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

My Lords, I am advised that legal aid would be available for such proceedings in Scotland or Northern Ireland.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that answer. Is he aware that a wife living in England who has to take proceedings in Scotland may not be able to afford the cost of travelling or accommodation? Are those covered by legal aid?

My Lords, where a legal aid certificate is granted it can cover reasonable travelling and subsistence expenses.

My Lords, as this question is concerned with the important matter of domicile, can the noble Lord tell me whether the Government are considering introducing legislation which will remove this discrimination against women?

My Lords, I do not think there is a case here of discrimination against women. Assuming the matrimonial home had been in Scotland, and the marriage broke up and the woman remained there but the man came to England, the proceedings would take place in Scotland. Then the man would have to travel up from England to contest the proceedings, and the expense would be on him. So I think it cuts both ways.

My Lords, is it a fact, then, that there is no question of there being any discrimination between the domicile of married partners?

My Lords, I should not wish to get drawn too deeply into this subject, because my preparation for the Question on the Order Paper has let me to the conclusion that this is a complicated legal subject.

My Lords, I do not know whether my noble friend would be good enough to explain to the noble Baroness that a Private Member's Bill is being introduced.

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

My Lords, a recent re-appraisal of the proposals for a by-pass of Billesdon is now being considered by the Department of the Environment.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply. Can he say how long these considerations are likely to take?

My Lords, it is not very easy to say. The scheme has to be considered against other calls on road expenditure. However, I can say that if the decision to go ahead was taken and it was put in the preparation pool, construction might begin within five years.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the A.47 road is the main road from the industrial Midlands to the East Coast ports and the growing City of Peterborough, and that the volume of traffic has of recent years increased considerably?

My Lords, we are aware of this, and the local council has made representations about this matter. The fact that the centre of Billesdon has now been designated a conservation area will no doubt help the noble Lord's case.

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

My Lords, my right honourable friends who are responsible for the education, social services and employment of young people are aware of the increased expectancy of life of children born with physical handicaps. Planning is based on estimates for the future. With some adjustment some of these young people will be able to avail themselves of the provisions made for the non-handicapped, but many will need special facilities and these are gradually being provided. A circular was sent to local education authorities in May, 1969, drawing attention to the increase in numbers of children handicapped by spina bifida and their special educational needs. In June, 1971, a circular was issued about the education of autistic children. They are not usually physically handicapped, but were mentioned in the Question. More hostels are being provided by local authorities, as are day centres for those incapable of remunerative employment.

My Lords, while thanking the Minister for his, as usual, sympathetic Answer, may I ask whether the projection which the Department has as to forthcoming needs has been based on the fact that neither surgical techniques nor medical science are standing still, and as they are developing, so the need will develop? I wonder whether the projection is based on the present state or on the expected increase in the future in the numbers involved.

My Lords, perhaps I can best answer the noble Lord by saying that the number of places provided for physically handicapped children has been increasing. There were 225 new places provided in special schools in 1967–68, rising to 902 places in 1971–72 and it will be about 940 places in the forthcoming programme for 1972–73. At the moment there are just over 400 physically handicapped children awaiting entry into special schools.

My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether he has considered the position of children suffering from disablement, including deafness, whose educational position is prejudiced by transport problems. Also, in his circulars which may be going forth in the future to local authorities, could he give some suggestions as to the employment of existing transport facilities which would take account especially of disabled children who live in rather remote areas? This matter is much affected by the fact that the population tends to spread more and more and transportation becomes a difficult problem to the parents of these children.

My Lords, I appreciate the problem which the noble Lord has put to the House. Transport is at the discretion of the local education authorities, although back in 1965 the Department of Education did ask local authorities if they would exercise their discretion as flexibly as possible. If I remember rightly, they particularly mentioned in that letter the difficulties of transport in the more far-flung rural areas. The noble Lord mentioned deafness. He may be interested to know that the Open University is at the moment providing special courses for deaf students.

My Lords, while I recognise that in the noble Lord's original Answer to the Question of my noble friend the Government accepts the need to extend the range of facilities across the needs of handicapped children, adolescents and adults, could he also tell the House what progress is now being made with the development of multi-disciplinary assessment centres?

My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services intends shortly to give advice to local authorities about the day care of handicapped children generally. I am advised that my right honourable friend will particularly want to lay stress on the need for the multidisciplinary assessment of these children to precede the making of arrangements for day care.

My Lords, would the noble Lord tell us whether in the last circular which was sent out by the Department any attempt was made to encourage neighbouring local authorities to come together with a view to providing what may be a scarce facility, which a single local authority might find difficulty in covering alone?

My Lords, in almost the first question which I answered in this House the noble Baroness had made the point relating to co-operation. I think that if the noble Baroness looks at the second of the circulars which I mentioned in my initial Answer to the noble Lord—the circular on autistic children—she will find that her views are reflected in one of the paragraphs in that circular.

My Lords, while appreciating in general the Minister's replies to the noble Lord's question, may I ask whether Her Majesty's Government will give special attention to two areas in which I think help is necessary: first, for those who have disabled children and young people in the home and who need help—very often financial help; and secondly, in enabling parents to go to visit children in institutional care?

My Lords, I will certainly acquaint my right honourable friend with the view expressed by the noble Lord. Perhaps it would be right to point out that there are between 40 and 50 homes for the physically handicapped which have been provisionally approved for loan sanction by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services during this and the next two financial years, and that this represents a 300 per cent. increase of provision in this particular section.

My Lords, as this question covers an enormous field, could the Government consider giving us an early date for debating the Motion standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, for which no date has yet been allocated?

My Lords, doubtless this will be arranged through the usual channels.

My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether he has any information about the building of schools by local authorities and whether facilities are being provided to make those schools accessible to disabled children, so that they do not have to be segregated in special schools?

My Lords, I think I am right in saying that what the noble Baroness is asking for is accepted almost throughout the educational world. It is easier, I know, to accept than to do. I will certainly convey what the noble Baroness has said to the Architects and Building Branch of my Department. I might add that each new school for the physically handicapped contains a unit for nursery provision for children, so that these schools to-day are providing for children from the age of three onwards. Lords, I meant provision to be made available in able-bodied schools, so that disabled children could be in able-bodied schools.

My Lords, I am sorry. What I added at the end was not strictly relevant, but I repeat what I said at the beginning of my answer to the noble Baroness: I will certainly pass on and discuss the point with the Architects and Building Branch.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, my noble friend Lord Lothian will be making, at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m., a statement on the British Embassy in Dublin.

My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, I understand that no Amendments have been set down to this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript Amendment or to speak in Committee. Therefore, unless any noble Lord objects, I beg to move, pursuant to Standing Order No. 43(2), that the Order of Commitment be discharged.

My Lords, to-day's business is unique in that your Lordships are being asked to give a Second Reading to a Bill to make further provision for Her Majesty's Civil List in the middle of what we all acknowledge to be a strikingly successful reign which all your Lordships hope will be a long and continued one. The Bill that we are discussing is a Money Bill in every sense of the term. I assume that, in accordance with precedent, your Lordships will wish me to deal with the subject with great brevity: such has been the custom of your Lordships' House for many years. The purpose of the Bill is to enable the Queen, and those members of the Royal Family who share the burden of her work, to continue to serve the nation in the way the nation expects. I am sure your Lordships support this objective. The Bill provides the machinery to do this in an appropriate manner. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.

My Lords, following precedent, I do not propose to discuss this Bill. No one in the House will disagree with the noble Earl's remarks about the successful nature of the services that are rendered by Her Majesty and the Royal Family. There are other views on the administration of these matters, but I certainly would not recommend anyone raising them in your Lordships' House.

My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time. Before I explain the purpose of this Bill, the House will, I am sure, wish to join me in expressing our appreciation and thanks to the outgoing Chairman of the British Airports Authority, Sir Peter Masefield, for his leadership of the British Airports Authority during the first six years of its existence. As many of your Lordships will recall, Sir Peter Masefield had the challenging task of setting up an entirely new organisation to run this country's most important international airports, which until 1965 had been owned and managed directly by the Government Department concerned. Although the Authority is sometimes criticised—and what Authority is not?—there can be no doubt of the great measure of success which Sir Peter Masefield has achieved in making the Authority one of our most successful and profitable public undertakings. I am sure, too, that we shall all wish to welcome the new Chairman, Mr. Nigel Foulkes, who took over on January 1, and to wish him well.

The objects of the Bill are, first, to increase the statutory limit on the Authority's total borrowings, and second, to enable the Authority to borrow in currencies other than sterling—which it is not at present empowered to do—both temporarily and long-term.

The British Airports Authority was set up by the Airports Authority Act 1965. The Act vested in the Authority the three airports serving London—Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted—and also Scotland's intercontinental airport, Prestwick, and made it the duty of the Authority to provide the services and facilities necessary or desirable for their operation. In common with other nationalised industries, the Authority was given powers to borrow from the Minister in order to carry out this duty, and a statutory limit of £70 million was set on its borrowing powers. At the time of the transfer, the net asset value of the four airports, which was deemed to be a debt to the Government, was nearly £53 million. In the first five years of its operations to March, 1971, the Authority has carried out substantial developments at its airports which have increased their net asset value by £22 million. It has financed all but £5·5 million of its capital spending from its own resources, so that its total borrowings, including the initial capital debt, currently stand at just under £60 million.

Your Lordships may like me to say briefly how the Authority has spent its money so far, and may also wish to hear something about its future plans. Most of its spending has been on improving facilities at Heathrow and Gatwick, which are its two largest, busiest and fastest growing airports. At Heathrow the Authority has had to make provision to cope with the new large, wide-bodied aircraft—the jumbo-jets—which can carry almost three times as many passengers as previous aircraft. It has already spent nearly £12 million on redeveloping Terminal 3—the terminal for intercontinental traffic—where separate buildings are being provided for arrivals and departures. The Authority has also had to rebuild Terminal 1 almost completely and to make substantial improvements to Terminal 2.

At Gatwick the Authority has greatly improved the airport's operational efficiency by extending the runway Eastwards and by constructing a new taxiway and new aircraft stands. Improvements have been made to the terminal building; but it is now plainly inadequate for the number of passengers using it during the summer months, and the Authority has recently started to build a Northern extension to the existing terminal, which will almost double the space available. As traffic at Stansted, and at Prestwick has grown more slowly, less work has been necessary at these airports. But the Authority has replaced the Nissen huts at Stansted with a terminal building, which they are now having to extend for the second time. The main runway at Prestwick has been resurfaced and a new office block erected there.

As to the Authority's future plans for capital investment at these four airports and at Edinburgh, which was handed over by the D.T.I. on April 1 last year, noble Lords may recall that my right honourable friend the Minister for Trade announced in another place on July 27 that the Government did not think it would be necessary to construct new runways at Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton or Stansted in the foreseeable future. Heathrow and Gatwick would continue as major airports serving the London area for as long as can be foreseen and he foresaw the possibility of dispensing with Stansted as a public transport airport and possibly closing it altogether when the third London airport became operational. These decisions provide the framework within which the Authority must make its plans for catering for a continuing increase in the numbers of aircraft movements and passengers using the London airports. Nearly 16 million passengers passed through Heathrow last year and nearly 4 million through Gatwick, and by the time the third London Airport is operational these totals will be very much higher. Expenditure will therefore be required both to improve facilities, so that these large numbers of people can move as quickly and easily through the airports as is practicable, and also to provide the amenities they will need while waiting for their aircraft.

In addition, the advent of larger heavier aircraft will involve the Authority in expenditure on strengthening runways, providing new stands for jumbo-jets and further improving the three terminals at a total estimated cost of £26 million. The Authority will spend another £11 million in the next five years on improving access to Heathrow. Of this £6 million is needed for the terminal and connections to the extension of the Piccadilly Line. The line is now in the process of construction and will provide rapid access for many passengers to the airport. The other £5 million will be spent on improving the access from the West side of the airport.

At Gatwick the Authority intends to build two major extensions to the existing terminal buildings, which when completed will more than double the existing capacity; one extension, the Northern building has already been begun. The main construction work on the Southern building, which will be used mostly for domestic passengers, will start in spring 1973. These two buildings and other improvements to the terminal area will cost some £20 million. The Authority has applied for planning permission to extend the runway Westwards so that the larger jets can use Gatwick without a weight penalty. The application was considered at a public inquiry last year. I understand that a decision will be announced shortly. If the decision is favourable, the Authority will spend £6 million on this extension and on extension to the aprons. As at Heathrow, passenger access to the airport needs improving, and the Authority expects to spend about £4 million on a new link road to the M.23 and associated development. At Prestwick £1 million will be spent on over-slabbing the runway and £1·8 million on a new cargo terminal.

At Edinburgh a larger development is necessary. As many of your Lordships are aware, the existing airport is far from satisfactory. In accordance with the terms of the transfer agreement by which it received the airport from the D.T.I., the Authority has applied for planning permission to build a new runway and a new terminal complex. These applications are currently the subject of a public inquiry; if planning permission is forthcoming the Authority will have to build what is in essence a new airport. The D.T.I. will help with a contribution of three-quarters of the cost—up to a limit of £6·5 million.

It is greatly to the Authority's credit that it has so far been able to finance nearly all of its capital expenditure from its own resources: over seven-eighths, in fact. The Authority intends to continue to fund much of its future expenditure in this way, but it cannot finance it all. It is for this reason that we are now proposing to increase the limit to £125 million. This limit will not of course be adequate to cover all the capital expenditure required for the building of the third London airport. But it will probably suffice to cover preliminary expenditure in the next few years such as planning and engineering studies which must take place before the airport can be built.

The second object of the Bill, which is covered by Clause 2, is to empower the Authority to borrow in currencies other than sterling within the limit fixed for total borowings. The Authority will probably not need to make use of this provision in the immediate future, but it seems sensible to take the opportunity provided by this Bill to bring the Authority in line with other nationalised industries (including the Airways Board) in this regard, rather than leave the matter to be dealt with on a separate occasion. Under Clause 2(1) these borrowings will of course be strictly controlled.

In recent years our national airports have tended to receive more criticism than praise. That is not altogether surprising. The enormous growth in air transport has meant more noise for people who live near these airports and at times frustrating delays for airport users. It is right that we should require the highest standards from our international airports, and it is right that every practicable method of minimising the disturbance to those who live near airports should be employed. Under successive Governments the Authority has done its best to mitigate the disturbance. Fortunately, there is firm evidence that future aircraft will be much quieter than those in use to-day. But the Authority does deserve praise for what it has achieved in the relatively short time that it has been in existence. Even after returning substantial sums to the Government in the form of interest charges and taxation, it has shown a profit every year; last year indeed the net profit exceeded £5·7 million. It has used its profits to finance much of the substantial improvements which increasing traffic has made necessary at all its major airports. It has continued to improve its return on net assets. It has become a substantial earner of foreign currency, without materially increasing its landing charges, though there will have to be some increases in these charges this year.

The Authority will have to continue to grow and to expand its resources to provide the facilities needed for this vital section of our international transport. Your Lordships will know that Heathrow already not only handles more international passengers than any other airport in the world, but also handles more cargo, in terms of value, than any other port in the United Kingdom except London and Liverpool. Very heavy demands will be made on our international airports in the coming decade, and, in meeting this task, the Authority will have to operate within the confines of the Government's policy which gives full weight to the need to control noise and to avoid damage to the environment in the development of new or existing airports. I trust that your Lordships will also agree that within these constraints the Authority's borrowing powers should be adequate to provide what is necessary for all who use their airports. I commend the Bill to the House. My Lords, I beg to move.

My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord for his explanation of this Bill and we followed what he had to say with great interest, although there were moments when I had some difficulty in following exactly what he said because his mind was working rather more rapidly than mine. We shall give this Bill a Second Reading, of course, because we give all proper support to the British Airports Authority. I join with the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, in taking this opportunity of adding my tribute to the work of its recently retired Chairman, Sir Peter Masefield. As the noble Lord said, the Authority had to deal with an industry or a service which is growing and changing rapidly, which constantly needed adaptation to new technology. It had its own special difficulties, and there have been complaints from all manner of people. Yet, despite all these difficulties and all the surrounding areas of complaint from the environmental lobby (if I may so call them), Sir Peter and those who served under him did their job absolutely splendidly.

I am bound to say, however, especially listening to the warm praise which the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, had to offer to the Chairman, that I am all the more surprised that it was found impossible to renew his contract. I am sure we all congratulate Sir Peter on his New Year's knighthood. But there are many—many who believe in fair play and justice—who are distinctly uneasy about the treatment of Her Majesty's Government in this matter. The knighthood was fine. But was it really necessary to pull the carpet from under his feet just as the sword was falling on his shoulder? There are many of us who think that his appointment as Chairman was not renewed because he said what he believed to be true about the Government's rejection of all aviation opinion about Foulness. I shall return to that matter later, but first I want to ask about general policy for airport planning.

I believe that for several reasons we are at a point when the whole policy of airport planning needs to be looked at again carefully and quite afresh. There was a time when the only argument that one heard was that all services should go into one airport, and every operator insisted that inter-line traffic was so important that he must be allowed to operate from this one main centre. That is how we came to see the great development of Heathrow. But various developments now come together to demand a rethinking of the problem. For one thing, an over-large international airport is synonymous with time-wasting. The sheer size of Heathrow now, in my view, prevents maximum efficiency. A passenger has to check in three-quarters of an hour or an hour before take-off, but there are many who add on to this time another half-hour or so simply because they are unable to find their way around, or are afraid that they cannot find their way around, and need to have more time in hand.

All this is to be deprecated, even if one is going to save a matter of hours on a trans-continental flight. But if it is a matter of a 40 or 50 minute flight from one point in Europe to another, it really is absurd that we should have to add on so much waste of time before and after the actual movement from A to B. Therefore there is an argument for segregating the short-haul traffic, which, after all, is about 60 per cent. of the whole aircraft movements to-day.

Then we have this quite amazing growth of the inclusive tour traffic—what one might call the "coach traffic" much of which could well be handled very efficiently at an airport separated from the main centre for international scheduled flights. We have also the growing belief that we should encourage and cater for much more air traffic from the Provinces. Here, too, with proper airport planning we can save time. The other day I was discussing certain new services now operating from the East Midlands airport. They were to be operated by an aircraft which is somewhat slower than the latest available machines; nevertheless, with these somewhat slower machines a businessman from the Midlands—Nottingham, Leicester, Derby and indeed Birmingham—could be offered a service to Frankfurt or Amsterdam, for example, at a journey time from office or home to destination some two hours shorter than the services now being operated from Heathrow with faster and more modern machines. This is simply because the surface journey time was cut, and similarly the check-in time was so much nearer take-off time at the smaller and, in this respect, more efficient airport at Castle Donington. In other words, here again it is more efficient to use the provincial airport.

In addition to all these factors there is the quite decisive development of new, quieter aircraft that can be made available for operation within the next decade. Here I have an interest to declare of which noble Lords are well aware, but I declare it again. However, apart from my interest, this factor is there and must be taken into account when one looks ahead for appropriate airport requirements. All this means that we ought to be assured that before fresh sums of money are allocated to the British Airports Authority the Vote ought to be against the background of a known overall airport plan, and despite the details which the noble Lord has given us I am not convinced that at the present time we really have an overall airport plan. I was gratified when Her Majesty's Government accepted an Amendment of mine during the passage of the Civil Aviation Bill, which places upon the new Civil Aviation Authority the responsibility for planning future airport policy.

The first question I want to ask the noble Lord is how he sees the thinking of the planning of airport policy by the C.A.A. and the B.A.A. and the Government to be meshed in together. Which is going to be the supreme authority in this field? Who is going to be equipped to go deepest and widest in all these related matters? Is it intended that there should be one real leader in the country on airport planning, or are we going to get a frustrating conflict between the major executive body—the British Airports Authority—and the Civil Aviation Authority and the Government of the day? I suggest that we cannot sensibly vote these sums unless we know what is to be the future of other airports in the country, and in particular Luton, Stansted and Gatwick, as well as Heathrow. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, made a reference to the extension to the terminal, aprons and runway at Gatwick. I thought he observed that the development at Gatwick had been less than expected, but I am told the expectation there is that they will reach saturation point before other facilities are available. I want to ask the noble Lord, where do I turn now if I want to judge of these matters? How do I find the overall planning of Her Majesty's Government in this field? Where are all the facts set out and how is the policy with regard to the B.A.A. to be fitted into the overall airport policy making?

Then I want to ask about the proposal to build the Third London Airport out on the sands of the Essex coast. We did not have the Statement on this matter in the House yesterday because it was thought helpful all round to discuss it to-day, and I have a number of questions to ask which have a relevance to this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, said that some of the money was to be allocated to the preparatory planning for Foulness. Can he be a little more specific as to what this work entails and how much of this money will be spent on what he calls "preparatory planning"? Is it possible for the noble Lord now to give me a figure for the estimated eventual cost of the Foulness project, including the cost of the access routes? Can it really be true, as the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, appeared to be saying the other day, that a definite decision was being taken with regard to Foulness without any estimate having been arrived at? How much money is involved in this, and what sort of breakdown is there of the eventual capital requirement?

I wonder, too, whether the noble Lord can say to what extent the proposed new responsibilities for airport planning of the Civil Aviation Authority impinge upon, or will influence, the development of Foulness? We are going to have this new body, the Civil Aviation Authority, which I wish well and I hope will be the repository of all air transport and aviation opinion and knowledge in this country: to what extent will it be able to influence this proposed development down on the Essex coast?

My Lords, I wish to ask just one more question about Gatwick. Does the noble Lord know of the uncertainty which has been created among the operators at Gatwick? I see the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, is in the Chamber, and I should not be at all surprised if he were to confirm that there is a similar uncertainty at Luton. I know that in the case of Luton there is the public inquiry and little can be said, but in the case of Gatwick I feel that the Government are running into trouble. Although we have had this clamour about the noise around Gatwick and Heathrow, among the people at both those airports there is now considerable worry about their jobs and the future of their livelihood. So far as I can see, some of those people who did not want to have Gatwick developed at all are very agitated as they believe that with the reorganisation of local government they are going to be deprived of the rateable value which that development offers.

In all these areas there is uncertainty, and I should like the noble Lord to say whether it would be possible to publish a statement or a White Paper in the light of what has happened in the last year or so, and especially in relation to Foulness, giving some indication of what the time scales are and what the future expectations may be at Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton and Stansted as well as Foulness. I ask for that authoritative statement, but I go on then to ask the noble Lord, who is going to draw it up? Which Department of this Government is really responsible for these matters now? I should have thought that it would have something to do with transport, something to do with the Departments that hitherto we have thought have been responsible for air transport and aviation. But the Statement yesterday in another place was made by the Minister of the Environment, and when one reads what he had to say the impression which he creates is that air transport does not come into this at all; it is a matter of environmental effects and, as he says, regional planning. Now of course we have to take into account the environment and regional problems, but I feel that we ought also to take into account the needs of aviation and air transport. At the moment there is really no evidence at all that these criteria are taken into account by Her Majesty's present advisers. I ask these questions. I gave the noble Lord some indication of what I would ask. I have probably gone a little further, but I hope he will be able to give us some satisfaction.

My Lords, I should like to begin by following the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, and the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, in paying a tribute to the man who in the last few years and until very recently has led the British Airports Authority in such an admirable and profitable way. I have known Sir Peter Masefield for nearly all of his professional life. I know him to be one of aviation's polymaths, and I think we should all like to feel that in future his tremendous knowledge will continue to be at the service of British civil aviation.

This Bill is quite uncomplicated, but to me at first blush it seems a little odd. It may be that I am under a misapprehension but one gathers from the Explanatory Memorandum on the earlier Act that money which is borrowed in sterling would come from the National Loans Fund. I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, whether I am right in assuming that any other money borrowed will necessarily be in foreign currencies. To put my point differently, is it to be inferred from the Bill that the Authority cannot go to the City of London for loans whilst it may in certain circumstances, with Treasury permission, go to Wall Street or Zurich? If that inference is correct, I should like to know why this restriction is applied. If it is correct, it would seem to be inconsistent with the statement made yesterday by the Secretary of State for the Environment that at the appropriate time it would be highly desirable to involve private capital in the Maplin project.

I think the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, made it clear that only a small part of this money is likely to be expended on planning for Foulness, and I may say that on the whole that was a source of some satisfaction. In the great debate which we had in your Lordships' House on the Third London Airport almost a year ago, those of us who were against this project were in a small minority; but if I may say so we were all people with a pretty thorough knowledge of aviation, and we contemplated the Foulness project, as it was then called, with the deepest concern. It seems to me that the views which we expressed then have gained a great deal of ground since, and in the debate in another place, on the Second Reading of the Bill which we are considering to-day. the deepest suspicions were voiced. I believe that those suspicions, in the minds of the majority of those who continue to think about airports, will harden into the sort of certainty that some of us expressed 12 months ago.

I was glad to learn from the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, how a great deal of this money which can be borrowed is likely to be spent. I was rather disappointed that it was for the most part going into improvements and modifications of what exists already—it seems that there are to be no new runways constructed to carry us through the 1970s. If I misunderstood him there, I should like to be corrected, because I know that unless we have an additional runway mileage for the second half of the 1970s we shall run out of runway capacity.

There seems to be also among the consequences of our Common Market entry, assuming that is accomplished, the necessity to develop much further than seems at present contemplated communications between provincial centres and cities on the Continent. This point was made somewhat differently by the noble Lord, Lord Beswick. I want to ask the noble Lord whether it is intended to spend some of this money in this direction. There is at present a tendency for all international traffic to gravitate to the great centres like Heathrow for interline exchange, and perhaps the traffic burden of London airports could be alleviated by developing intra-European air transport between twin cities, and perhaps by introduction of a European cabotage fare, a system something on the lines already operating in the United States and Australia, which would make air transport much more attractive financially to the passenger and consequently encourage the expansion of the airline network in Europe and the demand for European-built aeroplanes for Europeans.

I should like, too, to ask the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, whether it is intended to spend any of this money on long term planning additionally to the planning which he mentioned in connection with Maplin or Foulness. If noble Lords will bear with me for a few minutes, I will explain why I am asking this question. Continually in the minds of all noble Lords interested in aviation is the development of QTOL, STOL and VTOL—that is to say, quiet, short and vertical take-off aircraft. In your Lordships' House a year ago I dared to make a quantitative prediction of the progress of QTOL, and I suggested consequences which would flow from that prediction in the policy of airport construction. There has already, as the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, hinted, been considerable progress towards the fulfilment of that prophecy. If we take as our standard that admirable old workhorse the Boeing 707, with its almost intolerable noise level, 111 p.n.db., it is worth noting that the Boeing 747, the jumbo-jet, which started at the same intolerable level, has already been reduced to 108 p.n.db., which, although it does not seem at all likely, corresponds to a 30 per cent. reduction in noise energy. At the present time in the United States there is flying the DC 10, with a noise level of a different order, 101 p.n.db. Already the Trijet, with our own RB. 211 engine, is down to 98 p.n.db. It seems to me that this is very remarkable progress indeed and that we are establishing a trend which ought to have a very great effect upon what we do, and I can only hope that it will be allowed to.

There is no change since this time a year ago in the technological possibilities of STOL and VTOL. They are as certain of achievement as ever. It is merely a matter of whether we go ahead and capitalise our expertise, which is ahead of the rest of the world still, or whether we procrastinate until the others catch up and act. But either way airport planning will decisively be affected by a change in aircraft design. The aircraft of the future will undoubtedly affect the design of the airports of the future. The situation of the airports, their position, will affect the required performance characteristics of the aircraft, and the best combinations of aircraft and airports will depend upon their accessibility to the traveller.

I am clear that in the design of airports the British Airports Authority has a clear function. I am clear that the Civil Aviation Authority has a planning function. I understand quite clearly that in the creation of new aircraft the Government and the industry have clear functions to perform. But I am by no means clear with whom resides responsibility for creating the links between the urban centres, or perhaps rural centres, and the airports. This is the third arm of the overall system, and it is of vital importance. One would like to feel that there is the same kind of imagination behind the achievement of these communication links as there is behind the design of aircraft.

Is this third arm the responsibility of the Airports Authority? Can it attract any of the money for its development from the borrowing powers of this Bill? I suggest that we are in some danger of designing for the future on the basis of what we have to-day rather than on extrapolation from it. For example, we are, I believe, planning the Maplin project on the basis of the sort of aeroplanes we have to-day. We know, for another example that was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, of a new link with London Airport at Heathrow by means of Tube railways: a system with obvious merits in dense urban complexes but, I believe, open to serious question in this new application. But we also know of thoughts and of plans for experiments with hover-trains and overhead railways, of overhead railways pneumatically sustained and driven by linear electric motors. Some of them show most promising economic and technological possibilities. Their economics should be studied in the context of airport access and of communications in the airport area.

So in addition to the questions I have asked, I make a twofold plea: first, to think of the future, and the expenditure of the British Airports Authority in that future, in a comprehensive way in which the airport and its services, the overland communications and the aircraft, are all seen as part of a single pattern. Secondly, to plan this future imaginatively, and not to assume that we shall always, for ever, get into the air by charging along the ground like the Wright brothers did at the beginning of the century. Incidentally, in the latter part of their work, they introduced means to shorten take-off because they were men of vision. We must extend this imaginative thinking not only to aeroplanes, not only to the airport services, but to the overland communications as well. In other words, I hope that some of this new money can go into new thinking.

My Lords, like other noble Lords, may I be allowed to pay my personal tribute to Sir Peter Masefield? In the years that he has been Chairman of the British Airports Authority he has left a very fine achievement behind him and, like the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, I am extremely sorry that he has not been allowed to continue his work there. I do not know why: we have never been told. Sir Peter has tremendous experience of the whole field of aviation. Many noble Lords will recall that at the end of the war he was Chief Executive of British European Airways. He is still a comparatively young man, and I should like to see his services used in this advancing technology in the country. We owe him a great debt for what he has already done for the nation.

The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, complained about the problems at Heathrow. He should cast his mind back to January, 1946, when the late Lord Winster went down to London Airport and dug the first sod. The Socialist Government of the day were determined to rush up London Airport at Heathrow, regardless of what was happening in the rest of the world (very little was done in research in America), and the result was that we finished up with the centre of the airport holding the majority of the buildings. Every bag of cement that has to go into London Airport for building has to go through a tunnel. We all know the untold delays that happen in trying to get through these tunnels. The Labour Party must bear a very big responsibility. In fact, I think the planning of Heathrow is a lasting monument to Socialism. Sir Peter Masefield took over a very real mess, and he has made it tolerable. I must say that the new terminal building compares with anything in Europe. I think we should also pay a tribute to the staff of London Airport, who have worked under great difficulties and made something worth while; and we have to make the best of it.

Having said that, I think I should add that the British Airports safety control system is probably the best in the world. It is not perfect, but it is a very fine system, and far ahead of anything I have seen elsewhere. One very murky day last year I sat in the front of a VC.10 going into Kennedy Airfield. The control was bad. One could not hear what the controller was saying in the control tower: he had a very mixed accent. There were other airliners on the right, the left, in front, and behind, and it was a question of following the leader. If ever an airline captain earns what is considered a monthly salary, these men flying into Kennedy Airport certainly do it all the time.

We certainly have a very fine control system in Britain. Apart from the five airports under the control of the Authority—Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Prestwick and Turnhouse—there is, as the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, said, no real long-term plan covering all the airports in the United Kingdom to serve the population with a properly thought-out system. After all, they are all taxpayers and they are entitled to these facilities, as well as those living in Greater London or near the airports I have mentioned. We have had talk about the Severn Airport, in the West Country. Is it to be Filton? Can we be told something about the long-term planning? We have Manchester Airport, Ringway, one of the best administered airports in the country. It is well thought out and built for expansion, but there is a war going on between Manchester and Liverpool. Liverpool want to catch up with Manchester, 38 miles away. The Government must give thought to the broader problems covering the whole country, not as they are to-day but as they will be in ten years time.

There is also a need for the co-ordination of the Scottish problems with airports. Clearly, Turnhouse ought to be developed even further. I have no doubt that the new Civil Aviation Authority has been told to deal with this problem when it gets under way; but Government action is necessary, to give guidance to the new Authority to get on with the job. We have heard about the profits made by the Authority. Well, my Lords, I am not surprised that they have made a profit, because the landing charges are just about the highest in the world. Ask any operator. Whether it is the landing fee, or the cost of hiring a bench and a shop, the charge is just about the highest. It is no good making a profit if you are going to price yourself out of business, and if charges are too high airlines will tend to go to other parts of Europe. The Airports Authority must be competitive.

Speaking about these new airports, I was amazed that the international building at London Airport, which went up only four or five years ago, was put up without refrigeration, air-conditioning. I think it is to be installed this year, but with inflation, it will cost far more; and, of course, it is very difficult to put the trunking in long after the building has gone up. It should have been thought out at the beginning. Why do passengers, many of them infirm or aged, have to walk half a mile to get on and off the aeroplanes in a modern airport? There is one escalator at London, but at Schiphol passengers ride on an escalator all the way. Worse still, you can arrive at London Airport, and probably twice out of four times although you expect the aeroplane to taxi up to a pier it does not do so. It stops outside the pier, for some unknown reason, and there are no steps available. You can wait for a quarter of an hour, and then they say, "We will unload at the rear." Then you go off on the bus when the last passenger out of 130 has got on. This is the sort of thing which irritates passengers who are paying a high price to get from point A to point B, and then suffer a frustrating 20 minutes hold-up at London Airport. It does not happen at Manchester. Up there they are far ahead in dealing with these smaller matters—but of course their problems are not so great.

The noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, who has had years of experience in the aviation business, referred to noise. This is a problem that we have to keep very much in mind. He gave the decibel figures, and, undoubtedly, the RB 211 engine, over which there has been so much controversy, is going to be a very great engine, with years of development ahead of it. The noise factor is probably 40 or 50 per cent. less than with other engines. Surely, when we have complaints about noise at night during landing and take-off, and when operators are restricted in taking-off during the dark hours, it will be for them to purchase engines with the lowest decibel figures for noise. There is a great opportunity for British engine manufacturers to keep the lead which they already have in this field.

The aircraft industry as a whole is growing at a very rapid rate. I know that this Government have been immersed in all the problems that they inherited, and in many others, since they came to power, but I should like to see this House and the other place more immersed in thinking and expressing views about aviation as a whole—not merely about the airports but about the industry, both civil and military. We have for years had a lead in vertical take-off air- craft with the "Harrier", a lead far ahead of any other nation; so much so that the Americans are now placing a second order for this aircraft. Unfortunately, the Labour Government which came into power in 1964 cancelled the P.1154 vertical take-off aircraft. That cancellation was very regrettable. I agree that not all of the research and development programme could have gone ahead as it was, and that there had to be cuts, but we should surely continue in a field where we have the lead over all other nations. The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, shakes his head. I do not know whether he is in disagreement, but I think we have a very definite lead in this respect. The point I want to make is that if we can get a lead in developing a medium-sized vertical take-off transport aircraft for inter-city travel, such as to Paris and Brussels, that will save miles of concrete runways in the years ahead. I hope that we shall get some guidance from the Government on this matter.

As regards Foulness, fortunately we have been told that that is now to be known as Maplin. It is easy to be critical when one does not have to answer to 100,000 constituents, as I had to do when I was in another place, but I always felt that if a third airport was needed it was needed well North of London to draw off the population of the Midlands. Unless communications with the South-East Essex coast are extremely good there will be a problem, because the airport will be in the wrong place. But from the points of view of siting and of the approach over the North Sea, the airport will be admirable, provided that the approach does not interfere with the Continental control on the other side of the North Sea. It offers great scope for a deep harbour. Our harbours are far behind those of Rotterdam and other European ports, and this project will help us when we are in the Common Market. With our unemployment problem, Britain must get out of the old industries—which is happening, anyhow—and into businesses like this which employ our people in new technology.

We have now selected the site, and I think that, on balance, Maplin is best, but I want to be assured by my noble friend that the communications—the railways and the trunk roads—are being thought out and will be available before the airport is completed. I say that because only now are we being told that an Underground railway is to run from the West End to London Airport. It was necessary years ago. So we want good communications throughout Essex, and I hope we can have an assurance on that point. Maplin will undoubtedly give flood protection to London and we shall need the full co-operation of the Port of London Authority and all those concerned on this aspect.

But I would ask my noble friend whether in the months ahead we can have a White Paper covering the whole field of aviation, including airports and vertical take-off aircraft. I know it is very difficult to estimate at this stage how much is going to be spent even on Maplin, but perhaps, with all the qualifications, we could be given an approximate figure. After all, in industry one has to plan and there has to be a cockshy at what will be spent over, say, the next five years. One accepts that the engineering, planning, drainage and so on will cost a lot of money, but I think the House would like to be given an approximate figure. May we and the nation, also be informed as this airport progresses? We have a right to know, because it is a very big venture, costing about £800 million all told. I wish the venture well, and I also wish the British Airports Authority well. The Authority has done a very fine job of work and I am sure we are appreciative of all its achievements.

My Lords, I think it is quite right that to-day we should come to praise the work of Sir Peter Masefield. Like other noble Lords who have spoken, I have had the privilege of his friendship for nearly 35 years. I have known his work in aviation. When I was on the Board of British European Airways he was finishing his period as Chief Executive, and I can pay tribute to his work in that field. Like the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, I trust that his experience, his energy and his integrity will not be lost to civil aviation in particular and to British industry in general. I should particularly like to endorse one piece of work for which he was responsible and which my noble friend has just mentioned; that is, the control system at London Airport. During my period on the Board of British European Airways (I am sorry to have to refer to it again, but I was very close to the picture) one of my duties was as Chairman of the Air Safety Committee, and I was in close touch with many of our aircrew. I can make one statement without fear of contradiction. If you asked British or international airline pilots which airport they would prefer to come into when, as they say, the birds are almost walking, they would choose London Airport, and London Airport Control. We in this House, and indeed the whole country, can be proud of that fact.

I support wholeheartedly the plea which was made by my noble friends Lord Beswick and Lord Harvey of Prestbury for more overall planning of our future policy for airports throughout the country. I am not happy that overall planning of airports should be, as it were, confined to the British Airports Authority. There is so much involved, and a much wider view is needed than any single Corporation or Government Department can take. Our minds are very finite and the minds of bureaucracy are particularly finite. I remember very well that the last Bill which another place was passing when war broke out was called the Heston Airport Extension Bill. In those days there was a little airport at Heston which has gone right out of service. The Bill proposed to lengthen the Heston runway, to knock down a church and to remove a few houses, and it aroused tremendous opposition. We thought at that time that we were doing something bold, not only for those days but for the future. But how inadequate was our thinking in those days in relation to what is required to-day! My feeling is that Government Departments and Government agencies cannot, and indeed should not, be expected to look at great national issues which need great and wide review.

As regards the new London Airport, I prefer the name Maplin, which is much more pleasant than Foulness. I was one of those who doubted whether we should go forward with the scheme. I am not going to weary your Lordships with any of the arguments put forward by those who had doubts. The Government have decided to go forward, so it is up to all of us to endeavour in every way possible to make that project a success. But, my Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, spoke of the danger of designing for the future what we have to-day. I have just given one small example as regards the past, and I fear that unless we have a better knowledge of overall planning and what is intended we may commit the same error again.

My Lords, I read the Statement which was made in another place yesterday, and it is right that we should refer to that Statement to-day as your Lordships have not had an opportunity to debate it. Furthermore, even if we were in another place I should be within the Rules of Order, because, as the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, told us, some of the money is going to be used for planning and engineering. Therefore, I make no apology at all for dealing briefly, in just a few words, with some aspects of yesterday's Statement. My first question is this: can the Minister say that the road and rail links will be ready when the first runway is available in 1980? Because I think it would be silly to have aircraft using an airport without surface links, and the present surface links to Maplin are virtually impossible and impractical for any passenger. That is my first question. The Statement contains one decision and three "no decisions". The first decision is that there should be no basic industries at Maplin. Then there is no decision on the question of an industrial estate; there is no decision on secondary industries; and there is no decision on how, when and what amount of private capital is to be injected into the scheme. I attach no blame, but it is the "no" Statement of the week—there are three "Noes". Certainly if decisions on those points cannot be announced yet, they must be announced soon as part of the overall planning.

My Lords, as well as answers to those questions I think we should like to hear something of how the machinery of government is coping with the multitude of open questions affecting nearly every Department of Government. There is scarcely a home Department that is not involved in this project, and consideration by an Inter-Departmental Committee is no doubt necessary. But I think there is a real danger, as many noble Lords who have been in Government will know, of issues being bogged down by disagreement and then the Minister saying, "I cannot accept what my colleagues want; I must take it to the Cabinet". Then, either the Cabinet—a busy body which has larger issues to deal with—has to give a decision or there is a compromise that weakens the objective aims and is probably accepted reluctantly by all. My Lords, I am not urging a dictator, but I do urge a single supremo, an overlord, in the Cabinet, whose decision will stand with the full backing of his colleagues.

The Statement says that the Minister of the Environment intends to make further statements in the future. I would ask for something more definite than that. I would ask whether the Government would consider reporting to Parliament, certainly not less frequently than twice a year during construction, on progress in all its aspects, forecasting any expectations for completion on which disappointment may have to be faced and drawing attention to any great increase in expenditure which will make estimates look false. Also in the report particulars should be given of any great difficulties or snags which have been met which will cause unforeseen delays. I think Parliament and the public are entitled to have this periodic information on this vast project, and I hope that the Minister will give that suggestion sympathetic consideration.

My Lords, with the permission of the House I should like to repeat a Statement which has been made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. This is the Statement:

"As the House will be aware from Press reports, the British Embassy in Dublin was yesterday gutted by fire. This was the culmination of 36 hours of attacks on the premises of the British Embassy and of the Embassy's Commercial Department, about 50 yards away from the main building. In the course of the night of the 1st/2nd of February, the door of the Embassy was blown in by a gelignite bomb and renewed attacks with petrol the following morning led to the fire which destroyed the building. The staff were evacuated from the buildings early yesterday morning and there were no casualties.

"The Government of the Irish Republic have a duty, in international law, to protect the premises of foreign Embassies within the Republic. On this occasion the authorities had ample warning of the danger, both through the build-up of the crowd's activities and through specific warnings conveyed during the early evening of the 1st of February by the British Chargé d'Affaires in Dublin and by the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office yesterday morning to the Irish Chargé d'Affaires in London. Accordingly, my right honourable friend the Minister of State summoned the Irish Chargé d'Affaires yesterday evening to protest at the failure of the Irish authorities to carry out their responsibility. He made it clear that the British Government look to the Government of the Irish Republic for the most stringent measures to ensure the protection of all the members of the Embassy and that we would expect full compensation to be paid for the damage suffered. The Chargé d'Affaires accepted full responsibility on behalf of his Government and expressed great regret for what had happened."

That, my Lords, is the Statement.

My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Marquess for making that Statement. Of course, all noble Lords—certainly we on this side—utterly deplore the attack on the Embassy, and we welcome the fact that the Irish Government accept responsibility and (because there are reports to the contrary in the Press) have in fact, as I understand, expressed their regrets as well. This, of course, is part of the hazard of serving in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. We have had a number of Embassies burned down, but I must say that Dublin was not a place where I had expected a British Embassy to be attacked in this way and not be protected. I certainly do not wish to make any further comments to that effect. I am sure our particular sympathy goes out to the members of the Embassy. To have this sort of thing happening must be horrifying; I should like again to express our sympathy to them.

The only further point I would make is that the effects of the situation in Northern Ireland seem to be escalating all round the world. There have apparently been attacks on British property in different places—in Berlin, I understand. I do not know whether that is true—perhaps not in Berlin. There are so many explosions occurring. But this does once again lend point (and I do not wish to repeat yesterday's debate) to the urgency, which we have tried to press on the Government, of new initiatives. In this connection I would ask the noble Marquess—he may not have yet had a chance to do so—whether he has had an opportunity to consider the really rather important statement issued by the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, will be aware of what a valuable stabilising role the trade unions have played in the Ulster situation. Would the noble Marquess give consideration to a set of proposals on which I will not take up the time of the House but which seem to be, again, a possible approach to a solution? Because of the degree of urgency which this recent incident has produced, I only ask the Government whether they will give consideration to it.

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friends on these Benches, I should like to associate myself with what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, in regard to this deplorable outrage. Having said that, I should like to ask two short questions. First, would the Government agree that recent statements by Mr. Lynch and his Minister for Foreign Affairs give some colour to the assumption that the Irish Government are now assuming at least some responsibility for the activities of the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland? Secondly, would it not in these circumstances be advisable for Her Majesty's Government to inquire of the Irish Government what exactly their own proposals would now be for a general solution of the Irish question?

My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for the reception that they have given this Statement. I should like particularly to thank the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, for his expressions of sympathy with the members of the Embassy in Dublin in which I am certain all of us will join. The noble Lord drew my attention to the trade union representatives who have been so helpful in Northern Ireland in the present difficult situation. I understand that they are having a meeting later to-day with the Home Secretary and I have. no doubt that he will consider very carefully any suggestions that they have to make.

The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, asked me whether I thought there were signs that Mr. Lynch and the Irish Government were intending to take more stringent measures with regard to the I.R.A.—

My Lords, my question was whether it was not reasonable to suppose that the Irish Government now seem to be assuming some responsibility for the actions of the I.R.A. in Northern Ireland. I asked the Government whether they thought that that was a legitimate assumption.

My Lords, I am sorry if I misrepresented what was said by the noble Lord. I do not think I should like to go so far as he has gone in his question. I am hopeful that this outrage in Dublin will bring the Irish Government more to the realisation of what really is involved and how dangerous it is to let the situation get out of hand. As Lord Shackleton said, this is something which calls for a political solution; and it is for that that we must continue to strive.

My Lords, while voicing the general condemnation, may I ask one question? Can the noble Marquess give an assurance that the Irish authorities who have in the past over many years been successful in safeguarding the lives and welfare of members of the staff of the British Embassy, will continue to do so in future?

My Lords, as I said in the Statement, they have accepted full responsibility in this regard; so that I hope that the noble Lord's prediction will be correct.

My Lords, if I understood the Statement aright. the Irish Government have accepted the financial responsibility; but would Her Majesty's Government agree that it is hardly reassuring to those in Northern Ireland who, it is sometimes said, favour a united Ireland, that they should go into combination with a Government which allows mob rule?

My Lords, I think that this is going a little wide of the Statement, if I may say so.

My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether, if these outrages are going to continue, Her Majesty's Government will envisage restricting some of the very special privileges that citizens of Eire enjoy in this country? Is my noble friend aware that there are a large number of Irish citizens in this country—about one million of them, I think—which number may have been infiltrated by some I.R.A. members?

My Lords, I think that this subject also is rather outside the terms of the Statement; but naturally it is a matter which must exercise the minds of anybody trying to solve this dreadful problem.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Marquess, since clearly the last two interventions suggest speeches undelivered yesterday, whether he also has given consideration to the extent to which these events show a potential threat to the Irish Republic? There have been some activities already; and this is a very striking additional sign. This is the frightening thing. It emphasises the need for major initiatives. I know the difficulties of finding them; but there are ideas, and I should like to see some real energy on the part of the Government.

My Lords, I accept what the noble Lord has said about the potential danger to the Republic of Ireland. I am sure that that is something which calls for consideration.

My Lords, can the noble Marquess tell us whether any kind of explanation has been given by the Republican Government in Ireland as to the alleged inactivities of the police during these proceedings? Many of us, I expect, saw on television last evening the complete impassivity of the police at a time when one would have thought that sonic attempt at least would have been made to protect the Embassy.

My Lords, I am sure that many noble Lords saw the films on television last night which were most distressing, particularly with regard to the inactivity of the Irish police, who, I understand, before the Embassy was burned down, were doing their best to help the situation. I cannot answer the noble Lord's question. I do not know whether the Irish Government have made any explanation. I understand that the British Ambassador saw Mr. Lynch this morning and possibly discussed it then.

My Lords, the Second Reading of this Bill gives me the opportunity of bringing to your Lordships' notice a small matter, but one of great concern to many which comes under the subject of the Airports Authority. Badly disabled people are being put into an embarrassing and penalised position. Once more it is people less able to help themselves who are being made to suffer by a most inhumane regulation which is now in force at London's Heathrow Airport, which must be one of the biggest in the world.

If you are disabled but fortunate enough to be able to walk with sticks or crutches, and the aid of someone's arm, you are treated like any other passenger and no extra charge is made. But if, instead of having legs that work, you find yourself in the position of having to substitute by using four wheels you come into another category. The Airports Authority at London Airport say that you must be transported to and from the main building and the aircraft by a so-called "ambulance" and lifted by a fork-lift into and out of the aircraft. May I add that the so-called "ambulance" is not what any sane person would be proud to call an ambulance: it is a rattling old van, with no heating. For this service the airlines involved are charged £10. Most of these absorb this amount within their own costs; but not all do so. At least two international airlines pass on this charge of £10 to the poor, unsuspecting disabled passenger. Passengers are not warned beforehand of this charge, as no travel agency knows of this regulation and so is unable to advise clients to travel by another airline with a more humane outlook. On arrival at London Airport the passenger, the disabled traveller, is suddenly told that he must pay £10 or will get no help to disembark.

One of the cases brought to my notice concerned a lady of about 60 who suffers from multiple sclerosis but manages to carry on her profession of an art critic which takes her abroad a great deal. She was deeply shocked and terrified, on arriving at London, to find that to disembark she had to bump her way down the steps from the aircraft on her "behind". Her harrowing experience and desperate situation were eased by a member of the airport staff who transported her from the bottom of the aircraft steps to the main building, a few hundred yards away, in his own private car. This lady told me that the airport staff sympathised with her, and that on that day, October 29, 1971, there had been three other cases similar to hers.

My Lords, to an Airports Authority which deals in millions of pounds, as we have seen from this Bill, £10 must seem a very small figure. But to a badly disabled person, who may have scraped together enough money to come to this country for treatment, or who may have managed to leave the frustrations of present-day Britain for a few days much-needed holiday, £10 can seem an enormous amount. It seems that over this matter the Government have slipped back a hundred years in their attitude to disabled people. Instead of encouraging those who need encouraging to lead an independent life, they are doing all they can to discourage airlines from taking disabled passengers on their aircraft. Because of this extra charge and the extra difficulties involved, the less persistent disabled person will give up the unequal struggle and vegetate at home, thinking that he is a nuisance and not wanted.

Can this really be the attitude of the present Government? If so, it is time that something was done to change their view. As we are about to enter the Common Market, our rules and regulations may be increasingly copied, and it would be disastrous if every airport in the world charged £10 to transport a disabled person to and from an aircraft. I hope that the Minister will look into this matter and will be able to rectify the present situation without delay.

My Lords, at the outset may I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, on a most moving and eloquent speech. I hope that my noble friend will say that he will be able to call the attention of the British Airports Authority to this problem. I should like to add my tribute to that of others speakers to the outgoing Chairman, Sir Peter Masefield. Undoubtedly he has played a most distinguished part in the very successful record of the British Airports Authority. His reign, since the Authority started, has been particularly impressive from the financial point of view. I believe that the accumulated profits now reach £38 million. From my personal knowledge, I know that he devoted a great deal more time to his appointment than perhaps people might expect from the occupant of the post of a part-time chairman. As other noble Lords have said, I hope that Sir Peter Masefield will not be lost to British aviation. In saying that, I should also like to associate myself with those noble Lords who have wished success to his successor, Mr. Foulkes.

The first point to which I should like to draw attention in this Bill relates to capital. My noble friend said that the Bill would give adequate capital to the British Airports Authority. I did not notice for what period of time that adequate capital would last, but it seems surprising that it is adequate when one thinks of the enormous cost involved in meeting the ever increasing demand for air traffic. I believe that at present Heathrow handles some 16 million passengers per year. It is estimated that by 1975 the figure will be 25 million, and by 1980, 30 million. I am delighted that the British Airports Authority has recently taken over Turnhouse Airport at Edinburgh. Without wishing to pre-judge any planning appeal, I hope that they will be successful with their plans to modernise and extend the airport facilities for what, after all, is Scotland's capital city. I am sure that those who like myself fly with B.E.A. up to Edinburgh look forward to the day when the jet service will be introduced.

If asked to comment on improvements to facilities for passengers, both at Heathrow and at Gatwick, there are three matters to which I should like to draw attention. The first is the facilities for leaving luggage, which are very limited. Those who wish to leave their luggage at the airport and perhaps spend a day in London, find it a little difficult, and I hope that the situation may be improved. The second matter refers to the facilities provided when cars break down within the airport precincts. I am aware that the A.A. have a voluntary service, but I think the Airports Authority could do more in this respect. The third matter is the question of the moving escalator which the Airports Authority introduced at Heathrow some nine months ago. After much trumpeting over the introduction of this service, at the time when the Jumbo-jet terminal came into use, to my knowledge this escalator has worked for only about one month out of the nine. For the elderly, and even for the moderately fit, it is a long way to walk from the terminal to where one embarks in the aircraft. The same situation occurs at Gatwick, where at present there seem to be no plans for installing an escalator. About a week ago, when I left Gatwick, I had to walk something like a quarter of a mile to the aircraft.

When discussing the finances of the British Airports Authority, one is reminded of the controversy that arose at the time of, or soon after, devaluation, when the Authority raised its landing fees Controversy arose particularly because there seemed to be little consultation between the Airports Authority and the operators. One recognises the immense value of the foreign currency earning capacity of the airports, but I see from the Second Reading debate in another place—I do not know whether it was referred to by my noble friend—that the Airports Authority intends to increase landing fees by a further 8 per cent. in April. One understands the feelings of the operators about their monopoly and one looks, on the other hand, to the target for the Authority set by the Treasury which, I believe, is 14 per cent. One wonders whether this target gives the Authority an over-aggressive commercial policy which possibly could cause harm to the airports, in that traffic may be turned away. One has to recall that at Heathrow, B.E.A. and B.O.A.C. fees make up about 50 per cent. of the landing fees.

Of all the problems that face the British Airports Authority at the present time the major one which has been mentioned a number of times this afternoon, and particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, is the question of the future of Foulness. I would not agree with the noble Lord when he said that he was happy—perhaps he did not use these words—that no Statement was made in the House yesterday repeating the Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend. After all, this is one of the largest planning decisions. One understands that it will cost something in the neighbourhood of £1,100 million. I should have thought that this House was fully entitled to all information, particularly about Statements made in another place.

My Lords, let me make clear that I was not against the Statement being made in your Lordships' House, if this was to be done. I was simply referring to the fact that by reserving discussion or comment until to-day I thought that I was saving time.

My Lords, I appreciate the noble Lord's desire to save time, but some of us did not notice the Statement that was made in another place and read about it only this morning in the Press. Probably there has been no time to study it to-day. I should like to ask my noble friend whether he would give an assurance that Parliament will be consulted about the final estimate of costs for the building of Foulness as and when it is known. I would add that in the Statement that we missed yesterday we even missed the fact that it is now to be called Maplin and not Foulness. I hope my noble friend will give us an assurance that before any final commitment is made, Parliament will be fully informed on this information. I should like to ask my noble friend also whether Her Majesty's Government have consulted both B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. as to the likely capital cost of their facilities that will be needed at Foulness.

There is, I believe, an ever-growing band of informed aviation experts, possibly headed by the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, who anticipate that when the final decision on Foulness is reached there will be much clearer evidence of the effect of quieter engines, much greater information on the studies of the short take-off aircraft, and much more evidence on the effects the wide-bodied aircraft will have. With the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, I hope at that stage that the Government will consider these factors before reaching a final, irrevocable decision.

Turning to the question of noise and of short take-off aircraft, I think it would be interesting to know what programme my noble friend's Department have for reducing the noise of engines, and what programme of investment on the development of production, and also the sort of aircraft. May I say how much I welcome the Government's decision to ban night flying at Heathrow. The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, asked again about the British Airports Authority, and other noble Lords have done so as well. One appreciates that this will now be the concern of the new Civil Aviation Authority—possibly thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, for putting down his Amendment to the Bill, which was accepted. I should like again to wish the chairman designate of this new Authority every success. I would ask my noble friend whether he can give an assurance that the Government consider that the national airport policy is a matter of priority and one which they wish to see the new C.A.A. tackle at a very early stage.

I would conclude by asking a specific question to which the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, drew attention. I do so in case my noble friend missed it. It is as to the limitation under Clause 2. As we have already heard, the British Airports Authority are limited to borrowing money from abroad. The question I wish to ask it: Why is there this limitation and why cannot the Airports Authority borrow money on the home market? This is a question the answer to which will be of interest to other noble Lords, as well as to members of the British Airports Authority.

My Lords, I had not intended to speak on this Bill and it is only the merging of it, as it were, with the Statement which was laid on the Table yesterday that has emboldened me to put down my name. I have therefore come unprepared and your Lordships will be relieved to hear that as a consequence I intend to be quite brief. My mind goes back to the papers that I left on my desk and would have brought. I have thought of the debate which was raised by my noble friend Lord Harvey of Prestbury on the Thames barrage scheme. I urged then that we might think so big that the new airport, docks extensions in the Maplin Sands and the barrage might be made one great scheme. I did so chiefly because it seemed to me that that would provide the swiftest communication between Maplin (as it is now called) and Heathrow, Gatwick and Victoria.

This point has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords who have spoken, but it is the particular point that I want to make. I think the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, said that this matter must be settled before any runway at Maplin comes into operation. Therefore it seems to me to be of primary importance that thorough thought should be given to it and to the need for rapid communication between existing airfields, which may well be employed for short haul, and (shall I say?) Maplin with perhaps a Concorde to catch. Obviously, if a passenger is coming from Edinburgh to fly by Concorde to New York he can be there much sooner by Boeing 707 from Prestwick than by coming down to Gatwick, taking the train to Victoria, a taxi across London and joining a train at King's Cross to get to Maplin. I refer to King's Cross because I think I am right in saying that, as matters stand. the plan is that the rail link with Maplin should come to King's Cross. I have some knowledge of this problem of air transport and this seems to me to be absolutely out of the question.

I will not weary your Lordships more along those lines except to mention another point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton; namely, that the hover-train and the monorail may well develop into a really rapid means of transport from one airport to another, and it may be that without the grandoise scheme of a barrage off the Isle of Sheppey the right place for the rail link with Gatwick, Victoria and Heathrow would be much further up the river than the new docks would be.

My noble friend Lord Harvey of Prestbury referred to the absence of a rail terminus inside Heathrow. I do not know how many of your Lordships are aware how that situation arose. My information, which is on the best authority, is that the only stumbling block between the original plan—no matter that the central building arrangement may have been bad and would consequently require an underground approach—which was for a direct link by rail from Heathrow to Victoria, was a quarrel (or shall I call it a disagreement?) between the railway authorities and the airport construction authorities as to who should pay for the additional two lines that were necessary to extend the bridge across the Thames. Simply because this issue could not be resolved, we find ourselves to-day with the problem of an enormously costly arrangement of putting an underground railway into the centre of a major airport.

That brings me to something that nearly every other speaker has urged upon my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn. When my noble friend Lord Balfour of Inchrye was speaking I was sad that he used the two words that I have scribbled on my notes, "overlord" and "supremo". It seems to me that if anything comes out of this debate it is the unanimity of opinion that manifestly the interests here are so disparate that there must be some overall authority to decide what is to be done.

From that I come to the other matter of cost. I have some sympathy with my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn when noble Lords urge him to say what this scheme will cost, because the problems of policy are so great. Surely the cost will depend to a very great extent upon what any "supremo" will decide as to who is going to build and pay for the docks: how much is to be paid for the docks, how much of the cost is to be contributed by British Rail and how much is to be subscribed by private capital and private enterprise. Therefore I have great sympathy with my noble friend who will reply on that count. Of course it would be only right for me to say that the first speaker to talk about the absolute necessity (although he did not use the word "overlord" or "supremo") for such a person, was the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, so I think we are unanimous in that respect.

There is one thing I might have said: as a Scotsman and a citizen of Edinburgh, the news given by the noble Lord is very good. However, I should like to urge one particular point, which is that no considerations of where the airport buildings are to go, and no deliberations in regard to their design should be allowed to delay the completion of plans and the commencement of the runway. A son-in-law of mine is a very go-ahead architect and after a visit to the Montreal Expo. a few years ago he said that what had struck him most during his visit was what he called the "blown-up" buildings—buildings which had been constructed there of modern materials and designed with very great capacity but at no very great cost, because they were good for only three or four years. From that he suggested to me, and I suggest to my noble friend, that it should be considered that if the existing buildings at Turnhouse are to be inadequate when the new runway is completed it might provide a more speedy completion of the runway and ultimately provide a better plan for the final airport buildings if the existing ones could be supplemented by "blown-up" buildings (if I may use this Canadian term) by using quasi-permanent structures. Above all, this should be borne in mind if it means that a second runway will be available to Edinburgh at the soonest possible moment.

I have only one other matter to put forward. This has not been touched upon by any other of your Lordships, and it concerns the stacking of aircraft. My noble friend Lord Harvey of Prestbury mentioned the problems of coming into Kennedy Airport and similar airports, but I think I am right in saying that it is not only the problems on the ground that form limitations with regard to Heathrow and Gatwick. Nor is it, indeed, the problem of stacking inward bound aircraft. The problem that arises after take-off from either of these airports is for the Traffic Control to find a slot for an aircraft which is making, say, for Paris. A delay of 10 or 15 minutes on such a journey is a very serious matter. That is all I have to say, my Lords, except that I should like to return to the point with which I began; namely, that it seems to me that the planning, the design and, as the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, said, the completion of the land links to Maplin come very near the top of the priorities list.

My Lords, I did not put my name down to speak because I had not read the Statement until this morning, but it contains one paragraph which restricts the new port at Maplin so that it will not take oil tankers, and says that a steelworks should not be developed in the area. I cannot help feeling that that is a very retrograde statement to make. I look upon Maplin as a new Europort for England. It will be the nearest port to the Europort in Holland. We all know what a lot of good these ports have done: into them we bring iron ore, convert it into steel and then into motor cars, and these can be shipped, all within a very small area. This may be forward thinking, but surely the motor trade ought not to be concentrated in the Midlands but ought to come down to the South and occupy land which is now under water and which we are going to reclaim. Unless you have the oil coming in and can convert iron ore into steel and steel into manufactured goods in that area, I have little hope of Maplin being a feasible proposition.

My Lords, my name is not on the list of speakers, but I shall be very brief. I rise only because Foulness has been introduced into this debate, and as I, for perhaps ten years past and indeed right into the pre-Stansted days, have been very active and, to your Lordships' knowledge, very vocal in advocating the case for Foulness, you may think that if I remain silent I am sulking. Speaking as a former news editor of one of our national daily papers, I think it is fairly safe to say that the dramatic intervention by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, is what is going to capture the headlines to-morrow and that the technical and financial provisions of this Bill are going to get very short shrift indeed.

I speak under some disadvantage here. Many of your Lordships who have addressed the House have yourselves been active aeronautical experts, either managing great aviation undertakings or actually sitting in the pilot's seat of aircraft of various kinds. I have never been anything like that, but it came near to it once. Back in 1917 I was an infantry company sergeant-major round about Poperinghe and they suddenly appealed for people to transfer from the infantry to the Royal Flying Corps. So I went along to the aerodrome at Abeele and presented myself. They thought I was a likely young chap but, they said, "You will have to transfer to the Flying Corps in the rank of sergeant instead of being a company sergeant major." My father was an old Regular soldier, and if I had written home to him saying, "I was a company sergeant major yesterday, I am a sergeant to-day, but this is nothing in the way of a black mark against me", I do not think he would have believed me. So I left the Flying Corps behind me as one of those things that might have been.

We have had a good debate to-day, but there have possibly been one or two rough edges. The noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton (incidentally I used to live in Kings Norton), says that we need more runways. We have heard from other speakers in the debate who say that vertical and short take-off aircraft will render more runways unnecessary; and that has been the very essence of the argument that has been used from time to time against building the airport at Foulness. We were also told that at Gatwick and Luton there is at the moment a grave state of uncertainty. I suppose that was intended as a criticism of the way the Airports Authority is at present carrying out its work and projecting its future plans. For the same reason, I feel that we do not want to import any more uncertainty at this late hour into the question of the airport at Foulness. That was an imaginative and courageous plan, which has become even more important now that we have decided, whether rightly or wrongly—and the House knows my view—to go into the Common Market.

I agree with speakers who have said that there must be some kind of overall Minister in command of this operation. It need not necessarily be one man; a small Cabinet sub-committee of the Ministers concerned with aviation, industry, and the environment, could make a workable sub-committee. Incidentally, I do not agree with my noble friend who suggested that we should station the motor industry in or around Foulness. We have a fairly substantial motor industry in Essex at the moment, known as the Ford Motor Company. I doubt whether the labour would be available if another motor industry of great magnitude were installed at Foulness.

I must refer, as everyone else has referred, to the Statement which was circulated yesterday. It is a very satisfactory Statement—and if I say anything which indicates that something done by a Tory Government is satisfactory, your Lordships can take it quite certainly that I mean it. The Statement foreshadows prompt development, both of the airport and of the seaport. It promises us a deep seaport with an oil terminal and equipped for the container traffic. This is something that should have been done long ago, before we allowed Rotterdam to get ahead of us. Rotterdam can become the focal traffic point of Europe if we allow this opportunity at Foulness to escape us. I am delighted that there are to be no steel works, no oil refinery and no other big primary industrial establishments. All that I have said is completely in line with the view of the planning authority of the neighbourhood; that is to say, the Essex County Council, of which for 22 years I had the honour to be a member. That is exactly the view they take: an airport and a seaport—not a gigantic one, but one which is adequate—with the necessary secondary industries that have to be grouped around an airport. They do not want a great major industrial complex settled there, mainly because of the crush that would be created on accommodation for the people who would be employed.

From the financial point of view, as explained in the document circulated this morning, it is said that the scheme is to be basically under "public sector commitment and control". This means to say that the construction of the airport is to be a nationalised undertaking. I agree completely with this; but I similarly agree, as anybody looking at it realistically must do, that there will be scope for contracts to be placed with private enterprise firms later for the hotels, the secondary industries, the dredging operations, and so on. From what we have read, there are three or four very efficient groups of contractors, dredgers, and others, which have been formed, and although they are probably going to be disappointed that they do not get in and do the job as a complete private enterprise, they can be well content with the contracts that will be coming their way as the scheme progresses, I am a little unhappy about the way land speculators have been diving into that corner of Essex during the past two years. I sincerely hope that some steps will be taken by the Government to see that, after millions of pounds of Government money have been poured into the enterprise, the cream is not skimmed off by people who do no more useful work than sit at their desks and sign cheques and options.

There are two or three matters that I should like to raise, although I know that I cannot get the answers to-day. But, for reasons which will be apparent, it is desirable that the answers should be given as soon as possible to allay any public apprehension that there may be. First, what is to be the route to be followed by the roads? I know that territory very well. I have a fairly good idea where the road could go without causing much damage to anybody, but if the wrong route were taken it could be a calamity. What route will be taken by the new railway? I believe that a straightforward trouble-free route could be chosen, whereas other routes could cause a considerable amount of inconvenience and expense. We want to know fairly soon the position of the runways, because this is a matter of great controversy in the neighbourhood. The runways must not be too far to the South; they must not be so far to the North that they interfere with the estuary of the Crouch. As soon as we can we must know what the Minister has decided about the route of the roads and the railway. This is a primary matter that has to be settled and made public.

We want to hear something about the provision to be made for housing the many scores of thousands of workers who will ultimately have to be accommodated there—and I wonder what kind of under- taking will carry out that work? Will something in the nature of a New Town Corporation be set up? Something like that is required; you cannot scatter the job between three or four local councils. One authority should be put in charge of a vast housing undertaking. But more important than all this, there was a hint in the paper circulated this morning about the undesirability of allowing all the industry and housing accommodation to trespass across the Crouch into the district North of that river. The attitude of Essex County Council is that there should be no trespassing into the territory North of the Crouch by anything associated with the Foulness Airport.

I am delighted, as other noble Lords were, to see that the term "Foulness" has been dropped and that "Maplin" has been introduced. "Maplin" is strictly more accurate because the airport is to be built upon the Maplin Sands. There is a little misunderstanding about the derivation of the Word "Foulness". I have heard it pronounced "Foul-ness". I have heard it suggested that there is something odiferous about the neighbourhood. However, it is not that. The word "foul" comes from the little birds that inhabit the sands. The word "ness" comes from the promontory that sticks out into the sea at that point. My Lords, I hope that we shall get information about this undertaking as frequently as possible.

My Lords, at the risk of helping the unlisted tail to wag the listed dog in this debate, I venture to put in a word in support of the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton. She mentioned three categories of handicapped people likely to be flying: those travelling in pursuit of their profession; those coming to this country for treatment; and those going abroad for a holiday. There is a fourth category which I suspect may be numerically the largest. From this country every year hundreds, if not thousands, of handicapped people make pilgrimage to Lourdes. They fly out and they fly back. Almost all the pilgrimages are financed on a shoestring; the overwhelming majority of the pilgrims come from the poorer sections of society. If the impost to which the noble Baroness has referred is levied on every one of these, quite a number will be unable to go on pilgrimage, which is contrary, I am sure your Lordships will agree, to Christian charity.

Having said that, I should also like to support her picture of the other side of the story, the helpfulness and courtesy of the airport staff. I have seen regulations bent wherever they could be bent to help the handicapped, and red tape cut through as if it were butter. There is no doubt in my mind that the point the noble Baroness has made must be borne in mind by the Government.

My Lords, having travelled by air back to this country last week with a son with a broken leg I would endorse that the airport staffs both at Zurich and at London Airport are very considerate indeed in allowing wheel-chairs to be pushed through and in allowing special access and every possible facility. I could not praise them too highly for the way in which they work to make this possible. I wanted to intervene to support something the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, said in opening from the other Benches. More and more I have come to the conclusion —and I have to travel a lot by air both on inter-continental and on inter-U.K. routes—that one needs to separate the inter-U.K. from the long, continental routes. We are still treating these short flights—and I would probably include shortly inter-Western Europe flights—of one hour in the same way as other flights. It is really ridiculous to treat them in the same manner as we treat flights to Africa, to America and to Australia. One is forced to report 30 minutes beforehand now. This perhaps made sense twenty years ago when manifests were laboriously hand-written out in capital letters. Now all this is done by computer, not in milliseconds, not even in microseconds, but in nanoseconds. But not for poor human beings! They perforce have to be there 30 minutes before flight time; and, being prudent people and allowing for possible blockages on the roads, either into the airport or on the trunk roads leading to the airport, they allow themselves probably an extra 15 minutes. So one is always setting aside before take-off quite as much time—probably more—as that of the actual flight. I would therefore think that we have to separate the manner in which we deal with these short-haul passengers.

I have travelled a lot on the Boston-New York airbus route, and there one reports on the hour up to the moment of take-off. If you arrive at one minute to six and there is a place on the 6 o'clock 'plane, you catch the 'plane; if you arrive at one minute past six, you have to wait an hour because another hour elapses before the next 'plane leaves. The way to treat inter-city travel in this country is quite simply in this manner. You carry on your own luggage so you do not have to wait even while that is unloaded. Furthermore, I cannot see why air travel is the only facility where one is free to have what is called technically a "no show". You book a ticket and you do not turn up, and you are apparently entitled to travel on another day. If I book a ticket for a theatre or concert, or almost anything else, and do not occupy my seat, then I forfeit the place. I cannot help feeling that this should be so in air travel. So one would find that in fact there was a general encouragment to have higher load factors, and this would add to the economy of the airline and would probably in due course—when we can break away from IATA and its restrictive practices—lower air fares for the benefit of all. Is the noble Lord going to interrupt?

My Lords, I was only going to support what was said about services in the United States. At a time last year when almost everywhere else airline traffic was stagnating, there was between a 30 per cent. and 40 per cent. increase in the total traffic carried there.

Well, my Lords, I think this is imaginative, and that is one of the reasons why I support a third airline in this country. Sometimes the Corporations have been a little rigid; they have not allowed trickle loading when one arrives at an airport. Now it is allowed, but it was not allowed until it was pioneered by, I think, British Eagle, on the Edinburgh route. All these are ways to help stimulate enterprise and comfort, to the benefit of the travelling public. I would hope that we may send out a message that we cannot go on having to report 30 minutes early for the convenience of the administrative staff and that this system should be changed for inter-United Kingdom flights.

Now I come to the bigger question. In a democracy I cannot believe that any Government like to create a new airport, which means a new centre of noise and grave discomfort to all the people who are living around that new airport. That, surely, was one of the reasons why Foulness was selected. But equally I think that one should make the optimum use of existing airport facilities, and that one should spend money, and spend it more wisely and more productively, by improving the navigation systems and by improving the control systems, so that the traffic can be packed in and out of the airport to the maximum extent. The noble Lord in introducing this Bill said that London had a greater number of international passengers than any other airport in the world. The point to look at in this is international passengers; but, of course, it does not handle anything like as much as the airports at Chicago, Washington or New York. All those airports on the North American continent handle more. Therefore, I would say that we can still—and we must until Foulness is ready—go on improving the handling, improving in the technical sphere; improving the control systems and, above all, surely, investing in quieter aircraft. And if necessary we should be awkward. After all, the Americans were very awkward about the Comet. It was too noisy, until their own jets were ready to handle civil traffic, and then it was allowed. Unfortunately for Britain, it ran into other troubles and this delayed its massive introduction into service, which was of some advantage to its rivals. Well, if they can be awkward, so we can be awkward. We can start setting standards and—the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, made this point very rightly—the number of decibels now is reducing each time, and it is encouraging that the number is going down. We should encourage it by spending Government money on research and development to this end. We shall be benefiting the sales of our aircraft and benefiting literally millions of people who live around the international airports of the world as a result of this R. and D.

I still think it is probably necessary to go to Foulness. But let us be quite honest: if we were an operating airline we would wish to operate out of an established airport, and we are going to find it very difficult to move established airlines out of London Airport. For one thing, they have all their spares stacked in one place and there is a very big investment in spares, and they do not want to have to repeat this and have another stack of spares, very expensive spares, at Foulness and possibly at Gatwick as well. Secondly, there is the recruiting and training of staff—key staff in the technical sphere. Are they to be repeated also, once at London Airport, once at Gatwick, and once at Foulness? There would be grave objections to this from the airlines. So there will be tremendous pressure from everyone to stay where they are. That is why I say, go ahead with Foulness, but do realise that it is going to be a long haul and a very expensive haul. I would urge my noble friend not to fall into the trap, quite understandably set, and to say, "Please do not quote us a price until the surveys in depth and all the planning has been looked into. It will be wrong even then, but it will be much more wrong if you quote it to-day". I am sure that my noble friend will not fall into that trap. We can all think of occasions in the last twenty years when prices have been put on projects that have always proved to be utterly and completely wrong.

I think it is right to support Foulness. One of my reasons for supporting it is that obviously it is not going to create a new centre of noise, because most of the noise will be over the sea and therefore it is not going to disrupt the people who live there. My second reason is that it will give tremendous incentive for development of a hover-train or monorail. I very much doubt whether this country is going to punch ahead in that important area without an incentive, which Foulness I believe makes absolutely essential. Then we have to consider also possibly high-speed links between the three London airports, for the sake of key staff and the sake of key spares, because they will not always be available in the right places.

So I have lastly come to support the idea that there is so much at stake in future development of the airport system around London that there ought to be some co-ordinating authority. It is not common practice, as the last noble Lord who spoke rightly said, to list Cabinet committees. I have never quite understood why not—it generally becomes known—but it has not been done, and this may be a way to do it. But certainly we want someone to co-ordinate all these plans if we are to go punching ahead as fast as we should do, and if we are going to match up to what the French, the Germans and the Americans are doing. If we do not match up to them we shall lose our air traffic to those centres where facilities may be better than our own. So may we please have a co-ordinating authority to handle these vital matters?

My Lords, I have been asked a very great number of questions in the course of this debate, which I suppose was inevitable, and I am bound to say at the outset that a great many of the questions I have been asked are matters for Mr. Foulkes and his colleagues; and we wish them well in dealing with them. In many cases also they are matters for the airway authorities, the B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. Many of the matters that have been raised are really within their purview, but I will of course bring them to the attention of the authorities concerned, although I doubt whether that is in fact necessary; they will be watching this debate very carefully. Certainly this debate has been worth while and it will be worth their while to pay attention to it. I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part, including of course the noble Baroness.

The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, in opening, asked a number of important questions. The first was about an overall airport plan. He asked what is to be the supreme authority, and he laid stress on the need for one real leader. As has been said in the debate, the noble Lord was himself responsible for the amendment in the Civil Aviation Act which really gives the key to the answer. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry will of course continue to exercise the statutory obligations laid upon him in respect of the British Airports Authority, and his Department will continue to be the sponsoring Department for that Authority. But the Civil Aviation Authority will take over from the Department of Trade and Industry the licensing of airports, and consequently will be responsible for licensing the airports of the British Airports Authority. As noble Lords will be aware, all airports used for commercial operations or instruction in flying are licensed annually to ensure that they are adequate, from the safety standpoint, for the operations they have to carry out. We do not anticipate that this will give rise to any difficulty or friction between the two authorities.

The Civil Aviation Authority, under Section 33 of the Civil Aviation Act 1971, will have a duty to make recommendations to my right honourable friend in regard to what aerodromes are likely to be required in this country from time to time in addition to, or in place of, existing aerodromes, and these recommendations must be published by the Secretary of State. So it is clear that before making any such recommendations the Civil Aviation Authority will have to undertake a study in depth of the aerodrome requirements of this country and will need to consult with all interested parties, including, of course, the British Airports Authority. Any recommendations they make will be made with the object of providing the best guidance possible to all aerodrome owners in the United Kingdom, and we expect to see close liaison between the Civil Aviation Authority and all aerodrome owners, including the British Airports Authority, in this matter.

Many noble Lords have referred to the question of a national airports plan. If that plan arises it will arise in this way.

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving way, and I hope the way in which he sees the position will work out. Everything that he has said is hinged upon the responsibilities of the Department of Trade and Industry. Can he therefore say why the responsibility for making the Statement yesterday, about the biggest single project of all, was left to the Department of the Environment?

My Lords, because the Department of the Environment has to deal not only with transport problems—ground transport—but with the whole question of the environment of the airports, with all the questions that have been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, and others. It was proper for him to make the Statement because he is at the moment co-ordinating the whole issue.

If I may, I will just touch on this because a great deal has been said about it in the course of the debate. There is of course a committee which is dealing with this matter, called the Progress Review Committee, and it is for Ministers to exercise control and to make certain that the whole plan is well co-ordinated. I should only like to say that, so far as the Maplin airport is concerned, it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to go ahead with this project and to make certain that by the time the first runway is in operation the transport links are fully operational. What those transport links will be I am unable to say, but I fully take the point made by my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing, that this is a great opportunity to develop means of transport, such as the hover-train or the monorail, or the fast train services; and of course there are road links to be considered as well, a point to which the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, referred. All these have to be worked together in one plan, with the intention that the runway shall be in operation by 1980.

The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, asked for a statement on the future of Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton. In the course of my opening speech I referred to the Statement made in the other place on July 27 of last year, and I think perhaps it is worth putting emphasis again on the main points. The first point was that it is not expected (in spite of what my noble friend Lord Kings Norton said) that new runways will be required in the meantime. This is a calculation that has been made. Secondly, Heathrow and Gatwick will continue as major international airports for the foreseeable future; and thirdly, after the third London Airport is open Luton and Stansted will probably not be required for commercial air transport operations. Lastly, when the third London airport is in operation it should be possible to impose stricter limits at Heathrow and Gatwick in the interests of noise control.

May I turn now to the second question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, which was the cost of the Maplin project? I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing that it would really not help to add to the indications of cost that were given in the Roskill Report, and it will have been noticed by those who have read the proceedings in another place that the Secretary of State did not respond to the request for putting a price on the developments at Foulness, because of course such price would be extremely difficult to calculate. In any case, one would have to differentiate between the cost of actually building the airport and the cost of all the developments that are required—the communications and the like. So I hope that the noble Lord. Lord Beswick, and my noble friend will excuse me from giving that reply at the present time.

The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, said that there was a great deal of uncertainty at the present time. He is in as good a position as anyone to know that inevitably there is a certain amount of uncertainty in these matters, and I would suggest to him that any uncertainty that exists at the moment, apart from the longer-term uncertainty, relates to the planning procedures. In fact I indicated in my speech that, subject to approvals being given, those uncertainties should soon be removed. The noble Lord also asked whether a White Paper could be published. I hope that I have sufficiently answered that point for the time being. I shall of course draw it to the attention of my right honourable friend, but I hope that what I have said now will be sufficient to indicate the present intentions of Her Majesty's Government.

The noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, in a very interesting speech indeed, asked first of all why it is necessary to borrow from the National Loans Fund and also to add the possibility of borrowing from abroad but not at home. This is the normal practice so far as a nationalised industry is concerned and there really is no good reason to alter this practice at the present time.

My Lords, is borrowing in this country excluded?

Yes, my Lords; there are no powers at the present moment for the British Airports Authority to borrow in this country.

It seems a little odd.

I was extremely interested in the suggestions that the noble Lord made for intra-European transport between twin cities and the possibility of developing a cabotage system. I am sure that he will have ample opportunity to develop these ideas; and many of them, of course, subject to the licensing procedures. could develop quite spontaneously. I think he was perhaps under some misapprehension when he was asking about the possibility of the sums we are talking about in this Bill being devoted to airports other than those controlled by the British Airports Authority. That is not possible; that does not arise.

As usual we paid very great attention to what the noble Lord had to say about QTOL and STOL and VTOL, and my noble friend Lord Harvey of Prestbury also referred to this. The Government. in collaboration with other bodies, including B.E.A. and B.A.A. and aircraft manufacturers, are studying a range of possible future aircraft with reduced runway requirements. In the course of these studies it is necessary to examine a wide range of problems, including how such aircraft would operate; how many could operate from various possible sites; the extent of noise disturbance at each possible site; the overall cost of developing such a system, and whether the demand from European as well as from British airlines would be sufficient to make production and use of these aircraft economically feasible. All I can say is that it is too early to predict when the Government will be in a position to make a firm announcement about the results of these studies. Nevertheless, the present indications are that STOL aircraft, even if they are developed, will not be available in time to affect the need for extra runway capacity for conventional aircraft at the end of the the Roskill Report and it is still the position. The successful development of STOL aircraft could affect the size of the ultimate development at Maplin. I cannot say more at the present time.

I come now to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton. This is essentially, of course, one of the matters that is not directly in the ambit of the Government. I thought perhaps she was a little hard in castigating the Government and saying that they had slipped back 100 years in this matter. I can only give her the information that is available. I know that she has been in correspondence about this, and the information came to me at the last moment before the debate. It is this. The Authority, at the request of airlines, supplies the ambulance service on repayment, and although most of the airlines absorb this cost, there are some, such as Air France, which pass the charge on to the passenger. I quite agree that this may be rather a shock to some of the passengers, but Air France regulations apparently require that they pass on to passengers the cost of any special facilities. As to the point about disabled people not being allowed to be carried on or off aircraft and being forced to use the service of the fork-lift truck ambulance, I am not quite certain how far this is so. All I can say is that it would mean that disabled passengers who travel by airlines which pass on the charge must pay the charge themselves even if they are accompanied by people who are prepared to carry them on and off the aircraft. That is denied both by B.A.A. and Air France; they say that there is no such rule.

My Lords, I personally have often travelled by various airlines and have never been allowed to be carried on. In one case my husband and the captain of an aircraft flying to Spain offered to carry me on, and were not allowed to do so by some authority at London Airport. I kept the aeroplane waiting 20 minutes. which was not very popular with the other passengers. The reason was that the man driving the fork-lift truck ambulance was having his supper.

My Lords, that is very direct evidence and I shall certainly draw it to the attention of my right honourable friend. My noble friend Lord Balfour of Inchrye praised the control system at London Airport and I was very glad to hear what lie said. I know the part that he himself has played in this. I think that he was perhaps being a little unfair in saying that Government Departments cannot and should not be expected to look at great national issues. We have from time to time inquiries, such as the Edwards Committee, into the whole field of an industry. That, after all, is what Governments are there to do, to co-ordinate this work, even if they do not do it themselves; it is what they have to do from time to time. He criticised the Statement that was made by my right honourable friend in another place. I found a slight contradiction in what he said, because on the one hand he was criticising the progress report—this was, after all, a progress report which as such does not indicate completion but indicates that some things are not done—and at the same time he was asking for further progress reports. I noticed that my right honourable friend concluded what he had to say in words which are very well known, "Further announcements on these and other aspects will be made in due course.

My Lords, it is quite true that he said that. What I was asking was whether there could be some periodic progress reports or a White Paper, because those words really mean absolutely nothing; it may mean no progress report for a year or a year and a half. Could there not be some periodic information to Parliament as to how matters are going, matters of finance, construction and various other matters?

My Lords, I am sure that most members of the Government know very well that if there was no such report over a period the noble Lord would be clamouring for one, so I do not think we need fear that the progress reports will not be forthcoming. But whether they should be forthcoming at particular intervals is another matter, and perhaps the noble Lord will leave it for further consideration.

My noble friend, and also the noble Lord, Lord Nunburnholme, complained that no heavy industry was to be allowed at the port. I do not think this was a complaint; I think it was a question which my noble friend was asking. I should make it quite clear that there is an obvious distinction between an airport with the possibility of a seaport associated with it and the sort of Europort that exists at Rotterdam. What my noble friend said was that heavy industry was not acceptable, either on regional planning grounds or on grounds of compatibility with the airport. I think I might add that there really is no evidence that a seaport/airport combination would be a great attraction to industry. This does not mean, of course, that the seaport might not be visited by tankers and the oil pumped inland; but this is the way this is looked at.

My noble friend Lord Harvey of Prestbury made a most interesting speech, and asked a great many questions. Some of them, again, are not really matters for this debate. He also asked for a White Paper covering the whole field of aviation. He went into the question of noise and the development of aircraft; he also asked about the Scottish position. The Scottish position will simply be this: that Prestwick and Edinburgh will be under the control of the British Airports Authority, and Glasgow, as a municipal airport, will be on its own. The remaining airports, so far as I can remember, are to be transferred from the D.T.I. to the Civil Aviation Authority.

My Lords, what I am not clear about is what happens in the case of a municipal airport, such as Ringway, at Manchester. To what extent will that be co-ordinated into the Authority's airports? I am thinking also about Liverpool, which wants to develop its own airport.

My Lords, I think this will be a matter for the Civil Aviation Authority to advise on. I do not think I ought to follow up this matter now, because it is outside the purview of this debate, and the airports mentioned do not come under the British Airports Authority.

I think I have detained the House long enough. I should like to thank my noble friends Lord Kinnoull and Lord Ferrier for their speeches, and I will study any points that they have raised. The only point I think I should deal with now is the point that my noble friend raised about landing fees. It is the case that the B.A.A. are proposing to introduce an overall 8 per cent. increase in charges in April. However, this does not mean that it will be evenly spread over all services. In fact, there will be a reduction for internal aircraft, and an increase on a good many of the heavier aircraft. The charges will fall more heavily on the heavier aircraft.

My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt, and I apologise for doing so again, because the noble Lord has done absolutely splendidly in answering the questions. But there was one question of mine to which he did not refer, and ironically it was the only one relating to the Bill that we are discussing. I asked what proportion of this money, the £125 million which they will now be allowed to borrow, is due to the proposed expenditure on what was termed the "preparatory planning of Foulness". I noted with extreme unbelief the suggestion advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, that it is possible to start on a proposition without knowing how much it is going to cost. I think there must be some proportion of this accounted for in the way described, and I should be grateful if the noble Lord could say how much it is.

My Lords, this represents an increase, does it not, of just on £55 million, and it is to cover a period of something of the order of five years. I think that over that period it would be difficult to quantify minutely the actual amount to be spent on these kinds of researches.

What order of cost?

My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot give the noble Lord the order of cost, but I think the main point that is worth mentioning here is that it will be some time before any heavy cost falls upon the B.A.A., and it is quite likely that the main airport construction will not start until the middle of 1975. Therefore it is bound to be some time before the main costs arise, and no doubt it will be necessary to come to Parliament in connection with the large costs that are involved in the construction of the Maplin airport and the communications.

I hope that I have dealt with the various points tolerably well, and that the House will now be prepared to give a Second Reading to this Bill.

My Lords, I beg to move that the Mineral Exploration and Investment Grants Bill be read a second time. This is a very short Bill of only two clauses, excluding the Short Title, and the Bill incorporates two quite separate pieces of legislation. The purpose of Clause 1 is to give effect to the scheme which the Government announced last summer to encourage exploration and evaluation of non-ferrous metals and certain other minerals in Great Britain. It is a fairly safe prediction that over the next fifty years, taking the world as a whole, the pace of industrialisation will continue to increase. This, in turn, means that world demand for minerals and especially for metals is bound to continue to grow. The supply situation is, however, less clear. Some people have already claimed that the reserves of various non-ferrous metals are dangerously low. That is possibly an exaggerated view of the situation, but we have certainly reached the stage where some metals are becoming increasingly difficult to find and to mine, and the price of these metals in real terms will in the long term tend to rise.

Over the past century this country has become very dependent on overseas sources for its non-ferrous ore supplies. There is now a growing realisation that even these sources are not inexhaustible and, with political pressures growing also, we clearly should no longer rely too complacently on them without further examination of our own indigenous resources. If these could be economically developed there could be substantial benefits in terms of balance of payments, security of supply and, in some areas, new employment opportunities. Modern technology now holds out the prospect of improved methods of mining and treatment of low grade ores. Fortunately, we are well placed to take advantage of these developments. Size for size, this country has as varied a geology as any country in the world, and it is widely believed that substantial deposits exist here which could be economically worked.

A number of the largest mining houses are interested in prospecting in this country. These include not only R.T.Z., Consolidated Goldfields, and other companies based in Britain, but also companies from Canada, the United States and Europe. If we are to take full advantage of this situation we need to know more about the location and extent of our mineral resources, and only the mining companies are fully equipped to provide this information. The mining industry is international and deploys its exploration effort where the prospects seem most promising. We must therefore try to ensure that conditions here, if not the same, are no less favourable than those offered in other parts of the world. Mineral exploration is, however, a risky business and also a very expensive one. Fewer than one in ten exploration projects lead to the development of a mine. The cost of trying to prove quite a small deposit may amount to £1 million, while a major project could cost £5 million or more. This is of course quite separate from the investment which might be required later in actually establishing a mine, and which could be anything up to £100 million or more. Even where the result of the exploration is favourable it will frequently be at least five years before any return is seen for the money invested. For all these reasons, we decided to introduce this scheme. The response has been very encouraging. We have already received more than 100 applications for assistance towards exploration work costing over £3 million, mainly in areas such as Scotland, Wales, the North Pennines and the South West, where there is a need for more employment. We have given the go-ahead, subject of course to this legislation, to over 50 projects. The minerals involved include copper, tin, nickel, tungsten and fluorspar.

Clause 1 provides the financial authority for the scheme. It restricts the total sum to £25 million with provision for a further £25 million by Order. The contribution to any particular project will be limited to 35 per cent. of the qualifying expenditure and will be in the nature of a loan; if the project is successful and leads to minerals being extracted, we shall get our money back with interest. Whether the project is successful or not, however, the geological information obtained as a result of assisted work will be made available to the Government and to the Institute of Geological Sciences. The Bill permits contributions to be made in respect of any minerals but, for the present, the scheme will be confined principally to non-ferrous metal ores and three other minerals—barium, fluorspar and potash—where there are good arguments for encouraging exploration. It will not apply to hydrocarbons for which exploration is proceeding satisfactorily and there is no need for an additional incentive. But, later on, if circumstances change so that there are good reasons for bringing other minerals within the scheme, we shall be able to consider this.

The scheme will be discretionary—the Bill permits the Secretary of State to impose such terms as he thinks fit—and I would like to say a few words about how we envisage it will be administered. We shall want to satisfy ourselves that the work proposed and its cost is reasonable in the light of the known geology of the area, and that the applicant has the financial and technical resources to carry out the work. Overseas applicants will be welcome, but they will be asked to form a United Kingdom-registered company. Some people have formed a mistaken impression about the implications of the Bill for the environment. We have gone into this with great care and we believe that adequate measures exist for its protection. This Bill is concerned only with the exploration and evaluation of mineral deposits. Mine construction and commercial extraction do not benefit. The effects of mineral exploration on the environment are very slight. The first stages involve geochemical and geophysical surveys which produce negligible disturbance. This is normally followed by drilling. Exploratory drilling involves very small diameter holes—a matter of a few inches—from which the core is extracted and samples are sent for analysis. Some rather bulky equipment is sometimes, but not always, used in this process and this is removed once the operation is completed. Within a few months it would be difficult to identify the spot where the work had taken place.

In the later stages of exploration, rather more substantial work may have to be done, but in all cases involving interference with the environment, even of a temporary nature, planning permission must be sought. This scheme will in no way affect the operation of the normal planning controls. It is open to planning authorities to impose conditions under the Town and Country Planning legislation on the way the work is carried out, and to require reinstatement of the site afterwards. I am quite confident of the adequacy of these procedures as a safeguard. The Bill provides that before making a contribution the Secretary of State must be satisfied that planning permission has been obtained or is not necessary, and if there is a serious breach of planning conditions he would withhold the grant. If at the end of the day the company decide that it would be worth while to construct a mine, then entirely different and more serious planning issues arise. The planning authority will have the opportunity to consider all the implications and we are satisfied that the planning machinery is adequate.

The problem of the environment arises, quite irrespective of the present Bill, wherever a mineral is extracted. Most of the minerals currently being worked in this country will not be affected by the Bill. The fact that an exploration project may be supported under the Bill will not be relevant when an application for planning permission is being considered. Very few exploration projects will lead to a mine; this is the nature of mineral exploration. But when it leads to the possible construction of a mine, there will be full opportunity to consider afresh the whole question of whether such construction in a certain area is in the total national interest—environmental and economic.

I turn now very briefly to Clause 2, which modifies in two minor respects the provisions of Section 1 of the Investment and Building Grants Act 1971. As the House will recall, the Act put into effect the Government's decision to end investment grants by, in general, precluding the payment of investment grants on expenditure incurred after October 25, 1970, unless it consists of a sum payable under a contract made on or before that date. Since the passing of the Act, it has become clear that, in so far as they relate to hired assets and to ships, the provisions are more restrictive than I believe Parliament intended when it passed the Act. The purpose of Clause 2 is to remedy these two small defects. I hope that your Lordships will approve the provisions in this Bill. My Lords, I beg to move.

My Lords, I want to thank the noble Earl for his clear explanation of some of the reasons for introducing this Bill. I want straight away to relieve him of any anxiety that he may have, by saying that we on this side welcome the Bill, but I shall naturally have to carry out my responsibility of examining certain of its aspects. I think there are three matters to which I would invite your Lordships' attention. The first is why we need a subsidy; the second is whether the incentive to exploration has been reasonably balanced by an incentive to restoration—a matter upon which the noble Earl touched; and the third point is that I should like to relate the situation in this Bill to a very important mineral.

First, then, on the question of the subsidy, as the noble Earl probably knows, and as the House knows, the Labour Government did a great deal to prepare the way. Indeed, it was my lot to play a totally unimportant part in this when I had discussions and negotiations with representatives of the landowners, and when I had to deal with this aspect of the matter in the Finance Act which escaped the General Election. I want to make it clear that, with agreement all round, very special trouble was taken to see that, whatever else the Election chopper may have caught—and I have some dim recollection that the Election chopper catches even Cabinet Ministers from time to time—it should not prevent the very considerable easement of taxation to landowners in respect of the receipt of mineral royalties going through both Houses before the Election, and that indeed was achieved. But the arguments then for doing that were not wholly the same as the arguments now for doing this. A major argument then was the pressure of the balance of payments. That is still an argument—it is always an argument; but it is nothing like so pressing an argument now as it was then. But the greater difference lies in the fact that, then, the situation was understood to be that, whereas there were companies queueing up and anxious to start exploration, followed by development or exploitation, there were landowners whose tax position all told was such that they had no interest (using that word in its real sense; they had no real interest) in coming to terms with the would-be explorers and entering into licence agreements with them. Therefore, special provision for the landowners had to be made so that explorers could be enabled to do what they were bursting to do.

Why, then, is it necessary to give the would-be explorers this £50 million incentive? The noble Earl did not explain that. He has left it to me, therefore, to give your Lordships the explanation—and it is a simple one. What has changed since then—the reason why the Government have now to give to the explorer an incentive which the then Government did not need to give at that time—is that the Government have withdrawn the incentives which were available to investors. The investment incentive of the investment grant has been withdrawn by a most unwise act of Government policy, with the result that it is necessary now to find some incentive to attract those who would have explored had the ordinary investment grants been available to them. The noble Earl did not mention that. He may have thought it was not necessary to mention it as it had been explained by his honourable friend in another place; but, perhaps, as we want to be complete in our knowledge in this House, I will be forgiven for quoting what the Minister for Industry, Sir John Eden, said on introducing this Bill for Second Reading in another place on November 10. At column 1025 he said:

"Most metal mining companies exploring here have little or no United Kingdom profits available and, because of the long time lag before capital allowances relating to exploration can he claimed,"—

and may I say, in parenthesis, that your Lordships will appreciate that capital allowances are what the present Government have introduced in place of the investment grants which previously obtained—

"their value"—

that is to say, the value of the capital allowances—

"in discounted cash flow terms is much reduced. It was becoming clear that, in face of the problems I have outlined, momentum in their exploration effort was being lost. The Bill is geared to their special needs and provides an additional incentive for exploration mainly in the metal mining sector".

That is what the responsible Conservative Minister said in the other place, and what I am adding and underlining is that it does not apply only to exploration; it applies to all investment. What we are seeing here is the compulsion of facts upon a Government to withdraw from a foolish policy in a particular area where the compulsion is so great that they needs must do so. As we all know, if a company is not making profits then allowances from the tax which is based on those profits is useless. What we also know is that if you are engaged on an investment as to which it will take several years (as has been made clear by the noble Earl this afternoon) before any return is possible, then the incentive effect of that, the likelihood of getting some relief from profits—if you make them—in four, five, six, seven or eight years ahead, is not sufficient to encourage investment, either in this field or in any similar field. Indeed, as the noble Earl has made clear (and I hope I shall not be accused of taking on some of the atmosphere of yesterday's debate in what I am now going to say, in its being a little Irish) the only time when the incentive is likely to be paid is when it will not be paid: because by that time, in order for capital allowances to be relevant, the company will be making a profit, and, as this incentive scheme is drawn, if it is making a profit then the Government will ask for repayment of the subsidy given—and I very much support that attitude. So, my Lords, what I am making abundantly clear is that the change in the situation is due entirely to the Government's having changed the policy on investment grants. They have withdrawn incentives from would-be investors in many fields—and that is one of the reasons why we are suffering from such a lack of investment in the economy, and in particular in this field—and that withdrawal has had such a drastic effect in this field that they have had to produce a special subsidy in order to cope and to compete with what is readily available abroad.

My Lords, the Bill is a very curious Bill, in that it has one clause dealing with what we have been discussing and another clause (and the noble Earl did not explain this) apparently dealing with something totally different—on the surface, at all events. Because Clause 2 talks about the alteration in the Act providing investment allowances for ships. One might think, at first blush, that if a shipowner wanted to know where he stood under the law with regard to expenditure incurred on a new ship, with a view to obtaining some tax relief or an investment grant relief, he would not immediately think of looking for a Bill headed "Mineral Exploration". He would think this an unusual combination of ideas. But, of course, the Government are right to put in the alteration of these two minor matters of investment grant. The Government are right to put Clause 2 here, because it relates to investment grants, and this Bill is about the withdrawal of investment grants. Had it not been for that reason, the draftsman would have suggested that Clause 2 should be tacked on to some other, more suitable, Bill. So that, my Lords, is why we have this Bill; and I wanted to make it very clear before turning on to the second aspect; that is to say, the aspect of conservation.

I listened very carefully indeed to what the noble Earl had to say, because he and I and I am sure all of us are equally interested that there should be a reasonable balance between those who explore and then, we hope, win minerals for the benefit of the country's economy generally, and those who are interested in maintaining the beauties of our countryside for the benefit of the population generally. With the greatest respect to what the noble Earl said, I should have thought that giving a subsidy to one side of that pressure alone was liable to get the pressure out of balance unless one is very careful. Now I know the noble Earl said —and I took his point—that this is not a new situation; that this applies to all kinds of exploration and exploitation and the winning of minerals, whether they are covered by this Bill or not. I realise that. But the noble Lord is proposing, and I am agreeing, that we should provide up to £50 million to encourage exploration and subsequent development. I should have thought, especially having regard to some of the debates that we have recently heard, that it would not have hurt to provide a tiny fraction of that sum for those organisations which are concerned with the preservation of the countryside, who need to stimulate public opinion and to counter, even in a modest way, the pressures that are going to be put on by this particular subsidy. So I ask the Government to consider whether they are quite satisfied that they are not upsetting the balance unduly in favour of the despoiler rather than the conserver of the countryside.

I realise that planning permission, where appropriate, can require restoration of the site, but I want to go into one detail about that aspect because I think it is relevant. I could be wrong, but, as I understand the position where exploration is concerned—and I am not talking about the later development now—some, but not all, of the processes are subject to planning consent. We therefore have a situation in which exploration can take place without necessarily having planning consent. Once exploration has taken place and a lot of money has been invested in it, there is additional pressure built up for development. Indeed, there is no point in the explorer and the taxpayer contributing to an exploration unless it is in the hope that it will be followed by development, by exploitation. Therefore I should have thought that, notwithstanding what the noble Earl has said about application for planning permission at the development stage, one wants to anticipate the pressures that are going to be brought to bear then by making sure, so far as possible at the start of the exploration, that if it is going to be a successful exploration one is not going to run into unnecessarily difficult planning situations. If you do, it is a matter which ought to have been faced at the start and before great pressures have built up.

I am saying this on the assumption that what I said earlier is correct: that there is at present no compulsion to have planning permission for all the processes of exploration. If there is this compulsion, then it is already under control. If there is not, there is an area through which activities might be started, money might be spent and great processes opened up, and difficulties and unnecessary pressure will be put upon those who wish to hold the balance of conserving the countryside. My assumption behind all this is that noble Lords will share with me the view that there ought to be a balance; that nobody is going to think wholly of the countryside and nobody is going to think wholly of minerals; that there should be a reasonable balance of both. That is all I want to say on that point.

I now turn to the third point: that is, the relationship between this Bill and a very important mineral indeed called coal. The noble Earl said that the money to be provided under the Bill, a total of £50 million, would be available as a subsidy to all minerals although he had certain minerals in mind at the moment. I want to remind the Government that we are at the moment in the depths of a coal strike. If the noble Earl says to to me, "We discussed this on Monday, only three days ago", I shall say that that gave the Government an opportunity for considering the questions I then asked, questions to which they will no doubt be ready to reply to-day. But the difference between now and Monday is that the country has in the meantime lost £6 million—£2 million a day, which is the cost of the coal strike. And £2 million a day, every day, is quite a lot of money—even ignoring all the hardships and all the difficulties which stem from the Government's inaction and unwillingness to do what most of those who spoke in that debate are asking for; namely, to encourage a compromise, a movement from both sides or a movement from all three sides.

I look at this figure of £50 million and ask why, for example, one quarter of it could not be allocated to a particular mineral whose exploration and, indeed, development, should be going on at the moment but is not doing so because of lack of funds, because of the lack of a small amount of money. A quarter of this figure allocated to that purpose would produce sufficient to pay the miners an additional 11 per cent. as compared with last year and with what they are being offered at the moment, which is an additional 7 per cent. or 8 per cent. Such an allocation would mean an additional 11 per cent.—and that would mean that the miners would be getting an increase of exactly the same percentage as the average increase in wages for the whole year in the private sector. The figures published on Monday showed that the average settlement throughout the private sector during the year amounted to 11 per cent. Eleven per cent. for the miners would give them an increase in their standard of living of 1 per cent., of one penny in the pound. This could hardly be called very inflationary, especially as we know that their increased productivity is of the order of 3 per cent. or 4 per cent. They would be getting one-third to one-quarter of their increased productivity and we should, in my view, be breaking the deadlock; because it is the Government's attitude, actions, statements and arm-twisting which is resulting in the Coal Board's being unable to offer more than they have offered hitherto.

Therefore I do not think I am taking up your Lordships' time unnecessarily, when we are dealing with a Bill to provide £50 million for one small group of owners, to have regard to the interests of nearly 300,000 men who are engaged in exploring and exploiting one of our most important minerals. I hope that the noble Earl will do what he can, either to say what is the present situation or the present posture of the Government or, if he is unable to do that, to take the most serious account of what I am pressing upon him.

My Lords, like the noble Lords opposite, I welcome this Bill in general terms; it seems obviously sensible to try to develop such resources as we have. But, like him, I am exercised about the effect it is likely to have on the countryside; because by and large the minerals which are going to be looked for are those which are found in the most ancient rocks which make up places like Cornwall, Wales, the North of England and Scotland, the more spectacularly beautiful parts of our country and parts of our country which, more-over, tend to have animals and plants or assemblages of animals and plants which are of the greatest interest to biologists. It is with those that I am more closely concerned, because I am a member of the Nature Conservancy which administers a number of nature reserves and has designated a considerable number of sites of special scientific interest on all of which there grow, or live, animals or plants; or where there are geological exposures which are of the greatest interest. These could be destroyed, not only by the exploitation which the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, has said almost inevitably will follow a successful exploration, but also they could be destroyed by those very explorations to which the noble Earl referred, and the scars of which he said might disappear completely if properly managed and no exploitation took place. That is true of the scars of exploitation which could disappear quickly. We no longer see the ridge and furrow exploitation of ironstone in the Midlands or of opencast coal mining and the like. In both those cases the top soil is replaced and agricultural and forestry may flourish as they did before, and little harm may be done.

The things in which I am particularly interested, these assemblies of animals and plants which have grown up over thousands of years, may be utterly destroyed by exploration and exploitation and nothing that is done can restore what was there before. In general, the sites where that sort of damage may be done are small. Probably it is true to say that on most of the larger nature reserves some form of exploration, and even exploitation, could take place; and although the amenities in the way of aesthetic beauty might be destroyed the scientific importance could be maintained if those sites of the greatest importance were avoided. The S.S.S.I., by their very definition, are places at great risk and obviously they demand special care. No amount of planning can provide for it because as the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, said, a considerable amount of exploration may slip through the planning net, in that you can go into a place for 28 days without having to ask for planning permission and during that period a great deal of damage may be done. What is essential is that before any licence is given for exploration the Minister should consult the Nature Conservancy which knows all these sites of scientific importance, and through N.E.R.C., could be told what damage may occur; and sites could be specified which otherwise no one may recognise. but which ought to be avoided at all costs.

This point was raised during the Committee stage in another place. An Amendment was moved and withdrawn, unwillingly, after the Minister had given an undertaking which did not satisfy the mover of the Amendment and which, I think, will not satisfy your Lordships. It certainly does not satisfy me. The Minister said that the Nature Conservancy which administers these reserves and knows about these sites would be consulted in advance about any work which might qualify for grant, and which would be detrimental to a nature reserve or to a site of special scientific interest. That means nothing at all because the only body which knows what sites are of importance is the Nature Conservancy. I hope that the noble Earl will be able to give an assurance that in every case the Conservancy will be consulted before a licence is granted. No delay would be involved because those who know could answer practically off the cuff, and the dangers to which I, and the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, have referred would be avoided so far as scientific sites are concerned.

My Lords, I think that the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, may take some comfort from the realisation that the big mining companies are very much aware of the need to conserve the countryside. I hear that Lord Zuckerman's Committee was in Cornwall this week, and is going to Scotland next week to report on the steps taken by mineral developers; so the matter is being taken very seriously. This Island, my Lords, is, considering its size, one of the most highly mineralised areas on earth. It is the source of our prosperity and it is our duty to ensure its maximum development by every inducement and incentive. I and my colleagues in the mining industry consider this Bill to be a risible attempt to atone for the abolition of investment grants. If the Government want to encourage investment in mining as they will be forced to do in the not too distant future, they must reintroduce something to replace the investment grant to provide at least an equal incentive, otherwise the present spate of exploration by major companies will die down.

The viability of mining ill this country will not be restored by dogmatic affirmation of the view that investment grants are a waste of money, or by a back-door, halfway house of advances for exploration only. The comparison must be international and the present mouse of a Bill does not put the United Kingdom back to where it was in the international league when investment grants were on offer. I venture to say that the development of tin mining in Cornwall would not have started but for the encouragement offered by investment grants. Inadequate as the Bill is on the fiscal side, it completely fails to deal with the problem of the inadequate basis of mineral rights in the United Kingdom. There cannot be a prosperous future for mining in this country unless at a time when the company is prepared to commit funds for exploration it has pre-emptive rights to mineral tenures in the area it seeks to explore. The Government started out by saying that they were examining this problem. But they have abandoned this issue entirely, and I presume that they cannot afford to upset the landowners. It is their doctrinaire view on this point which prevents any attempt to solve this basic problem. Until it is solved it is no use offering incentives. This Bill is an attempt to put the cart before the horse.

When the Government decided to abolish investment grants and replace them by accelerated depreciation the effect of the change on certain industries in terms of comparative values was catastrophic. There was no comparison between the old and the new. One of the industries adversely affected was the mining industry. The C.B.I., commenting on the proposed changes, advocated the retention of investment grants for the mining industry in particular. I do not think that the Government can ignore the advice of the C.B.I. The effects of the withdrawal of the investment grant is described in detail in an article published in the Financial Times of February 15, 1971, nearly a year ago. It was written by Mr. Alun G. Davies, an executive director of R.T.Z. who was also President of the Overseas Mining Association and Chairman of the Taxation Committee of the C.B.I. I will quote two passages from that article. The first is:

"Mining men have often deplored the indifference of the British fiscal system to the development of mining in the U.K. It is true that the Treasury and the Inland Revenue have been on the whole allergic to any preferential treatment for mining. What is also true is that the availability of investment grants in the development areas put the U.K. at one step among the leadership of the world league in fiscal stimulus for mining enterprises. By the abandonment of the grant last October (1970), how are the mighty fallen! The derisory benefits of the new so-called investment incentives will undoubtedly lead to the exit of the exploration teams from this country in pursuit of minerals elsewhere."

That which was forecast by Mr. Alun Davies in February of last year was too serious to be ignored, and in my opinion, in order to stem the retreat of the mining companies and to make the mining companies continue, the Bill that we are now discussing was thought up. I now quote another passage from this pungent article by Mr. Alun Davies:

"The finding and mining of natural resources creates wealth inside a country in a way that no other industry can. Industrial societies have a desperate and increasing demand for raw materials as a feed for industrial plants. Without them any country, and this country in particular, would be unable to survive industrially. Unless we are prepared to pass into the stage of a semi-pastoral Utopia we will have to continue to import minerals on a vast scale. We should not lightly pass by a rare opportunity at little budgetary cost to re-create a mineral industry of very large proportions in these islands."

This reference to "very large proportions" is the first that I have heard from a director of a company of this size. The article continues:

"But a quick movement on the fiscal levers is urgently necessary."

My Lords, the whole article from which I have quoted extracts should be studied very carefully by the Treasury and the other Departments involved; and I think it fair to give notice that later on this year, unless there is evidence of rethinking, I shall table a Motion asking for specific reasons why the Government persist in this attitude. For reasons which are still not clear to me, the last Labour Government missed an opportunity, by not taking earlier action, to give the mining industry the incentive which my right honourable friend the Leader of the Opposition in another place outlined in a speech as far back as June 20, 1961 (cols. 1513 to 1526 of the Commons OFFICIAL REPORT), when he moved a new clause in the Finance Bill to provide a "tax holiday" of three years after a mine was first brought into commercial operation. In his speech he referred to the proposal as one put forward by the very important Committee set up by my noble friend Lord Shinwell. My right honourable friend said:

"That Committee produced one of the most important Reports produced in the immediate post war years."

He was referring to the Mineral Development Committee. This Committee was composed of geologists, industrialists, the then Director of the Royal School of Mines, economists, mining engineers and members of both Parties. There are two noble Lords in your Lordships' House, Lord Thorneycroft and Lord Balogh, who sat on the Committee, and I wish they were here this evening. I, too, had the honour of being a member. The recommendations we made are far more viable today than they were 25 years ago. I beg the Government to have another look at that Report.

I am going to refer to still another article, written by Mr. Nigel Hawkes in the Daily Telegraph Magazine of December 3, 1971. It is evidently the result of deep research into the position of world mineral reserves, which I would recommend as an additional study in assessing the need for a complete change of attitude on the part of the Government. It is headed "Living Beyond our Resources", and one of the features is an assessment of world mineral reserves and the estimated life according to the known reserves. Oil is exhausted in the year 2001; the present reserves of coal will last indefinitely, as I implied in my speech during the debate on Monday on the coal industry; copper is exhausted in the year 2010; lead in 1988; Zinc in 1988; nickel in 2030; uranium in 1988 —but breeder reactors can greatly prolong the reserve lifetime; mercury in 1984; tin in 1995; and iron ore will last at least 250 years. These calculations are on the basis of present known reserves and present rates of consumption. They ignore future new discoveries—that is what we are talking about today—and also the expected growth of population, which can upset everything.

My Lords, I have been in this fight for recognition of the need to develop our mineral resources since 1937. It was the subject of my presidential address to the Institute of Cornish Mining Engineers 35 years ago. Old colleagues of mine, especially Mr. J. H. Trounson, another ex-President of the same rare vintage as myself, are still in the fight Goodness knows how many Lords and Knights of the Treasury have been and gone during those 35 years, but it is certain that not one of them has earned the respect of the mining industry.

It would be apt on this occasion to ask, in view of the great and growing importance of developing our own mineral resources in this country, how many mining engineers there are on the Treasury staff. There is an ample number of economists and statisticians among the senior ranks, but I cannot recognise one mining engineer. There may be one down the list, but it is unlikely that he would be of any rank to carry sufficient influence on the deeply entrenched attitudes of Treasury academics. Is it fear of being unorthodox which breeds this attitude? If so, I should like to point out that they are alone in this world. Every country where there is a base metal mining industry provides substantial incentives. There is no need to go further than Ireland to prove this, North as well as Eire.

The Labour Government had to unravel the interests in the minerals industry shared by no fewer than seven Departments, apart from the direct over-riding interest of the Treasury. It was not until this was done and the number reduced to two that the task of mineral by mineral analysis was begun at the Ministry of Technology, with the honourable Member for Swansea West in another place in charge. The conclusion of the two years' analysis unhappily coincided with a change of Government; but the results are there in the archives, and I hope that they will be used and not be smothered by the dead hand of the Treasury. A study of the debate on this Bill in another place on November 10 reveals quite a lot of important information when one considers the doubtful value of this Bill, particularly the contribution of the honourable Member for Swansea West, to whom I have just referred. My first speech on this subject in your Lordships' House was on an Unstarred Question, which ran:

"What steps the Government are taking to provide for the situation that will arise as a result of the rapid depletion of the world resources of tin?"

That was several years ago. Since then I have made several speeches on the need to provide incentives for the mining industry. One might regard it as a waste of time and cease to fight, but in fact I intend fighting a damn sight harder.

By comparison with the investment grants which put us fourth in the world in terms of attractiveness for mineral investment, where are we now? I know it is unfair to ask the noble Earl to answer such a question without prior notice, but it is one which has to be answered in order to assess our present attractiveness to international mining companies. There is another question that I should like to ask—I do not require an answer but I want to register the question—what steps are being taken to safeguard against the fantastic escalation of terms that a mineral landlord can demand once it is established that his land contains minerals of value? The Member for Falmouth and Camborne who sits in another place, during the debate on this Bill on November 10, gave an example within his knowledge of an application to lease the rights to mine china clay over 40 acres. This was a poor agricultural holding—really no more than a smallholding—and its value shot up from £35,000 to £150,000 after it was known that it contained china clay.

In the absence of adequate protection of the mineral rights legislation which was in the pipeline of the Labour Government and until recently in the Conservative Government's programme, this Bill will be considered as a mineral landlord's answer to prayer. It may perhaps slow down the decline in exploration, but in terms of the cost of setting up new mines the contribution, in terms of encouragement, is risible, as I mentioned earlier, and the mining industry regards it as a half-baked attempt to atone for the abolition of investment grants. Let the Government invite the opinion of the big international mining groups: it is their money we are after.

During the debate on Monday, my noble friend Lord Diamond suggested splitting this £25 million between the miners and the mineral explorers. I suggest that in view of what has occurred in the coalmining industry since this Bill was drafted the whole amount be handed to the N.C.B. to get the miners back. That is now our first priority. Let us tackle the problem of mineral rights afterwards. I suggest meanwhile a drastic overhaul of the Institute of Geological Science. What do we pay these geologists to do? Can they not be organised and equipped to carry out the function on which it is proposed to spend £25 million? They should have amassed enough data over the last 25 years to give them a flying start. Here is another question to answer: has this Institute become a lush home for academics, a record office, or could it not function, in combination with the N.C.B., as a spearhead to reduce the £360 million a year we now spend on importing just copper, lead and tin? I would remind your Lordships that the country's total mineral imports were over £2,000 million in 1969. During Monday's debate several speakers, myself included, asked the Government to frame a fuel policy. I suggest that we also need a minerals policy. Time is running out. One last question: Do the Government propose to wait for some hoped-for dramatic results from this Bill before they can reconsider the harm they have done to the development of the minerals industry?

My Lords, like the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, I have been closely connected with and am still very much interested in the work of the Nature Conservancy. The noble Earl raised a point on which it seems to me your Lordships are entitled to much more definite assurances than we have yet had from the noble Lord in charge of the Bill. If I may say so, I think he is wrong in assuring us that the planning machinery and the planning authorities look after the problem to which the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, and the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, have both referred. It may be that so far as the amenities of the countryside go, the planning authorities can do a very great deal to control adverse developments. But that I will leave to the noble Lord, Lord Molson, to deal with, since he is much more closely concerned with that aspect of affairs than I am.

As regards the effect upon the natural life of these areas—many of them very ancient and little interfered with hitherto by man—I think it is a great mistake to say that even exploration can do no harm. Perhaps no one but a naturalist or scientist realises what the effects can be of a mere disturbance of the soil over a small area. I believe that the public at large are beginning to think more and more about what may happen if water is diverted and streams put through lead or copper-bearing areas, even by very slight alterations. I would feel content if the noble Earl who is in charge of the Bill could give us an assurance that even before exploration on a small scale, and certainly any interference on a bigger scale, is approved, the Nature Conservancy or NERC, or the Secretary of State for the Environment are brought into consultation. Those decisions ought not to be left to the Minister who is directly responsible for the development of the industries which are seeking his approval.

It seems to me that there is a particular obligation upon the Government, in working out any machinery of consultation in these matters, to take into account the situation to which President Kennedy drew attention some years ago when he assumed office. He found competing Departments backing competing interests in the United States and he said that he was not going to tolerate any longer one Department or one interest spending its time and the taxpayers' money on frustrating the policy and undoing the efforts of another.

I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, that as a rule very little harm will be done to scientific interests and the wild life of the country by explorations designed to find out what minerals are there. Indeed, that process will have some compensating advantages. But one does not know, and the decision ought to rest with people who are acquainted with all the circumstances attending the environment and its possible alteration or deterioration. If, therefore, the noble Earl gives an assurance—because, as my noble friend Lord Diamond pointed out, there are gaps in the planning machinery—that the scientific people who have the knowledge, and are responsible to Parliament for the protection of the environment, will be consulted before work is allowed to proceed, then we might be content. That assurance, I hope, will not be hedged about. It should apply to any nature reserve, whether the land is owned by the Conservancy, leased by them or protected under agreements, and whether or not they have full national status, or are merely designated under the statutory machinery of sites of scientific importance. I hope, therefore, that we shall get an assurance of that kind. If that assurance can be given, so far as I am concerned I have nothing to say about the general principles of the Bill.

My Lords, based on experience of opencast coal operations and the restoration of land which has followed those operations, I should imagine that our amenities, wherever they are, will be effectively safeguarded. That is my assurance to the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, and also to my noble friend Lord Hurcomb. Conservation is a very important matter indeed. Nobody would suggest that we should be careless, despoil the land and interfere with amenities which ought to be properly safeguarded. As I have said, I have long experience of the opencast coal operations, and nobody could complain about the land restoration that followed those operations. That is all I want to say about that aspect, and I do not want to say very much more because no one would wish to detain your Lordships' House at this time. However, I am bound to make one observation. Yesterday, in a full House, we spent the whole day debating with considerable excitement destruction and devastation. Here we are in your Lordships' House in wide open spaces with hardly any attendance worth talking about—except for its quality.

My Lords, may I interrupt? I came in specially when I heard that the noble Lord was speaking.

That is very kind of my noble friend; but I repeat that we were discussing a grave issue which may have its repercussions for many years to come. I hope they will not be as tragic as recent events. Here we are discussing development, something constructive, yet hardly any interest is evoked.

My noble friend Lord Diamond, with his usual ingenuity, sought to relate this Bill to the position of the coal-mining industry and the present dispute. Of course if we had the choice of injecting into the coal mining industry such national finance as is available, in order to bring this dispute to its end, or using it for the purposes of exploring the possibility of producing more non-ferrous materials, the former would obviously be more gratifying. But that is not the issue before us. The issue is whether it is proper for the Government, even at this somewhat belated stage, to find the necessary finance to provide the essential incentive in order to put exploration on its feet for the first time for many years.

I had a long experience—a rather tense experience—of this subject as far back as the time of the first Labour Government in 1924, when I was Secretary for Mines. The matter came before me in a variety of ways, as did the whole subject of the production of by-products from coal. A great deal can be said about that. It was only the absence of finance that prevented us from proceeding as we should have wished to do. When it was my turn to become Minister of Fuel and Power in 1945, again the subject was revived. I regret to say that it was the inaction of the Treasury (the Treasury are more inclined to inaction than to action, when it comes to doling out funds) and their attitude that prevented us from proceeding with the schemes to which my noble friend Lord Arwyn has been referring.

This matter of exploration is of the highest importance. It is just possible—indeed, it is probable—that as a result of further exploration delving much deeper into the earth than we have done hitherto—and this would cost a great deal of money— we might assist the coal-mining industry, in addition to assisting the production of non-ferrous metals which are so essential in our industries. But the question is whether this Bill will do it. My noble friend Lord Diamond was right; the Government have produced this belated incentive because of the absence, on their own volition, of investment grants. If investment grants had been continued, they would have done the trick. There were many companies ready to enter into the exploration field if the investment grants had been available. In the absence of investment grants, this is the best alternative, in the circumstances, although it is subject to considerable criticism, not only as regards the change in Government policy but as regards the financial details. I am not going to enter into that matter: it is too late, and in any event it would not matter very much.

The question before us is: do we want to explore? In my opinion we should. It was my experience (and this was mentioned to some extent by my noble friend Lord Arwyn) that when we were faced with the cessation of development in the tin mining industry in Cornwall it was maintained by those associated with the industry that there was much of that material to be exploited, but the question was one of finance. The Government of the day would not furnish the necessary finance. There was not only tin; there were the lead mines of Scotland in the Ayrshire and Dumfries-shire districts which have never been properly exploited, although it is well-known to geologists that there are "parcels" (let me use that term) of lead, and indeed, other materials available if an attempt were made to exploit them. What about the possibility of silver, and even gold, in Wales? There was a time when gold was produced in Wales. The wedding ring of Queen Alexandra, the spouse of King Edward VII at the beginning of this century, was made out of gold found in Wales. I am sure there is still plenty of it there, if we dig deep enough and are prepared to provide the necessary finance.

In any event, without proceeding further along these what might be called romantic and fantastic lines, although I think there is a great deal of material in what I have ventured to put to your Lordships' House in these few words, I welcome this Bill. My noble friend Lord Diamond was correct in his criticism, wise in his criticism, as he usually is, even if I do not always agree with him—but that is by the way; let us set that aside. The Government are doing something that is necessary, and it is about time they did something that is necessary. Before very long they will have to change their minds and their policy to a remarkable degree, as they have done in this particular instance. So we welcome the Bill. Let us go ahead and, at the same time, let us preserve and conserve the amenities. But let us use our resources to the utmost in the interests of the nation, for the purpose of providing employment and the raw materials out of which our industries can prosper.

My Lords, like all those who have previously spoken, I support the Bill which has been introduced. At the same time, I should like to echo what has been generally said about the importance of making sure that this encouragement of mining activity in this country does not unduly affect our environment. I am bound to say that I was unable to follow the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell: that because a good deal of excellent restoration has been done in the case of opencast coal, that was a reason for being complacent about the provisions in this Bill. There are at the present time some 150,000 acres of derelict land—those are the official figures produced by the Department of the Environment—and very slow progress is being made in restoring them. Admittedly it is being speeded up at the present time, and I welcome that, but no one who has been Member of Parliament for the High Peak and seen the devastation done there in those limestone areas can feel entirely happy about any Bill encouraging mining and quarrying which does not contain adequate protection for the environment. I was most grateful to the noble Lord. Lord Diamond, for what he said about the difficulties which amenity societies and others have in fighting proposals for development. It is immensely costly, and often those who are concerned with the exploitation dispose of sums of money ten or a hundred times larger than the money at the disposal of the voluntary bodies.

I am quite sure that the Government intend that their Bill as drafted now should contain adequate protection, but I am not quite sure whether it is entirely adequate. I would ask the noble Earl what exactly they contemplate in cases where, as the Bill says, planning permission is "deemed not to be necessary". There has been a good deal of exploration in a seismographic survey in Dorset where charges of explosive have been sunk into the ground and exploded and, as a result of the waves through the different strata of the earth, scientists are able to deduce what is underground. In this case it was deemed that planning permission was not required. I ask the Government whether it is not reasonable that in all cases where exploration is going to take place and where planning permission is deemed not to be necessary, they should at any rate consult the local planning authority in order that it may make representations to the Government that the effect of the exploration would be harmful to the environment. We must bear in mind that the Minister who is going to be responsible for administering this Bill is the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, and he is naturally and rightly chiefly concerned with economic development. We therefore must make sure that those who are primarily concerned with amenity and the preservation of the environment are in a position to put forward their point of view.

I have spoken about amenity and preservation of the countryside. I should like to lend my support to my noble friend Lord Cranbrook in what he said about the importance of making sure that exploration does not do harm to areas of special scientific interest. It seems to me that it would be entirely appropriate in a Bill of this kind if the Government could give us their assurance that, before any grants are made in areas of that kind, the NERC should be consulted. After all, NERC is a Government body; it is financed by the Government; and one would think it was only appropriate that it should be consulted before public money is spent in doing what in some cases NERC might regard as harmful to the interests that it has been appointed to defend.

My Lords, I am very grateful to noble Lords who have taken part in this debate for the views which they have expressed and I, for my part, have found it extraordinarily interesting. I thought the real nub of the whole matter lay in what the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, said. What he said was: Do we want to explore? This was really the whole basis behind it, and I found it exciting. He put forward the prospects that lay ahead of possible exploration. Of course, this is exactly what this Bill is about. But, having said, "Yes, we do want to explore", then of course we bump up against all the other interests which are affected by such exploration. Several noble Lords have referred to whether there is adequate protection for the countryside—and a very real point this is. The noble Lord, Lord Arwyn, referred to land owners who have prevented exploration. But, there again, their rights must be, if not equated with, at least taken into account just as much as the rights of those concerned with the environment or those who wish to explore, both for the advancement of their companies and for the advancement of the country.

My Lords, I want it to be quite clear that I was referring to people who are not aware they have any minerals at all on their land. The minerals are discovered by somebody else and the value of the land goes up sky high. That is what I want to make clear.

My Lords, I quite agree. The noble Lord will concede that when one comes to mineral rights one comes to a complicated subject, and I do not think we would want to get drawn down that particular course.

I was grateful for the way in which your Lordships welcomed this Bill. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, took the opportunity (I do not blame him for it at all) of saying that it was the Government's fault for having disposed of investment grants, and had they not done it this Bill would not have been necessary. This is a perfectly reasonable point of view which I expected the noble Lord to take, but I would just tell him this, if I may. Where the old investment grants operated in the development areas they were 40 per cent. and in the areas which were not designated as development areas they were 20 per cent. This Bill allows loans or grants of 35 per cent., so I think the noble Lord will concede that there is not quite the disparity here that might appear on the surface.

Of course, the noble Lord also took the opportunity of referring to the ships and other hired assets that come under Clause 2. The only reason for including this is in order to rectify something that obviously had never been intended as a result of the passing of the Investment and Building Grants Act, and I am quite certain that your Lordships will agree that what has been put in Clause 2 is entirely correct in order to ensure that those who do apply for investment grants, for instance, are not prevented from obtaining the grant (to which they were entitled because they had applied for it before the relevant date) simply by virtue of having assigned the benefit of their contracts to a bank.

The noble Lord, Lord Diamond, quite rightly asked whether we were upsetting the balance between the interests of the countryside and the prospector. Indeed, this was a point put forward by many noble Lords: whether planning permission is adequate and whether the planning authorities have sufficient powers. If one applies for planning permission to start a project or to explore, the inference is that, having explored and having found the minerals there, one will want to proceed with it. This is a very real point. It is of course difficult to say that you should apply for planning permission in order to develop a whole site, when possibly only one out of ten projects which will be stated will develop into a site, and when anyhow you do not know what the site will consist of or where it will be, or indeed how much of whatever it is you want to develop is going to be there. I think it is right that this should be taken one stage at a time and one should first get the planning permission for prospecting. When you have prospected and found out what it is that should be developed and everyone knows the size of it, then the second stage comes, which is the planning permission for the overall job.

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl, but I do not think he has sufficiently taken the point which has been made by four noble Lords from all sides of the House. If the one in ten original proposals which the noble Earl has referred to as being likely to be followed by development is going to be made in an area where, irrespective of the size or the place or the nature of the digging (I do not know sufficient about the technical details) and although you cannot define it you know that you are in a sensitive area from the point of view of all the problems of natural life, beauty and the environment which have been put before us, then I should have thought there ought to be some machinery to cause questions to be raised at the start.

My Lords, the noble Lord is entirely correct; had he restrained himself a little I was about to come to that because, as he rightly says, this was a point of view put forward by about four noble Lords. I think I can give him the assurance he requires, because the Government have always been conscious of the need to give special care and attention to the position of nature reserves and sites of special scientific interest, which is what my noble friend Lord Cranbrook referred to. These sites are administered by or in agreement with, the Nature Conservancy which is part of the Natural Environment Research Council.

The Department is in touch with this Council and has agreed to make arrangements whereby the NERC will be consulted before any application for assistance under Clause 1 of this Bill is approved. The National Parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty cover some 16 per cent. of England and Wales. In fact there are, I think, 154 nature reserves and 2,700 sites of scientific interest. My noble friend Lord Cranbrook, and the noble Lord, Lord Hurcomb, will therefore, I hope, be glad to know that in all cases where an application is received, irrespective of whether it covers these particular areas, there will be consultation with the NERC because they are the people who know where the areas are and whether such a proposal is likely to affect any area in which they are interested.

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl again, but I did not notice it in the Bill and I should be grateful if he would draw my attention to the relevant clause.

My Lords, it is not in the Bill; it is an assurance that I have given the noble Lord as to what the Minister intends to do. The noble Lord also invited me to comment on the fact that we were spending £50 million here and asked whether it would not be a good idea if a quarter of this was given to the coal miners to help during the present strike. My Lords, I have always immensely admired the ingenuity of the noble Lord, Lord Diamond. When he referred to this the other day during the debate, I wondered whether it might crop up again, but I could not really believe that it would. One of the joys of being in Opposition is to try to dig an elephant trap for some poor person to fall into. I can give the noble Lord the assurance that I do not wish to comment on the coal strike one iota in relation to this Bill, and indeed I am sure that he would agree that it really has nothing to do with it. I thought it was rather like saying, "I like Parliament Square very much, but on the whole I prefer Tuesday afternoon".

If I may say so, the noble Lord, Lord Arwyn, made a very interesting speech, and one acknowledges the depth of knowledge which the noble Lord has, and his interest in this matter. I do not wish to comment a great deal at this moment on what he said because he ranged fairly wide, but what he has said will certainly be taken into account. We realise, of course, the difficulties experienced by mining companies in gaining access to land and minerals, and the noble Lord will be glad to hear, I think, that at the moment we are considering the form which any amending legislation might take when the Parliamentary timetable permits it. As he knows, the subject is complex and we are anxious that any new legislation shall be as effective and as fair as it can be, not only to the developers but to everyone else who has an interest in it.

My Lords, this Bill is designed to provide an incentive to companies to explore and to prove the mineral resources. The noble Lord, Lord Arwyn, said that it was a "mouse" of a Bill. I thought this was a little unkind. Since the scheme was announced last July there have in fact been over one hundred applications from more than 20 companies, and of these 100 applications 50 have already been approved in principle.

My Lords, I intervene only in a jocular way in reference to the noble Earl's comparing himself to an elephant just now. I do not think it is fair to him, and I will withdraw my description of a "mouse" if he will withdraw his description of himself as a "elephant".

My Lords, if I were to withdraw my own description as an elephant possibly noble Lords opposite might not agree. However, I hope that I have been able to give noble Lords the assurances which they have been concerned to get, and I accept that this is mostly the environmental one. I hope they will find that this Bill will not in fact make undue and unfair inroads into the environment, and that there are planning authorities capable of controlling these undertakings, should this come about. I am very grateful to noble Lords who have taken part.

rose to move, That the Draft Family Income Supplements (Computation) Regulations 1972, laid before the House on January 18 last, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Family Income Supplements Act 1970 provides for the payment of a benefit for families with small incomes where the breadwinner is in full-time work and there is at least one dependent child. The supplement is payable when the family's weekly resources fall below the amounts prescribed in Section 2(1) of the Act, as amended by regulations made under Section 2(2). The weekly rate of the benefit is one half of the amount by which the family's total income falls below the prescribed amount, subject to a maximum weekly payment determined by Section 3(1) of the Act, as amended by regulations made under Section 3(4).

My Lords, I have a few observations to make before these Regulations are approved. As the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, has pointed out, the Regulations authorise increases in family income supplements. In so far as these help families on very low incomes, one cannot do other than welcome them. But the very fact that these Regulations are before the House is a recognition of the existence of a large number of families with very low incomes for whom we must express our concern. Moreover, the increases are some acknowledgement of the fall in money values. In considering the operation of this scheme there are just four short questions which I should like to put to the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and of which I have given him notice.

The first is this. Are the Government satisfied with the take-up? According to my own calculations there is only about a 50 per cent. take-up; that is to say, 50 per cent. of the total who might be entitled under these provisions are taking advantage of the scheme. Such a situation is not entirely satisfactory. Secondly, I wonder whether the noble Lord would agree that there are many anomalies. For example, it has been pointed out that where there has been a wage increase introduced by the employer to cover an increase in superannuation contributions by the employees, this may have the effect of reducing, and possibly eliminating altogether, the benefit of the family income supplement. It is felt that this is, to say the least, unfortunate. Thirdly, as the noble Lord is aware, there has been a good deal of discussion about the possible disincentive effect of F.I.S., but I should like to know what progress has been made by Her Majesty's Government in the attempt to overcome any disincentive effect.

The fourth question is this. Are the Government satisfied that those in need are not put off by the additional form-filling which this involves? I say "additional form-filling" because the families who come into this category are often under some other form of means test, and every means test involves some kind of filling up of forms. I have the claim form here. I would not suggest that this is the most complicated of forms; I have seen many worse. But for the kind of families who have to cope with this problem I think that any form-filling is difficult. I am not at all sure whether the majority would know exactly what "gross earnings" are. For example, where some of the payment by the employer is in kind, where it includes rent and fuel, is that taken into account in working out gross income? I should have thought there might well be some confusion in filling up these forms. Alternatively, it may be that some families are put off altogether by the fact that they have to fill up a form, and the increase in benefit will not overcome that because it is a problem which is part and parcel of the whole means-testing system.

I would conclude with this general observation. I do not really think that F.I.S. gets to the root of the problem. I think that if I were introducing this increase I should have to acknowledge that it is only a temporary expedient. I cannot to-night suggest alternatives. I should like to see a statutory minimum-earnings rule. As to our general policy of social security benefits, I believe that our aim should be not to extend means-testing but to find ways of avoiding it. There are a number of proposals, that we could put forward—as negative income tax, for example—though again we cannot discuss them to-night. But surely so long as there are these families on low incomes the aim should be to alleviate the hardship arising from low incomes and at the same time avoid, so far as possible, the embarrassment of means testing. The Government may say that it will take time. If so, I think the right attitude is to regard this as a temporary expedient. The impression I have from statements of the Government is that this is to be regarded as a permanent feature of our social legislation, and it is with that that I cannot agree. However, with those reservations, I believe, these Regulations should be approved.

My Lords, I am very grateful for the way this increase in family income supplement is received by noble Lords sitting on the Labour Benches. I take their silence to mean general approval. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Wade, is so gloomy about it all and I think he is quite wrongly gloomy. I think this scheme has made a very good start. I should like just to comment quickly on some of the things he said. He was talking about means testing. He thought that I might say that to get over means testing to some other system would take time. I think it would also take money, and the thing to get over is that the means testing system spends the limited amount of money in those areas where it is most needed. He said that it is a permanent part of our social system, but this is not necessarily so. We have always said all along that it is one of the ways in which we can start helping people who need this sort of help. It is not necessarily a permanent part of our social security system.

I should like to say a few words on the four points that the noble Lord raised. First of all, the take-up. There are 68,000 people at present enjoying the Family Incomes Supplement and a further 25,000 who are benefiting from Supplementary Benefit, because this affects the wage-stop provision. So these are quite a number of families, involving something over a quarter of a million children who are receiving help. Most of the help, something over three-quarters of the awards, are to those who are receiving £2 to £4 of Family Income Supplement, and these are the people who need it most. The cost is actually running at £6 million at the moment. Therefore, £6 million is going into the hands of families affecting over 250,000 children, which is surely some help.

Secondly, the noble Lord asked me about wage increases. If somebody gets a wage increase they may well go out of the range of entitlement, but on the other hand this regulation that we are passing this evening will help in this respect because it changes the qualifying figure. So far as the disincentive effect is concerned, yes, of course, all these benefits involve a certain amount of disincentive effect, but the fact that this scheme works on a 50 per cent. award between the prescribed figure and the gross wage does mean that the disincentive effect is only 50 per cent. That was why this figure was put into the scheme.

So far as the forms are concerned, I can only think that we are all becoming extremely expert in filling up forms, because in fact there has been very little difficulty about it. The forms have been satisfactorily completed in most cases. Some of them have had to go back for further information, but the number of home visits, which is the last resort when trying to sort out the claim, have been less than 1 per cent. of the total claims. One must not forget—and it is an important part of the Scheme —that once a claim is awarded it gives a passport to other benefits: to free prescription charges, free welfare milk and foods, and free school meals, so that one form covers a number of other benefits. I hope, therefore, that I have convinced the noble Lord, Lord Wade, that this is not quite such a bad Scheme as he painted it.

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask this question? He may have mentioned it, but I do not think he dealt with the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Wade, about the anomaly which can arise when there is an increase in pay to cover an increased superannuation contribution.

My Lords. I think I did deal with that. I said that when there was an increase in pay, for whatever reason, it might well take somebody out of the prescribed level. All I can say about it is that the Scheme, by raising the prescribed level by £2, helps to keep more people in. I am afraid that where there is a rise in gross wages, that naturally affects the entitlement.

My Lords, would the noble Lord not take note of the point that what is significant in such a case (I think this was the noble Lord's point) is that although there is an increase in gross pay, that increase is immediately absorbed by this additional superannuation contribution. Therefore, the net pay, leaving superannuation aside, is unchanged. I think that was the anomaly the noble Lord had in mind.

Yes, my Lords, that is the point.

My Lords, I think I had got the point. The answer is that I will certainly look into it. It is a new point to me, but, so far as I know, the answer is that this is intended to be a simple scheme; the level is set at a certain point, and if a man goes beyond the point then he loses entitlement, although of course he gets the entitlement for six months.

My Lords, I beg to move that the Draft Redundancy Fund (Advances out of the National Loans Fund) Order 1972, laid before the House on January 18 last, be approved. The effect of this Order is to enable the Secretary of State for Employment, with the agreement of the Treasury, to raise the limit on loans from the National Loans Fund to the Redundancy Fund from £8 million, to which it is restricted under Section 35 of the 1969 Act, to £20 million, for a period of two years beginning on February 28, 1972.

I do not think I need give the background to the Act, but I should just like to say that the state of the Fund has fluctuated considerably since the introduction of the redundancy payments Scheme in December 1965. Expenditure from the Fund is necessarily linked with the incidence of redundancies, and the Fund is therefore especially vulnerable in times when unemployment is rising. But expenditure is also affected by the ages, length of service and rates of pay at the time of redundancy of the workers who become redundant. Through a combination of these various factors a trend to deficit appeared in the later part of 1966. It proved necessary to increase the borrowing limit to £12 million from August 1967 and—notwithstanding increases in the contribution—to £15 million from April 1968 and to £20 million from August of that year. By March 1969 the deficit was over £17 million. The Redundancy Rebates Act, which came into operation in that month, decreased the rate of outgoings from the Fund by reducing the employer's rebate from 75 per cent. to 50 per cent. of the payment due to the employee. In 1969 and 1970 the number of redundant workers qualifying for payment remained relatively stable. These factors together enabled the loan to be fully repaid from the Fund by the autumn of 1970, and at the end of that year the Fund carried a surplus of £2¾million.

During 1971, however, the number of redundancy payments increased steeply. The number of payments from the Fund in that year—provisionally 369,000—was a third greater than in the previous year Moreover, the average payment in 1971 exceeded the 1970 figure by 15 per cent.; higher wage levels being an important contributory factor. As a result, the surplus in the Fund, which had been £31¼ million in the middle of April, began to disappear and by the end of the year the deficit had reached £4¾ million, and at the end of last week it was £5,897,000. If it continued to rise at the rate it has done in recent months it looks as if the £8 million limit on the amount which can he borrowed from the National Loans Fund would be reached in a month or so.

Experience throughout the life of the Fund has shown how difficult it is to forecast what its future position will be. I cannot therefore blame our predecessors for having increased the borrowing, limit three times in twelve months. I suggest, however, that we can and should profit by their experience. And so, given the difficulties in forecasting, we think that the right thing to do now is to increase the amount which the Fund can borrow to the maximum figure of £20 million for the next two years, not because we believe that it will in the event prove necessary to borrow up to this limit but because it will at least avoid our having to come back to Parliament within a short time to increase the limit.

My Lords, perhaps I should just add something about the redundancy payments scheme itself. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Employment has been reviewing its working, and my honourable friend the Minister of State made the following announcement in another place on his behalf:

"The Government consider it desirable that before any decisions are reached as to what changes, if any, should be made in the scheme, there should be full public discussion of the various issues involved. For this purpose my right hon. Friend proposes to issue a consultative document. This will examine how the scheme has operated in the light of experience; how far it has achieved its original objectives; whether changes are now required either in these objectives or in the means by which they are secured."

Meantime the purpose of this Order is to ensure that there will be sufficient money in the Redundancy Fund to enable the statutory rebates and guarantee payments to be met from it, and I commend it to the House. My Lords, I beg to move.

My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord for the way in which he has presented this Order to the House. We now have some six years' experience of the working of the Redundancy Payments Scheme, and we have heard with interest the reference which the noble Lord made at the end of his speech to the recent announcement on its possible future. I think it has been generally accepted as useful and as working well. But there are one or two questions which I should like to put to the noble Lord in connection with the Order. It would be valuable if we could be told when we may expect to have the accounts of the Redundancy Fund published. I think I am right in saying that the last accounts were published in November, 1970, and were in respect of the financial year 1969–70. This would have led one to expect that we should have a further set of accounts in the late autumn of last year. Perhaps the noble Lord can tell us whether accounts in respect of the year 1970–71 are likely to be published fairly soon.

I think your Lordships will recognise the unhappy circumstances which have necessitated this Order, which empowers the Secretary of State to obtain this temporary loan for the purposes of the Fund. This is obviously not the occasion to dwell at any length upon the unemployment situation, but against that background it would be useful to know what are the terms upon which the loan will be made available. Will any question of interest charges arise in connection with it; and, if so, what effect is that likely to have upon the future finances of the Redundancy Fund? It would also be useful if the noble Lord could give us a more precise indication of how long it appears likely that this additional sum will suffice. If I understood aright the figures which he gave us, the deficit in the Fund has been increasing at something like £1 million a month. Bearing in mind the present deficit, this suggests that the £20 million will not be likely to last much beyond the end of 1972. In other words, it might well be absorbed in a shorter period than the two years mentioned in the Order. I am not very clear whether, in the event of the £20 million proving to be insufficient, further legislation would be necessary in order for further loans to be procured, or whether the laying of a further Order raising the limit again would be sufficient. There will obviously be no disposition on our part to oppose this Order, the necessity for which we recognise, but it would be useful if the noble Lord could comment a little on those points.

My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord. He asked, first, when the accounts will be published, and I should think that would be quite soon. Although the accounts were published last time on November 24, one set of accounts was previously published on January 27 and two were published in February. I am afraid that I cannot give the noble Lord an exact date. He then asked me about interest charges. I understand that the rate of interest is the same as that for borrowing by the nationalised industries, but I am afraid that I cannot give him the exact figure. All I can tell the noble Lord is that the figure is the same as for the nationalised industries, and apparently this has been the practice all along. The noble Lord then asked for how long the sum is likely to suffice. I cannot fault his arithmetic, which seems to be about right, but of course this is not the only way in which the assets of the Fund can be increased. I understand that they can be increased by Order raising the contributions. But I think the noble Lord is right in implying that further legislation would be necessary to raise the limit of the loan beyond the £20 million. I hope that I have answered the noble Lord's questions.