My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, Her Majesty's Government have no such intention at present, though the question of which Department of State should be responsible for this establishment is kept under review.

My Lords, while welcoming the phrase at present "may I ask the Minister another question? In view of the fact that the Geneva Disarmament Convention which was initiated by our Government now outlaws biological warfare, and in the United States of America biological laboratories are being closed, is there not a great deal to he said for the view that Porton Down, which does so much for health purposes, should now be brought under the Department of Health?

My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Lord's appreciation of the fact that the matter is still under consideration. But of course, as he realises, the biological warfare convention still foresees the continuance of prophylactic, protective and other peaceful research of the kind which is currently carried on at this establishment; and in America, as I understand the position. although certain establishments have been closed they still run establishments which will continue the peaceful research which is required.

My Lords. I wonder whether I may ask a further supplementary question. Is it not the case that Professor Harris, who has been appointed as the new head of Porton Down, has been given a brief to expand the activity for civilian purposes, and has he not himself written an article in the New Scientist urging that Porton Down should be transferred to the Ministry of Health?

My Lords, it is perfectly true that there is a big health interest at this establishment, but there is still a division as to about two-thirds defence work to one-third health work. With regard to the article written by Professor Harris, which I have read with great interest, I think the purport of it is rather more on the lines that there may be a need for a change in the future than actually advocating one at present, and in my view the headline which appeared in The Times over this report was slightly misleading.

My Lords, are Her Majesty's Government aware that, for the reasons that have been stated, there are considerable advantages in delay over this decision.

Yes, my Lords.

My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether it is true that it is the policy of Her Majesty's Government, in the light of the Geneva Convention and of the American statement in this matter, not to engage in any research into the manufacture of microbiological weapons? Is it not therefore true that such researches as will take place are for peaceful purposes? Is it not therefore urgent that this matter should be removed from the Ministry of Defence and brought under one of the civilian ministries?

My Lords, I can confirm that the research which goes on there is for peaceful purposes. As I said in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, two-thirds of the research is still directly for peaceful purposes concerned with defence and general basic research.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether it would not be reasonable to hive-off from Porton Down that part of the research which is primarily devoted to health, leaving the purely defence aspects to Porton Down? The defence aspect would be of considerable value in the event of a conflict. Therefore, would it not be more desirable to do that than to transfer the whole of the Porton Down establishment to the Ministry of Health?

My Lords, I think this would be a misuse of resources, because in fact certain highly important health discoveries have come through basic research which has been for defence purposes, one particular example being the Porton needle-less injector which was recently used with great effect in East Pakistan.

My Lords, I do not wish to prolong this exchange, or to embarrass the Minister, but would he mind explaining just exactly what he means by the defence aspect of the research for peaceful purposes?

My Lords, it is concerned with the detection of possible microbiological warfare against this country in the future.

My Lords, would the noble Lord tell us whether the U.S.S.R. has closed down or reduced any of its efforts in this field? If not, is it not of supreme importance that we should keep a defence capability in this important research department? Would the noble Lord also bear in mind that there is a strong cross-pollination when one collects together a number of erudite scientists, and there would seem to be an advantage in keeping the health side and the defence side together in one establishment rather than hiving them off, because the two will work together and will produce civil applications which, as the noble Lord has suggested, are wholly beneficial?

My Lords, I agree generally with what my noble friend has said. So far as the Soviet Union is concerned, although the original initiative came from us and was not accepted by the Soviet Union, the present draft is a Soviet draft and we hope it will shortly be available for signature.

My Lords, is there such a thing as poisonous pollen?

My Lords, I do not think that is a question for Her Majesty's Government.

My Lords, which Government Department is responsible for the cross-pollination of scientists?

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, all probation officers in the Inner London Probation and After-Care Service at present receive a London addition to their salary of £90 a year. There are no exceptions. The Joint Negotiating Committee for the Probation Service has recommended that, with effect from May 1, 1971, this sum should be increased to £144 a year. The Government have not accepted this recommendation for all Inner London officers, but my right honourable friend the Home Secretary received a deputation from the Committee to discuss this matter on January 14. and he undertook, without commitment to give it further consideration.

My Lords, the noble Lord has said, as I understand it, that it is proposed to raise the weighting allowance from £90 to £144. What he did not say was that the proposal was that within the boroughs of Hammersmith, Wandsworth, Lewisham and Greenwich it should be only £105. How can we possibly justify this discrimination between the rest of the Inner London Service and those four boroughs?

My Lords, my reference was to the proposal by the Joint Negotiating Committee. They proposed that all officers in Inner London should receive £144. The Government's reply has been that where the probation officer's place of work is in a London borough within a four-mile area from Charing Cross—that is, in eight out of the 12 Inner London boroughs—the London weighting should be £144, and that in the other four boroughs it should be at the lower rate of £105. The reason for this is that it is in line with the existing rates payable to local authority administrative, professional, technical and clerical staffs.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he is aware that in the four boroughs to which he made reference, Greenwich, Hammersmith, Lewisham and Wandsworth, the clerical assistants employed by the Inner London Probation Service will get £144 a year London weighting allowance and the probation officers in those areas will get only £105? How can the Home Office reconcile those two allowances without creating a very absurd situation? Furthermore, may I ask the noble Lord whether his right honourable friend is aware that the probation officers in those four areas have applied to be transferred to courts in the other eight areas, that officers who have been asked to go into those four areas have declined to do so, and that this is really threatening the morale of the Inner London Probation Service?

My Lords, following the reorganisation of local authority social work departments there was some feeling, as the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, will know, that a gap was likely to widen between the pay of probation officers and that of local authority social workers. Consequently an inquiry has been set up under Mr. Butterworth, Vice-Chancellor of Warwick University, to look into the appropriate relationship between probation officers and social workers. As I have explained, the proposal the Government have made to the Joint Negotiating Committee is exactly in line with the London weighting allowances which are paid to social workers in the London boroughs.

My Lords, if the noble Lord is anxious to relate the remuneration of the probation officers to that of the social workers, why does he not do it in the case of salary and not simply in the case of the weighting allowance? When the noble Lord refers to the fact that in the boroughs within four miles of Charing Cross there is to be a different rate, does he not accept that employment of the probation officer is to a single unit, to the Inner London probation service, and that officers are likely to be posted to any of the boroughs within the London area and not simply those within four miles of Charing Cross?

My Lords, the relationship between the overall rates of pay is the subject of Mr. Butterworth's inquiry; that is what he will be looking into. I appreciate what the noble Lord has just said about the difference in the nature of employment between the probation officer and the local authority social worker, but I understand there are other categories of people who are centrally employed in the public service where differential rates of London allowance are payable. I should like to say to noble Lords who have expressed interest in this subject that it is because of arguments of the sort that have been raised in the House this afternoon that the Home Secretary has undertaken, without commitment, to give the matter further consideration.

My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord for saying that this matter will be considered without commitment; I hope he will also say "with a measure of sympathy". Would the noble Lord agree that it will be very difficult to believe that the Government take the expansion of the Probation Service seriously if they insist on this kind of discrimination?

My Lords, it is not a question of insisting on discrimination. The local authorities' staffs in the Inner London area until May of last year all received the same rate of London weighting allowance. After negotiations, it was agreed with the local authorities that there should be differential rates according to whether the place of work is within or outside four miles from Charing Cross. This already is the case with civil servants, and has been for some years. Therefore, there is an existing body of precedent. It is a question of the scale to which the Probation Service should most properly be attached.

My Lords, would the noble Lord be good enough to deal with the point that I raised with regard to clerical assistants, and bring to the notice of his right honourable friend that it is rather an absurdity when you have a professionally qualified person working in an office and dictating letters to a clerical assistant who is getting £39 a year more London weighting? It is a ridiculous situation. I hope the noble Lord will bring the attention of his right honourable friend to this matter.

My Lords, there are certain anomalies, and there always will be where there are differential rates, because it will depend on who is the employer as well as the nature of the work done. As I explained in my initial reply, as recently as last Friday the Home Secretary saw a delegation on this matter. Negotiations being at the stage they are, it is difficult for me to add any more to that to-day.

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, the recent changes in international exchange rates made it necessary for IATA to revise the fares adopted on December 12, which are expressed in U.S. dollars. A Conference was held in Geneva from January 6 to 15, but except in respect of the winter group inclusive tour fares (which Governments have approved) the airlines have not yet been able to agree on what consequential changes in fares should he made and submitted to Governments for approval. To take as an example the return trips London-New York and London-Montreal, the winter group inclusive tour fare for 7–8 days is from January 17,200 dollars for New York and 186 dollars for Montreal. I am sending the noble Baroness details of the winter group inclusive tour fares and will lay a copy in the Library.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that of course the first part of my Question refers to these actual fares which came into operation on January 15? May I ask the Minister whether he might not have been a little more forthcoming when I asked him a Question on December 16 on this matter? Does he realise that these actual fares—and I am referring to the winter grouping—were advertised in the Press by National Airlines on December 16, by Pan Am on December 17, and by B.O.A.C. on December 19, all stating that they were subject to Government approval? Does not the noble Lord feel that he could have told this House that these were the fares suggested, subject to Government approval, instead of saying nothing at all?

My Lords, when I look at what was said I do not think I can be accused of having said nothing at all. What I am now doing is to send the noble Baroness a copy of the fares that have been approved (it is limited, I am sorry to say, to the winter group inclusive tour fares), and laying a copy in the Library, for reasons which the noble Baroness will see when she receives the copy I am sending to her.

My Lords, I do not wish to look a gift horse in the mouth, and I am sure that the Library will be grateful, but I have the information. In order to introduce a little variety into our questions and answers, may I ask the noble Lord whether he can tell me when he is likely to have the information for which I have asked in the second part of my Question, so that I might then have a satisfactory reply and be able to my, "Thank you"?

My Lords, I look forward very much to receiving a "Thank you" from the noble Baroness, but I am afraid that this must depend on getting agreement. The airline which is not in agreement with the other airlines has been given until January 24 to come into line, and I hope that soon after that date it will be possible to reach agreement.

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, our Missions overseas receive guidance and information on Her Majesty's Government's policies and interests for use in regular and, frequently, detailed briefing of correspondents and agencies. No further steps are considered necessary or appropriate.

My Lords, while thanking the noble Earl for that reply, may I ask him two questions? First, is it not a fact that this same firm had the Biafra account, with known results, and can he not imagine what they will do with the Northern Ireland situation, for which they have obviously been employed? Secondly, since some of our own media are already somewhat inclined to go for I.R.A. propaganda, is it not the duty of the Government to take some active steps to protect the reputation of our Servicemen, who were committed by the last Government to do a job which they did not ask for and who are already hopping mad at inadequate Press protection? There could come a time when even the best disciplined force could crack.

My Lords, in reply to the noble Lord's first question, I am aware that the firm to which he refers was involved in the Biafra war. The noble Lord asked whether one could imagine the result that that might have. It is up to each noble Lord to use his own imagination in the way he thinks fit. I think that the noble Lord has not construed Her Majesty's Government's policy correctly when he described the detailed publicity that has been given to people in Northern Ireland. He will, however, be fully aware that what goes into newspapers and what goes on television is a matter for the authorities concerned.

My Lords, would the noble Lord say whether the Government are willing to consider a review of the B.B.C.'s Charter, in view of their recent habit of treating as news matters that are security as well as political aspects of urban guerrilla activity within the United Kingdom?

My Lords, the original Question referred to the appointment of a firm to represent the views of the Government of the Republic of Ireland, and I think that my noble friend's question is rather outside that.

My Lords, in view of the disastrous resuts of this firm's activities on behalf of Biafra, surely are not the Government of Ireland welcome to their services in this connection?

My Lords, it is of course up to any Government to choose how it decides to disseminate its own publicity.

My Lords, are the Government aware that there are a number of colonels in the Army whose duty is specifically that of organising Press liaison? Are any of those colonels serving with our Forces in Northern Ireland at the moment? I ask that question because quite a number of the interviews that are given to the Press appear to be given by regimental officers and N.C.O.'s.

My Lords, the Question asked what we were prepared to do to counter the effects of propaganda, and the answer to that is that our Missions already have Press and information officers whose job this is. I should not be prepared to comment in detail on the noble Lord's question without specific notice.

My Lords, I will be brief. I did not get an answer to the specific point as to whether any of these Press liaison officers, who are fairly senior people, are serving in Northern Ireland.

My Lords, I meant to indicate to the noble Lord that I could not give a specific answer to that question without notice; but if he would care to put a Question down, I would do so.

My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that there is a chief publications officer attached to the office of the G.O.C. in Belfast? He is capable of giving some extremely good briefings, and, I would suggest, is a much more efficient operator than the firm to which the Question referred.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that statement, and I am sure that that is so.

My Lords, in confirmation of what has been said, may I ask whether Her Majesty's Government are fully aware that, so far as our troops are concerned, it is against the mass media of this country, particularly the B.B.C. who are accused of grossly inaccurate and tendentious reporting, that their indignation is mainly directed?

My Lords, I am aware of the many feelings which people have over this matter. But this is not the responsibility of the Government; it is of course the responsibility of the B.B.C.

My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that, if many more accusations are flung around this House against the B.B.C. and other bodies, it might be better if the noble Earl, of whom I have no criticisms, suggested that they should be raised when we come to debate Northern Ireland in a fortnight's time?

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lords who have flung these criticisms around will have taken note of the remarks of the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition.

My Lords, does not the noble Earl feel it right, in view of some of the questions that have been put, to distinguish between the Government of the Republic of Ireland and the I.R.A.? Do we not wish success to the Government of Ireland in what it puts out? Do we not regret that it may be a bad agency?—although I do not wish to content on that. But there have been some questions which seemed to me to imply that the Government of the Republic of Ireland was intending to put out matter which was hostile to this country.

My Lords, one sympathises with the views which have been expressed. The fact is that any Government can use the services of anyone it wishes in order to disseminate its own publicity. The question I was asked was: what do Her Majesty's Government intend to do to counter insidious propaganda? My answer to that is that I believe that our own existing organisations are sufficiently capable and competent.

My Lords, in view of the dangers of the insidious propaganda which has been talked about, is the Minister aware of the disparity, or the reported disparity, between the facilities and accommodation provided for our troops, and those of a superior standard provided for detainees, many of whom could be classified as dangerous to society, in circumstances in which they have full range for their natural viciousness? I think that that is something which could he used as counter-propaganda, to which the Minister referred just now.

My Lords, I can only come back to what I have said before. I believe that the information officers, who are available in our Missions, and the other methods of publicising our own point of view, are sufficiently strong and capable of doing just the job for which they are there.

My Lords, this is a sore point with the troops, and what are we doing about emphasising it?

My Lords, I believe that the supplementaries are going very wide on this point, and I am sure that the general feeling of your Lordships' House is that we should now pass onto other Business.

rose to move, That the matter of the approval of the proposed six Immunities and Privileges Orders standing in his name this day, be moved in one Motion and put to the House in one Question. The noble Earl said: My Lords, this Motion gives all Members of the House a chance of considering whether they are unanimously content that the six Immunities and Privileges Orders standing in my name lower down on to-day's Order Paper should be moved en bloc. If a single noble Lord objects or wishes a question to be put on one or more of the Orders separately, I shall of course be pleased to move them separately to the extent desired. I beg to move.

My Lords, I beg to move that the Third Report from the Committee on Procedure of the House be now considered.

My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be agreed to.

My Lords, I do not think your Lordships ought to allow this Report to pass without noting one very important provision, which I pesonally think is necessary; that is, the power to override our own Standing Orders without notice in order to proceed with emergency legislation. If I understand the position correctly, the House has done this previously. For instance, at the time of the national emergency in 1939 certain legislation or other matters were dealt with in defiance of the Standing Orders of the House. That strikes me as wrong, and I therefore think it right that the House should have this power. As I understand it, this recommendation of the Procedure Committee means that in circumstances where, in the judgment of the Government and of a majority of the House, it is right to override Standing Orders, we remove all the protections which due notice would provide against arbitrary action. But though I think this recommendation is right, I should be a little shocked if the House were merely to pass what is really a pretty revolutionary proviso to the Standing Order, without taking note of all that it is doing. Perhaps the noble Earl will confirm that my understanding is correct and, furthermore that the power to dispense with the protection does not require unanimity and can be taken with a simple majority of the House. This recommendation worries me quite a lot, but I feel that it is inescapable if we are to be effective. But I think that the noble Earl should comment on this, and that the House should take a decision in the realisation that it is rather a weighty one.

May I raise one other point on the first item in the Report? I understand that the new procedure in regard to en bloc Motions—namely, that notice of such Motions shall be given in at least two issues—will mean under other Standing Orders that they will always appear in the Order Paper for the actual day on which they are being taken.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition for what he has said, and for supporting the recommendations of the Procedure Committee in their Third Report. I agree with him that recommendation 4, dealing with Standing Order No. 78, is of very special importance and I also agree with his interpretation of that recommendation. I think it is perfectly clear that what is being asked is that the House shall be enabled to proceed with business without due notice, on the occasion of a grave national emergency, and only on the occasion of a grave national emergency. It is only in those circumstances that the House, if it amends Standing Order No. 78 in this way, will be in a position to deal with urgent business such as certain Bills that were promoted, as the noble Lord pointed out, at the beginning of the last war, without having notice on the Order Paper of this urgent business and without being in the position, as it was before, of breaching its own Standing Order.

My Lords, I want to be very brief. I should like to ask: what is the interpretation of the words, "grave national emergency"? If we were confronted with a possible outbreak of war, then, quite obviously, this new Standing Order would be appropriate. But if an industrial dispute developed in such a way that not only the coalminers but the transport workers and the railway workers were out, would that be regarded as a grave national emergency within the provisions of this Standing Order?

My Lords, I think the view taken by the Procedure Committee was that it would be for Parliament to decide what was a grave national emergency. In recent history, the only occasions that have been regarded as grave national emergencies, in the sense that we are now discussing, were the outbreaks of the two world wars. My Lords, I have spoken again only by leave of the House, but I wished to reply to the noble Lord opposite.

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.

moved Amendment No. 1:

Page 1, line 17, leave out (" is intended for breeding or exhibition and ")

I wonder whether the noble Earl would mind my interrupting him. He said—and this might vitiate the whole of his argument —that these animals were landed in Zeebrugge in Holland and then transferred into Belgium. It not Zeebrugge in Belgium?

I apologise. I was under the impression that it was not; but, with great respect to the noble Lord, it does not completely destroy the argument. I had thought that there had been a further violation, in that the animals had gone through Holland. As I said, I am satisfied that there was a violation and that the distance was exceeded, whether or not they went through a second country.

The noble Earl will forgive me for interrupting again. One of the objects of the Balfour assurance was that animals should not be re-exported from the country to which we had exported them. The noble Earl, basing his argument on the premise that Zeebrugge was in Holland, made these animals cross a frontier to get into Belgium; whereas if we accept the geographical fact that Zeebrugge is in Belgium, they did not cross a frontier in order to get to their final destination in Belgium.

The noble Lord is right, I am sure. I was not attempting in any way to say that there had not been a violation. I was probably being very hard on myself and thinking there had been a further breach of the assurance, as I believe the noble Lord will see if he reads what I said. I presumed that there had been a further breach.

There are many other points that I should like to raise but I have spoken long enough in moving my Amendment. What I wish to say is that in my opinion we should not, by prohibiting exports, abandon the only standards by which on the Continent this practice is coming to be judged and can be made more humane. It is our example which matters. Let us not take away this example. I think that would be a great disservice to animal welfare generally. If we back out, the animals will still come from somewhere, crossing perhaps many more frontiers. It may be that the animals will come this country through some loophole in this Bill; but I think we can safely say that they will not come through the hands of reputable exporters. I do not know whether my Amendment is acceptable to the Government. No doubt the noble Lord, Lord Denham, will say whether or not he considers the Bill with my Amendment is more or less suitable than the Bill without it. But I would ask that we do not abandon the only parameters by which this trade can be judged. Instead we should continue to ensure that our animals, which already are beginning to command a premium price owing to the condition in which they arrive, are properly looked after and slaughtered. By so doing we may set an example instead of turning our back on the whole business.

This is only a probing Amendment, so I shall not be asking the Committee to divide on it; but I should like to hear the further views of other noble Lords, and particularly of the noble Lord, Lord Somers, if he can devise a way or ways of meeting my points and those of other noble Lords who expressed their concern on Second Reading. I would again apologise to the Committee for my obvious lapse in knowledge of geography and in trying to imply that there had been even further violations than there were, but it was a small point and not very strongly related to my argument. I agreed that there had been a violation and was, in fact, trying to make it worse than it was. I beg to move.

I should like to begin by thanking the noble Earl very much for having written me and given me notice of the Amendment he was going to move. When he told me of his reasons for doing so I naturally looked into them. I have made exhaustive inquiries and I can find no instances—it may be that I have simply not found anybody who knows of them—of a British seller of cattle to the Continent accompanying those cattle to the Continental slaughter-house.

May I refer the noble Lord to his own statement on Second Reading where he states, in quoting from the Putte Report:

" ' The calves would arrive at Putte at 5 a.m. and the owner of the calves told us that he insisted that they were given something to drink on arrival.' "—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25/11/71; col. 1172.]

Those inspectors were with the calves. Where was the owner, unless they contacted him by telephone? I submit that the noble Lord knows from that that someone was there, because they spoke to him.

Indeed, the owner was the Belgian owner who had bought the calves over here. That is what generally happens. They come over to our markets on the East coast, they buy the cattle here and from that moment they are the owners.

Will the noble Lord accept that I have spoken to the owner; that he was there and was the one who gave the inspectors this particular statement?

I must accept that statement, naturally, if the noble Earl makes it. But I can only say that is a very unusual case. It is usual for the cattle to be shipped on to either a British or a Continental-owned ship and from that moment we have not the slightest control over what happens to them. The noble Earl said that the British calves were slaughtered before the R.S.P.C.A. inspectors arrived there. I will deal first with the question of distance. The inspectors saw the calves arrive and followed them in the train to the slaughterhouse. They found that the distance was well over the 100 kilometre limit.

One inspector was a veterinary inspector, and I hardly think that he would be likely to mistake these calves for others. He not only saw them being slaughtered in this manner but also, as the report says, saw a pile of animal heads in a corner. He examined the heads and found that there were no bullet holes in them, but in many cases there were broken frontal bones. The inspectors asked the slaughterman to demonstrate the use of a Cash pistol, which he did out of deference to those two inspectors. It was found that the slaughterman was not proficient in the use of the pistol, which does not seem to imply that he had been using it until the inspectors arrived. The pistol had not been greased and the box which contained the charges was covered with cobwebs. That does not seem to me to imply that the captive bolt pistol was used very often. Therefore, I am afraid that in this instance the owner of the cattle—if, as the noble Earl says, he was British—must have been greatly misled by what he saw.

I regard the report of the R.S.P.C.A. inspectors—which was extremely balanced and not exaggerated or hysterical in any form—as stating what was good and what was bad. I accept that report as being accurate. Incidentally, may I say to the noble Earl that this is not the only case. It is not just one particular instance of maltreatment in Belgium. There have been many others, in Belgium, France and in other countries. Therefore, I do not feel that I can in any circumstances accept the noble Earl's Amendment.

I do not know what the implications of the noble Earl's Amendment will be, but I agree with him that this is a bad Bill. As he did, I slipped up on Second Reading. I did not notice what the Bill was about; if I had I should have spoken against it, as indeed I shall on Third Reading.

By the provisions of the Bill it is hoped to try to alleviate certain sufferings which we agree occasionally occur. In fact, they will not be alleviated in any degree whatsoever. The people who perpetrate the worse abuses in this respect will continue to get away with them as they do now. They are nearly all foreign nationals. What the provisions of the Bill will do is totally to prevent the sensible and valuable export of live cattle from this country. I cannot believe that that would be in the best interests of the agriculture industry or of anybody else. There are already adequate provisions to ensure the welfare of animals, both in transit and also, for the most part, in the slaughterhouses of the countries to which they are exported. I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Shannon, and with the noble Lord, Lord Somers, that there are abuses, and we are doing our best to prevent them. By being a party to the Balfour recommendations we are helping to make the Continentals follow our example, as the noble Earl said. By coming out we merely opt out of the whole thing, and that will do no good.

So far as animal welfare in those slaughterhouses is concerned the Bill achieves nothing at all. It would be a pity to close a valuable market to our home producers just because there are a few bad cases. It is a market which is likely to increase substantially, and as it does so no doubt the controls on it will become better as we go into Europe. As it stands, the Bill would preclude us from taking advantage of selling into Europe at all. I should like to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Royle, has to say, but I know that in this country we have very good slaughterhouses which at certain times are under-used. In certain circumstances it might be possible to do all our exporting in terms of butchered cattle. That is what I think the noble Lord. Lord Somers, wants. But that is probably an unlikely development, and in any case the Continentals prefer cattle on the hoof and the market cannot be maintained by exporting carcases instead of livestock. For all those reasons, and for those put forward so ably by the noble Earl, I think that this is a bad Bill. As I say, I do not quite understand the implications of this Amendment and I shall be interested to hear what the Government have to say.

I took the trouble to find out what the Bill was about before the Second Reading debate and I supported it wholeheartedly. I am relieved to know that the noble Earl, Lord Shannon, does not propose to press his Amendment to a Division. I was glad to hear him say this because, although he described it as a probing Amendment, if it were accepted the Bill would die —the Amendment would destroy it. On Second Reading, noble Lords agreed with the contention that it was a good thing that no longer should food animals be exported to the Continent of Europe except where they were needed for exhibition or for breeding. It was as clear as that. May we just look at the terms of the Bill and at what the acceptance of the Amendment would mean. Clause 1 of the Bill says:

"Subject to the following provisions of this Act, it shall not be lawful to ship, or attempt to ship, any animal to which this section applies in any vessel from any port in Great Britain to any port outside the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man unless—

(a) the Minister or, in Scotland, the Secretary of State is satisfied that the animal is intended for breeding or exhibition and is of less value than such amount as may be prescribed by order of the Minister.…"

If we delete the words suggested by the noble Earl, the only condition with regard to the export of food animals will be the decision of the Minister whether their value is over or below a certain amount. That would completely destroy the principles of the Bill which this House accepted oil Second Reading. Therefore, my appeal to your Lordships is that the Amendment should be resisted in all circumstances. If it is carried, the export of animals would be permitted over the value fixed by the Minister, for whatever purpose they may be exported, whether for slaughter for food, for exhibition or for breeding.

My contention is that on Second Reading we decided that only certain animals should be exported for exhibition and for breeding, and I am asking the Committee to agree that that principle shall be maintained. On the question of value, whoever determines what the value is to be, we know that the exporters of live animals to the Continent are prepared to pay fancy prices for British livestock for continental consumption. If this Amendment were carried, there is no doubt at all that animals from British farms would get there in very large numbers.

The Amendment gives no idea at all of what value would be assessed by the Minister; there is no indication whatsoever as to what the amount would be. We would (if I may use the term) be "buying a pig in a poke" here. The noble Lord who spoke from the Liberal Benches has not said a word about the economic side of this matter. There is the humane side and the economic side, and in my speech on Second Reading I tried to point out that one was as important as the other. Some time ago, I was reading a speech which had been delivered to farmers by the Present Minister of Agriculture during the course of the Macclesfield by-election. He was saying to them that when we go into the Common Market we shall find all kinds of foodstuffs coming into this country at an expensive rate and he appealed to British farmers to produce more so that we should not have to import so much. If that is right, why are we sending out these animals? Why do we not keep them? Why do we not use our own meat in this country instead of exporting to the Continent of Europe animals on which the British taxpayer has already paid a heavy subsidy? These are points which do not emerge in the Amendment which has been moved.

On the humane side, there are coming to light more and more disturbing incidents in the export of all kinds of animals for food. In spite of what the noble Earl has said, there are hair-raising reports about a certain Dutch ship called the "Superior Producer" and about the things that happened on that ship as British animals were being taken aboard. There are so many loopholes in the present situation. There are some disturbing reports about conditions at a certain Dover lairage already approved by the Ministry of Agriculture. To hear of or to read some of the things about the conditions in that particular place would make one's hair stand on end.

So my appeal is that if, on economic grounds, we have to export meat to the Continent of Europe, for goodness' sake let us send the meat dead. As the noble Lord has indicated, we have magnificent slaughterhouses in this country, ships and refrigeration are up to date, and if we have to send them, we can send bodies of animals dead to the Continent. I hope that your Lordships will say this afternoon that this is not the kind of Amendment we want, though this is the kind of Bill we need to prevent our animals from being sent abroad under such conditions.

I end by saying that most of your Lordships know my background and what my business was, so that they will not accuse me of being squeamish in any shape or form, and I am not. I am not just a "do-gooder" who pays more regard to the benefits we give to cattle than to the benefits we want to give to human beings. We talked about this at great length yesterday in regard to another part of the world. I believe that there are still many things to be done for human benefit, and I think that animals should lake the second place. But in this country we have a tradition of care for our animals. It is a tradition that does not exist in many other countries. I hope that your Lordships will allow the Bill as it stands to proceed to a Third Reading.

It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Royle, because we all have an enormous respect for his experience and his humanity. I speak only because I remember something of these matters in the dark ages when I was Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. We were greatly concerned about these matters at that time. We tried to improve the situation and I believe that since those days the situation has probably been considerably improved. There have been also notable improvements and developments in the field of refrigeration since those days. I am one of those who find something very distasteful indeed in the idea of many of these animals being kept under conditions which are unnatural, herded together aboard ship for a long time and, at the end of the day, only for the purpose of slaughter.

I believe that there will be a strong demand for British meat in future, and 1 see no reason why that demand should not be satisfied by using refrigeration. So my own feeling is that it would be right to do everything we can to terminate the conveyance of live animals for the purpose of slaughter where any length of journey at all of any importance is involved, as it would be in transport by sea, and I rather hope that on general grounds we shall let the Bill stand as it is.

I should like to support the noble Lord, Lord Royle, in what he has said on this Bill. But when I was listening to the noble Earl who moved this Amendment I was puzzled. It is obvious that he has the welfare of animals very much at heart, but if his Amendment were accepted, it would not help their welfare at all. As the noble Lord, Lord Royle, said, it is left completely to the Minister and the Secretary of State to lay down the value below which animals could not be exported. Of course, the Minister and the Secretary of State have to keep an eye on the balance of payments. It might happen that they lower the value of livestock to help the balance of payments and thereby encourage the export of greater numbers on the hoof. There is far greater protection of animals if these words are kept in the Bill. If you are exporting an animal for exhibition, presumably the animal has to return. If you are exporting it for breeding, it must be of a far higher value than if you are exporting it for slaughter. It would be rare, in my experience, for any importer on the Continent to pay £400, £500, £600 or £1,000 for a bull merely to have it slaughtered. It would make very expensive steak and—although this is rather beside the point—rather tough steak too. I could not support this Amendment, because it appears to me to be against the welfare of livestock.

I shall not endear myself to your Lordships if I utter more than four or five sentences, and particularly I shall not endear myself to my noble friend Lady Lee, who has an important piece of business coming on afterwards. However, I was somewhat mystified by the terms of the Amendment moved by the noble Earl. It would, for example, prevent us from sending racehorses abroad and participating in races on the Continent; and that might be a bad thing. But the noble Earl did not say a single word about the Amendment, so far as I could follow him, and I paid fairly close attention to what he said. He also said that many Peers were rather deceived by the title of the Bill, and did not realise that "Animal Diseases Bill" really meant putting an embargo on certain kinds of exports. I was similarly mystified by the title of the Bill, but I then took the elementary precaution of reading it. I suggest to the noble Earl that it is a good thing always to read a Bill before attempting to address yourself to it. The noble Earl told us a story of one owner who accompanied his animals right to the point of exportation. Such an owner, under this Bill, will have nothng at all to fear.

Can the noble Lord enlarge upon that? If the owner is totally barred from exporting, how is he unaffected by the Bill?

That is all right, then. The noble Earl said that we have no control over these animals once they have gone outside this country. Having regard to the mass of evidence that exists about the cruel and neglectiful way in which some of the animals mentioned by the noble Earl are treated. I suggest that we ought to make sure that they are killed before they leave this country.

In view of what the noble Lord on the Liberal Benches said—that with the Common Market coming along we shall probably be developing our exportation of animals to be slaughtered for food—surely the precautions which the Bill seeks to impose will be more necessary than ever. When the economic aspect of the argument is touched upon, we should not forget that while we export probably £5 million, £6 million or £7 million worth of these animals a year, we import £350 million worth of meat from abroad, and it will do no harm to our balance of payments if we can reduce the amount we import. I think this is a good Bill—and no Bill is perfect. In the earlier stages your Lordships gave general approval to it, and I sincerely hope that it will now be able to go forward to its final stages.

Reference has been made to the Common Market. Does entry into the Common Market have any effect on this Bill? On our entry into the Common Market. does this Bill remain as effective as it is now or are we wasting our time? I do not know what will he the effect of the Amendment if we enter the Common Market. I do not know exactly the situation that exists. Does anybody know? If so, it would be helpful if we could be told.

Before the noble Lord sits down, may I remind him that, so far as we are concerned, the Common Market will not come into operation for another 12 months. Surely, we should do our best to try to prevent the continuance of hardship and cruelty for another 12 months.

I should like for a moment to support the noble Earl, Earl Shannon, who moved this Amendment, even though as a farmer I have to declare an interest. Obviously all farmers will benefit by trade with the Continent, and that we must indeed confess. I think also that the farming industry must look closely at the sacrifices that will have to be made if this trade ceases. Of course, one has no wish whatsover to encourage cruelty (none of us has; it does none of us any good), but we must ask ourselves whether this Bill is the best way to stop it. Is it right, with the Ireland loophole and so on?—but I will not labour those points further. What I should like to see is a better form of leverage than to cut off the trade; to decide to opt out of the whole matter rather than, as has been suggested, to carry the campaign into Europe. I feel that in the long run it would serve much better if we could do that.

Another point that must be remembered about exporting less meat and importing less meat from and to this country is the question of quality. We probably want to import better quality meat and to export some of the less good meat. I think that is the pattern of trade that has gone on for many years. I should like to mention also the increasing trade there is in Europe in the movement of calves by air. I have a feeling that the people who are going to enter into this trade must do their job well to succeed; I do not believe they will succeed if it is not done properly. Therefore, if there were a chance of regulating that trade and seeing that it was well done, I believe that we should perhaps let it go forward. It will of course be caught by the Bill as it stands at present.

Before we conclude our deliberations, may I draw your Lordship's attention to a paragraph in the Balfour Committee's Report? There is some difficulty at the present moment in obtaining the Report other than from the Library of your Lordships' House. On re-reading that Report I found that paragraph 13 (which is quite short) is an important paragraph to bear in mind, having regard to what the noble Earl, Lord Shannon, said when he cast doubt on the Putte report. The Balfour Committee reported after considerable investigations, and this is what they had to say in paragraph 13:

"We have been greatly concerned by the evidence about Point 3 "—

that is, long train journeys after disembarkation on the Continent. The Report goes on to say:

"The Committee have obtained firsthand evidence that cattle exported to France from Great Britain have been travelling for long journeys through France to places as far away as Marseilles or Bordeaux. Some of these journeys may take more than 48 hours from the point of disembarkation and there are no Government regulations requiring animals to be fed or watered."

From all that has been said, both by the noble Lord, Lord Royle, with whom I find myself in almost complete agreement, and other speakers, especially the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, I feel that we should concern ourselves with the considerable amount of travelling which animals are obliged to do before arriving at the end of their journeys. I would also draw the attention of your Lordships to what the noble Lord, Lord Monk Bretton, said, because the trade which is building up in exporting calves to as far afield as Bermuda or India is something with which the new regulations will have to concern themselves. For that reason I would thank the noble Lord, Lord Denham, for what he said in his assurance on Second Reading that the Government are looking into this matter in redrafting the regulations.

I do not want to detain the House a moment longer than necessary, but there is one fact which has been brought out by both sides; that animals intended for slaughter abroad are much better slaughtered in this country from the point of view of their own welfare, the quality of the meat, et cetera, rather than being sent across the sea and then on long train journeys to some inhumane slaughterhouse. That is all I have to say. I should like to know whether the noble Lord, Lord Denham, could not introduce some paragraph to exclude all animals from being exported for slaughter abroad: animals for show or for breeding purposes are a different matter. In these cases there may be certificates to show that they are in fit condition for export. The importer at the other side will see that they are properly looked after on the journey. But when an animal is exported to become just a bit of meat, it could quite well be killed in this country.

I said during the Second Reading debate—I think I should almost say during the "first Second Reading debate" on this Bill—that the Government would be reluctant to see the Bill proceed, arid I referred to the practical difficulties in the operation of the controls envisaged. Briefly, these are that it would be necessary to set minimum values for different types of animal within all the species covered by the Bill, and these would have to be revised from time to time to reflect changing market conditions and even different periods of the year. Often there is no great margin between the value of animals for slaughter on the Continent and commercial breeding animals in Great Britain. If minimum values were set high enough to make the export of animals for slaughter or for rearing for slaughter uneconomic, they could also interfere with the trade in breeding animals which the Bill does not seek to restrict. I would add that the veterinary inspection and certification of individual animals for export is already a requirement under the Exported Animals Protection Order 1964, but with one important difference: Ministers have some discretion to waive the requirements in certain circumstances. This power of exemption is necessary, as in some cases exemption from inspection can be in the interests of animal welfare.

The noble Earl, Lord Shannon, said in moving this Amendment that it was a probing Amendment, but I think I should say to him that it would not eliminate these practical difficulties. Indeed it would add to them. Ministers would still be required to prescribe minimum values —the noble Lord, Lord Royle, mentioned this—and it would have to be done in the absence of any guidance on the criteria Ministers should adopt for this purpose. In the view of the Government, the provision in the Bill for prescribing minimum values is, as it stands, unworkable and the Amendment would introduce this further serious complicating factor. In short, Her Majesty's Government do not consider that this Bill is a practical proposition, and in their view the Amendment would only make matters worse.

I was asked one question by my noble friend Lord Wakefield of Kendal. I think I should say that the European Economic Community have not so far issued any directives to member countries on animal welfare and we know of no proposal at present for harmonising legislation in this field. On the other hand, we have to accept that there are no trade restrictions on the movement of animals between existing member countries of the Community. I hope that the noble Earl will not press this Amendment, in view of the extra difficulties I have described.

Before the noble Lord sits down, may I say that he declared that attempting to fix prices would be unworkable. He has not explained to us why. Can he tell us why?

Yes; because there are four different species of animal covered by the Bill and not, as the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, seemed to think earlier, only horses: there are cows, pigs, sheep and goats. A different price would have to be fixed for every breed and virtually a different price for every age group. That price would have to be varied from time to time according to the market conditions appertaining and it would vary from one period of the year to another. It would also have to vary if the value of money changed. It would be an almost impossible task for a Ministry Department to fix the number of prices that are needed and the amount that has to be set so as neither to put the sum low enough to enable animals to be exported ostensibly for breeding but actually for slaughter, nor too high so that in fact it would stop the export of genuine animals for breeding.

Has not the noble Lord's Ministry had some experience in fixing what we might call standard prices for different beasts in connection with the different subsidies that we have paid to farmers in recent years?

Yes, but this is rather different, in that the whole purpose of fixing these prices—and there would be a tremendous range of them—is to differentiate between the animal for slaughter and the animal for breeding or show purposes.

I should like to thank those members of the Committee who have taken part in this, what Lord Denham called. "second Second Reading debate". I did not realise quite the strength of emotion held on all sides, and I am most grateful to all those noble Lords who have made known their points of view on this Amendment. I am sorry if I did not make the Amendment quite clear. It was purely to see whether it was not possible to remove the total prohibition while leaving in the Bill the rest of the safeguards, including the valuation one. I am sorry to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Denham, that in fact I should be guilty of making confusion worse confounded. I have nothing further to offer on the matter of values, because this seems to be something which makes the Bill unworkable in its first condition and just as bad or worse with my Amendment.

Now I did not mention anything to do with the economics: that is a subject I know nothing about and I have not inquired into whether or not we are losing a jolly good industry. I am afraid that is something I have not concerned myself with. One point arose which I did not mention and had not thought of before, but I think it should be highlighted. We talked a lot about the 100 kilometres on the Continent. Do we apply it to this country? Are all animals in this country slaughtered within a 60-mile radius, I wonder? Before we in this country get too smug about this matter, let us look at the current edition of the R.S.P.C.A. News Sheet, which talks about the ritual slaughter that is still carried out here. That makes one's hair stand on end and makes the Putte report look not so bad after all.

I do not think I have any other observation to make in respect of those who have spoken in support or against my Amendment. I opened my remarks by saying that the reason for my Amendment being put down was partly because of those noble Lords who had expressed on Second Reading only qualified support for the Bill, asking for work to be done on the Committee stage and for the Bill to be amended, and also because I felt that the Bill would not in fact do what its proposers hoped that it would do. I think it will have the opposite effect, and I have explained that matter in detail. I have already promised the Committee that my Amendment is only designed to probe the possibility of removing the complete prohibition.

I will withdraw my Amendment. Before I do so I should like once again to ask the noble Lord, Lord Somers, to try to think of an Amendment for the Report stage to meet what I consider will be a very serious admission of defeat, because we have led the way in improving the conditions of slaughter on the Continent, and the travelling conditions of animals. I should hate to see us abandon our lead and admit defeat. We have led this campaign, and I do not think we ought to give it up. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Somers, will see his way to propose an Amendment, perhaps on Report stage; otherwise I must inform the Committee that I shall be opposing the Third Reading of this Bill. I beg leave of your Lordships to withdraw the Amendment.

Before we pass Clause 1, I think I had better say a few words because I have had requests from several quarters to include horses in this Bill. Before I did so I felt it was necessary to make quite certain of the proportion of horses that were exported. Ponies are already adequately protected under the Ponies Act sponsored by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin. So far as I can make out, other horses seem to be protected by price, and, in any case, I cannot find from any authorities that I have consulted that there is any great export of horses at all. Therefore, in the circumstances I feel that it would be unjustifiable to introduce horses. If any noble Lord holds the contrary view, I am perfectly ready to consider the matter at a further stage.

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.

had given Notice of an Amendment to Clause 1:

Page 1, line 5, at beginning insert (" Subject to section (Provisions as to public performance of plays on Sundays) below ").

moved Amendment No. 2:

After Clause 1, insert the following new clause:

May we leave this open for further clarification? We must decide precisely what we mean by two o'clock or two-thirty, whether it is "curtain up", or whatever it may be.

I hope that we may on this Amendment debate the question of the introduction of the licensing authority, rather than the matter of half-past two. In the first version of the Bill of the noble Baroness there were, in my view, one or two very desirable safeguards. I very much regret that there was a departure from grace in the second version of the Bill, in that some of these very desirable safeguards had been removed. The first one to which this Amendment refers is the question of the introduction of the licensing authorities. In the first version of the noble Baroness's Bill the licensing authorities were to license theatres to be open on a Sunday, and that was removed from the version now before the Committee. It is my intention, by this Amendment, to reintroduce the power of the licensing authorities.

The licensing authorities referred to here are those under the Theatres Act 1968; and they are, in the case of London, the Greater London Authority; in the case of England and Wales the county councils or the borough councils, and in Scotland the county councils or burgh councils. I am appealing to the Committee to reintroduce this aspect of the Bill because I believe that it will protect the element of local option. The county councils will obviously be aware of the sentiments of the people in their particular parts of England, Wales or Scotland, and will be able to weigh the feeling of people as to whether they desire to have theatres open on Sundays in that area where they live. I do not think that this question ought to be left purely to the pressure of economic circumstances because of the contention that the promoters would not go to a place and open a theatre unless they thought there was a demand. The feelings of local people ought also to be considered when it is decided whether a theatre should or should not be open on Sundays.

I am particularly fortified in that belief because when the Crathorne Report was being considered the British Council of Churches gave it, so I understand, a general approval, but there was a specific request from the Council of Churches in Wales that if anything like this was suggested for a Sunday the element of local option should be introduced into the Bill. In my view, if the licensing authorities are introduced and they have to license a theatre to be open on a Sunday, then the feelings of the people in the particular area will be respected. I understand that there are strong feelings in Wales and in parts of Scotland about this issue. Those strong feelings ought to be respected, and therefore I am moving this clause, which would require the licensing authority to license theatres that are to be open on a Sunday. Accordingly, I move this Amendment.

I should like to support the Amendment. Like the right reverend Prelate, 1 consider that feelings on this matter may well vary in different parts of the country. Local feelings ought to be respected. They can be made clear, as the right reverend Prelate has said, through the county councils. This provision appeared in the noble Baroness's original Bill. I support it.

May I declare myself? Perhaps I shall have to make more than one declaration. I am for the Bill and against the Amendment. Years ago the old London County Council—I am now talking of forty years ago—allowed cinemas to open on a Sunday. At that period I was interested in what were called social services; I was interested also in operating cinemas. When cinemas were not under the L.C.C. the local police in a number of working-class districts appealed to me and others to open cinemas on Sunday to keep what they called the "young people" off the streets. In practically every case we found that the local authority—that is, the county council or the local council —were opposed to the Sunday opening of cinemas. They represented another thought, an entirely different approach to life. Well, eventually cinemas were open on Sunday. A Bill which is now going through your Lordships' House will confirm what was done in, I think, 1930. I suppose that nobody in your Lordships' House or elsewhere will say that the opening of cinemas on a Sunday affected the fabric of this nation. All this was done before the war. When the war came, nobody suggested that the young or the old were less willing to do their duty because cinemas had opened on Sunday.

I now want to make another declaration. I have for the last 15 years, legally, been involved in doing in this country on a Sunday exactly what this Bill, if it is passed, will allow, but instead of producing plays for an audience of perhaps 500 to 1,000—theatres are much smaller than we think—I have been transmitting plays to millions of law-abiding citizens in this country. It is true that my audiences were more comfortable in their own homes than they would be in the average theatre, but it was their decision to stay at home because there was nowhere else for them to go. I am talking of television plays shown on B.B.C. and Independent Television at nearly all hours. There is an interval between 6 to 7.30 p.m. when there are special programmes, but otherwise it is possible to put on a play at any time of the day on a Sunday.

A great number of young people, rightly or wrongly, want to go to the live theatre and see for themselves what the live theatre has to offer them. They read dramatic criticisms and theatre gossip in the newspapers and want to see for themselves what is offered. The only day on which many of them are free is a Sunday. As I say, they want to see the live theatre. Are they to have the freedom to go to it if they wish? When we consider that your Lordships have said that people of 18 may have a vote and are accepted in the Army to fight for the country, or to be killed for the country, is it not right that they should have the right to demand to be able to go to see a play in a theatre at any time of the day they wish, or to watch television or go to a cinema? A great number of plays have been turned into films, so in the end it is the same. Television gives millions of people who do not want to go to the theatre the ability to watch a play or film in their own home. On what basis, with what logic, can we refuse thousands of young people or old people who want to go to a theatre on Sunday the right of doing so? Having a great deal of experience in the problems, not only of the theatre—because I have worked in the theatre—but in the cinema and television, I oppose the Amendment. The theatre is an essential part of the culture of this country. I know that that is not a very fashionable phrase nowadays, but I repeat it: an essential part of the culture of this country. I do not see why we should cut off this area of culture on a Sunday during the normal hours of living. I oppose the Amendment.

This Amendment is about local option, and what is good for the Metropolis or finds acceptance in the suburbs of London, Birmingham or Manchester is not necessarily what is wanted throughout the United Kingdom. I recognise straight away that this Bill does not refer to Scotland, but it does refer to Wales as well as England. It is surely common ground between all Parties in this Committee that our political philosophy at least respects the integrity of the individual; and, by the same token, translated into politics, it is surely common ground that our political philosophy on either side of the Committee also respects regional taste, feelings, aspirations and hopes. We are not simply talking now, as I see it, about the Celtic fringe, from which I come, but are talking about all parts of Britain. The further you go from London, whether it is North or West or South-West, the greater is the difference of mood and tempo and atmosphere. In other words, all this Amendment asks for is that regions and localities should have a choice. It is not saying that the regions and localities should forbid or should support Sunday opening; it is saying they should have a choice. This again is surely common ground on both sides of the Committee and in all quarters of the House. Therefore, on that account, I would urge your Lordships seriously to view this Amendment with sympathy. I give it my support.

First of all I ought perhaps to declare an interest, in the sense that Sunday opening might bring me a little more business as a playwright, but I hope that the Committee will reject the Amendment. It seems to me that the argument about regionalism and local taste is always trotted out on this issue and conveniently forgotten on many others. Is anybody on this Committee seriously going to suggest for one moment that the opening of a theatre in the Celtic fringe, or anywhere else, will strike a great blow against the freedom of the citizens living there? They have the choice now. It is not a question of giving them a choice by passing this Amendment: they need not go to that theatre if it is open; they need not support it. They can continue their lives as they have in the past, and nobody is affected; but a freedom is extended to a great many people who have been denied that freedom in the past—namely, the freedom to go to a theatre of their choice. Although I do not think it is in the mind of the mover of this Amendment I see it as possibly being a last-ditch weapon in the hands of those who wish to restrict the cultural freedom of others and to control their lives in the light of their own prejudices.

I think the noble Lord, Lord Bernstein, will remember that many years ago, when the question of the Sunday opening of cinemas was a local issue, there were quite a number of areas where great pressure campaigns were put on by minority groups, and as a result they managed either to frighten or to cajole public opinion into voting against the local opening of cinemas. The young people then did not have a voice in the matter and they were denied the freedom of going to the cinemas, all because other people imposed their prejudices upon them.

I am obliged to the noble Lord for giving way.

The noble Lord uses the word "prejudice", which rather begs the question: we all have prejudices, for and against everything, all our lives. Surely the object of this Amendment is to enable local people, minority or otherwise, to show whether they are minorities or not.

The noble Earl is quite wrong. What is prejudice on his part, of course, is wisdom on mine. That is always so. I think that this is a back-door way of restricting the freedom of others, and it is not in fact what it purports to be, an Amendment in favour of freedom. I hope the Committee will reject it.

While I am sure that it is not so intended, I think that this is in fact a wrecking Amendment. It is of course a difficult thing to pilot a long, contentious, complicated Private Member's Bill through either House. Your Lordships will remember that the earlier Bill, based on the Crathorne Report, which dealt with Sunday trading and many other things apart from theatres, was a fairly long and substantial Bill. I shall always remember it because, while I do not think I took any part in it, I heard it all from the Woolsack. What impressed me was that although a substantial number of Amendments were put down, nearly all of them were withdrawn on the sheer merits of the argument against them. There were only one or two which went to a Division. One concerned local option, more particularly, I think. for Wales, and attracted very little support. So this is a matter which the House has already considered at length. I was impressed by the fact that this Private Member's Bill on this subject ended up in this House exactly as it had started, without any amendment at all, which I thought showed that the Crathorne Committee were a balanced and sensible Committee whose views were agreed to by both Houses.

That being so, I do not think we ought to decide this question of local option without reminding ourselves what the Crathorne Committee said about it—a Committee which included many well-known churchmen—Mr. Chuter Ede, Sylvia Fletcher Moulton, and the present Attorney General, Sir Peter Rawlinson, who is a strong churchman. What that Committee said was this:

"We considered whether the entertainments and sports that we have recommended should be permitted on Sunday should be allowed everywhere, as of right, or whether there should be some form of local option. The principle of a local community deciding for itself the character of its Sunday seems attractive and democratic in that it allows for local variations of opinion; in particular it may be a useful device for an initial period when something new is being introduced about which public opinion is uncertain and changing, or is changing in one part of the country more quickly than in another.

"The evidence we received was, however, almost uniformly against the local electorate deciding what recreations should be permitted on Sunday in a particular area. We were told that in practice the local option procedure for cinemas was exploited by vociferous minorities, was expensive in time and money and aroused little interest among the general public. We examined an alternative proposal put forward by the Association of Municipal Corporations, namely, that if any local option was considered necessary, it should be exercised by the local borough or district council who could assess local opinion simply and reliably. This was proposed in the unsuccessful Bills that preceded the 1932 Act. The objection at that time was partly against the principle of local option on the grounds that it was a matter that should be decided nationally, and partly because it was feared that the controversial battles that had raged in Parliament would be transferred to local government elections. We consider that these objections to decisions by local councils are still valid. We do not believe that our proposals would, in practice, change the character of Sunday in those areas where Sabhatarian views are strongest; they are often rural areas and small towns where there are unlikely to be any theatres or variety halls and only a few cinemas and sports grounds and the absence of public demand for Sunday entertainment would act as a financial deterrent. We do not recommend any form of local option, whether by testing the opinion of local electors or by vesting discretion in the local authority on the lines suggested by the Association of Municipal Corporations."

I hope that those views of the Crathorne Committee may commend themselves to this Committee, bearing in mind the fact that this House has already discussed exactly the same point before and come to the same conclusion.

It seems to me that the noble Lord, Lord Willis, put his finger on the real point. It is not just a question of local options; it is a question of the restriction of liberty. I am in favour of devolution but not of devolution of restriction of liberty. I believe that we ought to pay attention to the feelings of others, but I have never been in favour of paying any attention whatsoever to the feelings of others who merely want to restrict other people's liberties. This is certainly what liberalism is about and I think it is what liberty is about in a free society. And I do not believe it is made very much more respectable when the liberty that it is proposed to take away (or possibly, in this case, the lack of liberty which is to be maintained) is taken away by a majority rather than by a minority. The removal of liberty by a majority is almost as bad as its removal by a minority. In a free society, surely the burden of proof must always be on those who would restrict liberty. The burden of proof as to why this particular liberty has not been restricted has not been put forward to-day. Indeed, those noble Lords who support the Bill in principle are saying that they do not see a great case for restricting this liberty. If this is so, I do not see why other people should be given the power to restrict the liberty of those who want to visit theatres and those who want to put on theatrical productions. I hope that the Committee will reject this Amendment.

First, may I say that I wholly respect the feelings of the right reverend Prelate in this matter, but I wonder whether his remarks on local option will in fact remotely advance his cause. I ask him to consider whether his Amendment is more likely to achieve his object or to impede it. I should like to say one word to the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, who seems to have a somewhat odd notion of where theatres are situated. There are no theatres in rural districts; or, if there are, they are only small ones. There is a tiny one in Richmond, in Yorkshire, which holds about 80 people and I remember a tented theatre in his own area, in Pitlochry.

May I interrupt the noble Lord for one moment? When one is speaking of the Provinces, one is speaking of Newcastle, Cardiff, and many cities which have theatres, and I feel that in that particular comment the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, perhaps did me less than justice.

The noble Earl said that he was concerned with metropolitan areas as opposed to rural areas.

No; I am concerned with the Provinces as against London.

I do not think we need dispute the point; I do not think there is much between us. The point I want to make is that theatres in England are situated in large metropolitan areas containing large variegated populations whose views would certainly not be expressed by any local authority, which is a body appointed for a specialist purpose, very rarely to deal with cultural matters, and it would, I think, be a great mistake to impose on them a responsibility that few of them would seek.

What I would invite the right reverend Prelate to consider is whether, in relation to the theatre, this great, noble and antique institution, he is wrong not to regard it as an ally rather than an enemy. I think the theatre of quality is a great ally to the causes he seeks to advance. If he considers the message that has been sent out by dramatists over the years, it is a message very largely in support of his own cause. It is a search after truth, it is the unveiling of injustice and wickedness, which is the major message which emerges from great theatre. It would, I think, be absolutely wrong to cast a suggestion that the theatre is in some way inimical to his causes.

On the question of local option, the noble Lord, Lord Bernstein, who knows more of this than any of us present, has drawn attention to the anomalies. In relation to the cinema, they are not only anomalies, they are absurdities. Films which are freely available, to be seen, for instance, by the Home Secretary at any time of the day or night, have to be sought after by moving from one local area to another. People drive in motor cars some distance because a film that is restricted in one area is available in another. This makes no sense of any kind. To leave cultural decisions of this kind to the individual opinions of small groups of people who are not specially trained or charged in the matter is a great mistake. I noticed also that the right reverend Prelate made an observation which I think was justified, if his belief is justified; that is, that commercial considerations in these matters have to be guarded against; that the hideous notion that commercial managements would control these matters was something that required to be viewed with circumspection and concern. But the theatre outside London is almost entirely non-commercial. If I may say so, speaking as Chairman of the Arts Council, the number of commercial threatres which still exist out of London can almost be counted on the fingers of one hand and are contained in ancient mausoleum buildings that are falling down for want of support.

The virile, thriving theatre in this country is not a commercial theatre at all. It is a theatre brought about by the dedicated concern of a number of volunteers in each area who have understood and are concerned about bringing this splendid art form to as many people as possible. They are not commercially minded; they make no profit out of it; they spend their lives on pilgrimages to the Arts Council to try to squeeze more money out of us in order to pay off their deficits. This is a very different thing from the idea that the right reverend Prelate has. I urge upon him to consider the unwisdom of an Amendment of this sort.

May I make one further and final observation in relation to the perhaps over-ready acceptance by my noble friend Lady Lee of a 2.30 opening time? I can say with very great authority that there are few people in this House who need my counsel less on these matters than Lady Lee. But I would venture to suggest, as I might have done a couple of years ago when we were working in tandem, that 2.30 is a particularly inconvenient time, because the audience has to arrive and become seated, and therefore you would practically proscribe any matinee on Sunday if you fixed a 2.30 hour of opening. You cannot open at 2.30 and expect to put a play on at 2.30. As a purely administrative matter this would seem to be a mistake. I earnestly hope that we may not be pressed to a Division on this, but if we are I would earnestly urge your Lordships to consider that this is not a wise Amendment and would not advance the cause it seeks to advance, although obviously professed with total sincerity.

Before the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, resumes his seat, may I ask him to look at a later Amendment which shows that I can sometimes improve the error of my ways. There is an Amendment on the Marshalled List that the time should be no later than 2 o'clock, and this is a matter which I think the right reverend Prelate and myself want to agree to, because we want to clarify the point as to whether we are talking about the moment the performance commences or when the theatre opens. I think we shall be able to settle that point to the satisfaction of everyone.

So far as local option is concerned, I hope that, considering the immense amount of study put into this subject by the Crathorne Report and the very distinguished debates that have taken place in both Houses on this matter, we shall not be asked to accept that there should be one law for the concert party, one law for the cinema, one law for private theatres, whether of an excellent quality or as sleazy as you like, and a different and more restrictive law for theatres which include some of the most distinguished art and artistes in the country. Indeed, if we are talking about safeguarding and respecting the prejudices and the freedoms of other people, I would say that there is more interference with freedom if you have a really good brass band in the park on Sunday. I am all in favour of bands in the park of the kind they are, but many people who want the Sabbath day to be a day of total quiet might say it was an invasion of their privacy, because they might be living in such circumstances that they cannot escape the noise of a band that they do not want to hear.

The noble Lord, Lord Bernstein, made the point that you can look at a play in the privacy of your home on television. In going to a theatre you are not disturbing the peace in any way. There is nothing compulsory about it. You are not taking away one's rights or liberties. You are merely making it possible for certain civilised pursuits that are obviously going to be available in some parts of the country, to be made universally available for that very important minority who are deeply concerned about these matters. I do not know whether our appeals have touched the heart of the right reverend Prelate, but I hope that we can agree on this matter rather than have the House divide.

I should like the noble Baroness, later on perhaps, to enlarge on one point. The question of Sunday opening appears to different people in different lights. To certain of the Free Churches it is a violent affront to see anybody going to a theatre, or even a cinema or anything else, on a Sunday. But for what we might call the broad spectrum of the Church, they do not see it in that way; they are frightened of people being exploited by being forced to perform for other people's amusement on a Sunday. We know of the very sad figure of one million unemployed in this country, which I suppose is something of the order of 5 per cent. of the working population. But when it comes to actors. I understand that it is 20 or more per cent. of the profession unemployed. That means that if actors are asked to do a particular thing and they want to refuse, they are in a very bad position indeed. Moreover, theatres on the whole tend to make losses just as much as profits, and I should like to have some assurance that if there is no safeguard provided by local licensing and so on, there is some safeguard somewhere that actors cannot be exploited and forced to work seven days a week when the rest of the population work five days. That is the area that I am disquieted about. Undoubtedly in Wales and some parts of England the Free Churches are disquieted on the other score that I mentioned.

Did I understand the noble Lord to say that, other than actors, most people in this country worked five days a week, because 1 would question that?

I suggest that the noble Lord studies the statistics.

The point which the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, has put forward is an interesting one, and one that was fairly fully discussed on Second Reading. I should like to suggest that it surely does not really arise under this Amendment. Protection against the exploitation of actors is surely a matter for national decision, for our decision in this Bill, and there are safeguards. It is a matter for national action, and surely cannot he a matter for local option.

The council granting the licence to open can specify that the theatre shall only be open on five or six days in a week, whereas if they have not any option presumably the theatre can be open for seven days a week.

My intentions in moving this Amendment have been painted in such black colours that I hardly recognise myself. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, that I am one of the most enthusiastic adherents to the theatre. I love the theatre. I believe that it is a great ally of all things that are good and true. As for wanting to restrict the activities of the theatre, that has no part in my thinking. I mentioned the commercial interests solely in order to say that I do not think that the fact that it is viable to open a theatre in a particular area should be the sole criterion. I think that the general emotion and feeling of that particular area should have some opportunity of expression.

I hesitate to interrupt the right reverend Prelate, but I can give him a categorical assurance that it is an economic impossibility for any commercial interest to open a new theatre outside of London.

Then I would assure the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, that I have no intention whatsoever of trying to wreck this Bill; and I cannot think that moving this Amendment would wreck the Bill in view of the fact that it was in the original version of the Bill. All I am trying to do is to put back into this Bill something of the original intention of those who conceived the Bill. However, having listened with great interest to the debate that has taken place, I would simply assure your Lordships that my intention in moving this Amendment was that there should be an opportunity for certain areas to express an opinion as to whether they wanted to have Sunday opening of theatres or not. There would be no question of having the kind of voting which went on in regard to cinema opening because here the question is one for the licensing authority to decide. This would be a very considerable authority, in that it is the county council in a particular area. It would be they who would decide and not a popular vote with all the boosting and propaganda that would go on. Nevertheless, I have listened with great care to the arguments that have been advanced. I assure the noble Baroness that her charms have touched my heart, and therefore I will ask leave to withdraw this Amendment.

moved Amendment No. 3:

After Clause 1 insert the following new clause

I hope we have total agreement in the Committee that we want to protect any actors, technicians, and others engaged in the work of the theatre against being coerced into having to work seven days a week. That is our common purpose. I attempted to find suitable wording for this in the original Bill, but I was advised that the wording did not do what I thought should be done. I looked with great care at the wording of the Amendment that the right reverend Prelate has brought before us, and I am again advised, although we are completely at one about what we want to achieve, that this is not the way it could be done. For instance, his Amendment says:

"no performance will take place on a Sunday if a performance of the same or a similar production has been held on each of the six previous days on those premises."

When you talk about "the same or a similar production", you might have a repertory company which was putting on different plays two or three times a week and on any night, and therefore, although we are at one in what we are seeking to achieve, we still have not arrived at the best methods of so doing.

I have made an attempt later on by a new clause to state what I thought might adequately cover the point. I am again advised that there are certain difficulties, and certain things that are not quite clear in the wording. I will take the counsel of other Members of your Lordships' House, but since we are in total accord about what we want to achieve but have not yet managed to satisfy the Home Office and those who are simply interested in making quite sure that our words do mean what we intend, perhaps we might leave this matter to be decided on Report stage. At this moment of time I am in your Lordships' hands.

Perhaps this is an appropriate time for me to intervene in the debate. This is of course a Private Member's Bill. It is entirely for the promoter, the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, to handle the Bill as she thinks fit in the light of the discussion in Committee. When I spoke for the Government during the Second Reading debate, I said that we were sympathetic towards the aims of this Bill. The Paymaster General, as the Minister with special responsibility for the Arts, shares the Bill's objectives. I then went on to say that our attitude was one of benevolent neutrality and that no Government time or Government drafting could be offered in another place. But if a change of this sort is to be made in the law, it is desirable that it should be as practicable and workable and understandable as possible for those interests that will be concerned.

I might point out to the right reverend Prelate that the reason why the No. 2 Bill is different in a number of respects from the No. 1 Bill is because of the discussions that were held between the noble Baroness, Lady Lee, and her advisers and my Department on the best way to make this change. It is, in a way, a case study in legislative reform. It seems such an extraordinarily simple thing to say, "Let there be no impediment towards theatres opening on Sundays." That would not seem very difficult to achieve. But as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, will know, in a field where there is already a great deal of Statute Law (going right back to the 18th century in this case) it is a far from straightforward matter to make sure that a relatively simple change is kept consistent with those parts of the law which are to be unchanged; to repeal those parts of the existing law that need to be repealed, and to end up with a simple statutory provision which everyone can understand.

I have been advised, as the noble Baroness has been by her own advisers, that her Amendment No. 13 may itself be open to some technical objection. It is entirely for the noble Baroness, in the light of this debate, to say whether or not she thinks there should be a statutory safeguard for actors not to be required to work more than six days a week. I confess that my own personal views incline the other way. I believe that the better trend in public policy is towards voluntary collective bargaining, particularly where there is a strong union involved in the industry, as there is here, rather than trying to write down in a Statute exactly what the limitations should be. The Government's desire here is to try to see whether there is any way in which the noble Baroness can be advised how most effectively to achieve her aim. I had intended when we come to Amendment No. 13, which also seeks to do what the right reverend Prelate is seeking to do by this Amendment, to suggest that we had a further discussion after the Committee stage as to what further Amendments might be needed on Report.

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for what he bas said, and if we can get some agreement and some help upon this matter I shall be very grateful. I would only say that I and my friends who feel strongly about this point will press that there should be something in the Bill to give this protection. I would repeat that I do not think the protection should extend to saying that if an actor has a free night in the week he may not act on that night. I think it would be quite wrong to impose such a restriction that a person may not do a one-night stand or a television programme on the seventh evening. But as we are going to allow the theatres to be open on Sundays, we should have within the Bill a clear statement that actors cannot be expected to act on seven nights a week and that they are expected to act on only six nights a week. I should be very grateful if, in consultation with the noble Baroness and with any help that the noble Lord's Department can give us, we could devise a clause to that effect. I should then be very happy. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

May I very strongly support what the Government have said on this matter? It would be extremely difficult to introduce such a provision into the Bill, although it is obviously desirable, and will, I am sure, be achieved by other means. If your Lordships study the professional implications of this problem, you will see that it is replete with difficulties. Actors do not work 365 days a year, or 52 weeks a year. An actor may work for four months and then take a two months' holiday. An actor may be engaged for a special production for a period of only a week, and it would obviously be quite wrong to exclude him from appearing on seven days if the production was to run for only seven days. Also, a distinguished visiting company from abroad may come for ten days and wish to appear on consecutive days. There are innumerable problems here which are best left to the trade organisation which deals with such matters. Equity is very strong and, having dealt with it for many years on the other side of the table, I think it is a very sensible body. I do not believe that the Industrial Relations Act is going to diminish its power in the slightest degree, except perhaps on the question of the closed shop; and there is no reason to believe that sensible actors will not recognise the wisdom of remaining members of Equity and conforming to its rules. I am sure that this is a matter which can safely be left to the industry's own organisation.

moved Amendment No. 4:

After Clause 1 insert the following new clause:

I regret to have to assume the role of the professional expert on matters connected with actors, but the only great actor who is a Member of this House is unfortunately not here. But I know a little about the profession, and I think that this again is a misconceived, paternalistic Amendment which actors would not seek. It could cause great difficulty. It could, for instance, prevent single-day productions going to an area from having any prospect of a viable box office, by not enabling two productions. It could prevent a great artiste coming for a day to give two performances, though obviously there would be large numbers of people in an area who would want to see him or her. It could prevent all sorts of entirely benevolent situations, without necessarily achieving the objective of the Amendment. This is another matter that should be left to arrangements to be made by the industrial organisation of actors who can be relied upon to safeguard their profession. The normal contract for the run of a play is, I believe, eight performances during the week. I am quite sure that this situation will be most faithfully preserved by Equity, and the people concerned with the acting profession, to ensure that there are six performances in the evenings and two matinees. I have no doubt at all that this change would not impose a further strenuous burden on actors, and that no such burden would be permitted by Equity.

Reference has been made to the noble Lord, Lord Olivier. He wished to be present to-day, but, as I think your Lordships know, he is under very great strain in the most distinguished part he is playing at the moment at the New Theatre. He had the opportunity to have a much-needed few days' rest; and I took the liberty of saying to him that I was quite sure your Lordships would be in general agreement with his views—though I must add that his views happen to be my views. We discussed this very matter; and the general feeling that I get from talking with people who are administrators, directors, professionals of every kind in the theatre, is that they would not want a restriction placed on the Sunday performances that was different from that on the other days. What they do on a Sunday is another matter. Indeed, how many theatres actually choose to open on a Sunday is another matter. But I would strongly urge that there should be no special limiting conditions placed on Sunday performances.

With some experience of the theatre, from a slightly different angle from that of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, I should like strongly to support what the noble Baroness and the noble Lord have said. This is always on the basis of a run of a production, and I should have thought it was very much easier and more sensible to leave the matter to be settled with Equity.

I am glad to have had this opportunity to raise this question in Committee, because I know that it concerns some members of the acting profession who feel that it would be a very considerable burden if on a Sunday they were required to perform twice, during the afternoon and again in the evening. However, I have listened with great care to the opinions which have been expressed, and especially to the authoritative views of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman. In the light of that, and in the hope that note will be taken of the views which have been expressed in this debate, I am ready to withdraw the Amendment.

moved Amendment No. 5:

Page 1, line 18, after (" force ") insert (" or in respect of which a licensing authority have power to impose conditions in writing under section 17(2) of the Theatres Act 1968 ").

As I have already explained, Amendment No. 6 is simply a clarification to avoid any ambiguity. I beg to move.

moved Amendment No. 7:

Page 1, line 20, leave out (" one") and insert (" two ").

In tabling an Amendment suggesting 2.30 I certainly had in mind that the play would start at 2.30, that the curtain would go up then; and that if people wanted to go to the theatre and to be there at the beginning of the play, they must be there by 2.30. I take the noble Baroness's point that if that is to happen the doors must open at two o'clock; and I also take the point, I think, that if the doors are to open at 2.30 probably the starting time of the performance at three o'clock would play havoc with the general timetable for the day. So if the noble Baroness intends only that the doors shall open at two o'clock, with the performance starting at 2.30, I readily accept that, and I hope that the noble Lord will also.

I should like to support Lady Lee's generosity in this matter, and support the hour of two o'clock, because presumably the people who work in the theatre will have to be there some considerable time before then; and if they are to enjoy their Sunday lunch in the way that I am sure Lady Lee wishes, then I suggest that two o'clock is the right time.

There is one point here. It is a drafting point, but it is a point for the Committee. I know exactly what we intend, but is it quite clear what is meant by the words "used for the public performance"? If the doors are opened, is the place being used for a public performance, or is it only when the curtain goes up that the theatre is being used for a public performance?

It is when the curtain goes up.

I beg to move Amendment No. 9.

This Amendment is to ensure that Covent Garden and Drury Lane and patent theatres not covered by the 1968 Theatre Act shall be included. I beg to move.

had given notice of her intention to move Amendment No. 13:

After Clause 3 insert the following new clause

My Lords, I beg to move the Second Reading of this Bill. The main purpose of the Bill is to overhaul the legislative framework of the public service pension schemes. It will give the Minister for the Civil Service power to prescribe pension schemes for the Civil Service in administrative documents. It will also empower the appropriate Secretaries of State to do the same for National Health Service employees, teachers and local government employees, but in statutory instruments subject to the Negative Resolution procedure. It will thus bring to an end the need for repeated Acts of Parliament to amend the public service pension schemes, much as the Pensions (Increase) Act which we passed in the last Session did in its particular sphere. I should make it clear at the outset that this Bill is not concerned with the pension schemes of the Armed Forces, which are made and changed by instruments under the Royal Prerogative.

I welcome the opportunity of reminding the House that the Party opposite and in particular the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, my predecessor in day-to-day charge of the Civil Service Department, announced just over two years ago their intention to make broad changes along these lines for the Civil Service. By the same token it was under the auspices of the noble Lord opposite that the reviews of public service pension terms, to which I shall return, were set in train. I happily acknowledge the degree to which putative parenthood can reasonably be attributed to the noble Lord opposite. At the same time I should like to set the Bill in the wider context of what I described, during our Second Reading of the Pensions (Increase) Bill, as the Government's strategy of subjecting to re-examination and reform all aspects of the treatment of retired public servants. Good progress has been made on all the issues I mentioned in July, and this Bill provides much more than an excuse for reporting that progress.

My right honourable friend has explained in his White Paper, Strategy for Pensions, the greatly enhanced role the Government's policy gives to the occupational pension scheme, to build an earnings-related pension for old age on top of the flat rate social security pension. The public service pension schemes have long been doing just that. But the Government intend to set an example both as an employer in the Civil Service and National Health Service and as the coordinator of the other public service pension schemes. A good start has already been made.

May I refer to the "headings", as it were, here? First came the decision last May on improved terms of compensation for Civil Servants retired prematurely for management reasons. We were able to announce last November that these had been agreed with the National Staff Side, and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs—and I am glad to see that the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth, will be taking part in this brief discussion—recently announced that, subject to continuing discussion on one or two points, the Diplomatic Service Staff Side to which I have already referred have also agreed to the new terms. Next came the Pensions (Increase) Act, which for the first time regularised on a fair and predictable basis the arrangements for increasing the pensions of retired public servants. The reforms embodied in that Bill were widely welcomed as they stood. But your Lordships will remember that in December my noble friend Lord Aberdare, while announcing the change to annual upratings of National Insurance pensions, also announced the Government's decision to make further improvements in the pensions increase arrangements.

These improvements will be twofold. First, reviews of public service pensions will become annual rather than two-yearly. Second, the reduction from 60 to 55 in the qualifying age at which increases may be paid, which was already promised for the lifetime of this Parliament and which has a particular significance for uniformed members of the public service, now has a firm date set for it; namely, December 1, 1972. I propose to move at Committee stage the Amendments to the Pensions (Increase) Act that will be required to provide for annual reviews. I hope these changes will be regarded as making better pensions increase arrangements for the public service which already, in my view, are an improvement on what had obtained in the past.

In Committee I should also hope to tie up one or two very minor loose ends in the highly technical provisions of the Pensions (Increase) Act and of this Bill. While on the subject of the complexity of this Bill, which inevitably flows from the need to amend or repeal a great mass of legislation, I should like to pay a very real and sincere tribute to the learned counsel who drafted this Bill and who is about to retire. because, although we "twit" them from time to time, we all owe a great deal to our Parliamentary draftsmen.

The third area of reform was the reviews of the public service pension schemes themselves. These are progressing well, and to illustrate how the powers sought in the Bill will be used I will say something about the review of the Civil Service scheme. But first I must say a word or two about the Bill itself. I hope that your Lordships will forgive me for putting it in the wider setting but the action of this Bill is more comprehensible if we try to set it in this wider context. Why are we seeking the authority of Parliament to reduce the degree of Parliamentary control of these schemes? Why go further for the Civil Service scheme than for the others? Are there any special safeguards for staff? Those I think are the three main questions which occur to anyone looking at the Bill.

The Civil Service was among the pioneers in occupational pension provision. As long ago as 1684 Mr. Martin Horsham, a Customs officer at the Port of London, known as a landwaiter, (with whom, no doubt, Samuel Pepys was acquainted) was certified by his superiors as being

"soe much indisposed by a great malancholye that he is at presens unfitt for business".

That in itself shows a humane approach in an age which is often thought brutish and insensitive. But there was more to it. The Lords Commissioners of the Treasury asked the Commissioners of Customs to appoint Mr. G. Scroope, who was recommended by them as a successor

"in the room and place of the said Martin Horsham with the established allowance of £80 per annum for his salary, out of which "—

and this is the point—

"he is to allow £40 per annum to the said Martin Horsham until we give order to the contrary."

Mr. Horsham was thus, as Dr. Raphael points out in his interesting thesis on this subject, established as one of the first pensioners of the British Civil Service.

Fascinating though it would be to take your Lordships through some of these byways of history, I will resist the temptation and pass on to present history. The first general provision for the Civil Service was the Superannuation Act 1810. This was followed by a long list of Acts, ending with the consolidating Superannuation Act 1965 and the Miscellaneous Provisions Act 1967. The other public services developed later on a national basis and so did their pension arrangements, which took various legislative forms. We thus have a hotch-potch of legislative foundations for these schemes, which is untidy in itself and which in many cases requires far too much Parliamentary time for what are often, by current standards of Parliamentary priorities, quite minor changes in conditions of service. Moreover, the need to find Parliamentary time can be damaging to the staff concerned—a point which they have had very much in mind —since it can delay the implementation of favourable changes which both the Staff side and the Official side, to use the jargon, would like to make.

In any case, we believe that the original reasons for spelling the schemes out in Statutes no longer hold good. We do not depend on this in order to prevent abuse or waste of public money: indeed superannuation is the only condition of service still to be treated in this way. Nor is it necessary to make provision in Acts in order to ensure that a particular practice is followed: occupational pension schemes have long been a well-established part of the economic scene, particularly in the public services. Finally, my Lords, the development of the staff associations, and of the vital part they play in representing the interests of staff, makes it no longer necessary to rest this responsibility on Parliament. In the Civil Service, the National Staff Side proposed as long ago as 1955 that the pension scheme should be taken out of Statute.

However, the solution for the Civil Service is not quite appropriate for the other public service schemes. The Bill tidies up and consolidates the legislative framework of these other schemes, but gives power to prescribe their terms not in administrative documents but in Statutory Instruments subject to Negative Resolution procedure. This different approach is what the scheme managers want and is acceptable to the staff. These services are less monolithic than the Civil Service. In the Civil Service there is a single employer and (for non-industrial civil servants) a single body—the National Whitley Council—representing the staff interests. But the other public services have a multiplicity either of employers or of staff interests or both; so that for the sake of greater uniformity and formality it is better, in these services, in our view, to keep pension terms in a statutory form.

My Lords, I turn now to the question of safeguards for staff interests. The Bill contains several very specific ones. First is the requirement, applying to all the public service schemes, that the Minister concerned must consult with the representatives of the staff before making changes in the schemes. Naturally, the value of this provision turns on how one interprets "consult".

In the Civil Service, the National Staff Side wrote to us when they had seen the Bill, and among other points said that they were most concerned that there should be no arbitrary changes made which were clearly against the declared interests of the staff. The Government certainly share that hope and feel confident that it is well founded. And as my Parliamentary Secretary said in another place on Second Reading the Government are both willing and able to give the assurance that the obligation to consult will be honoured in the spirit, not only in the letter: Consultation will mean what it says: it will be real and meaningful. Another safeguard is to be found in the provisions protecting existing pension rights against any retrospective worsening.

This brings me to the actual changes which we hope to introduce under the new powers. Here. I am sure that your Lordships will understand if I confine myself to developments in the Civil Service. The other reviews are less far advanced and it is only here, as the Minister directly responsible, that I would feel justified in going into any detail. But what I say will give an advance reflection of the radical nature of all the reviews which are now in progress.

The review of the Civil Service superannuation scheme is being conducted by the Joint Superannuation Committee of the National Whitley Council, a committee representing both employer and also employee; and I should like to pay tribute to the work they have been doing in this very important sphere for all the staff. I have its report and so does the National Staff Side, who are due to consider it within the next two or three weeks. Our expectation is that the National Staff Side will wish to refer it to the Staff Association Conferences which are held in May. I must emphasise, therefore, that the Committee's proposals are still subject to agreement with the National Staff Side. I hope that that can be achieved as quickly as possible after the May conferences. When it is. we want to get on with bringing the changes into effect as soon as practicable. Nevertheless, the Committee itself has completed its immediate task and I do not believe—I have considered this matter carefully—that it will prejudice either the Official or the Staff Sides' interests if I inform your Lordships about the main proposals it has put forward.

The Government have already declared their commitment to the principle that people should not lose their accrued pension rights when they change jobs. Moreover, the Government as employer are determined to set a good example. This applies particularly to the preservation of pensions—the arrangement whereby a man who leaves employment prematurely has his pension rights preserved or frozen to come into payment at the retirement age. It is now a firm proposal that all those who leave the Civil Service early, and who have passed the qualifying period for pension, should be entitled—if your Lordships will excuse me the quaint phrase—to preservation.

Preservation in the Civil Service will be introduced in a way which will conform with the proposed legal requirements of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services. A consequence is that the qualifying period in the scheme, both for a preserved pension and thus for other pension benefits, will be reduced from 10 to 5 years. For someone changing jobs, the alternative to preserving. his pension is to transfer it to his new scheme. In some ways this is the better solution; but—as anyone who has studied this matter, and I know many of your Lordships have, will know—it is also more complex. For practical reasons, the Government will not be making transferability compulsory. But this does not prevent the Government as employer from forging ahead with their plan to widen the scope of transfers. The Committee's report urges this. It proposes that the existing arrangements for transfer provisions between public sector bodies should be retained, and that transferability should be extended as far as possible to cover moves to and from the private sector. This means that the Government would be prepared to pay transfer values to any private sector scheme prepared to accept them; and conversely would accept them from any private sector scheme willing to pay them. The importance of this development cannot be over-stressed. I personally attach very great importance for a whole host of reasons, to this principle of pension transferability.

My Lords, the next main recommendation of the Committee is that all unestablished, that is, temporary staff, should be admitted into the pension scheme. This applies both to full-time unestablished staff and also to part-time staff working more than 18 hours a week.

Turning to the changes proposed in the benefits themselves, I also very much applaud the Committee's approach, the main strategic approach which they have followed. Resources here, as elsewhere, are inevitably limited and the Committee, like all of us, have had to assess priorities. Their view was that the emphasis should go on providing extra help where it was particularly needed; that is, to those who are injured on duty and who retire because of ill-health, and to civil servants' widows and dependants. Because they were selective, the Commitee were able to produce a package of improvements here which I think will be found to he attractive. The following are its main features: First, injury benefits will be radically overhauled and improved. The main changes include an extension of the injury scheme to manual workers, more liberal conditions of eligibility and substantial improvements in the benefits themselves.

Ill-health retirement benefits are also down for big improvements. "Enhancement" (that is, calculating the pension on more years than those actually served) will be built in for the generality of staff retiring on ill-health, and not only, as is the case at present, for those who have between 10 and 20 years' service. For example, a man aged 50 with 20 years' service would have his ill-health pension raised by the Committee's proposals from one-quarter to one-third of his pensionable pay.

Next for attention comes the all-important widows' and children's scheme. This was introduced soon after the war, when the widow's pension was fixed at one-third of that of the deceased officer. At that time, it was one of the best schemes in the field. Even though many schemes still do not provide widows' pensions, others have caught us up and some have overtaken us—"us" being the public sector; above all, the Civil Service. Accordingly, the Committee propose that civil servants should earn a contingent widow's pension of one-half, rather than one-third, of their own pension. This again is a matter to which those who represent the interests of the staff have attached—quite understandably —great importance.

There are many other improvements proposed in this part of the scheme. When an officer dies in service, his widow's pension is based on his notional ill-health pension and so will automatically benefit from the improvement in ill-health pensions I have described. It is proposed that children's pensions should be raised substantially. I will not spell out the details. But, to take an example, the new rates will double the amount of pension payable to a widow with two children, quite apart from the various other improvements which would help her. It is also proposed to help the widow in that difficult period of adjustment after her husband's death, by paying her for three months at his rate of salary, if he dies in service, or at his rate of pension if he dies after retirement.

Under this head I should also single out the death gratuity. Bearing in mind that a widow's pension is also payable and will be improved as I have just sketched, the Civil Service death gratuity is good by outside standards (it is never less than one year's pay), but there is a qualifying period of five years' service. The Committee propose that this qualifying period should be waived and that civil servants should have immediate death cover on entry into the scheme.

I think I can claim that these proposals bear out what I said about the Committee's emphasis on selective improvements directed at the points of greatest need. But there is one area where they concluded that there should be a general improvement which would benefit all members of the scheme. At present pension benefits are based on what is called pensionable pay, which has for long been defined as the average salary over the last three years' service. The Pensions (Increase) Act, particularly when amended to provide for annual reviews, will guarantee that pensions do not suffer any significant loss of purchasing power after award. The Committee see a clear need to complement this by relating pension to the final year's salary, or where this would be better, to the best of the last three years. This will improve all pension benefits, including lump sums, widows' and children's pensions, gratuities, compensation payments, and so on. The Committee also wish to abandon the rule that only completed years of service can count for pension and propose that service should he reckoned by completed days.

I should also mention a proposal, which I know will be popular—since I have received a great deal of correspondence on the subject, as I am sure my predecessor did—to ease the rule which limits the amount of pension plus pay a civil servant may draw if he retires on pension and is re-engaged in the Service. The proposal would allow him to benefit from ordinary pay increases as well as from pension increases. However, I should add that the Committee are not proposing that this system of abatement should be brought to an end altogether. The Government believe it right that when a public servant drawing a pension continues to be employed in his service, the pension should be adjusted in recognition of the pay he is drawing. It is wrong that he should receive both pay and pension in full at the same time and from the same employer, especially since public servants re-employed after the retirement age can continue to earn further pension rights.

My Lords, I have felt it right—and I hope that I have not taken too much of your Lordships' time—to single out the main proposals in the Committee's Report. But there will soon be an opportunity for noble Lords interested to have a further look at this. I understand that the Staff Side of the Committee are making summaries of the recommendations available to their constituent associations to-day. Subject to National Staff Side approval, the full Report will be printed and made widely available to staff and departments and others who wish to have copies in the next few weeks. I will ensure that copies are available for use and study in both Houses of Parliament.

I hope that I have said enough to convince your Lordships that major reforms are now just round the corner, in an important field affecting the careers and prospects of hundreds and thousands of our fellow countrymen and countrywomen. In the case of the Civil Service, this should be the most significant reform of the pension scheme this century. The Bill aims to provide timely powers with which to carry through changes promptly, efficiently and with due regard both to the appropriate degree of Parliamentary involvement and to the interests of staff representatives. I have confidence in recommending it to your Lordships. My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, has covered a great deal of material in his speech, and I for one am grateful for the amount of fresh information he has given. I am grateful, too, for his kind remarks at the beginning. Whether I am the putative father or not, I think this is the Bill I should have hoped to introduce; but, as he and I well know, there are certain secret begetters in his Ministry who play a vital part and do much of the thinking. I am bound to say that there are certain things in the Bill which may not have been in any Bill I would have introduced, but I cannot identify anything that is not as good as anything I might have proposed. Some things are possibly even better. Therefore, I pay a really grateful tribute to the noble Earl personally. It is always rather embarrassing to say that someone has done well because he is doing exactly what you would have done, but the important thing—and I must be allowed to make one or two passing remarks—is that in certain areas this Government have quite unnecessarily gone and torn up something and then found that there was nothing much better to put in its place. There has been no hesitation on the part of the noble Earl and of the Government with regard to reforms which the previous Government had initiated in other areas, and for the most part they have pressed on with them with a vigour which satisfies me very much indeed, and I am truly grateful, as I am sure is the Civil Service as a whole, to the noble Earl.

There is one area in his wide-ranging review where I do not feel competent to speak. We suddenly find ourselves in those rarefied strategy discussions of which this Government are so fond. We do not hear quite so much about the new style of government, but find ourselves seeing this in the context of the occupa- tional scheme, Strategy for Pensions, a Paper which I have read carefully and which is clearly expressed. But we have not debated it in this House and I hope that my noble friend Lady Phillips, who knows much more about general public pensions than I, will have an opportunity of doing so. This sector is significantly different in various ways from the Civil Service side. It may not be so satisfactory as the scheme which my right honourable friend Mr. Crossman had sought to introduce. If anything, it accentuates the advantages of the Civil Service scheme. Personally I do not complain of this. It may well be that it fits more neatly with it. But we certainly reserve our position with regard to the Government's system of State and occupational pensions until we have had an opportunity of debating them. I am glad to hear that the Diplomatic Staff Association (or whatever it is called) are now satisfied with some of the arrangements in a very difficult area that the Civil Service Department and the noble Earl have been able to make. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth, is here to confirm their attitude in a matter of some difficulty.

A number of points were raised in another place, but I do not propose to pursue them further here. I understand from my noble friend Lord Garnsworthy that some of the anxieties of a local government union have now been resolved and, as a result of Amendments which have been made in another place, it is no longer necessary for us to concern ourselves with them. There was anxiety as to the meaning of the word "representative". When the noble Earl comes to reply, it might be valuable if he repeated certain assurances which, while entirely satisfactory to the Civil Service Unions, who have had much more experience of dealing directly with the Central Department, have caused anxiety elsewhere. It is noteworthy that the Civil Service Unions, who obviously have worked very hard with the officials of the Department in the admirable Whitley machinery, have a good deal to be pleased with. None the less, on the point of consultation we had an assurance that the word "representative" is not some tricky device to avoid talking to the right unions, but is a device really in order to meet a situation which might give rise even to the encouragement of small break-away unions.

It is interesting that the Government are now going in for the annual review. I do not need to stress the efforts that we made to persuade the Government to have annual reviews of public service pensions. I have already teased the noble Earl on this matter and I will not do so again. I appreciate that the fact that this is happening in the public schemes, as opposed to the public service schemes, may have made it a bit easier. This is certainly desirable, though presumably, if ever we get to a stage where the cost of living is held steady, a time might come when annual reviews will not be necessary. Far be it from me to move an Amendment in this matter, but I take it that if ever that, as it seems, impossible event happens it would be possible, after consultation, to discontinue the annual review. I certainly would not ask the noble Earl to assume that I am advocating anything of the kind until the implications have been thought out. That is just a passing thought, but it might have validity in the future.

The noble Earl spoke about transfer and preservation. In this respect, of course, the Civil Service, who certainly have been far in the lead in this matter, will find that they will be more easily able to transfer once there is a proper control over occupational schemes in the private sector. Whereas we reserve our position on the Government's general scheme on occupational pensions, there is no doubt that the fact that there is to be proper supervision of them, and the State reserve scheme in addition, will make it easier to broaden the arrangements for transferability. As we said, and as the Government now say, it is right that, if possible, pensions should be transferable. But what so many people who have advocated transferability have failed to realise is that it is impossible to transfer them unless there is something satisfactory to transfer them to. We hope that if there is a real development in occupational schemes, and they are properly supervised, the amount of transferability will be increased. There is already a considerable amount that has been initiated by the Civil Service in previous years.

There is one question that I should like to put to the noble Earl. Paragraph 66 of Strategy for Pensions says:

"When an employee leaves a recognised occupational scheme after serving for less than five years, unless his pensions rights are preserved or transferred, his employer will be required to pay into the reserve scheme the total contributions."

It is possible, I suppose, that they will be transferred to the State reserve scheme, but I wonder a little about the de minimis rule. It has always been my view that all work that is done, other than the shortest temporary work, should qualify for pension purposes. One of the matters with which I was concerned was the extent to which people who have been working for many years in the public service as temporaries never become established and thus acquire no pension rights, although they may get a gratuity. I am sure the general principle should be that, ideally, all work (with some, of course, it is difficult, especially if it is casual work) should contribute towards the ultimate pension.

The noble Earl gave us an interesting account of the Whitley Committee that has been looking at such matters as interest benefit, ill-health, widows' and death cover. Again, I am most interested. I think there are some real improvements here, and nowhere is it more necessary than in regard to widows.

There is one other matter about which I should like to ask the noble Earl. Some concern has been expressed with regard to the universities, who of course operate under a different scheme. They are not covered by the provisions of the Superannuation Bill, which relate to a large number of people in the public services, including school teachers, health services personnel and the police. University teachers are outside this. This is a matter, I presume, for the university authorities or the University Grants Committee, but I feel that the Government ought to keep an eye on it. I think that many of them would have liked to he brought fully into the public service regulations. Perhaps the noble Earl will comment on this when he replies.

The other point I should like to mention is this. It is worth noting that Government control over the pension arrangements of the nationalised industries has now been disposed of; there will be no Government control. I think this is right. But equally I think it right that the Departments concerned, and indeed the Civil Service Department, who after all have o general responsibility, even though it may be remote, over the level at least of top pay in the nationalised industries, should at least keep an eye on this, because there are considerable differences between the levels in the various nationalised industries. They are certainly not free under this Government and I must confess that they were not entirely free under the previous Government in certain matters in which traditionally nationalised industries, acording to the textbook, ought to be free. One would be very sorry to see the Government pursuing a rather arbitrary pricing policy, seeing that it was not possible to pay the right sort of pensions; indeed, there is room for improvement in pensions in certain of the nationalised industries. But, having said that, I shall not, as I feel at present, seek to make any further amendments to the Bill. It is right that control over pensions now should be in the much more flexible form that the Bill now introduces. I therefore give it an unreserved welcome.

My Lords, when I saw from to-day's list of speakers that I was the only person who was not as personally or politically eminent as the other two noble Lords, I felt an inclination to take Civil Service action and write a minute saying "I agree", and sit down. But I cannot let your Lordships off quite as lightly as that. It is a particular pleasure to be able to greet this draft Bill, in the light of the further information that the noble Earl was good enough to give us this afternoon. In the particular capacity in which I speak, I say once again what I said in the case of the Pensions (Increase) Act, that I would certainly like to acknowledge the origins of this Bill in the thoughts and initiatives of the noble Lord. Lord Shackleton, as well as its completion by the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, and his Department.

I cannot speak with any authority, because in all fairness I must make it clear that I am not speaking "on behalf of" the Civil Service in any way or "on behalf of" the Diplomatic Service Asso- ciation, though from what I know I would concur with the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, in saying that there is a general atmosphere of satisfaction in the Association in what has been proposed. What I think I can perhaps do, which is only a small service to the Bill, is to make one or two comments in the light of really difficult experiences I had in trying to operate under the old arrangements. I shall not raise these matters at any length because they are, I hope, all about to die. But they do show how very urgent and necessary these changes are.

If I may first make a very brief allusion to the preservation and transfer of pensions, this will certainly lead to a desirable form of flexibility which many people, both civil servants and others, have been seeking for many years. It is perhaps not for me to say so but I have no doubt that the noble Earl's Department will arrange it all with just half an eye to the necessary caution, which is of course that the arrangements should be beneficial but not to the extent that transferring might become a game which extremely clever people can make profitable as a game. But I am sure this will not happen. Now if I may make brief comments in respect of three things: first, the basing of the pension, particularly for the Diplomatic Service, on the last year of service; then on the matter of the widow's pension; and thirdly, on the general principle which the noble Earl explained and defended, that this sphere should be taken out of the area of Parliament and dealt with administratively with proper safeguards.

First, on the matter of the last year, in diplomatic terms this is a great advance. The practical problem of administering the Diplomatic Service on the basis that an official's pension should be based on the average of the last three years was this: that when you are moving people round the world at public expense, you have a great many considerations to take care of. You do not want to waste public money on unnecessary journeys and transfers; you want to be fair to the official whom you are moving about and make sure that in the last three years he is in the grade which attracts the pension he ought to get; but at the same time, because of the limited I number of people in a grade, you could not always make these three considerations fit with each other. So the business of working out the movement of an official in an unpredictable world—and I mean totally unpredictable—consistent with what he ought to get, was sometimes very complicated indeed. Now under the new proposals to base the pension on the last year of service, this will become immensely simpler administratively as well as more humane to the official concerned, because, however difficult it might be to arrange that an official spends his last three years in the right grade, it must surely be clear that in his last year of all he will be in the grade attracting the pension that he ought to get. So from both points of view, this is a most important advance.

Then on the question of widows, if I may for a moment reminisce, it is only just over thirty years ago that I can recall one particular case in which very suddenly one of the diplomatic wives became a widow. She did not get even an old halfpenny from the public services, from the Government, from the Treasury; and literally the Service had to club together and help her out. I only mention that case in passing. We have come a long way from then, only a short time ago. Clearly it is immensely desirable that the one-third should be increased, and it is a very welcome change that the widow's pension shall now amount to a half. I would just make this reflection, that in this particular sphere perhaps the Diplomatic Service has a rather special interest in the sense that the person who is widowed may be widowed in a country which is neither her own country nor her country of adoption. If she is a foreign wife, she can be quite suddenly widowed in some remote country far from either of her countries, if I may put it that way, and the sense of forlornness in such cases is very hard to describe. I hope that the Minister will have the flexibility to be able to look and see after some time whether a half in such cases is enough or whether he has some discretion to give help to people with particular needs where something more would be really right in the family's circumstances.

Finally, I should like to say a word about the new procedure by which legislation to change the superannuation arrangements will no longer be necessary. When I had the privilege of being responsible for the administration of superannuation arrangements, the Diplomatic Service had benefited somewhat from the foresight of the noble Earl, Lord Avon, and his advisers in 1943. The 1943 Act provided that people could be retired on the basis of what was called politely "limited efficiency". It meant that if somebody had, so to speak, "run down in the Service", there was a procedure for retiring him without stigma. This was reinforced in the Act passed by Mr. Attlee's Government, which allowed officials to retire earlier with due pension benefits if they had served in particular posts, which imposed great strain on health or constitution. This Act also became to some extent an instrument of management. Your Lordships will readily see that with the passage of time both instruments became very blunt. The 1943 Act became something of a stigma after all, and the 1949 Act, if applied by management—which it had to be for structural reasons—was to some extent not a question of what you had done but where you had been, and this was no fair test.

The Acts were consolidated, as your Lordships know, in the Act of 1965. It is no criticism of the previous Government to say that that meant that Parliament could not within the next few weeks be expected to devote Parliamentary time to a further revision. This could not be done. That was the general malady from which the whole scheme suffered: Ministers and officials alike know that the system was unfair and was not working properly, but there seemed no way to change it. I am absolutely sure that both the previous Government and the present Government are right in feeling that this inflexibility is not in the public interest and that, provided the proper safeguards can be observed for seeing that the Executive do not do anything drastically unfair or capricious, it is infinitely better to assimilate the superannuation procedure to the other administrative procedures which are carried out by the Executive. For this reason I am quite sure that my own successors, and Sir William Armstrong and his successors, will find the business of regulating superannuation infinitely more fair and simple under the new Bill if and when it comes into force.

May I end by saying that we owe a great deal to many people in the improvement which has been brought about, notably to the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, and his Committee who first codified what was wanted, and, as I have said already, to the two noble Lords who have done so much personally to bring about a situation whereby when this Bill becomes an Act this whole business will be dealt with in a manner infinitely more practical, fair and humane than it was before.

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, and to the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth, for the very generous welcome which they have extended to this Bill. On that general point I can only agree with what they have said, except for the nice things which the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, said about me, with which I do not entirely agree. I am also particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth, for pointing out that one advantage of the move from three-year averaging to basing the pension on the last year's salary is not only an advantage where we should all wish it to be, from the point of view of humanity, but it also can greatly contribute towards good management, not least in the Diplomatic Service.

I have been asked a number of specific questions, and perhaps I should come straight to them. In the first place, I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Shackle-ton, if by any chance we get out of an inflationary cycle—and there are signs that the inflationary spiral may be not rising so fast as it has been, although it is still rising far too fast—whether this could lead to abandoning annual reviews. I do not think that this would be necessary since the Act provides for reviews and not increases. There is a point which I should spell out: at present the Act provides for increases at a two-yearly review period if the cost of living has risen by at least 4 per cent. in that two-year period. This is the Pensions (Increase) Act. When we move to annual reviews we must consider whether this 4 per cent. trigger is still right. We have had representations made to us by the Public Service Pensioners Council and we are considering those representations at the present time. It is probable that I shall be bringing forward my proposals in the form of Amendments at the Committee stage.

The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, also referred to paragraph 66 of the pensions White Paper. To the two questions that he put to me in that respect, the answers are as follows: all who served for five years will qualify for pension. If they leave before 60 years of age their pensions will be transferred to other occupational schemes or preserved for payment at 60 as each individual may prefer. On the de minimis point which he put to me in this context, for those who leave before completing five years there will be gratuities for all, and we shall bring them into the State reserve scheme in respect of these short periods of service. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, also asked me why the university staffs—

My Lords, may I interrupt? It may be that I am pressing the noble Earl too far, but under the public scheme the employer is required, if the period is less than five years, to pay into the reserve scheme the total contribution which, but for exemption, would have been due for the period concerned. It may be that I am not understanding it either. I am assuming that the public service pensions will at least provide as good a protection for those who have served for less than five years. The Government in their pensions White Paper set their faces very much against the proposals which the previous Government had (of which I personally was not entirely in favour) of paying out cash on these short terms. The last thing I would want to do is remove the gratuity, but it is fundamental that these monies should be paid in. No doubt this is a matter which the staff side are talking about.

My Lords, I should prefer to leave the matter there, because if I were to walk further into this particular maze I might find myself not emerging from it with any great ease. I should be glad to revert to this, either in correspondence with the noble Lord or as a point that we can raise on Committee stage. I will certainly look into the matter between now and then.

If I may refer to universities, a point that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton put to me, he asked why university staffs are not covered in this Bill, as are other teachers. The answer is that there is no need for this. As the noble Lord doubtless knows, university staffs have a scheme which is known as F.S.S.U., the Federated Superannuation Scheme for Universities, which is an insurance policy based scheme. This Bill is concerned only with powers, and the F.S.S.U. is a non-statutory scheme which those concerned can alter or replace without a Bill. I can confirm what I think was also in the mind of the noble Lord, that discussions are taking place between those concerned about the future form of pensions provision for university staff. There may be changes here, but I do not think I can anticipate the discussions which are already taking place.

Those were the main, specific questions which the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, put to me. There was a special plea which the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth, put to me about widows: whether in certain exceptional cases the one-half could not be adjusted upwards to meet certain specific difficulties. I am afraid that I cannot give the noble Lord any commitment on this point. It would be very difficult to vary so basic and standard a feature of the scheme for particular circumstances. I am quite certain it would be wrong for me to hold out a hope, certainly in the context of this Bill and in this discussion of it, that we could move towards meeting the noble Lord on this particular point. But I have noted what he said in this regard.

My Lords, perhaps we have devoted not undue time to a matter of extreme importance to a great many people, but we have had quite a look at the Bill at this stage. I will be moving certain Amendments, some of which I have foreshadowed, at Committee stage. If there are points then which have not been met in this debate I shall be very glad to have an opportunity of reverting to them.

My Lords, I beg to move that the six draft Immunities and Privileges Orders, which were laid before the House on December 6 last, and the Titles of which are set out on the Order Paper, be approved. I thought it might be for the convenience of your Lordships' House if I were to speak to all these six Orders together, as briefly as possible, commensurate with the reasonable courtesy which your Lordships would expect in explaining six Orders which might on the surface appear to have little in common, and then move them en bloc. The six Orders, which have already been approved in another place, all relate to privileges and immunities. Five of the six are concerned with international organisations in which the United Kingdom participates.

With your Lordships' permission, I will first discuss the International Tin Council (Immunities and Privileges) Order 1971, since this Order is the only one of the six which will have much practical effect within the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is host to four international commodity organisations which regulate world trading in wheat, coffee, sugar and tin. The function of these organisations is to try to ensure stable prices and favourable market conditions in each commodity, to protect the interests both of the consuming countries such as the United Kingdom and of the producing countries many of which are developing countries whose economy may be heavily dependent on a particular product.

Her Majesty's Government have negotiated headquarters agreements with each of these organisations within the last few years. This is normal practice among countries which are hosts to international organisations and the scale of privileges and immunities agreed with the commodity organisations was thought by Her Majesty's Government to be fully in line with the United Kingdom policy of according to each international organisation privileges and immunities which are sufficient to enable it to perform its functions efficiently and independently of interference or harassment but which do not go beyond that point.

The Tin Council employ about twenty staff in London. The Executive Director is British and will therefore not enjoy the diplomatic scale of privileges and immunities which, under Article 15 of the Order, would be given to him if he were foreign. However, he and his staff will be given only immunity for their official acts they will he given income tax exemption, on condition that they pay an internal tax to the Tin Council itself, and customs privileges limited to the time when they move their household to this country in order to work for the organisation. Their immunity in regard to official acts will not cover motoring offences or civil suits for damage caused by a motor vehicle which they own or drive. The organisation itself may also be sued in the case of a civil suit for damage caused by a vehicle belonging to it or operated on its behalf. Another exception to the ordinary immunity of the Council concerns the enforcement of arbitration awards. The Agreement contains provisions designed to ensure that where the Tin Council is entitled to immunity from our courts it will normally be possible for the United Kingdom Government, or for a private citizen, to require it to submit the dispute to arbitration. These arbitration awards will be enforceable.

Your Lordships have already approved in 1968 and 1969 Orders, in very similar terms, relating to the International Wheat Council, the International Coffee Council and the International Sugar Council, and I trust therefore that you will see no difficulty in approving this Order, which will place the Tin Council on an equal footing with its companion organisations in London.

The Orders relating to the European Organisation for Nuclear Research and the International Hydrographic Organisation confer no financial privileges and no immunity from jurisdiction. They are confined to conferring on the respective organisations legal personality, which means that they will be able, for example, to hold property in this country in the name of the organisation and to initiate legal proceedings. It will also, however, he possible to bring legal proceedings against the two organisations, so that it may indeed he said that the Orders make them more and not less subject to the jurisdiction of our courts.

The International Telecommunications Satellite Organisation, which for brevity is called "INTELSAT", is an international consortium of States established in 1964 to co-operate in the development and operation of satellites and tracking and control facilities for them. The worldwide system established by INTELSAT has now established itself as an essential element in the international telecommunications network. It is this system which has made possible live television coverage of events happening in other continents. The United Kingdom Post Office has been a major participant and investor in the INTELSAT system. The Agreements which will be ratified by the United Kingdom if this Order is approved replace interim arrangements under which the organisation has operated until now. The Order confers on INTELSAT only exemption from tax and customs duties in regard to activities authorised by the Agreement. No privilege or immunity is conferred on any person connected with the organisation.

The Caribbean Development Bank (Immunities and Privileges) Order is required to enable the United Kingdom to give effect to provisions in the Agreement establishing the Bank. We are in fact already a party to this Agreement, but subject to a reservation that we would not be able to give effect to the privileges or immunities required by the Agreement in the United Kingdom until the necessary legislation had been approved by Parliament. Your Lordships may recall that as the members of the Bank are all Commonwealth countries, special provision was required in the Diplomatic and Other Privileges Act, which was passed a few months ago, before this Order could be laid before the House. The purpose of the Bank is to provide capital for economic growth and to promote integration among the developing countries in the Caribbean. The privileges and immunities set out in the Order are based broadly on those given to regional financial organisations with comparable functions, but on United Kingdom initiative certain limitations were introduced. Your Lordships will note that immunity from jurisdiction does not extend to motor traffic offences or civil proceedings resulting from motor accidents. The immunity of the Bank (like that of the World Batik and the Asian Development Bank) does not apply in regard to its activities in borrowing, in guaranteeing obligations or in buying and selling securities. The headquarters of the Bank are in Barbados and so the practical application of the provisions in this Order will be very small.

The only Order in this group which does not relate to an international organisation is the Diplomatic Immunities (Conferences) (Nauru) Order. When a country becomes an independent member of the Commonwealth it is usual for an Act to be passed which includes provision for the name of the new member to be added to a number of existing Acts applying to specified independent members of the Commonwealth. Nauru, on achieving independence, negotiated a special membership of the Commonwealth under which she does not have the right to attend meetings of Heads of Governments within the Commonwealth and pays a smaller contribution. No Independence Bill has been found necessary in regard to Nauru, and instead her name has been added by Orders in Council at convenient times to United Kingdom legislation regarding privileges and immunities of Commonwealth countries. This is the last of the three such Orders needed. It confers no privileges or immunities in itself. But in the event of a representative of Nauru attending an inter-Governmental conference in the United Kingdom, it will enable his name to be included with those of his Commonwealth colleagues in a list which would be published in the London, Edinburgh and Belfast Gazettes. He would then for the duration of the conference enjoy the appropriate diplomatic immunity.

I trust your Lordships will agree that although we have presented on this occasion a rather large number of Orders, there is not one of them which is not based on precedent and on the principles accepted by the United Kingdom in this field, and therefore I hope they will receive the approval of your Lordships. I beg to move.

My Lords, I am sure that the House will be grateful to the noble Earl for his courtesy in explaining each of these Orders so clearly and so fully. There is no reason to take up much time, and certainly not with the more formal immunities and privileges such as those in the case of Nauru, which, as the noble Earl has said, is a pure formality, nor indeed in the case of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research and the hydrographic organisation, in which the immunities and privileges simply seek to invest the organisation with a legal personality. The INTELSAT Order will doubtless commend itself to your Lordships' House as it contains no provision for personal immunities.

There is just one point that I should like to clarify in my own mind about the International Tin Council and the Caribbean Development Bank. I am making the assumption that when the noble Earl says that this does not provide immunity from motoring offences, this includes parking offences; in other words, that the members of this organisation do not have the benefit of the immunity from parking regulations in this country as is the case with Embassies. As the noble Earl has said, there seems to be a clear precedent for each of these, particularly in the case of the Tin Council which is almost exactly similar to that of the wheat, coffee and sugar organisations, and I am sure, therefore, that all these Orders will commend themselves to your Lordships' House.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, for accepting these Orders so readily. I can allay his fears and say that these privileges do not apply to parking offences.

rose to move, That as from January 1, 1972, Members of this House who are—

(a) holders of any Ministerial Office specified in Schedule 1 to the Ministerial Salaries Consolidation Act 1965 (as amended by or under any enactment, including any enactment passed after the date hereof) or specified in any corresponding provisions of an Act passed after the date hereof whereby (in substitution for that Act) provision is made for the payment of salaries to holders of Ministerial offices, or

(b) Leader of the Opposition or Chief Opposition Whip in this House, Or,

(c) Chairman of Committees of this House,

except any such Member who holds (whether as a Minister or otherwise) a paid office in respect of which an official residence is provided from public funds, should receive a supplementary London allowance at the rate of £175 a year.

My Lords, I find this a rather embarrassing Motion. It is the first time I have found myself singled out in public for a possible pay increase, and I do not really want to make my remarks in regard to either the Leader of the Opposition or the Opposition Chief Whip. My concern has always been with regard to Ministers, and particularly junior Ministers and Lords in Waiting. I think that perhaps the Captain of the Yeoman of the Guard has gone up in the world a little, but I still regard the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, as being very under-privileged in these matters.

There has been quite a lot of comment (not initiated by your Lordships. I am sure, and certainly not by me) in which contrasts have been made with another place, and although I would not grudge any Member of another place anything that he receives I am sure the noble Earl is aware of the position. Indeed I would congratulate him on this. He has striven very hard indeed, but sooner or later we shall have to face a number of issues with regard to this House, and I feel this particularly with regard to Ministers. It is open for me, as Leader of the Opposition, to take outside jobs, but it is not open to Ministers, and this applies with regard to certain payments in another place. However there is no doubt that the demands which are being made on your Lordships' House—and this applies both to Ministers and to a large number of Peers—mean that sooner or later (and I make no suggestions) we shall have to face both the question of the allowance, which has to be within the Inland Revenue rules, and more particularly the position of those who served so long in another place but not long enough to get the benefit of the improved pensions. That is not recognised in this particular Motion, but I feel that those of us who are in a position to do so should speak for our colleagues, especially if we do not have an interest to declare in their problems but are conscious of them and recognise them—so much so that I hope the noble Earl, who, as the noble Lord. Lord Byers, once said, has been a good shop steward for this House, will receive representations. None the less, I have a very good shop steward on my side of the House, and before we pass this Motion I should like to suggest that rather than that I should develop this theme my noble friend Lord Beswick should also make a contribution in the context of this Motion.

My Lords, I should like to respond to the invitation of my noble friend the "chief shop steward." We are here proposing to make further provision for a category of serving Parliamentarians. This, to my mind, only emphasises the point which was made by certain Peers when action on the Boyle recommendations was first announced. It is proposed now, in one way or another, to help all who serve or who recently have served, excepting individuals who in my view are the least well placed and in many ways are the most deserving, and I refer to those Members who served in another place prior to 1964. Many of them, like the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, who made an appeal when an announcement was made recently, entered Parliament at a time when the salary, so-called, was £400 a year, with no pension entitlement at all. I thought of those people when we were considering the very carefully contrived pension arrangements for other public servants, and it seems to me that we have there a category of people for whom we have not done sufficient. They get no pension, though, as I say, they may have served 10, 20, 30 years or even more.

It is said that they made no contribution to the present pension fund and therefore cannot expect a pension. But present Members of Parliament did not pay contributions for service prior to 1964; nevertheless, they are proposing that they should be treated as if they had contributed to that fund, and they are arranging—and we shall be invited to agree to the arrangement—that they shall be credited with up to 10 years' contributions. It seems to me a minor scandal that those who are in a position to treat themselves should so treat themselves and yet deny it to others more deserving. There are, I know, some real cases of hardship. I am not asking the noble Earl to give me a definitive answer to-night—of course I am not; the matter does not arise directly out of the business we are considering. But knowing, as we all do, what humanity demands in these matters, I do ask whether he will give an assurance that before the relevant legislation reaches this House we shall have another opportunity to make representations on this particular point.

My Lords, I should like to congratulate the two noble shop stewards opposite on the brilliant orchestration of their efforts, and also to say that those on whose behalf they have spoken are very much in my mind as well. I think there are problems. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, is doubtless aware that I recognise that there are problems and difficulties over the differentiation in practical terms between the remuneration of a junior Minister, say a Whip, in your Lordships' House as opposed to a Member of another place. We all know the reason for that. I am not challenging what has been done in another place or suggesting that it is in any way wrong, but I think it does point up a difficulty which is certainly worth looking at, not least in terms of the increasing demands which service in this House—be it as a Minister, senior or junior, or as a Member—is placing on the individual. I recognise that this is a problem which bears looking at. It may be that the expense allowance itself is something which should be reexamined.

I am well aware of the depth of feeling to which the noble Lord, Lord Beswick has given expression on the question of pensions. On one specific matter which was raised when we touched on this subject on December 6, I was able to give subsequently an assurance to certain noble Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Boyle and the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, that pensions of those Members of another place who are eligible will be linked with the Pensions (Increase) Bill and will be subject to that inflation-proofing which is in the Pensions (Increase) Act. But there is another aspect of this subject which the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, has touched on. It would be quite wrong for me to hold out any substantive hopes at the present time that we shall be able to find a way of meeting this point, since the Government attach great importance to standing on Boyle and not going beyond, or further, or less far than, the Boyle recommendations themselves. Nevertheless, this area of pensions is one which is receiving further investigation. The legislation is not yet before us and not yet before another place. I will certainly give the noble Lord the assurance he has asked for: that I shall be very glad to receive representations from him or other noble Lords and there will be ample opportunity for discussion on this matter through the usual channels before that legislation comes to us. That assurance I gladly give.