf-blind children. The parents are afraid that all the successes and efforts made by the children throughout their school life will be lost if there is no provision for them after the age of 19 other than living at home with no opportunities for keeping up their skills. Would the Minister say whether there is much provision in this very specialised field for day centres; namely, whether there are many clay centres? I am sure that the teachers are equally concerned for the future of their pupils.
6.48 p.m.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, I am the tenth speaker and much of what I intended to say has already been said. I shall not repeat what other noble Lords have so adequately stated. Therefore, I ask the Minister three questions. First, have we really considered the community? We are asking the community to take on responsibilities that they have not before taken on. We have asked the community to have attitudes which they have not indulged in before. In fairness to the community, many people are apprehensive, and indeed frightened, of what they are being asked to take on.
I speak with feeling because, having had to do this work myself, the "not in my backyard" syndrome has been very difficult to contend with. I have great sympathy for the community when they are asked to do something which they do not understand, of which they are fearful, and about which they know nothing. My question to the Minister, following what the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, said, is would it not be wise to give much more publicity perhaps to a charter for community care to help the public to understand what is being required of them? I feel strongly that the public

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should not be blamed for being fearful or frightened. They should be helped to understand the problems involved.
My second question is what is community care? Has anyone ever really defined it? What is the ethos behind it? Is it to close the big mental hospitals and therefore save finance? Is it in the interests of the patients? I take the point made by my noble friend Lady Cox in that regard. Is it in the interests of people whose children, as well as adults, are in the hospitals?
As I understand it, community care—and like my noble friend I prefer to stick to that description; it is better understood—means, first, that mentally handicapped people in hospitals should either return to their families or stay with their families in the first instance. Secondly, they may be placed with willing relatives or foster carers. Thirdly, because many of those people—as we all acknowledge—cannot live in the community with either families or carers, they may need to be in a home in a residential setting. It does not need to be a large residential setting. Many years ago, in Oxford where I come from, we bought 26 small houses three rooms up and two down—and placed five people in each of them in different parts of the city. Instead of one large institution therefore we had several small ones spread around the city. But even then the residents were lonely because people were fearful of them and did not befriend them. That fact had to be brought to the notice of the neighbours.
The point I want to make to the Minister is that in this country there are a great number of voluntary organisations which look after mentally handicapped people who cannot be with parents, families or foster carers. Most of those homes—not hospitals but places like the Rudolf Steiner homes—have done a magnificent job of work. They raise the money to do that. But there is a crisis coming to this country. I beg the Minister to give us some hope of the Government understanding the problems.
The voluntary organisations raise the money. They employ the staff. They accept people who cannot be with families or foster carers. But local authorities and the Government are cutting back on expenses. As a result those voluntary homes are beginning to lose money. When they lose money the trustees must look carefully at the situation. They are registered charities and as a result may have to close.
Knowing that this debate was taking place today, someone called to see me this morning. Unfortunately I was not at home and he left a note saying that the home for the mentally handicapped that he was running was being closed because the local authority and health service were unable to pay its fees. If the Government do not help the voluntary organisations and if local authorities find that they are unable to pay, then a valuable resource will be lost to the country. At the end of the day it will be more expensive for local authorities; it will be more expensive for government departments. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, that, unless we realise what is happening,
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we shall have a more and not less expensive service because we shall lose the resources of those voluntary organisations.
Noble Lords may ask what I recommend. I recommend that there should be a consortium of the relevant Ministries—the Department of Health, the Department for Education and of course the Home Office—with local authorities and voluntary organisations meeting regularly to exchange views and see the trends. In that way we shall not suddenly find ourselves with no vacancies; with nowhere to place people and no money coming in.
It has been said that the voluntary organisations should market themselves. It is possible to do that. The other day I saw a dress that I wanted badly. I could not afford it. It was beautifully marketed but I could not afford it. This situation is the same. However well a voluntary organisation or charity markets itself, if there is no money they will have to close and we shall lose that resource. I ask the Minister therefore to give some indication as to how the voluntary organisations will be supported and helped; how they will achieve that partnership with local authorities and government departments.
My next point concerns children under five. In the Education Bill—now the Education Act—the whole question of the care and education of under-fives was widely discussed. We pressed for nursery provision or care of some kind for children under five. In your Lordships' House an amendment was moved—I believe it was by my noble friend Lady Blatch—that there should be nursery provision for the most vulnerable of children; for those with special handicaps, so that at an early age they could be assessed and helped. If children who suffer from a disability of any kind, or who are vulnerable or come from a difficult family, are helped between the ages of three and five, they manage to make good progress from five onwards. By not helping them we are building up problems for ourselves because they then take up to the age of seven, 10 or 13 to catch up. Furthermore, if small children attend a nursery and are found to be in need of special help, they can receive that special help at an early age.
The Minister cannot possibly answer my question—it is not her Ministry. But perhaps she will pass on to her colleagues how important it is for a young child to be assessed at an early age, to be helped and treated. I hope that the debate today, for which we are deeply grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rix, will achieve those aims.
6.58 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I should like to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, by saying how much I support her suggestion—a point made also by the noble Lord, Lord Allen—that there should be a charter for community care. The noble Baroness made out the case extremely well. People do not know what is expected of them. There are many campaigns of one kind or another. But nothing is more important than that the public should understand the responsibility that we have as a society to care for those who are in any way

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handicapped or unable fully to care for themselves. I refer not only to those with learning difficulties, but also to those with difficulties of any kind.
I particularly want to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Rix, for initiating such a debate at this time. We could have debated all kinds of other issues. I believe that this is one of the most urgent community care-based issues. It is good for your Lordships' House that we have had such a large response. It often happens that on the first day back from the hols there is not a great deal of enthusiasm to speak. The noble Lord's Question has attracted 15 speakers, many of whom bring to the House a great deal of fresh experience in this area, as did the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, in his very effective maiden speech.
I wish to concentrate on housing and I do not wish to limit my contribution to what is now defined as those with learning difficulties. I also want to touch on, as did the noble Lady, Lady Kinloss, deaf-blind people. One could not have more of a learning difficulty than to be both deaf and blind even if it is only partial deafness and partial blindness. This is where I believe that the title of "those with learning difficulties", which we seem to have adopted and which has been criticised by a number of noble Lords, does not adequately or effectively define those who have a mental handicap. There are all kinds of reasons why people can have a learning difficulty. It is not just limited to people who have a mental handicap. That may well confuse the public. I hope that some thought will be given to this point as clearly a number of noble Lords on different sides of the House have done so.
We are talking about large numbers of people. There are well over a million people with a significant degree of learning disability and 160,000 adults and 30,000 children who have a severe learning disability. Deaf-blind people are a small population—an estimated 21,000 people in the UK. They are a group of people with the highest needs and often require an intensive level of support over a prolonged period of time. I wish to say how much I admire the work that is done by voluntary organisations. They constantly press the case and often provide the services with the assistance of local authorities. The amount that our community owes to voluntary organisations such as MENCAP, MIND, SENSE, or the National Schizophrenia Fellowship is enormous. I am sure that the Minister will have noticed in listening to the debate a deep sense of concern that the resources are not yet adequate to deal with the size of the problem. I shall come onto that point a little later.
I want to concentrate on the problem of housing. Staff in some of our inner London health and social services are familiar with the routine of assessing people with mental health problems who live under a railway arch and of discharging them after hospital treatment knowing that sooner or later, with no family, no job, and no home of their own, they may well land up again under the railway arch. Some people with learning disabilities are homeless in that sense. We know that there has been a great increase in the number of homeless people. But most are homeless in the sense that they have no home of their own. Many are still in hospital or in their parents' home, a state of affairs
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which often imposes an enormous burden on parents. Those are not necessarily the best circumstances for people with learning difficulties. We should not assume that everyone with learning difficulties wall forever live within a family. Reference was made by the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, to respite care. One has to recognise that many carers are themselves of a substantial age—perhaps 60, 70, 80 or even 90 years old. The need for respite is very great indeed.
I was reminded that when MENCAP was founded nearly 50 years ago the main concern of parents was "What will happen when we are gone?" It is a tragedy that 50 years later that is still the question being asked. It is a rather sad comment. MENCAP co-operated with the New Era Housing Association, the National Federation of Housing Associations and the Institute of Housing to produce this year a guide to the housing needs of people with learning disabilities and on how to assess local housing need. This begins to fill a significant gap in what we know about this basic need. It suggests that whereas in recent years there have been perhaps 2,000 new places created each year we actually need about 5,000 new places a year if we are to meet our responsibility. This is a minimum estimate based on hospitals closing and elderly parents dying. It stops well short of any positive target such as guaranteeing people with learning difficulties a home of their own by the age of 30, which is the kind of target for which we should be aiming.
All of us know of people with significant learning difficulties who are able to cope in homes of their own, often shared with two or three other people and sometimes, as I know from one of my relatives, shared with a person who has no learning difficulties but who is prepared to form a kind of home co-operative where people with learning difficulties can feel at home. There is a large gap between identified needs and planned developments. Some plans record a fairly urgent need for 80 or so places, but offer a tentative budget for no more than six or so places. Local authorities throughout the country, as they try to meet some need, are by no means able even to contemplate meeting the assessed need.
While bridging the housing gap is actually not a major task in terms of overall housing need, or of the kind of housing programmes we used to take seriously a decade or so ago, we are talking about increasing the current special needs housing programme for this group by two and a half times. If we are to meet that target the funds have to be provided. I am concerned whether there is security for the special needs programme and whether new allocations will be there to support capital possibilities. There is a fairly determined drive to pass the whole housing support responsibility to social service departments by relabelling housing support as social care. We have to watch that very carefully as responsibilities are loaded on local authorities which do not have the resources to meet the needs.
I wish to say a few words about SENSE and the deaf-blind. SENSE has recently undertaken a survey of the concerns of 1,500 deaf-blind people and their families. The initial responses indicated a tremendous concern over the lack of provision, as the noble Lady,

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Lady Kinloss, said, after age 19 and a particular need for residential services. The need for day provision and further education is highlighted.
Another area of great concern was respite care for adults as there is virtually no provision recorded as being acceptable to families. The response to the survey indicated two groups with particular concerns. The first was elderly parents looking after their middle-aged deaf-blind sons and daughters where there appears to be no movement to enable those adults to move on. The second was that there are now many deaf-blind young people who have received a good education provided by teachers skilled in working with deaf-blind children. They are very concerned that all the efforts and successes throughout school life will be lost if there is no future after age 19 other than remaining in the parental home with no opportunities for a meaningful life.
I conclude by hoping that the Minister will be able to give us some kind of reassurance about funding. I remember very well—not just as regards the debates which we had about the National Health Service and Community Care Act, but when the Minister announced the funds that were going to be available—that I said that I was quite confident that the local authorities were right in saying that the funds were inadequate. That seems to be the case. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some kind of reassurance when she comes to reply to the debate.
7.10 p.m.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, I too would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Rix, for initiating this debate which comes at a time when we are starting to see the early results of the Government's community care policy and its effect on the mentally handicapped and others. I would also like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Rodney on his knowledgeable and wide-ranging maiden speech especially, I confess, because he gave a fair wind to the main thrust of what I have to say this evening. I hope that we shall hear from him again very soon.
I use the expression "mentally handicapped" deliberately because I find the expression "people with learning disabilities" confusing and indeed irritating. Like other politically correct expressions such as "people with learning difficulties" and "special education needs", I can only assume that it covers a broader range of disadvantage than mental handicap to which I refer specially tonight.
Before I do so I should declare an interest as the father of a 12-year old Down's Syndrome child who is therefore mentally handicapped, and as a patron of Rescare, the national society for mentally handicapped people in residential care. My noble friend Lady Cox, who is also a patron of Rescare, has already referred to some of the difficulties which it faces in its attempt to promote residential, sheltered village communities as a genuine option for the mentally handicapped and their families.
To earth what I am about to say firmly in the question before us, I would point out that if one particular form
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of provision is being unfairly discriminated against by the Department of Health, as I believe is the case with village communities, then community care assessments, however accurate, are likely to result in some very vulnerable people being cruelly sent in the wrong direction. My noble friend Lady Cox has already given examples of where that is indeed happening and, of course, I could give many more.
So I hope that it is helpful if I start by looking at a little of what has been going on behind the scenes in the Department of Health. The problem appears to have started last year when the Government surprisingly left village communities off the list of provision which local authorities are encouraged to support. That was a complete volte face from previous government policy which had been wisely and publicly supported by my honourable friend Mr. Stephen Dorell when he was a Minister at the Department of Health, and which included village communities alongside other forms of provision. When Rescare asked the Department why this had happened, we were told that active support for village communities had been dropped because a survey conducted by the department had come out strongly against them. When we eventually extracted details of the survey's findings we learnt that there had been only 43 respondents to the department's questionnaire which had been sent to literally hundreds of recipients. Of the 43 respondents, 20 made no comment for or against village communities. Three respondents, including Rescare, supported them and 20 had commented negatively. But of those 20, some 15 respondents were social services or local authority departments and only five were other voluntary organisations. So far the department has been reluctant to tell us who those five voluntary organisations were, which I believe is a pity because we would like to get in touch with them to make sure that they have not misunderstood the kind of service which we are trying to promote.
I wonder whether I can ask my noble friend the Minister to reconsider this position and to let us know who they are in due course, perhaps by correspondence. Furthermore, I ask my noble friend, when she comes to reply this evening, to agree that her department's survey can scarcely be described as sufficiently authoritative to have had such a profoundly negative effect on the service we favour. As my noble friend considers her reply, perhaps I should remind her of some statistics already given to us by my noble friend Lady Cox about Rescare's ongoing survey of families with a mentally handicapped member. Of the 1,400 families so far questioned, over 60 per cent. wish to see their mentally handicapped relative cared for in sheltered residential or village communities.
Whether or not the five other voluntary organisations which were negative about village communities have misunderstood them, I am afraid that there are some senior civil servants in the Department of Health who have clearly not yet grasped the basics of what a village community is and what Rescare stands for. I say that because, together with other Rescare officers, I attended a meeting at the department on 13th May this year. After we had finished complaining about the survey to which I have just referred, we gave examples of some of the

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existing hospitals for the mentally handicapped which have not yet been closed and which we believe could be adapted to become village communities. We mentioned St. Ebba's in Epsom; Offerton House in Stockport, Northgate Hospital in Newcastle, Bromham Hospital in Bedford and Cranage Hall Hospital in Cheshire. When we mentioned, I believe, Cranage Hall, a senior civil servant present interjected that we could not possibly want to keep that institution open because it had some of the worst wards in the sector.
Now of course 1 make no criticism whatever of the civil servant in question. I merely mention this conversation to show how there may still be substantial misunderstanding, even among those who advise the Secretary of State, as to what we mean by a sheltered village community. Perhaps we have failed so far in our public relations. I emphasise that we are as opposed to wards as anyone else. We have no wish to return to the horrific scenes depicted by the film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" which I believe has had such an influence on the matter we are discussing this evening. We favour the bungalow concept.
I hope it will help to promote more widespread understanding of what Rescare stands for and what a village community should be like, if I put on record the concept outlined in 1988 by the St. Ebba's Parents' and Relatives' Group which was supported by the Manor and Queen Elizabeth Hospitals' Groups and by the local MENCAP. It resembles schemes which we have proposed elsewhere. I quote from the St. Ebba's proposal of 1988:
"We see a collection of small homes scattered about the pleasant grounds of St Ebba's. Several of the existing listed buildings would be suitable for further conversion and improvement. Each home would be managed individually, making for diversity, either by direct delegation from the responsible authority or through existing organisations experienced in this field. It would have, as the hospital does now, specialised on-site services for occupation, training, medical and para-medical care, and facilities for entertainment and sporting activities. It would allow residents freedom to wander around in safety, which is enjoyable and therapeutic".
I say in brackets that that is not a freedom which is freely available to many under our community care programme. The proposal continues:
"It would provide a home for life for each of the existing residents and a new home for those living with their parents into which to move as family circumstances changed. It would be associated with satellite homes in the neighbouring district for those people capable of more independent living, so providing flexibility for people as their needs change. It would provide opportunities for sheltered employment to residents and non-residents. It would offer its range of services to mentally handicapped people living outside to use as daily visitors and would offer flexible respite care. It would give residents freedom to attend functions and entertainment outside and where appropriate to enrol in courses at local colleges and take up suitable employment. It could become a centre of excellence with training for staff and opportunities for research in mental handicap-causes, prevention, treatment and management".
Yet, even with a credo like that, no one from Rescare has been included in the new user and carer group, which I gather has been set up to advise Ministers and civil servants on how the community care policy is working at ground level and to offer recommendations. That might be fair enough, but we have found it difficult to discover who the members of the group are. We have merely been sent a list of names, together with the town
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or country from which they come. So I trust that noble Lords will forgive me if at this point we have a slight chip on our shoulder which I trust my noble friend the Minister will be able to remove this evening in her usual charming way.
As to the numbers of mentally handicapped people which village communities should hold, we reject any arbitrary limit—for example, 150—as being based on flawed ideology or false deduction from other unsatisfactory experience. So I very much hope that the pressure which I hear is now being applied to Ravenswood and Botton villages by local registration officials to reduce numbers, will cease forthwith.
If anyone doubts that larger residential communities can be safely encouraged, they have only to go to the Netherlands and look at what the Dutch are doing. Virtually all the Dutch provision is post-war. Although their population is only about one-third of that of the United Kingdom, they have more places in centres of more than 300 people each than we have in all our hospitals combined 27,000 compared with some 22,000 in the United Kingdom. The number living in such centres appears to have increased rather than decreased in the past 10 years. Parents from the United Kingdom who have visited Holland and a Rescare committee member who is a nurse and has worked there, all testify to the high standard of homely care. They report good individual programmes, excellent specialised services and good community services with flexible access to and from these large residential centres.
So, any arbitrary limit on the size of a village community seems likely to be misguided. Leadership, competence, local organisation, sustained enthusiasm and compassion are the ingredients of success; numbers are largely irrelevant.
I come now to the question of comparative costs between village community care and other forms of provision, notably community care itself. There does not appear to be much reliable data where comparisons capture all the costs involved, regardless of the budget to which they are charged. In a quest for such information, I tabled a Written Question on 26th July, the answer to which has just reached me, to the effect that the information is not kept centrally. However, I understand that a draft NHS Management Executive report says that costs per resident under the community care programme generally vary from some £15,000 to £26,000 per annum. But these costs appear to be for the residential care only, and to exclude the cost of day services, health care and so on. Moreover, even these residential costs can be very much higher. For instance, I have come upon one example where the residential cost of keeping two people in an ordinary house under the community care programme amounts to £170,000 per annum. Since one of the residents in question suffers from what is known as "chronic unremitting challenging behaviour", one cannot help wondering whether he might not be better and more cheaply looked after in a secure residential environment.
Be that as it may, our position at Rescare is that good quality residential care costs about 65 per cent. less than similar care under the new community care programme.

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Annual costs per resident in residential care seem to average around £25,000, but this would include a substantial NHS management charge and would also cover the costs of such essential on-site services as primary health care and consultant psychiatry; ancillary medical services such as drama and music therapy; extended education and training; occupational therapy; and recreation.
I would be most interested to know whether my noble friend the Minister has a view on these estimates and whether she can ask for further impartial analysis. In fact, we suggested to the department in May, as my noble friend Lady Cox has mentioned, that one or two pilot schemes turning existing residential hospitals into village communities should be carefully costed, and that an independent assessment should be made of the quality of life which they would offer. As of today, I regret to say that no answer has been forthcoming from the department. I hope that my noble friend can give this suggestion her blessing in due course.
To conclude on a general note, I have to disagree with those who believe that our community care problems can be cured by the simple injection of more money into the system. I believe the real problem lies deeper, and that the policy, though well intentioned, is fundamentally flawed for many people. There is not really enough of a community where we are forcing many of our mentally handicapped people to go, and it does not care all that much either. Of course, it may suit some people. Some people will be luckier with their social workers and other support than others, and where community care works, I wish it well. But the picture is confused and I feel that village communities should be invited to play a full and vigorous part in the nation's care of some of our most vulnerable citizens. I very much hope that my noble friend will be able to agree.
7.24 p.m.
Lord Palmer: My Lords, I too am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Rix for asking this important Question tonight. I should also like to add my sincere congratulations to my old friend the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, on his excellent and well researched maiden speech.
I would like to start by telling your Lordships about a little girl of 10. She finds it impossible to understand anything anyone says to her—and that includes her family. She is aggressive and she screams from dawn to dusk. She is incapable of feeding herself. She does not recognise her name. She is incontinent and has regular fits which lead to unconsciousness. I do not know her name, but some of your Lordships may recognise her. She is, in fact, the little girl chosen in the 1989 social survey report The Prevalence of Disability among Children to give an example of what it is like to be one of the 30,000 most severely disabled children in Britain today.
Some people may think that the number of such children is reducing while maternity services improve. It is true that parents now have more information about the likelihood of a child being born disabled, and with the option of terminating pregnancies we have
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undoubtedly become better at looking after children with learning disabilities. We must be proud of that achievement.
All three of my children were born on the National Health Service in the Western General hospital in Edinburgh, where the ante- and post-natal care is second to none. It is important to remember that the ante-natal prognosis of spina bifida was originally researched and developed at that hospital.
If we look at' the figures for births with congenital malformations in England and Wales between 1975 and 1991, we see that some categories have fallen dramatically. For example, the number of spina bifida births has fallen from 1,101 in 1975 to just 94 in 1991. The number of children born with anencephalus has dropped from 775 to just 12 in the same period. But chromosomal abnormalities have gone up from 70 to 531 and, sadly, Down's syndrome births have remained about the same with a 14-year average of 462. The Family Fund suggests that there has in fact been a marked increase in the number of severely disabled young children living at home with their families.
I am concerned that local authorities in England and Wales are being slow to develop registers under the 1989 Children Act. As a result of that dilatory approach, our knowledge of these children and perhaps more importantly their needs is far from complete. If we do not know the full extent of the situation, we cannot plan and if we do not plan, we are at risk of coming unstuck. I realise that the National Health Service and Community Care Act applies mainly to adults, but surely it is in childhood that a learning disability must be recognised, as the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, so sensibly stressed. It is important that that is done so that needs can be assessed, plans made, and, finally, services and help started.
I believe that it is important when assessing anyone of any age that those assessments are made with what is actually required in mind rather than what is readily available; otherwise I fear that tragic mistakes will materialise. Tales of people waiting for up to two years before being assessed are, I believe, totally unacceptable in our society today. I congratulate the Government on trying to tighten up on the timing and relevance of assessments carried out under the Education Act.
I started with a tragic scenario I would like to end by telling your Lordships of a success story. In my local town the Eildon Housing Association has set up a unit to accommodate people from institutions, run in some cases by charities or larger old fashioned state-run hospitals, with a view to re-introducing patients into the community at large. There has, as a result, been a marked improvement in the physical and mental well-being of patients, with some surprising results. That has had no great impact on the local resources available and, according to our local medical practice, the medical attention has been no more than that required by the average registered medical patient. That suggests that funding generally per capita north of the Border is greater than in England and Wales. The Government should perhaps consider addressing that situation.

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Finally, I should like to ask the Minister for an assurance that National Health Service and Community Care Act assessment will draw upon the Education Act and the Children Act assessments, where available, so that there is a picture of people over time and not just at a point in time which inevitably is a time of crisis. I also hope that those assessments will cover people's strengths and wishes and not just their weaknesses and impossibilities.
7.30 p.m.
Lord Renton: My Lords, I wish first to join with those who have criticised the expression "learning disabilities". It is misleading and confusing. Everyone has a learning disability of some sort. There was a Lord Chancellor in the 1920s who could not tell "God Save the King", as it then was, from "It's a long way to Tipperary". I would sell my soul to the devil if I could play the piano with more than one finger, but I cannot. There are mentally handicapped people who are brilliant artists, which, alas, I am not. I do not know how the phrase crept in, but I hope that the Secretary of State, her Ministers and the department will give a lead in using the more accurate term "mental handicap". It is no good saying, "Oh, but it is insensitive". Are we to have sensitivity conquering the truth? In any event, the expression "learning disabilities" is somewhat insensitive. especially in the context in which it is sometimes used. Do let us try to get a bit of sense into this matter.
This important debate, so well initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Rix, is taking place at a time when we have a budget deficit of £50 billion in a year. The Treasury has to search for economies. But the clear message from the debate is that community care is costly and more, not less, money is needed for it; and that failure to provide the money causes hardship, misery, and, indeed, shame on the part of the whole community which has a duty to provide care for those most in need. Perhaps I may remind my noble friends on the Front Bench that it is a Tory principle that we give a high priority to caring for those most in need.
I hope that it will not be considered irrelevant if I try to put the whole subject into its true perspective by going back just 15 years. That is not far in the evolution of social policy. In 1978, when it so happens that I became chairman of MENCAP—I claim no credit for what I am about to say—it had been considered for quite a long time to be unfortunate that thousands of people, both adults and children, suffering from mental handicap were shut away in long-stay hospitals. They were often just forgotten by their own families, alas! That was the social attitude at the time. But before I became chairman, MENCAP had decided to do something about it.
In the spring of 1979 the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, whose speech we all respected, addressed the MENCAP annual conference. It was put to him that he should get mentally handicapped people out of long-stay hospitals. He agreed in principle. I do not criticise him when I say that between that AGM and the start of the general election campaign he did not have long enough to get money out of the Treasury to help us get on with the job. In the autumn of that year, when my noble friend Lord
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Jenkin of Roding was the responsible Secretary of State, a modest sum was given to MENCAP for administrative help in starting our Homes Foundation. That was the beginning of a movement to provide lots of small hostels so that mentally handicapped people could live in the community. It has been a great success. The noble Lord, Lord Rix, became secretary general of MENCAP in that year (1980).
What happened between 1980 and 1986? It is impressive. The number of children and young people in long-stay hospitals was reduced from 2,500 to only 14. That is not bad. I am glad to say that none of the mentally handicapped children and young people who were discharged was merely turned out onto the streets. Some of them went to their own parents. Places were found for them in various kinds of living accommodation where they could receive care and treatment as, for example, at Ravenswood with which the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, is familiar, and where he has given us such encouragement.
It so happens that my severely handicapped daughter has been at Ravenswood for years and years. It is a charity. It now has 140 residents, as we call them. The cost of running Ravenswood is immense. We are having to raise about £1.5 million just to renovate and rebuild buildings that were constructed only 30 years ago. All those people live in. A few of them are able to go out and do simple work in the village. We have to have a three-shift system of people caring for them, and that is expensive. These people deserve to he paid properly, because it is not easy work.
Local authorities gradually came round to the idea. The performance of local authorities has been uneven. That is something we must face. In Cambridgeshire, which I know best, the local authorities have done very well. It is reassuring to know that under the 1990 Act the Government have some powers of persuasion.
Those parents who could house those children and other children who were found to be mentally handicapped in more recent years, are getting old. So are the children. They are grown up. We cannot assume that the parents with those people living at home, and who are doing their best, can go on forever. The parents will become old. They will die Something has to be done to place the children where they can be looked after properly. There is therefore a need for residential and nursing accommodation to cover just those cases which are increasing all the time. Still more money is required.
I wish to add only one comment. It is that having been a friend of the late Lord Rodney I know that he would be proud to have heard his son make his maiden speech today.
7.40 p.m.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I have sat in your Lordships' House for a brief time—hardly a year—but I hope that I have learnt at least two things. The first is that when the views of your Lordships are expressed as powerfully, with such unanimity and without reference to any party line, as they have been today, it is by and large a good idea for Ministers to attend. The second is that occasionally one hears a speech of such power and grace that it lingers in the

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memory. We heard such a speech today and it was a maiden speech. I thought that the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, was moving in both best senses; it was affecting and it was persuasive.
Most of the themes seem to have crystallised on the basis of agreement. The first is that there must be a correct definition of those with learning disabilities or mental handicaps. The second is that there needs to be as precise an assessment of numbers and needs as possible. The third is that whatever the schemes they must be the subject of the fullest consultation. The fourth is that there must be a proper evaluation of the efficient expenditure of money upon these schemes. The fifth is that above all and underpinning everything there must be the fullhearted recognition that all our fellow citizens, whatever their disabilities and handicaps, have a contribution to make, each in a different way, to the life of this country and that every one of them is worthy of a decent regard.
The keynote that seems to have concerned your Lordships is that there should be understanding, co-operation and consultation. Of course, as was indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Renton, resources are tight. But given reasonable consultation most people will accept the limits of finance. What they abominate—and rightly in our view—is the thought that difference or disability somehow means a lower state or that handicap or disability disentitles one to any decent consideration.
On cue, as always, my noble friend Lord Bruce of Donington returns to the Chamber. I wish to endorse as strongly as I can his remarks about what the Portillo tendency appears to—I almost used the words "believe in" but I think that I should use the word "represent". It is the suggestion that the more the state does somehow diminishes an individual. I suppose that it is now what architects call "the new brutalism". We say that that approach has no part in any decent country.
There are a number of questions which need to be attended to. There is the question of respite care. No one who gives care freely and willingly to their relatives and friends who are handicapped or disabled regrets or resents it. But the burden becomes intolerable. There are the burdens of age and of daily drudgery, which affection or love cannot alleviate although they may motivate the acceptance of the burdens. As my noble friend Lord Bruce pointed out, there is these days the increasing burden of sheer poverty. You cannot be generous with your resources if they will suffice barely for you alone.
A number of questions need to be answered. There is the question of the permanent ringfencing of funds for these invaluable services. There is the question of the community care charter. There is the serious and deep question of whether assessment is truly available for all those who need it. There is the question of whether as regards the partial deregulation of private homes and institutions there should not now be a national inspectorate and not one left to individual local authorities. There is also the question of representation. How is a handicapped or disabled person to have his or her view made known? They are human beings with an
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entitlement if not that their requests always be fulfilled at least that their requests be heard and understood. Will cash or resources be made available for that representation? Are release assessments sensibly related to the provision of care in the community?
Perhaps I may mention a single case which your Lordships have touched upon. It is that of Mrs. Zito whose husband of such short a while was done to death by someone let out in community care. She is a woman of saintly forbearance and says that she does not blame the man who killed her husband. She says that he was blameless, let out into a community with no care and no personal resources to assist him. Is that really what we have come to at the end of the 20th century? There is also the question referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale; that is the wilful refusal to bring into effect Acts which have been passed by Sovereign assemblies.
I practise in the Temple. It is a wealthy island of privilege surrounded increasingly during recent years by a growing number, week by week, of mentally handicapped disabled people. It is immediately next door to those few acres of wealth and privilege in the centre of the capital of what we claim to be a great country. There is no care for them. There is little community except what they make for themselves while sleeping on cardboard in doorways. The noble Lady, Baroness Cox, used the phrase "manifest failure". I believe that that feeling of unhappiness and of manifest failure informed all your Lordships' speeches. That is the question which we respectfully ask the Minister to attend to.
7.48 p.m.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Rix, for initiating the debate. His diligence if not in attracting a huge audience on this opening night has attracted at least a large and noble cast of well-informed experts in this field. As chairman and previously secretary general of MENCAP, the noble Lord has been a courageous and doughty fighter for the rights of people with learning disabilities. Through his leadership the Department of Health and MENCAP have a good working relationship and as a consequence MENCAP has been involved in the development of policy. I so agree with my noble friend Lady Faithfull that innovation often comes from non-governmental organisations. They bring a range of skills and expertise which enrich the lives of many people. In recognition of that, this year we are giving £1.4 million in Section 64 grants to organisations concerned with learning disabilities, including a core grant of £250,000 to MENCAP. But of course I understand the pressures which my noble friend Lady Faithfull outlined. I should like to take up with her informally her point about a consortium.
I wish to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Rodney on his maiden speech. Maidens are gently treated in your Lordships' House but I can see that this maiden will not require favours as he will hold his own in any debate.
It is with great regret that I start my speech in this debate with an unpopular disclaimer. I recognise that the

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politically correct term "people with learning disabilities" is not popular in your Lordships' House. However, I am assured that the term is used because of the pressure put on the department by people with a mental handicap and those involved in their care. I believe that in this instance, names are not so important, but as that appears to be the popular wish, it is one that I shall use this evening.
It is too soon to reach any firm impressions about whether community care assessments are influencing decisions. The Act has only been fully implemented for fewer than six months and 1st April was not intended to be a big bang. A great deal of hard work went on before then, and we have always made clear that the reforms are a long-term strategy. Even so, I have been impressed by the enthusiasm and determination with which various organisations and individuals are seeking to use the assessment, care management and planning processes to improve the services that they offer. Although I cannot yet report in detail. I can certainly offer the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, the assurance that community care is not falling apart.
The Government are closely monitoring community care reforms to see that people are getting the services they require and when there is a short-fall, the extent of that short-fall. We are undertaking research and will commission more as new arrangements develop further. We have also extended the statistics that we collect, so that in future we will have better information on the provision of home and day care, the meals services and residential provision. That will give us new information on just the kind of matters raised by my noble friend Lady Cox. I am delighted that my noble friend's knowledge, integrity and wisdom are being used on a trust board, but I am concerned about the backlog of assessments to which she referred. I know that some local authorities have started slowly, appointing staff as the work accumulates. They are now getting up to speed.
Right now, the Social Services Inspectorate and regional health authorities are busy with an extensive programme of monitoring. They have just completed a round of visits and discussions with every local and health authority in England. The results of that exercise are currently being collated and will be available shortly.
They are also undertaking a number of more detailed studies of particular aspects of the new arrangements. We have picked out key themes, including care management and assessment, purchasing and contracting and community care planning. There will also be studies concentrating exclusively on particular client groups, including people with learning disabilities.
The first six of these studies is nearing completion and is currently being written up. The second batch of studies, including one on implementing community care for people with learning disabilities, is just about to get under way and is due for completion over the next six months. My colleagues in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland also have extensive arrangements in hand.
Of course, the Government are not alone in monitoring. The Audit Commission has carried out a survey of authorities' purchasing and contracting
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arrangements. The Association of Directors of Social Services, the local authority associations, the Association of Residential Care (ARC) and other providers all have work in hand. But if the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, believes that to be inadequate, we shall consider at a later stage, when we are committed to a review in 1995, whether that is sufficient and at that stage we shall consider whether we need a completely independent national inspectorate or national standards.
The noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, will be pleased to hear me say that the Government do not. presume to have the answers to the needs of each individual; that would be arrogant. It is the people themselves, their relatives and carers who know what they need. We have always stressed the importance of service users and their carers which is why we have also established a National Users and Carers Group. This group reports directly to Ministers so that we can get a real picture of how the reforms are working from the user's point of view. That group will be useful in. meeting some of the anxieties expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale.
As your Lordships will be aware, the role of local authorities is central to the success of the new arrangements. To address the point made by my noble friend Lady Cox, the Government have made it clear, that their assessment procedures should be as simple, quick and efficient as possible. They are left in no doubt that they are responsible for ensuring that people receive the care they need, when they need it. We are monitoring closely, and I know that the Association of Directors of Social Services attaches great importance to that issue.
Perhaps I may now pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, about exclusions and whether there is sufficient co-ordination with. the Department of Health. Assessments are not restricted to cases where the local authority has an off-the-shelf service to provide. All people who may be eligible for community care services have a right to assessment. Assessments may be arranged with a client or requested by friends, family or the family doctor. Where people seem to have both health and social services needs, we expect the assessment procedure to be carried out jointly.
The department has encouraged authorities to set out clear eligibility criteria so that people with learning disabilities and their carers know where they stand., and can share in the results of assessments. I hope I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, that authorities have a duty to discuss with their clients, existing and potential, their wishes and preference and to ensure that what they say is given proper weight. No longer should existing services dictate need. The new arrangements reverse the process so that needs dictate services For some social workers I know this is difficult. Their are used to slotting people into established provision instead of looking wider, being more imaginative, seeing all the strengths in a community and drawing on those, rather than surrounding the individual with the traditional statutory "package of care"—I use their

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words not mine! We have also encouraged authorities to collect and record the information they need in order to plan and improve services.
A number of your Lordships mentioned the subject of advocacy. In the past people with learning disabilities have seldom been treated as individuals in their own right. They have been seen too often as passive recipients of care who must learn to live with a "one size fits all" service. Our guidance, issued to health and local authorities last year, reverses that. We are anxious that people should be given the respect that they deserve. We all need to work harder at listening to their views. I make no bones about that. It is what the Caring for People White Paper is all about.
So the guidance encourages authorities to help people express their views either through the development of self advocacy skills or through an independent advocate. We also support a number of voluntary bodies in projects which encourage self advocacy, as well as others which provide advocates or companions on a voluntary basis.
The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, if I understood him right, and my noble friend Lord Rodney were concerned to see the demise of the principles in past Acts and in particular, the Disabled Persons Act. The procedures now in force enable anyone to make representations on behalf of disabled people at any time. So the provisions of Sections 1, 2 and 3 of the Disabled Persons Act 1986 have in effect been overtaken by subsequent events. However, we propose, as promised, to review the need to implement those sections of the Act in the light of several years' experience of the community care arrangements.
Residential services often play an important part in the care provided for a person with learning disabilities. Both the individual and his or her family may have strong preferences on this issue. Our Direction on Choice places a binding duty on authorities to place people assessed as needing residential care in a home of their choice, subject to certain practical considerations such as cost and suitability.
When we reviewed our policy on residential care we concluded that a wide range of choices can be exercised, but the key question to be asked locally is what range of housing and support services can be commissioned or provided to ensure the greatest scope in moving towards greater independence and a more normal way of life? So often it is the poverty of our imaginations and aspirations that hold back and deny handicapped people a way of life that we take for granted but believe to be impossible for them.
I note the views of my noble friends Lady Cox and Lord Pearson of Rannoch about the advantages of village communities. Our guidance does not rule out village communities. When we last reviewed our policy on residential services we concluded that there was a very wide range of acceptable living arrangements. The important point is that services needed to be planned to meet the needs of individuals; what might be right for one might not be right for others.
It was recognised also that it might be difficult to provide quality care economically in very small groups,
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especially for people who need high staffing levels because of their multiple disabilities, a point made forcefully by my noble friend Lord Pearson. However, the majority of people to whom we spoke during our review felt that it was also difficult to achieve individually-based services in large numbers. As the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, pointed out, large institutions can add their own negative effects to the initial disabilities of those being cared for. Surely the key issue is what range of housing and support services can provide greater scope in moving towards an individually-based service.
My noble friend Lady Cox highlighted some case histories which I must say I found distressing and which must be addressed through careful case planning. But as my noble friend Lord Renton pointed out, thousands of people have moved happily from institutions into town and village life. People who for years were put away—their words, not mine—now have part-time jobs which are so important to every individual, as highlighted by the noble Lady, Lady Kinloss. They go down to the pub, they go to church, and some of them have even got married. Those are things that we take for granted but which have been denied them for so long.
I am very tempted to enter a detailed debate on the specific proposals for St. Ebba's Hospital, Epsom, as I know both it and those involved well. However, I shall resist. I am sorry that Rescare was disappointed at the outcome of the recent meeting of officials. However, I understand that Rescare has, as suggested at the meeting, decided to prepare a formal bid for the evaluation of a project establishing a village community. Although I can give no guarantee that that bid will be successful, I shall ensure that it receives full consideration.
The noble Lords, Lord Rix and Lord Ennals, and my noble friend Lord Rodney raised the specific issue of housing. I am aware of the report Community Care Planning: A Model for Housing Need Assessment with Reference to People with Learning Disabilities. I know that the report has been most warmly welcomed. The 1990 White Paper also stressed the importance of social services departments working closely with housing authorities, housing associations and the private and independent sector in developing a full and flexible range of accommodation—the need for which was so clearly emphasised by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals. We have taken a number of opportunities since then to reinforce that, including the September circular issued by the Department of Health jointly with the Department of the Environment.
As the noble Lady, Lady Kinloss, pointed out, day services also play an important part. Although there has been a significant increase in the number of places—an increase of 35 per cent. since 1979—as my noble friend Lord Renton pointed out, that and other service provision remains patchy. I so agree with the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, that respite care is also crucial. It is not a luxury. The noble Lord was right to point out that often it can only be obtained in a crisis. But the whole purpose of assessment is to ensure that services are planned and not available only in a crisis. The noble

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Lord also asked me for specific information regarding student action groups. I shall have to write to the noble Lord on that matter.
I return to the points made by the noble Lady, Lady Kinloss. Some authorities have already made considerable progress in arranging worthwhile day activities, especially as regards employment. I can cite Lancashire County Council as a stunning example. The noble Lord, Lord Rix, mentioned the Open University course. I know that that has been of great value to people with learning disabilities and also to their families. We are considering whether it is possible to make a contribution to the costs of the revision of that particular course.
The noble Lord, Lord Allen, and my noble friend Lady Faithful! suggested a community care charter. The community care reforms are rooted in charter principles—such as individual choice and published standards. We have noted the committee's recommendations and we have not dismissed them. We shall certainly keep them in mind as we consider how to develop the policy further.
My noble friend Lady Faithful] also suggested that a consortium should be established for community care. I certainly agree that policy in the area must be developed by discussion and collaboration with all those involved. Consultation is part and parcel of the way we work now and the way that we shall continue to work. It is one of the pleasures of the policy that it has for a long time attracted such wide-ranging support.
The noble Lords, Lord Ennals and Lord Williams of Mostyn, highlighted the role of elderly carers. Of course, parents and carers are often understandably anxious about the continuity of caring and service provision for their children when they are no longer able to care for them. Authorities need to take account of those people with learning disabilities still living with their parents when developing their plans for the provision of services.
I know that both the noble Lord, Lord Rix, and the noble. Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, pleaded for authorities to be easy on charging for services. But the Government believe that it is right and fair that those able to meet all or part of the economic cost of providing those services should be expected to do so. It is for local authorities to decide charging policies for day and domiciliary care. The Government believe that they should be able to take into account attendance allowance arid other benefits. However, any charges made must be reasonable and also take account of what everyone can afford. Those who find it difficult to meet the charge have a right to ask the local authority for a review. We believe that there should be no automatic right to free service. It is not in the best interests of those who use services to reduce the overall level of provision by providing those services free, regardless of whether some users are able to meet all or part of the costs.
Many of the issues raised by my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy, although concerning mental illness, cross over into tonight's debate. However, schizophrenia is a condition with particularly disturbing results.
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My right honourable friend the Secretary of State is aware of the tiny minority who are deeply disturbed arid can be violent. As a result. we have drawn up a 10-point plan which includes a new provision for supervised discharge. I am glad that my noble friend exempts me from taking on the problems over the Border.
I fear that I shall disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, as I now turn to resources. But it would be dilatory of me not to set out the Government's commitment, which is to resource community care fairly. The figures show that we have honoured that commitment. The noble Lord, Lord Ashley of Stoke, urged Ministers to gird their loins and take on the Treasury. I can assure the noble Lord that we do not lack courage. Indeed, the Secretary of State won a wonderful victory when she gained £565 million of additional money to be invested in community care in the current year. All that money is ring-fenced which should give a little solace to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale; but I cannot give him the long-term commitment to ring-fencing which he sought.
The new money includes £399 million transferred from the Department of Social Security and a further £26 million for changes to the independent living fund. The additional £140 million, 35 per cent. above the resources transferred from the DSS, represents a considerable achievement. For example, it covers assessing people's needs, giving more support to carers through additional respite and home care arid putting into place the necessary management structures. We have already announced for next year and the year after a special transitional grant of £716 million and £618 million respectively. That makes resources totalling £1,254 million and £1,808 million for each of those years and gives community care the stability that it needs.
In conclusion, community care was never intended to be a quick fix. We cannot promise instant results, but in the six months of implementing the Act considerable progress has been made. As the noble Lord, Lord Rix, so rightly said, the Government did not invent community care.
I am conscious that during the course of the debate I have had to spend much time talking about the mechanisms, assessment, monitoring, funding and so on. They are vital; but they are not the objective. Our central responsibility must always be to meet the needs of people with learning disabilities and their carers. I am aware that there are many hard working and committed people in the field who are determined that some of the most vulnerable members of our society should not be forgotten and that this Act will enhance their quality of life. Among their number I include Members of your Lordships' House. I have no doubt that whoever stands at this Dispatch Box now or in the future will have no peace until services are improved and people with learning disabilities can take their rightful place in society.
House adjourned at eleven minutes past eight o'clock.

  SOUTH KOREA
  SOUTH KOREA
  THE EUROPEAN UNION
  THE EUROPEAN UNION
  RUSSIA: TRADE IN NUCLEAR MATERIALS
  RUSSIA: TRADE IN NUCLEAR MATERIALS
  THAILAND: CHILD PROSTITUTION
  THAILAND: CHILD PROSTITUTION
  EC BODIES' MEETINGS: PUBLIC ACCESS
  EC BODIES' MEETINGS: PUBLIC ACCESS
  CYPRUS
  CYPRUS
  THE FOREST OF DEAN
  THE FOREST OF DEAN
  INTERNATIONAL PARLIAMENTARY BODIES: UK FUNDING
  INTERNATIONAL PARLIAMENTARY BODIES: UK FUNDING
  BUSINESS CLOSURES: COSTS TO TAXPAYER
  BUSINESS CLOSURES: COSTS TO TAXPAYER
  UK PAYMENTS TO EC
  UK PAYMENTS TO EC
  LONDON WEIGHTING AND LOCAL PAY ADDITIONS IN THE SOUTH EAST
  LONDON WEIGHTING AND LOCAL PAY ADDITIONS IN THE SOUTH EAST
  CIVIL SERVICE POSTS IN THE SOUTH EAST
  CIVIL SERVICE POSTS IN THE SOUTH EAST
  PUBLIC SECTOR INVESTMENT
  PUBLIC SECTOR INVESTMENT
  PAROLE BOARD APPOINTMENTS
  PAROLE BOARD APPOINTMENTS
  PEERS: APPOINTMENTS BY THE HOME SECRETARY
  PEERS: APPOINTMENTS BY THE HOME SECRETARY
  PEERS: APPOINTMENTS BY THE PRIME MINISTER
  PEERS: APPOINTMENTS BY THE PRIME MINISTER
  PEERS: APPOINTMENTS BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SOCIAL SECURITY
  PEERS: APPOINTMENTS BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SOCIAL SECURITY
  INCOME SUPPORT
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  VAT ON FUEL
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  SPECIALIST HOSPITAL SERVICES: LONDON
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  RHAs: TRUST STATUS HOSPITALS
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  MENTALLY HANDICAPPED: CARE
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  RENAL SERVICES
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  LONDON HOSPITALS: WAITING LISTS
  LONDON HOSPITALS: WAITING LISTS
  MR. RAYMOND BUSH
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  INWARD INVESTMENT
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  PEERS: APPOINTMENTS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE
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  CIVIL PLUTONIUM: NUCLEAR WEAPONS
  CIVIL PLUTONIUM: NUCLEAR WEAPONS
  PEERS: APPOINTMENTS BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR DEFENCE
  PEERS: APPOINTMENTS BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR DEFENCE
  MoD: MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET OFFICE
  MoD: MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET OFFICE