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

My Lords, the Answer to the first part of my noble friend's Question is, "Yes". As regards the second part, I am informed by the Port of London Authority that salmon were reported in the Thames Estuary in 1932, when 3 were caught at Southend in the early part of the year and 2 at Leigh-on-Sea in the late autumn. Two salmon are rumoured to have been caught in a trawl off Southend last August. As regards the third part of the Question, I would draw attention to the Annual Report by the Port of London Authority and the Greater London Council on Pollution Control for the year ending December 31, 1971, which has been laid before the House to-day. The Report shows a welcome increase in fish life in the tidal river, and records the presence of sea trout as far up river as Teddington; and that is an indication that the water quality in the lower reaches would not have been a barrier to migratory salmon at all times, even last year. If salmon do reappear it will not, I am sure, require a Government announcement to bring the fact to notice.

My Lords, in view of my noble friend's surprising and encouraging report, may I ask whether Her Majesty's Government will consider planting 5 million or 10 million fertilised salmon ova in the middle or northern areas of the Thames river? It is possible that a smolt—that is, a yearling salmon—might be willing to go through the mess to get to the ocean and, remembering what a beautiful river the Thames is, might come back again.

My Lords, I am always willing to bring to my right honourable friend's attention anything the noble Lord may say. I think that the word which my noble friend was looking for is kelt, rather than smolt.

No; it is smolt.

My Lords, we are getting on with the cleaning of the river and £28 million has been allocated to extra sewage control. Part of this sum has already been spent. But I think that Nature must first do its bit.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that it is not much good having salmon in the Estuary if they cannot get further up river? Therefore, can we look to the use of public monies in future to provide the necessary salmon ladders at the various weirs?

Yes, my Lords, I take the noble Lord's point; but I do not think he heard my first Answer. Sea trout, commonly called salmon trout, have been up as far as Teddington. They were also caught at Fulham, Charlton and places like that last year. But let us get the river clean before we decide whether we need ladders.

But they cannot get beyond a weir unless there is a ladder. Does the noble Lord not know that?

My Lords, would it be right to summarise the noble Lord's original lengthy but welcome Answer in this way: that when a test was made in 1957 no varieties of fish were found between Teddington and Gravesend, that by 1967 the number had gone up to over 40 and that it is now over 50? Is it not time that we started paying tribute to the public bodies and their officials who have been responsible for magnificent achievements in the field of clearing up pollution of the River Thames?

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale: what he said is perfectly true. Not only have over 50 varieties of fish been found in these reaches, but many birds which have not been seen nesting and being around there for a long time, have also come to the tidal reaches.

My Lords, if one of us wished to kill a salmon from the Terrace, to whom should he apply for permission?

My Lords, I think I should need notice of that question.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the last time a salmon was caught above Teddington was in 1923, in Boulter's Lock? Perhaps it was not the only poor fish caught in Boulter's Lock! Is my noble friend also aware that I think that if the fish arrive as far as Teddington they will be able to negotiate the weirs as they now stand. But if any ladders are needed to assist them the Thames Conservancy, and I hope their successors, will see that they are provided.

My Lords, I think we are all aware that the Thames Conservancy have a very able and excellent Chairman, and when the water has been cleared the fish will look forward to his help.

My Lords, do the Government not think that if the salmon in the Thames are working according to rule this is a case for the Industrial Court?

My Lords, the salmon in the Thames will look forward to working to rule.

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

My Lords, I fear that my reply to the noble Lord opposite must be a firm but friendly negative. To attempt now to change the statutory description "new penny" would involve considerable expenditure and disturb the public's growing familiarity with decimal currency. Nor would it be easy to find an alternative name likely to gain universal acceptance. Whatever it might be, it could not be imposed by Statute; popular preference might well ensure that the word "penny" survived in everyday use. The penny is part of our national heritage; the word has an Anglo-Saxon root and a firm place in our affection, our literature and our sayings. It is one that should be preserved.

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his reply, which leaves me almost sobbing with disappointment. Is he aware that in a supermarket the other day I saw a housewife carefully counting her change and then painfully saying to the cashier, "I think I ought to have another p"? Is that not a silly form of words to have to use; and does not the noble Earl think that it confuses shoppers, when they buy something marked "5p", only to realise that they have spent an old shilling and not merely an old-fashioned five pence?

My Lords, I must confess that I was not aware of the sad occurrence to which the noble Lord has alluded until he just informed us of it. I think his remarks about the confusion could well have applied when decimal currency was introduced, but I think there is little confusion on the whole now in the public mind. I believe that the new system, good or bad as the case may be, is now gaining universal acceptance, and that it would be a very great mistake now to try to backtrack.

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the plural of "penny" is "pence"?

My Lords, on a subject of that sort I should certainly think very hard before disagreeing with my noble friend.

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

My Lords, Her Majesty's Government endorsed 1972 as International Book Year when our delegation supported the resolution proclaiming it during the 16th General Conference of UNESCO.

My Lords, I am not sure whether I should not declare an interest, as I write some books. May I ask the Minister whether much more cannot be done in this respect? Is she aware that Mr. Nixon has issued a Presidential Proclamation which has had great publicity in America? Is she also aware that the French Government are giving six Classic books to every newly-wed couple in the country this year? Is she further aware that UNESCO has opened an office in this country? Is it not possible for the Government, by proclamation—it may even be by Royal Proclamation—and by presentation on T.V. and through the media, to make the public aware that 1972 is in fact International Book Year?

My Lords, I am aware of the facts which the noble Lord has put forward, including the fact that he writes books, although I have not yet had the advantage of reading one. But I can tell him that we have decided to make an approach, through the Department of Education and Science, to local authorities, and through the United Kingdom National Commission for UNESCO, to support and publicise a wide variety of International Book Year activities.

My Lords, is this not a little late? We are a fourth of the way through the year. Is it not a little belated that the Government should just now be taking action?

No, my Lords; it is already being done. Apart from that, we have a very large programme, under our aid programme, which amounts to about £850,000 this year for books alone.

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

My Lords, on the evidence before me I do not consider that a reference to the Monopolies Commission would be justified.

My Lords, I think that the House would wish to congratulate my noble friend on his first reply to a Parliamentary Question. I hope that his subsequent replies may be even more helpful. Is my noble friend aware that this firm handles commentators' contracts and that at present far more than the one-third figure laid down in Section 2(3) of the Monopolies Act are under contract to this firm? Is he further aware that David Coleman, who is probably their best known sports commentator, has secured a five-year contract with the B.B.C.? Is my noble friend also aware that because of their power the firm are in a position to dictate to the B.B.C. which commentators shall and which shall not appear on the programmes? Is not this state of affairs rather undesirable for a public service?

My Lords, I am aware of my noble friend's concern that a high proportion of the B.B.C. and the I.T.A. commentators are currently engaged through this one agency. There are, however, many other commentators to choose from, and both the B.B.C. and the I.T.A. are free to exercise that choice to avoid undue or undesirable dependence on any one agency.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn will be making a Statement on the rail dispute at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m.

My Lords, may I take this opportunity to congratulate the Leader of the House on yet another new recruit to his Front Bench? He seems to be doing very well; but I should like to ask him whether he regards it as a first consequence of giving a Second Reading to the Anti-Discrimination Bill that the Conservative Party, for the first time, has a Baroness in Waiting? I should like to congratulate the noble Baroness in Waiting, who I know will contribute to our debates as well as considerably embellishing the Front Bench opposite.

My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition for his very generous comments on my noble friend's appointment, which I think I am not going too far in saying is probably welcomed all round your Lordships' House. However, I must inform the noble Lord opposite that, with the appointment of the noble Baroness, I have now shot my bolt.

My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Administration of Justice (Scotland) Bill, has consented to place Her interest, so far as it is concerned on behalf of the Crown, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.

moved, as an Amendment to the clause:

My Lords, it will not surprise the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, to know that I am not rising to oppose this momentous Amendment. It does, however, seem to me to be a suitable opportunity to offer the noble Lord congratulations on joining the "gang" opposite—if that is not a completely inappropriate way of describing them. My only regret in the matter is that his coming to the Scottish Office should deprive us of the services of the noble Baroness, Lady Tweedsmuir, as a Scottish Minister. I should like to say that the pleasure in the noble Lord's joining the Government has been expressed outside the circle of his political friends.

I did not think that I had any influence with the present Prime Minister; but I am rather shaken in that belief because the noble Lord will recall that the last time that he and I took part in a debate I rather disagreed with him on the ground that he was proving too effective a spokesman for the Government. I did not expect that the Prime Minister would act so quickly on that. I hope that the noble Lord will find himself happy in his work in Scotland. I can assure him that in so far as he is not pursuing a particularly political line but is acting, as is usual with Ministers in the Scottish Office, in the interests of Scotland generally he will have support from this side of the House.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, for his extremely kind remarks. I can assure him that at the time of which he spoke my expectation was even less than his. I hope that the kindness and cordiality with which I have been received will be continued through the months ahead whatever differences there may be.

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

moved Amendment No. 1:

Page 6, line 36, leave out ("the") and insert ("any").

I beg to move Amendment No. 2, which is a drafting Amendment.

moved Amendment No. 3:

Page 7, line 32 (incorrectly numbered 35) leave out ("Scottish").

I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Stow Hill and Lord Hughes, for putting down this Amendment. It resolves a slight difficulty which the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, raised at an earlier stage. The noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, has put a very ingenious formula which I think covers also the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, which was raised earlier. I am glad for that reason to add my name to the Amendment.

I beg to move Amendment No. 4.

moved Amendment No. 5:

Page 7, line 32 (incorrectly numbered 35), at end insert—

("() A body corporate or a firm according to the law of Scotland which acts as a receiver shall be liable to a fine of £100; and an undischarged bankrupt who so acts shall be liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding £500 or to both.")

It was a pleasure to see my name on the same list as that of the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, and nothing in what he has said about the Amendment in the slightest diminishes my pleasure.

This is really a drafting Amendment, I beg to move.

moved Amendment No. 7:

Page 12, line 36, after ("charge") insert ("to such extent as may be necessary to enable the receiver second mentioned to exercise his powers under section 15 of this Act").

moved Amendment No. 8:

Page 16, line 35, after ("to the purchaser") insert ("or disponee").

moved Amendment No. 9:

Page 23, line 5, at end add:

("(4) Any default in respect of any of the provisions of this Part of this Act, which is punishable by fine alone, shall be prosecuted summarily, and the provisions of section 49 of the Companies Act 1967 shall apply in relation to the proceedings as they apply to proceedings for offences punishable by fine alone under Part I of that Act and under the Act of 1948, and any such fine shall be a maximum fine.")

moved Amendment No. 10:

Page 23, line 42, leave out second ("and") and insert ("or").

moved Amendment No. 11:

Page 24, line 28, at end insert ("'register of charges' means the register kept by the registrar of companies for the purposes of Part IIIA of the Act of 1948").

moved Amendment No. 12:

Page 24, line 44, leave out subsection (5).

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

moved Amendment No. 1:

Page 1, line 8, after ("books") insert ("including significant overseas publications").

I have the same desire as the noble Lord opposite: namely, that the collections in the British Library should cover as many foreign publications as possible. We feel that line 3 of Clause 1(1) describes that adequately, because we there say:

"…consisting of a comprehensive collection of books, manuscripts, periodicals, films and other recorded matter, whether printed or otherwise."

I cannot conceive of any librarian anywhere who would not interpret "comprehensive" as covering "a large amount of foreign material".

The facts to-day are that if one takes the figures of the intake of books, maps, periodicals and newspapers into the British Museum, 25 per cent. only are the result of deposit by law, 75 per cent. are acquired, and of that 75 per cent. by far the larger proportion is foreign material. So what the noble Lords want is already happening. Therefore I do not think the Amendment is necessary. It will never be possible, as even the Library of Congress has discovered, to buy everything that is printed overseas. There is now just too much being published in Europe, Asia and America, and the volume goes up all the time. Therefore you have to proceed by selection of what you actually buy, by co-operation among specialist libraries in this country, and by inter-lending between libraries in this country and overseas, all of which are obvious duties of the new Board. I hope, therefore, that we shall not try to spell that out in an Amendment.

Coming to the Amendment itself, it is defective in two respects. First of all, the Amendment says, "significant overseas publications" in relation to books only, whereas periodicals of course are equally as important as books when you arc making a national reference collection—as indeed, I suspect, some people will consider manuscripts, films and other recorded matter to be. Therefore we could not put it in where it is suggested, even if we thought in principle that it was right.

Secondly, what do we mean by the word "significant"? In point of fact the acquisition of foreign material by the British Library, or for that matter any other national library, is really conditioned by the amount of grant they get for acquisitions and how they want to split it between one type of acquisition and another. I do not think it would be a good thing to be able to refer to an Act of Parliament and say: "It is significant that you should buy this category of book rather than that category." That is why we shall be appointing the best people to manage the Library, not forgetting the acquisition department. Therefore I would ask your Lordships getting the acquisitions department. hensive collection, in any librarian's mind, covers "significant" overseas material.

I thank the noble Viscount for that reply. Of course this is a probing Amendment—I do not pretend otherwise—and I accept what he says about its being defective. On the other hand, a manuscript is not a publication. It would not be very difficult to get it right, but the main thing is that the Government have accepted the principle of the matter. The noble Viscount cannot have it both ways. You cannot have a comprehensive selection and yet a selective intake of overseas publications, whether they be periodicals or books.

I also accept what the noble Viscount says about the Farmington scheme. I believe there are 300,000 titles being pub lished all over the world every year and it is virtually impossible even for the United States to acquire all of them as they come out. On the other hand, I am very glad that this great effort is being made to acquire overseas publications—not only modern ones but older books as well, because I am afraid that there are considerable gaps in this category. The British Museum Library is almost complete so far as our own literature is concerned, as of course it would be from the copyright point of view, but it has considerable gaps in foreign books. I could list quite a number of some of the greatest novels in the world which are not included in their first editions in the British Museum collection. Also, I think it is right to say that research students now wishing to study, say, Western European or even English literature to a certain extent have to go to the United States. It was really to pinpoint this matter that I put the Amendment forward, and I beg leave to withdraw it.

moved Amendment No. 2:

Page 1, line 13, after ("study") insert ("exhibition").

Again I agree entirely with the objective of the noble Lord opposite, but this clause defines the principal functions of the Library and I think we must take exhibitions, if I may say so, as one of the "second eleven" functions—of which, of course, there would be many others, such as giving lectures, sales of reproductions, prints and postcards and, I suppose, even restaurants. In any case, we have covered exhibitions sufficiently, we think, in subsection (4) of this clause where we say that:

"The Board may … lend any item, and make any part of their collections, or of their premises, available in connection with events of an educational, literary or cultural nature."

That was deliberately put in to cover exhibitions, because these are, of course, of growing importance.

I would tell the noble Lord that in comparison with the totally inadequate space to which he has referred in the King's Library—which I must say is very well made use of, considering that it it not really what one wants—the new building will contain 2,500 square metres. I am afraid that I am not able to translate that into square feet but there will be 2,500 square metres of exhibition space, which represents an enormous improvement on what we have at present. I would agree with him that exhibitions which do more than simply place on view the main printings of an author's works are highly desirable. The new method, which I think was due to the Bibliothèque Nationale and the efforts of M. Julien Cain, who started by taking an author and then exhibiting everything to show how he had come to write the sort of things that he did write and the sort of pictures which lie had admired and so on, is a tremendously interesting and attractive way of mounting these exhibitions. I have no doubt at all that when space is available, as it will be in the new building, that type of exhibition will be put on. I hope that the Committee will not want the word "exhibition" included here. It is already covered in Clause 1(4), and I do not think it is quite on a level with the major functions of the British Library.

I thank the noble Viscount for that reply. I am sorry he thinks that exhibitions are part of the "second eleven". I should have thought they have a much more important function to play than that, but I am very glad to hear that the new building will have a great exhibition space of 2,500 square metres. As the noble Viscount said, there are difficulties with the King's Library; I have never measured the two but I do not think it is very much smaller than the room on the first floor of the Bibliothèque Nationale mentioned by the noble Viscount where they have these exhibitions arranged by M. Cain, the curator.

As the noble Viscount said, the French have in the years since the war put on the most notable exhibitions devoted to the centenaries or bicentenaries of their leading authors. I have a whole row of catalogues at home which are permanent works of reference. From the scholarly point of view and from the educational point of view this is the trend that we need to follow in this country. We have not even begun to touch on it, although the Victoria and Albert Museum did very well and had something much more up to the French standard with their exhibition devoted to Charles Dickens. I am sorry that the noble Viscount is not prepared to include the words in the Amendment. I should have thought that subsection (4) of Clause 1 was far too loose for this particular purpose; but, having made the point, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.

moved Amendment No. 3:

Page 1, line 13, leave out from ("bibliographical") to ("services") in line 14.

I am afraid that I can put only one Amendment at a time to the Commitee.

In so far as this is a probing Amendment I have nothing particular to say about it; but the noble Baroness referred in particular to the social services, that twilight zone between the sciences and the humanities. I am concerned to be reassured that "other information services" would cover such things as abstracting services, one at least of which is carried out at the Library of the Natural History Museum and at Boston Spa in the shape of what is now largely a bibliographical service of the zoological record. That is dealt with by a private society, but in due course one would hope that it will become the responsibility of the Library service. I should like reassurance on that matter from the noble Viscount, just as the noble Baroness wants reassurance with regard to the social services.

Would it be for the convenience of the Committee if I referred first to Amendment No. 3 and then to the other Amendment which has been mentioned in both speeches so far? I am glad that the Amendment to leave out "bibliographical and other information services" is in the nature of a probing Amendment because this is an integral part of the British Library. It is for that reason that we are bringing in the British National Bibliography, and the information services that go with it. May I reassure noble Lords that we have no intention—at least I hope that the Board will have no intention—of duplicating any good information services that are in operation to-day. The problem of any museum or library is always the double duty of, on the one hand, making a collection of objects or books as comprehensive as possible, and, on the other hand, making that collection available to the public. You cannot make collections of books and printed material available to the public unless you provide bibliographical and information services.

There is the further point that as the cataloguing services become computer based—and we can see that this is going to happen—there will open up a whole range of information services to the public which we are not able to provide at present. I should think that noble Lords would consider this an integral part of the new institution which we are setting up. So I assume that that covers the first Amendment which was to leave out this function of bibliographical services and other information services, which seem to me to be part of the Library.

The word "bibliographical" was left in. There is a misunderstanding. The phrase we were concerned about was, "and other information services". We wanted to be reassured that social services would be included.

The noble Viscount misunderstood me. I was asking for a reassurance from him in the opposite way to which he gave it me. I was hoping that the Library service itself would be ready to undertake the provision of abstracting services because the time is shortly coming when nobody else will be able to do it.

I entirely agree with my noble friend; that is why we want this left in the Bill. I cannot pretend to foresee what technological developments will bring. My noble friend is probably right; some of the information services (and I was connected with the National Book League which on a shoestring ran a very good information service, replying to some 75,000 telephone calls a year) will have to be considered. There will come a time when we shall have to consider how these services can be rationalised.

I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.

I do not wish to detain the Committee. I have already spoken on Amendment No. 4, and I beg to move it formally.

I received something of a shock last night because until then this Amendment had referred to "social services". Yesterday, noble Lords opposite, in their wisdom—and, if I may say so, very much for the better—decided to amend it to "social sciences". This is a very interesting point to which I should like to direct your Lordships' attention. It is necessary in this clause to define the main function of the British Library and then to state the subject matter in relation to which those functions are to be exercised. The words used in the Bill are:

"… in relation both to scientific and technological matters and to the humanities."

I have to admit that I was not content with those words because they perpetuate what I consider to be an unworthy and out-of-date attempt by certain persons, of great eminence, to split knowledge into the arts and the sciences. Of course there was a time when the scientists were struggling for recognition alongside the arts or the humanities, and I quite understand that when one is working one's way upward to be recognised as the equal of the elder brother, things of this kind matter very much; one wants to be seen to be equal in public. But I had hoped that the rivalry between these two great sides of human knowledge was now dying down and that we had really begun to revert to the older conception of the universality of knowledge, and that the words in the Bill might relate to the whole of human knowledge. That is what I should have liked to have. But I was told that I must perpetuate the division because there were people who minded very much about it, and so we have the words in the Bill as they are.

Then along come the social sciences, and they say, "But we are a still further division in knowledge. The Bill refers to science and technological matters, and to the humanities, and we, the social sciences, wish to be distinguished as a branch of learning." I find it difficult to follow the argument because in my view the social sciences are a mixture of the two; they are not a separate category. So far as I can understand it, social sciences are humane because they are social and they are scientific because they are sciences, and therefore they are really subsumed under the two great categories which I regret we have to keep of science and technology, on the one hand, and the humanities, which cover everything.

The noble Baroness asked, "What do the humanities cover?" So far as I understand it, we have always accepted the humanities as covering everything that was outside, strictly, what are known as the various sciences. I therefore feel that it would be retrograde to go on splitting up knowledge into new categories. I should welcome it if the Committee would support me (I have no idea whether it would) in changing my own words to "the whole of human knowledge". But, failing that, we ought to stop at what has now become the accredited division between science, on one side, and the humanities or the arts, on the other. Therefore I should be sorry to see our going further in the direction of fragmentation of knowledge.

It is a very unusual experience to be able to congratulate a noble Lord opposite on being ahead of his time. But I gather from the noble Viscount's observations that he is now prepared to include the social sciences under scientific matters dealing with human subjects. I am entirely with him on this, but he is ahead of his time and ahead of public knowledge and public opinion. I think that the reason why we are asking for the social sciences to be separately mentioned is just to establish this very point: that it is possible to approach problems of human living and human relations in a scientific way. However, I do not think any of us wish to press this Amendment, and I merely hoped that I might take the opportunity of congratulating the noble Viscount on his recognition of the universality of human knowledge and of the application of scientific techniques and scientific methods to these human problems.

I hope that the Minister has found the noble Baroness's speech as seductive as I have, and that he will respond completely in the spirit of it. We have no desire at all to have false divisions, but we do not want science or technology to be interpreted almost exclusively in relation to the very important subject of earning our living as a nation. There is also the problem of how people live. All kinds of human problems and human relationships are served by social services of many kinds. Provided we all agree that this is what is in our spirit, I do not think anyone would wish to press this Amendment, and I beg leave to withdraw it.

I beg to move that the House do now resume.

My Lords, with permission, I wish to repeat a Statement on the rail dispute that has been made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Employment. The Statement is as follows:

"I can confirm to the House that so far to-day there has been a virtual resumption of normal rail services. If, as I hope, this situation continues during the evening rush hour, I expect so to certify to the Industrial Court later to-day.

"Immediately thereafter I shall be in touch with the parties to urge them to reopen their discussions as quickly as possible.

"I am sure the whole House will hope that now industrial action has been discontinued a settlement will be reached."

My Lords, I am sure that it would be your Lordships' wish that I should thank the Minister for repeating that Statement. May I add immediately that, so far as those on this side of the House are concerned, we share his hope that a settlement will be reached. May I take it, as he has not mentioned this in his Statement, that the facilities and the expertise of the Department of Employment will be made available to assist in the settlement? Moreover, may I ask the Minister whether he is aware that my own view on this matter at the present stage is that the less that is said the better? I wonder whether he would sympathise with that point of view. In particular, I would ask him whether he will be kind enough to ascertain which Minister of the Crown is about to make a speech at the Conservative Central Office, and will he please ask him not to?

My Lords, I am sure we are all greatly relieved to hear that normal rail services have now virtually been resumed, and I take it that that means that the famous "cooling-off" period will now shortly start. May I also say, however, that I hope that during this period nobody will jump in with unsolicited advice to the negotiators, but will leave them to get on with the negotiation? In general, I found myself entirely in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, in saying that during this period it is important to remember that the least said by everybody, the better.

My Lords, I am most grateful to both noble Lords for the way in which they have received this Statement. I would agree right away with the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, and the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, that the less said the better at the present time. I can assure Lord Diamond that my right honourable friend is always ready to make available the facilities of the Department of Employment to assist in reaching a settlement, and I join with the noble Lord again in hoping that no provocative (if I may add a word), unsolicited advice will be offered at the present time. I am not quite certain that the last sentence of the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, did not nearly come into that category.

My Lords, may I ask a simple and harmless question? We have heard a great deal about the railway Rule Book. Is it possible for a copy of that book to be put in the Library of this House so that noble Lords may consult it from time to time?

My Lords, I will make inquiries as to whether there is a copy at the Department of Employment. But perhaps it would be better to put that question to those who are in a position to make the book available.

moved Amendment No. 5:

Page 2, line 10, at end insert—

("Provided that in deciding whether or not to lend any such item and in determining the time for which and the conditions subject to which any such item is to be lent, the Board shall have regard to the interests of students and other persons visiting the national library, to the physical condition and degree of rarity of the item in question and to any risks to which it is likely to be exposed.")

I should like to support this Amendment. The new Library Board will be engaged as a matter of course in lending from Boston Spa, which is the lending branch of the Library, and as the British Museum does now they will lend, under proper safeguards, to exhibitions. At the same time, it is extremely important that they should not lend from the existing British Museum Library, for the reason stated in this Amendment. It is important for students and other persons visiting the National Reference Library that they should know that they will find the book they want there and not that it has been lent to somebody in the Outer Hebrides. I think this is an important point. I have heard it suggested, for instance, that foreign books should be lent, under the new arrangements, from the British Museum Library. Therefore, I support this Amendment.

The British Library, among other things, is visualised as being a body which lends books. In fact this is one of its prime objects and thus its powers to lend must be clearly stated, as I think they are in Clause 1 of the Bill, which also sets out the duties of the Board and the functions of the Library. I see that this Amendment also includes a point about preserving the interests of students. This appears to be covered in Clause 1, where the duty of the Board is laid out that it shall,

"… manage the Library as a national centre for reference, study and bibliographical and other information services …".

Therefore the interests of students are surely covered.

In looking at this particular problem of safeguards, particularly the safeguards applied to rarities or scarce articles, it is important to bear in mind the size of the problem relative to the general problem of handling standard loans, and I think that in these categories requests for loans, for one purpose or another, would be very small indeed and could be dealt with on an ad hoc basis or on their merits. It would appear to me that the incidence of the problem is more likely to occur in the Humanities than in the Sciences. I imagine that there are fewer scientific than humanities rarities in the collections, although I could not say this for certain. Loans are transactions and the Board has powers to frame rules for transactions under paragraph 11(2) of the Schedule. To my mind this is quite proper, as in Clause 1 the Board has a duty to maintain and safeguard collections and also under paragraph 11(1) of the Schedule it is empowered to do the things which are necessary in this respect. This seems to me to be very clearly laid out.

As to the items which are transferred from the Trustees of the British Museum to the British Library Board, which is covered in Clause 3 of the Bill, it is my impression that these items are subject to a trust, in addition to any specific request which might be attached. Therefore, any item transferred by agreement automatically has a trust attached to it which is framed under the terms of the British Museum Act 1963. Surely the Board of the British Library is to be just as accountable to the nation as the Trustees of the British Museum—perhaps even more so as in many respects their duties go beyond those of the British Museum Trustees. To my mind, this Bill provides the necessary framework for the proper administration and I consider this Amendment to be superfluous, especially in view of the fact that Clause 1(4) already requires the Board to take adequate precautions to safeguard their collections. Therefore, I cannot see that this Amendment provides any protection where protection does not already exist.

I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ironside, when he says that this Amendment is superfluous. I think it is necessary. I am not sure that this is the occasion to enter into a debate with the noble Lord as to whether or not the trusts imposed on the Trustees of the British Museum Library will be equally binding on those who are going to administer the British Library. I hope it may well be that those who administer the new British Library set-up under this Bill will regard themselves as bound by those trusts in so far as they receive books and other documents emanating from the existing Library maintained by the Trustees of the British Museum. But it does not seem to me that that is so abundantly clear as to make it unnecessary for us to write this Amendment into the Bill, and I very much hope that it will be accepted by the Minister.

It seems to me that this Amendment involves a question of principle. It is perfectly true, as the noble Lord has said, that there is a reservation in subsection (4) of Clause 1 with regard to safeguarding the collections. But this is a different matter. One of the outstanding features and merits of the Library of the British Museum has always been that it is a reference library; any member of the public, student or otherwise, can always find there available for him any book that he requires, without risk of being told that that book has been lent and is not available. Therefore your Lordships will appreciate that in a real sense there is an inconsistency between the functions of a reference library and the functions of a lending library. It is perfectly proper that the interests of students should be observed in so far as they want to borrow books from some library or be able to obtain micro-filmed copies of the books in a reference library, but the essential feature of a reference library, and particularly of the British Library being set up by this Bill, is that the outstanding advantages of the Library hitherto maintained by the Trustees of the British Museum should be maintained and that it should continue to observe all the essential features of a reference library. Therefore, while when I first read the Bill I was a little disturbed by the fact that the Board would be given power to lend some books, I am perfectly prepared to accept that that provision should remain in the Bill provided that this Amendment as well as another Amendment which we shall come to later is incorporated in the Bill. Therefore, I strongly support the Amendment and hope it will be accepted.

Your Lordships are divided about this Amendment. That I can understand because there really are several different aspects to it. The Bill as drafted did, we think, safeguard the collections: that is to say, it took care, of the problem of risk to the collections if they were lent, they being rare objects. That was the only point in the noble Baroness's Amendment when it was first put down. But yesterday a second point which we have to consider was included in the Amendment: the interests of students and other persons visiting the British Library. Their interest of course is a different interest; it is not the safety of the objects from the point of view of their fragile nature or disintegration of the paper or whatever it may be. Their interest is that when they come to the Library what they expect to find, and know is in the catalogue, shall be there. This is a very important point. I expect that every noble Lord here has from time to time suffered a great deal of disappointment, having gone a long way, especially to the picture galleries in France, to find that in the place of a picture there is a little card saying that it is on exhibition in Paris. This is very annoying. I understand that.

My noble friend Lord Ironside speaks as a scientist, and there is no doubt at all that there is a big difference between scientific books and antiquarian books of a literary nature. The obsolescence of the scientific books is very high compared with that of books of literature. Not long elapses before someone has written a better book on a particular aspect of science and the original hook is out of date. Therefore, the scientist does not need to have the same regard for the First Edition of this or that book on this or that subject because he has got a better book. Therefore, I understand my noble friend's attitude, that in fact this clause is not necessary because the Board, being sensible persons, would do all that we want them to do with the Bill as it stands. On the other hand, I think the clause has been much improved by the introduction of the second point about the interests of students, and I should be glad to accept it.

I am very grateful to the noble Viscount for accepting the Amendment, and to other noble Lords for their support.

moved Amendment No. 6:

Page 2, line 21, leave out ("one part-time member shall be a person") and insert ("two part-time members shall be persons").

I should like to say one word on this question because although I have not put an Amendment down to alter the constitution of the Board doubtless the noble Viscount has seen the submission which the Royal Society made to the Minister for Education and Science suggesting that science should be more expressly mentioned in this clause. I should like the same sort of reassurance that the noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan, is asking for. I am quite certain that he is right in saying that for the first 12 years there should be a much closer connection between the Trustees of the British Museum as they are now and the Library, because a number of them have great experience in managing the British Museum Library and ought to be involved in the building up of the new one. I think that that is, as he said, preferable to having two representatives ab initio.

Those of us who are concerned with the management of the scientific side of this Library—and I think one must divorce the management, to the extent that one can quite reasonably talk of the management of the scientific side and the management of the side which deals with the humanities—would entirely agree with what the noble Lord said, that the Library's specific objects should not be defined as being (a) scientific, (b) humanities, (c) social sciences, but with the sum total of human knowledge. So far as its objectives are concerned they are as one. During the debate on the White Paper I expressed my doubts as to whether it was right and proper to have two Reading Rooms, one for the sciences and one for the humanities, because I thought that that sort of divorce was undesirable. I think I was wrong there, because fundamentally when you get down to management slightly different techniques are involved. I think it is very important that when the Minister comes to choose the members of the Board he should remember that, and make it quite clear that he is going to keep the present Trustees closely in touch during the first 12 years. But from the very beginning he will need on the Board people with knowledge of the administration of a scientific library. As I tried to explain on Second Reading, the underlying techniques may very often differ, and it is important that there should be people on the Board with that sort of knowledge.

I quite agree with my noble friend Lord Cranbrook that the administration of the scientific part of the Library is somewhat different, because the scientists require open access to a degree which the people using the arts books do not. I think it is fair to say that the way in which the National Reference Library for Science and Invention has been developed shows that the British Museum Trustees are fully aware that there is a separate technique. However, we can perhaps come to that on the next Amendment.

I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan, that it is absolutely essential, especially during the long period of transition when the new buildings are being erected, that there should be every possible form of co-operation between the British Museum Trustees and the new Board, and I give him the undertaking that, in one way or another, I will see that the British Museum Trustees are represented at every Board meeting; and we can have various other schemes of co-operation that we could work out between us. I am certain that we can come to arrangements which would be just as satisfactory as having two part-time members—and I find that difficult for the very reasons which he himself gave. We are not trying to establish a board of trustees; we are trying to establish a comparatively small board of management. Therefore in the few places that are open for part-time members it will be necessary for the Secretary of State to think very carefully about the kind of experience which is required.

If we have these part-time members appointed by outside bodies, they would not necessarily take into consideration the particular needs of the Board itself. They would perhaps be more likely to put on one of their members who was interested in another aspect of the Library, which might already be covered on the Board. Therefore I think it is important that we stick to the principle that all members of the Board should be appointed by the Secretary of State, excepting in the two really special cases. One is that of the King's Library; and Her Majesty will appoint a part-time trustee with the interest of that great Library in mind. The other is continuity with the British Museum itself. If we keep to that, we can stick to the Board as a management body, which is what I believe a modern great Library of this kind requires. I hope that, in view of the fullest assurance that I have given to the noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan, and his colleagues that we will make these arrangements work, he will agree to withdraw the Amendment.

In view of the assurance given to me by the noble Viscount the Paymaster General, that he will ensure that the British Museum Trustees can be adequately and physically represented at all times on the new Library Board, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

moved Amendment No. 7:

Page 2, line 23, leave out subsection (2).

I must point out to the Committee that if this Amendment is agreed to, I shall not be able to call Amendment No. 8.

I should like to support my noble friend for the reasons which she gave in moving this Amendment, because to include this subsection in the Bill—which I know is common form—could lead to some undesirable effects. I do not suppose that it would lead to the undesirable effect that no woman could be appointed. But it was used as an argument in another place only last week that, because of certain provisions in other Statutes, it had been found quite impossible to appoint women to various public boards because they did not quite fulfil the qualifications laid down.

As my noble friend has pointed out, this list is by no means all-inclusive. She mentioned films, which had occurred to me. There might also be the question of recorded sound. We have one institution concerned with films and another concerned with recorded sound. We are legislating for the future and either of those establishments might at some point be brought into collaboration, at least, with the British Library. Someone who was an expert in the fields of either films or recorded sound, but who was not necessarily a librarian or connected with a university, or who was not even an administrator, might still be a very valuable person to appoint to the Board. My noble friend is quite right in what she said. If these words are meaningful, then they can be dangerous. If they are meaningless, why should we include them in the Statute? Therefore, I hope that the noble Viscount will feel disposed to omit them.

It is a little difficult to know what noble Lords opposite really think about Ministers, because when we were discussing the previous Amendment they said that Ministers could not be trusted not to exercise political pressure to get valuable objects lent to their friends abroad. So we had to write into the Bill words to restrain Ministers from behaving in the way they wanted to behave. In this case, almost the whole Board will be appointed by the Secretary of State, and if we write nothing into the Bill we shall be showing a touching faith in Ministers. I accept the compliment and I think it is remarkable. But I wonder whether people outside this House, and outside political circles, would feel a certain uneasiness about an institution which is of such tremendous importance to a range of very different interests if we did not give in the Bill some indication of the kind of people for whom we expected the Secretary of State to have preference.

The subsection does not state that all members of the Board must be appointed because they have certain experience, but states simply that the Secretary of State "shall give preference to" those who appear to him to have knowledge and experience of certain aspects of life. I know very well that there would be great uneasiness in industry—and if my noble friend Lord Trevelyan moves the next Amendment, assuming that this one is not carried, I shall of course accept it—if it felt that there were not some words in the Bill to show that its interests would be represented, or at least (because it is not certain), had a very good chance of being represented, on the Board. Library and university affairs appear to me quite essential because the interests of the scholars, which are very important, are apt to be lost sight of under the enormous pressures of scientists, technologists, engineers and so on.

I think it is right to include this list. I do not claim that it is perfect—it is not—but it is an indication of the fields of experience where one hopes the Secretary of State would look for a suitable Board member. Therefore, I do not think we should delete the subsection and leave it entirely to every future Secretary of State to make any kind of appointment that he or she likes. It is better to say, "This is rough drafting. It is a rough list of what we want, and we would rather have it in the Bill than not."

We do not intend to press this Amendment to a Vote, but I would ask the Minister to look at it again before Report stage. He made a point about someone in industry feeling a little uneasy if industry were not specifically mentioned. I did not get a clear reply about the field of education, but someone whose interest in education was widespread and profound, but who was not specifically attached to the work of universities, might also ask, "Why am I not mentioned specifically?". There are a whole number of cases like that.

The Minister was extremely ingenuous—and he knows it—when he suggested that a Minister lived on a lonely pinnacle, and that in making appointments to our great boards of trustees and so on he was indulging in purely private caprice. We know the conventions of the British Constitution—and I think they are very good conventions. We know that Ministers consult their most senior and experienced civil servants in these particular fields. We also know that there is consultation with colleagues; and that when a new member is added to an existing board then in courtesy the chairman of the board and the members of the board are consulted. It is not a case of dictatorship coming either from the side of the board or from the side of the Minister. It is a consensus, a gathering together. So I know the Minister did not mean his first point to be taken too seriously, but I hope he will take seriously that some members of this Committee feel that this is a rather fatuous subsection and that it would be better left out.

I should like to support what the noble Baroness has just suggested, that the Minister should look at this again. I must say that I was not greatly impressed by his argument for retaining this provision. Indeed, he suggested that it was not by any means perfect. It is a limiting provision, as the noble Baroness has pointed out; and the noble Viscount himself, in an earlier intervention, indicated that we are concerned only with rather a small number of people. If he has to give preference, as the subsection requires, to these various sorts of people, then he is limiting himself, I would have said, very seriously. I do not like the word "preference". I agree with him that there is something to be said for indicating the sort of interests which should be considered in this connection, but accepting the obligation to give preference to quite a substantial number of interests of this kind is, I think, altogether unduly limiting. I am sure there is a better way out of this than this subsection, and I hope that the Minister will find it, as I am sure he can.

This wording is, of course, common form. In the legislation relating to the Gas, Steel and Transport Boards, the National Research and Development Corporation and other national institutions which provide national services in the same way as this one will do, there is a provision defining the categories of experience to which the relevant Minister should look. If we did not have this in the Bill, we should be doing something new in relation to this kind of institution. Therefore, though I am prepared to look at it again, I have very grave doubts whether it would commend itself to Parliament as a whole that the Secretary of State should be left with an absolutely blank cheque. I am not saying that one could not find Secretaries of State who would make the appointments perfectly well, but I think Parliament might say that it would prefer to have something in the Bill. As I have said, I will look at the point again, but I cannot give any assurance.

Would the Paymaster General, in looking at it again, verify whether, as he said just now, there is a precedent for this form of words? My recollection is that there are Acts which have words to the effect that, in making appointments, the Secretary of State or the Minister concerned shall "have regard to" persons with particular experience. But, speaking subject to correction, I think it is a matter which requires verification as to whether there is a precedent for using the words "shall give preference to" persons of one category or another, as distinct from giving the Minister responsible for the appointment appropriate guidance as to the kind of persons whose experience should qualify them for appointment.

I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

moved Amendment No. 8:

Page 2, line 26, leave out ("business") and insert ("industry").

I am very glad to accept this Amendment. I am quite sure that "industry" is a better word than "business".

moved Amendment No. 9:

Page 2, line 35, leave out ("incidental powers and staff") and insert ("and incidental powers, to the employment of staff and the terms and conditions of their employment").

moved Amendment No. 10:

Page 5, line 17, at end insert ("provided that, except for a whole-time member, this is not for an aggregate period of more than seven years").

I quite agree that one would not want to have a Board on which there were a number of what one might call professional part-timers who came on and stayed on. But this is not a self-perpetuating board. There are some boards where the trustees are able to appoint or to co-opt members of their own choice and they can go on appointing the same ones. But in this case every appointment is to be made by the Secretary of State. It appears to me fairly cer tain that the Secretary of State, not having a great many part-time places to fill, will look around for men and women with considerable experience. They are likely to be middle-aged and it is not very probable that the period of seven years would be too short for the kind of service that they would wish to give to the institution. But there can be exceptions. I can readily conceive of someone not of a very advanced age but who is deeply concerned in books and printed material (it may be a great collector, it might be a publisher; but someone who is outstanding in the aspect of this world in which they have their own job) who says, "I will serve as a part-time member." If you have to say that in no case—and that is what this Amendment says—can you renew the membership of a man or woman after a period of service of seven years you might lose some really very valuable people.

I hope that my old friend will not take it amiss, but let us take the example of Sir Mortimer Wheeler. It would have been terrible to have lost the possibility of having his services over a very much longer period than seven years. I do not think anyone can say that it would be at all easy to find anyone to replace him in the particular field of archæology in which he is so acknowledged an expert. I do not think that we ought to put into legislation a rule which stops us from re-appointing anybody who shows a really exceptional ability—and the Secretary of State will be there to be the judge. Therefore, I do not feel that to accept this Amendment would improve the Board. If it did so, I would accept it. In nine out of ten cases the part-time member will already be someone of middle age with considerable experience. In the tenth case it may be that you will find somebody younger who is already very distinguished and you will be only too glad to have him or her for 10 or 15 years on the Board. If we accept the Amendment this would not be possible. I recommend that we leave the subsection as it is.

I see the skill with which the Paymaster General has shifted his ground. He tells us now that it is the Minister who should be left to be the judge in a matter of this kind. I take the point. At one moment the Minister must not be allowed; at the next moment the Minister's judgment and common sense can be trusted. We are not pressing this Amendment to a Division, but we have put it down very seriously because we should like it to be the spirit of the Bill that it would be an exceptional case where the part-time member of the Board would be asked to continue beyond this very considerable period of seven years. We should not like an atmosphere in which it was considered a kind of downgrading for a part-time member of the Board who had served three or five years to be replaced. Rather, we want it to be the case that if someone is asked to serve it is because here is an exceptional person in exceptional circumstances and because when we looked around the world of scholarship there were no other claimants who could equally well refresh the Board by their services. If the Minister were to accept what we said in that spirit, I should beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

moved Amendment No. 16:

Page 6, line 1, leave out paragraph 6.

As the Bill now stands, it provides in paragraph 5 of the Schedule that the Board shall pay to the members of the Board

"such remuneration and allowances as the Secretary of State may determine".

There was on the Marshalled List an Amendment to that provision limiting its application to the whole-time members. That Amendment was not moved. Had it been moved I might have supported it. But as the Bill now stands, it seems to me that the Board, in all probability, will wish to make some payment by way of remuneration to all members of the Board, whether they are whole time or part-time, and I imagine that most of those who are invited to become part-time members might, not unreasonably, expect some remuneration. That being so, one has to consider whether it is appropriate to include the Library Board in the Schedule to the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1957.

It so happens that I had a certain amount to do with the preparation of that Act. It was based on a number of Reports and involved a very exhaustive consideration of those offices of one kind or another, paid or unpaid, which should, quite properly as a matter of public policy, exclude from membership of the House of Commons. Your Lordships will remember that prior to 1957 the law on the subject was very obscure and produced a number of anomalies. Therefore that Act was based on a very comprehensive review of the whole subject. Sorry as I am to disagree with my noble friend Lady Lee of Asheridge, I am bound to say, recollecting the discussions which took place at that time, that I should have thought that on principle if the philosophy that actuated the preparation of that Schedule were applied, it would not be right to do otherwise than, as the Bill now provides, make membership of this Board a ground for disqualification.

I also greatly regret having to disagree with my noble friend but I think that she is proposing something which goes back very much on existing practice. It is a very common practice now that some remuneration should be paid to the members of boards and public bodies. The B.B.C, the I.T.A. and nearly all the boards of nationalised industries include part-time members who receive some remuneration. I appreciate that this normally excludes Members of the other place but, much as one wishes Members of the other place to have outside interests, I think experience shows that the outside interests have to be compelling in order to get their fair share of attention from the Members of the other place who are so fully occupied by their pressing duties in their House. I know that the noble Baroness has not moved the Amendments about remuneration, but I understand that they are tied up with this Amendment and therefore it is perhaps not out of order to speak to them. I should very much regret if a decision were made that members of this body should be an exception to the fairly well established rule that some modest remuneration is paid.

I hope that, before we come to the Report stage, we shall give serious consideration to the position of Members of the other place. If this point is not cleared up in your Lordships' House, I think that it will certainly be raised in the other place. I see the varying points of view, and I accept what has been said about remuneration by my noble friend, Lady Wootton of Abinger. But remuneration may be given in different forms. If it is given in the form of a salary it excludes Members of another place. If it were given in the form of expenses—as happens in the case of anyone, for instance, who travels from Inverness to attend meetings of the Arts Council—it would not exclude Members of the other place. I hope that we shall look at the methods of payment to part-time members in such a way as to take into consideration something about which I feel very strongly; namely, that if there are suitable applicants from the elected Chamber they should not be excluded just because of the method of remuneration.

I understand what the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, feels about the disqualification of Members of another place, of which, I am happy to say, both she and I were once Members. But we have had the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Fletcher, and I am glad that he spoke because I suppose that he had more to do with the House of Commons Disqualification Act than any other noble Lord. I have looked at the Act and I was much impressed by the very long list of bodies to which the disqualification of membership of the other place applies. I do not wish to weary your Lordships by referring to them all, but there are bodies like the University Grants Committee. I tried to find bodies which seemed to have some sort of relationship to the area about which we are now talking: the British Film Fund Agency; the Commission for Industrial Relations; the Commonwealth Development Corporation; the Community Relations Commission and the Consumer Council. The names of the bodies occupy three pages of the Schedule to the Act; and, of course, additions are made every year.

I wonder whether the Minister realises that he mentioned the Consumer Council, which his Government abolished.

I know; but the Consumer Council was a body on which one might have expected Members of Parliament to serve, yet they were disqualified. And no doubt there will be other such bodies which will arise and, in their turn, disappear.

The noble Baroness did not move Amendment No. 11 which was concerned with the payment of part-time members. Therefore, as the Bill stands, and as we should like it to remain, part-time members may be paid at the discretion of the Secretary of State. I have a list (it relates to November 1, 1969, the latest issued) of members of public boards. It is Cmnd. 4245, and it shows that in every case now where there are part-time members they are paid. This has become a common practice. Indeed, I think that the sort of life we live to-day calls increasingly for people of experience to do more than one job. It may well be that one would miss somebody if one were not able to offer a modest salary, in addition to expenses. That is a very important point when considering the problem of the disqualification of Members of another place.

The second point I would bring to the notice of your Lordships is that, as I said before, this is a small management board which we hope to set up. Because of the range of subjects which the British Library will have to cover, with all the problems connected with collections and reference and scholarship; the problems arising from lending to the different classes of user; the large problems connected with the improvement of the techniques of library services; and the very considerable international problems, which will probably increase all the time, it will be a board on which, as I see it, part-time members will have to serve on committees and will have to do some real work. There will be so much work involved, on such a variety of subjects. Therefore I do not think that this is the kind of board on which someone who was primarily engrossed in another job could serve. I do not think that such people could very easily give the time. I feel fairly sure that if the right organisation is to do it (I do not know whether the parallel is correct), it will be something like the Bank of England where the part-time members do a considerable amount of committee work. Therefore, on the ground that it is almost certain that the precedent which is now well established will be followed and the part-time members will be paid a salary, and on the ground, as I hope, that these part-time members will be prepared to give a considerable amount of time to the work, I think it is right that we should maintain the disqualification as in the provision that we are now discussing.

I am afraid that I am not convinced. I think it will be a sad day for this country when we do not have the tremendous amount of unpaid voluntary service which we have in so many fields. I can remember that when the National Health Service was introduced there were all kinds of able and highly qualified people who were giving a good deal of their time to the maintenance and care of hospitals. When the service started they had the wrong idea that their help would no longer be required. But we owe an immeasurable debt for all kinds of voluntary service in local authority work, and I think it is good for the community and the individual that there should be fields where, if people have the time, energy, specialist knowledge and concern, they should offer their services. However, at the moment it looks as if my point of view is in a minority in this Committee. We shall have further time to discuss this at a later stage, and I am certain that it will be debated at considerable length when it goes to the other place. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

moved Amendment No. 17:

Page 6, line 40, at end insert—

("Provided that the disposal of all articles specified in section 3(1)(a) of this Act shall be subject to the conditions imposed by section 5 of the British Museum Act 1963 on the disposal by the Trustees of the British Museum of objects vested in them and comprised in their collections.")

I should like to support this Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan, and I, too, hope that the Government will accept it. I am very much opposed on principle to museums being able to dispose of objects, although, as the noble Lord has said, we can have full confidence in the Trustees and the Boards. I think that the British Museum is probably a special case. I am glad that the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery have not the right to dispose. I suppose that in the 'thirties they would have disposed of many of their Victorian paintings, because the Bloomsbury Group taught us to despise them. Now we do not think much of the Bloomsbury Group, but of course revere Victoriana. The British Museum is, I feel, a special case. We debated this at length at the time of the British Museum Act 1963. As the noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan, has said, I think that the section in that Act is about right, and it is important that this should be included in the present Bill.

I do not think that either of the two noble Lords who have spoken on this Amendment realise its full implications, because the disposal of objects in the collections and otherwise of the British Museum under the 1963 Act was dealt with not only in Section 5 of the Act, to which the noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan, referred, but also in Section 9, which deals with the transfer to other institutions. On Second Reading, I ventured to draw the attention of your Lordships to a number of manuscripts which are now held at Bloomsbury, and which I think in the interests of students should be transferred to another national institution. I rather think that if we qualify the powers given to the Board under Clause 11(3) by Section 5 of the 1963 Act it will mean that we shall have to move an Amendment at the Report stage carrying forward Section 9 of the 1963 Act, which, as I have said, refers to transfer to other institutions, in order to regularise the position.

I suggest that this is really a different point. It is one which has not come to my notice before. I personally should support the idea that Section 9, if it is found to be legally necessary, should be continued, but I think it should be considered separately from the Amendment that I have moved, perhaps on the Report stage.

As a generality, I entirely support the noble Lords, Lord Trevelyan and Lord Strabolgi.

I have not the text of the British Museum Act 1963 before me, and no doubt the Paymaster General has, but he will recollect, as I do, that when we were considering the 1963 Act in another place considerable thought was given to this matter. I do not think that anybody then disputed the desirability of including Section 5 in the Act of 1963. It was done for very good reasons and, if my recollection holds, the Paymaster General was in support of it, as I was. Desirable as is this present Bill—and we all welcome it—it is difficult to imagine any grounds that have arisen since 1963 which make it any more acceptable now than it was then that either the Trustees or the new Board should be released from the conditions which Parliament then thought fit to impose.

When I saw that my noble friend Lord Cranbrook was present I was certain that the other part of the 1963 Act would be mentioned. First, may I say that I am convinced by the arguments of the noble Lords, Lord Trevelyan and Lord Strabolgi, that it is right to do as they wish and carry forward into this Bill the section from the British Museum Act 1963. I feel sure that the Board would have recognised this inheritance, and would not have tried to dispose of property which they had had transferred to them from the British Museum in this way; but I think it is right to put it into the Bill, and I gladly accept the Amendment.

As to whether on Report stage we should incorporate Section 9 of the 1963 Act, perhaps I should remind your Lordships of what that section provides. It gives the British Museum Trustees now, and would give the British Library Board in the future, power to transfer certain objects to the Natural History Museum, in which my noble friend Lord Cranbrook is much interested. The question whether these books and objects that belonged, I think, to Sir Joseph Banks, should or should not be transferred has been discussed for many a year and will no doubt go on being discussed. We will look at this point and if it seems desirable we will also include on Report stage Section 9 of the British Museum Act. However, I am not absolutely sure about this and I should like to discuss it with the noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan, and the Trustees of the British Museum before giving an absolutely definite assurance.

I hope that the noble Viscount will also discuss the matter with the Trustees of the Natural History Museum.

moved Amendment No. 20:

Page 7, line 15, at end insert—

("(4) Civil servants and staff of the British Museum who are transferred on the appointed day to the British Library will retain terms and conditions which correspond, as nearly as the circumstances permit, to those of the Civil Service. These conditions will not be varied in the future without the agreement of the recognised staff associations.")

The British Library, of course, is going to afford wider career opportunities for librarians and also more opportunities for promotion. Therefore I think the way in which the staff have received the idea of this great integration of these four parts is understandable. None the less it is very welcome. In our discussions with them, the staff have been extraordinarily co-operative and I should like to place that on record.

It is not really possible for me to discuss this Amendment unless I refer to the alternative one which I have put down, so I hope that your Lordships will not mind if I do that. There are two things which we want to do and which also form the purpose of the noble Lord's Amendment. The first is to see that on transfer the conditions offered by the British Library to those employees, some civil servants and some not, who come into their service are no worse than the conditions they had before. We have already given an undertaking in that regard, and we spell that out in the first part of my Amendment: that is also what the noble Lord does in his. However, the first sentence of the Amendment we are now considering is a little too narrow and I think probably that on reflection noble Lords will agree that it is covered better in subsection (1) of my Amendment.

Then we come to the second sentence of the noble Lord's Amendment:

"These conditions will not be varied in the future without the agreement of the recognised staff associations."

That, of course, is going further than we have gone before. It is one thing to assure all these people—which we certainly intend to do—that their conditions will be at least as good, taken as a whole, on transfer as they were before; but it is another thing to give the staff associations the right of veto on any change, in however long a future, in their conditions of work. This, I think, would not be a wise approach—I hope that your Lordships will agree—to introduce into an institution of this kind or, indeed, any other institution. Therefore when we come to my Amendment you will not find the future mentioned. What I am doing is what I feel we must do—that is, to give a guarantee for here and now. As the years pass, and there are rises in salaries, changes in grades and all that sort of thing we simply cannot give the staff associations (indeed we do not do this in any other institutions, so far as I am aware) a complete veto as to whether or not a proposal of the Board should be accepted. I must tell the Committee that we are not able to accept this Amendment, but in the following Amendment all that we have been asked for, and all that we have done, in other cases is provided.

I am disappointed that the noble Viscount cannot accept my Amendment. As he said, and indeed as I said also, there is no provision in the Bill or in the Government's Amendment for safeguarding the future. On the other hand, I note what he says and hope very much that the Board will enter into discussions if they wish to change any of the conditions. I may say that the situation and the gaps in the Government's Amendment have caused concern to the Institution of Professional Civil Servants; and they are concerned not about the conditions which will prevail at the time of the transfer but about those that may come about afterwards. I hope that the Government will bear in mind that there must be consultations and, wherever possible, mutual agreement before decisions are made. Perhaps the noble Viscount will give some such assurance.

I am glad to tell noble Lords that to the best of my ability I will see that the members of the Board are people who will do exactly what the noble Lord asks. Any good Board consults with the staff associations when making any changes in conditions. I should be surprised if the people who are appointed to the Board did not do that. But we cannot accept that there should be an absolute right of veto.

The Civil Service Department have had long experience in working with staff associations. They have the Whitley Council system which works superbly, although there are difficulties now and again. There is bound to be a little concern that the general ethos of negotiations with staff associations, which both sides within the Civil Service understand so well, may be lost. I do not know what my noble friend's intentions are, but one appreciates that it would be difficult to accept all that he asks. The noble Viscount has promised to speak to the new Board and I hope that he will at that time ensure that so far as possible they meet with the staff associations concerned. Although he may not wish to give them directions, I hope that he will, if necessary, seek the help of the joint Whitley Council machinery in ensuring that they get off to a good start. This will give great confidence to the general secretaries of the unions, to their members, and to those who are directly responsible for these particular workers. The workers will be on contracts of employment; their position will have changed from that of civil servants. One cannot go too far in giving assurances. The noble Viscount's heart may be right on this; we want to make sure that it carries through into the right action.

I assure the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition that I will do my best to see that that comes about. I believe strongly that a rather intricate kind of business such as the British Library is going to depend tremendously on the good will and the enthusiasm of the staff. Therefore consultation with them is an absolute necessity.

I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.

moved Amendment No. 21:

Page 7, line 15, at end insert—

(".—(1) In the case of persons to be employed by them on and after the appointed day who immediately before that day are employed either in the civil service of the State or by the trustees of the British Museum, the Board shall, in negotiating their terms of employment, ensure that the terms, taken as a whole, are not less favourable in the case of each such person than those on which he is employed at the time when an offer is made to him of employment with the Board.

(2) In the following provisions of this paragraph, "the Act of 1963" means the Contracts of Employment Act 1963, "the Act of 1965" means the Redundancy Payments Act 1965 and "the Superannuation Acts" means the Superannuation Acts 1965 and 1972.

(3) Where a person enters the employment of the Board on the appointed day having been, immediately before that day, employed as mentioned in sub-paragraph (1) above, then—

(a) for the purposes of the Acts of 1963 and 1965 any period during which he was so employed before that day (other than a period excepted by sub-paragraph (4) below) shall count as a period of employment with the Board, and the change of employer shall not break the continuity of the period of employment; and

(b) if he was employed by the trustees of the British Museum and his contract of employment was terminated with a view to his being re-employed by the Board as from that day, he is not to be treated for the purposes of the Act of 1965 as having been dismissed by reason of redundancy.

(4) A period of employment excepted by this sub-paragraph is one which ended before the appointed day in consequence of termination of the employment, where there was made to the person in respect of that termination a payment in accordance with Part I of the Act of 1965, or under the Superannuation Acts or any enactment replaced by either of those Acts, or under any such arrangements as are mentioned in section 41(3) of the Act of 1965.").

I am very grateful to the noble Viscount for moving this Amendment. I am sure that it was right to put these subsections in the Bill rather than leaving the intention to the White Paper. It is always better to get all the facts and legal backing that one can into the Statutory Instrument rather than leaving it to the White Paper. Therefore, I am very glad that the Government have included the wording in the Bill.

While generally supporting this Amendment, I should like to enter one caveat: there has not been time for the British Museum administration, which deals with staff matters, to scrutinise the Amendment. I have no reason to suppose that they will have any comments on it but if they have I should be grateful if I may give them to the noble Viscount before the Report stage.

I have a simple question to ask which I am sure can be answered without reading the long brief. Would subsection (4) cover any echelon of service whatever position the staff are in so far as superannuation is concerned? I gather that that is safeguarded by subsection (4).

I hope so. I had better reserve the right to communicate with the noble Lord in case I am not exactly right.

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

moved Amendment No. 1:

Page 2, line 18, leave out ("(3)") and insert ("(4)").

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn. He has dealt with this matter in a wholehearted way, though he did not imply or suggest that he was very pleased about it. Of course, he still used the same bad argument he used last time; namely, that because there had not been a prosecution for obstructing, no obstruction was taking place and therefore there was really no need for a penalty at all—or for the right penalty. Well, we will not waste time on that. Furthermore, it was not until the noble Lord, Lord Reigate, logically saw that if one was going to do this for the medical inspector one ought to do it for the factory inspector that the penny dropped for the second time, and this time the noble Lord learnt wisdom and realised that he was on a losing ticket and that the noble Lord, Lord Reigate, was likely to carry his Amendment. This is a good example of co-operation and I am very grateful to Lord Reigate in this matter.

I do not propose to spend much time on this matter because in fact the Government have now done, rightly, what we want and have extended the Bill's provisions. This has meant some quite extensive amendment of the Bill. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has the Amendments right now. He has the best advice. But if I may turn to the Amendment by which provision is put in the Schedule, I assume that it is all right to have the heading to Schedule 1—

"Provisions of the Factories Act 1961 applying to give employment medical advisers certain powers of inspectors "—

and that he does not need to add "as amended by the Employment Medical Advisory Service Bill 1972". I take it that we have amended the 1961 Act by the noble Lord's new clause and I presume it still remains the 1961 Act. If he says so, I shall be content; if he says he will check that, I will still be content. It is a small point and doubtless the noble Lord has got it right. But we were told that one of the reasons why we could not do in the Bill what we wished to do was that the Schedule merely reproduced certain provisions of the 1961 Act and therefore was sacrosanct. Well, once the House had made its feelings known the noble Lord found that he could do it; and perhaps he was not too well advised on that. At any rate, I am grateful for this progress. I must say in fairness that some of the credit for it goes not merely to this side of the House but to the noble Lord, Lord Reigate, and some of his friends.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shackle ton, for his tribute. I should like to thank my noble friend for coming to heel, if I may put it that way. I noticed that he was rather lacking in his thanks to me for my efforts in provoking the elaborate series of Amendments which he has put before the House on this occasion. In looking at his Amendments, I must say, frankly, that I think my own, which was drafted by an expert draftsman, was far simpler and just as efficacious. But I will take my noble friend's advice that it is better done in the way he proposes to do it. The main point is that it should be done. On a previous occasion he gave three reasons why he could not possibly accept my Amendment, the most curious being the suggestion that there had not been any prosecution. I cannot wait for the day when someone comes to the House and says, "There have not been any prosecutions for treason for a little while; let us get rid of the penalty". That is quite the worst reason I ever heard.

Then my noble friend resisted the Amendment on the ground that it was anomalous. He ought to give me credit for being most helpful to him on that. I suppose that the worst of all the reasons was the suggestion that we ought to wait for the noble Lord, Lord Robens of Woldingham, to report. Even when Lord Robens has reported there will have to be legislation, and it is singularly ominous that Lord Robens has just published a book under the title, Ten Years' Stint. Therefore I think my noble friend ought to congratulate me on having taken time by the forelock and saved everybody a lot of trouble.

My Lords, I most willingly congratulate my noble friend on having tabled this Amendment. It has certainly focused our thoughts in what I know he regards as an entirely desirable way. I thought I had made it plain that what he did was entirely logical, and I thought that was itself a measure of tribute. To deal with the one point that he made, I never said that we did not need a penalty. At no time did I say that. What I said in arguing the case before was that it was less important to bring the penalty up to date because there had been no offences so far. Perhaps we may leave it at that. With regard to what the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has said, I am grateful for the way in which he has received this Amendment. With great respect, I still feel that there was not much between us. Nevertheless, our view was as it was expressed, and without the pressure that has been brought we would not have changed it. Let me leave it like that.

So far as the structure of the Bill is concerned, the alteration of the Long Title does make a difference, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, will agree. I would never go so far as to say that I am absolutely certain that we have done it right, but in view of what he has said we will certainly have another look at it before the next stage. I was myself convinced that what had been done was exactly what the noble Lord required.

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 2.

moved Amendment No. 3:

Page 3, line 5, at end insert—

("() The Secretary of State shall ensure that medical records of persons specified in subsection (6) above whose medical records are not in the possession of the local education authority by virtue of the fact that such persons have been educated independently, shall be made available on demand to an employment medical adviser, and the Secretary of State may by statutory instrument make an order to this effect.")

Could the noble Lord say whether the position is the same in the direct grant schools?

I am sorry, I do not know. I assume it is so. I do not know whether the direct grant schools which have links with local authorities come in this respect under the local education authority—perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn can help us on that. If it were so, the number becomes very much greater. My impression is that no great problem will arise in direct grant schools. It is in the case of the smaller independent schools where we want to make sure this is properly handled. I beg to move.

My Lords, I find it difficult to understand why it has been decided to discriminate against these children. If a child is sent to an independent school it certainly may not have been the child's choice: it was the parents' choice in the first place. Following some years in school the child is taken into some occupation. It is decided that, whereas the boy or girl working next to him who has been to a State school is not denied the full benefit of the Health Service because their health records are produced, this child who has been at an independent school is handicapped, in my opinion, in a very serious way. The child may be in a factory where there are certain industrial hazards which are known. Let us take dust hazards. It may be that this child has had a record of hay fever, asthma—diseases of that kind; and in such a case the record of the medical adviser on this child is of paramount importance. Indeed, later on we are coming to another Amendment on this clause, put down by my noble friend and myself, which is concerned with the examination of a worker and the right of that worker to be assisted by a trade union. Here the two things are linked together. I am hoping that the noble Lord will accept that second Amendment. We are advising that the worker should have a friend, a counsellor, a man who understands the importance of industrial diseases, present when the occupier of the factory is called upon by the medical adviser for an examination of the worker.

This boy or girl who has been at an independent school is to be denied all health records. It is quite incomprehensible to me. It seems to me that it is denying him or her elementary justice. To establish two kinds of workers at a factory, one who has his full health record and one denied it because he has been to an independent school, really cannot be supported. I hope very much that the noble Lord will reconsider this. It was raised on Second Reading, and the more one thinks about it the more one recognises that it would be grossly unjust not to accept this Amendment.

My Lords, I know very little about this subject, but it seems to me, as a layman, that everybody entering employment should be medically examined whether he has medical records in the State school or the independent school. I urge that this Amendment should be accepted.

My Lords, I cannot help rising for one moment to point out to your Lordships the humour in the situation, when Socialists are sticking up for the rights of old Etonians and old Harrovians who are suffering from these appalling diseases, pneumoconiosis, byssinosis, and so on, contracted as a result of the sub-standard occupations in which they have been involved, having worked in a quarry with the fumes and dust coming into their lungs causing serious diseases. My heart bleeds for these young men who are forced into occupations where they run such appalling risks. My heart bleeds for them even more when I hear Socialists pleading their case.

But I think there is a serious point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton. It would surely be anomalous, even if only a few individuals were involved, to leave out of protection this small minority. I must also ask the noble Lord the Minister to say definitely whether the implications raised by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, do apply to students from direct grant schools. If it were so, we should be talking not about a tiny problem but about many thousands of school-leavers who every year would be left out of the protection otherwise to be given under this Bill. But for the sake of uniformity, even if it were a tiny minority the noble Lord ought to take the opportunity of this Amendment to clear it up and put everyone on the same footing.

My Lords, I must take up the point of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. We are not protecting Etonians and Harrovians from pneumoconiosis and silicosis, suffered from working on an anthracite face in Ystradgynlais. We do not want them to go into that kind of job. But one must not think only of Eton and Harrow. There are some people whose money is young who, through some false idea of cheap snobbery, send their children to inadequate private schools and keep them there against their will until they are 15 or 16. I know what kind of education is given in some of these schools. A certain friend of mine was the only qualified mathematician and person holding a degree on the staff of a school with about 50 children from all over Britain. In a great many cases those children went direct to industry, and not in the higher echelons after going to university; but coming from a snobbish little private school that was not only not developing their minds but neglecting their bodies, too. Consequently there is a place for my noble friend's Amendment, and I am quite sure the Government will treat it—as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury did, after his little "crack"—with the seriousness which it undoubtedly deserves.

My Lords, does this Amendment seriously mean that in the case of a young person who has been to a school which employs no medical officer, and who has simply been under his or her own general practitioner, that general practitioner is expected to submit the whole of that person's records, at any rate so far as they can possibly apply to employment, before the person is employed? It seems to me that there is a difference. The school medical officer knows the reason for the keeping of his records, and he knows that as soon as the child is of an age to be employed the child will then pass out of his hands. The situation with regard to general practice is surely something quite different. I can imagine a large number of general practitioners who would be quite alarmed if they thought they were liable to get demands, backed up by Act of Parliament, to submit these persons' records. I think if the wording were that the employment medical advisory officer, whoever he is, should request an account of any illnesses which might affect certain kinds of person with regard to certain kinds of employment, that would be a reasonable thing to ask. However, I think that the way this Amendment is worded really will give rise to a great deal of difficulty.

My Lords, may I ask my noble friend how he expects the employment medical adviser to obtain information? After all, if the patient left his general pracitioner and went to another doctor, as my noble friend knows, the record is transferred to the next doctor. There is no question of that record being only in the hands of one doctor for the whole of the patient's life. It is transferred sometimes to two and perhaps three doctors. All we are asking is that, if it is only the record of the general practitioner, that record should be seen by another doctor—not the employer—in the factory, just as another doctor could see it if the patient transferred himself to another area.

My Lords, if I may say so, he does not transfer himself to two or three doctors at a time.

My Lords, first of all I should like to say that I am very grateful to the noble Lord for providing us with this opportunity of looking more closely than we had done at the practical aspects of the arrangements for enabling the E.M.A.S. to help pupils from independent schools. It is not always easy for a Minister to anticipate all the branches into which inquiries may go, but I can tell the noble Lord that in this case he has provided a focus for attention, and I personally have done my best to go into this as well as I could in the time. It is a subject, of course, that involves at least four Departments, and, as he says, it is not an unimportant point. There is no dispute about the importance of pupils who leave independent schools being able to have the same help from the Employment Medical Advisory Service as pupils who leave maintained schools. The question is how this can best be achieved. I hope the House will bear with me because this is a very complicated matter, and I am afraid that necessarily my response to the noble Lord must be complicated and somewhat lengthy.

As the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, said when he spoke about this during the Committee stage, the Bill provides for the school health service to co-operate with the Employment Medical Advisory Service. I stress the word "co-operate" because, although Clause 1(6) is expressed in terms of compulsory powers and, in the language of legislation, "requires school medical records to be furnished", it is essential if a service such as the E.M.A.S. is to be successful that there should be willing co-operation; the schools, the school medical officers, the young people themselves and their parents, and the future employers, must understand and appreciate how the I service can help them. Clause 1(6) therefore provides a statutory basis for a service which essentially depends on good co-operation. It is intended as a fallback provision, just in case anything should go wrong or a mistake should be made.

For maintained schools it is possible to express this requirement for co-operation in the terms provided for by Clause 1(6) because the legislative basis for complying with what is required already exists. There is a legislative requirement for a service of medical inspection and treatment—and the noble Lord, Lord Platt, has put his finger on this—and it is also a requirement of legislation that school medical officers, who are the employees of education authorities, shall keep records. It is therefore a simple matter for legislation to lay a duty on education authorities to require that the medical officers who work for them shall provide information from those medical records.

The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has already indicated that he is aware that the position is not so straightforward with non-maintained schools. There are in England and Wales, I am told, about 180 direct grant grammar schools, and just under 2,700 independent schools. About 1,600 of the independent schools admit only children of primary school age. There is great variation in the size of independent schools; nearly half have less than 100 pupils and just under a quarter have less than 50 pupils. There are both day and boarding schools. It is a requirement that direct grant schools—a "requirement", and this is in answer to the question put by the noble Lords, Lord Shackleton and Lord Avebury—shall provide a service of medical inspection comparable with that provided by the school health service, but there is no comparable requirement for independent schools in general, and there is no requirement about the keeping of school records either by direct grant or by independent schools.

In practice, many of these schools, and particularly the boarding schools, have well-developed arrangements for supervising the health of their pupils, and some have an arrangement with the local education authority—as the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, suspected—to do this on their behalf through the school health service. But these services are not based on the same legal requirements for a service or for record-keeping as exist for maintained schools.

The legal basis for any statutory requirement such as the Amendment proposes is further complicated by the fact that the contractual relationship between medical officers and independent schools is not the same as that of school medical officers to local education authorities. This, as the noble Lord, Lord Platt, has indicated, is important. I have no detailed knowledge of the arrangements between independent schools and their medical officers; I do know that they vary, and I also know that it is usual in the case of boarding schools for pupils to be on the National Health Service list of the school medical officer. This means that the school medical officer would then normally provide services for the pupil by virtue of his contract with the local executive council, and would be remunerated by the executive council for his services.

There is also other work, largely of a preventative and advisory nature, which falls outside the National Health Service for which the school medical officer may be under a direct contract to the school governors or proprietors and for which he may be remunerated separately. But he is not a "servant" of the school in the legal sense. Some school medical officers may keep school records independently of their patients' National Health Service records; but I have no certain information about this, and it is quite possible that the records of pupils may be kept with National Health Service records and go back with the pupil to his home general practitioner if he returns home when he leaves school, or on to whoever is responsible for his health if he goes on to higher education. This, I think, would be normal, as the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, has indicated. There are certainly complications here about what records the school medical officer who is also the pupil's general practitioner might be being asked to provide.

As I think the noble Lord has recognised both in what he said on March 23 and in the way in which he phrased his Amendment and what he said to-day, it would be difficult to draft legislation to fit the various circumstances under which independent schools provide medical services and to accord with existing legislative provision. If we are going to legislate, we should certainly need to do this by regulation so that the Department of Employment, together with the Department of Education and Science, the Department of Health and Social Services, and the Scottish Office, could look thoroughly at the legal and practical implications, and could carry out the necessary consultative processes, and could draft orders which were legislatively sound. But when all this process has been completed, one would probably be left with regulations which said little more than that when records existed they were to be produced.

I would hope that we could do better than this. We want independent schools to understand the service which the E.M.As. can offer, and to be willing themselves to make the sort of arrangements which will enable the E.M.As. to help pupils who may need advice on medical grounds about their future employment. Both the Department of Employment and the Department of Education and Science are proposing to set in train the consultative processes, and to make the organisation arrangements, which will ensure that independent schools are aware of the service and have an opportunity to co-operate with it. Part of this consultation process has already begun, and I think that this debate and the interest which the noble Lord has focused on the subject will speed it considerably. It has to be clearly understood that there are cases when one can legislate straight away for a denned purpose. There are other cases when one has to proceed by way of consultation and then to legislate in consequence. This consultation should now go forward. The Medical Officers of Schools Association has already said that it will make sure that its members are aware of the service.

Details have not yet been finalised, but arrangements will be made to ensure that employment medical advisers know of independent schools in their areas, that the schools know of the employment medical advisers, and that the schools and the employment medical advisers consider together how, under the medical arrangements prevailing in each school, which vary so much, the help of the employment medical adviser can best be made available. It is conceivable that in day schools this might be by liaison with a pupil's general practitioner on an informal and professional basis, in a way which parents and pupils would accept as being helpful, but which it might be quite inappropriate to provide for in legislation. The Department of Employment, the Department of Education and Science, the Department of Health and Social Security, and the Scottish Education Department certainly intend to do all that they can by administrative means to ensure that the spirit of Clause 1(6) is observed by pupils in independent schools.

I have been into this with the greatest of care, and I feel sure that in the circumstances which I have described we are more likely to achieve what we all want by administrative than by legislative action. Administrative action will enable the best possible arrangements to be made, according to the circumstances of individual schools, for ensuring that information is available about pupils who need help. We feel that enacting legislation of the sort proposed in the Amendment would do no more than apply compulsion to those independent schools where compulsion is least needed; that is, to those schools where records already exist which could be passed on. There could be no question of further amending this Bill to require independent schools to employ school medical officers and keep medical records. That would be a matter of amending the Education Acts. We are confident that what we all want can be obtained by administrative action, and I can assure the noble Lord that Government Departments concerned will do all they can to ensure this.

I hope that I have said enough to convince noble Lords that, in the first place, the whole essence of the Bill so far as the young person is concerned is that it will work by co-operation. There is a fall-back provision in Clause 1(6), but that would not help very much in the case of independent schools. For the reasons I have given, it certainly could not cover the whole field as matters are. But we are very conscious of the gap which exists in the system for those whose parents have decided that their children should be educated outside the system, and we are determined to overcome it so far as it is humanly possible to do so. No system is going to work perfectly and no doubt even with compulsory powers this will not work perfectly. But I believe that with the co-operation and the administrative arrangements which we intend to achieve, this will work more than satisfactorily. Does the noble Lord wish to interrupt?

My Lords, before the noble Lord concludes, may I raise one point about which I am anxious? He said that he will enter into consultations but, as he said, there are so many independent schools which cover a vast network. In addition to the ordinary public schools which come under the Headmasters' Conference, there are the schools which the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, has mentioned—the fly-by-night establishments which cater for particular needs. I am anxious about the schools which cater for mentally and physically handicapped children. So far as I am aware, there is no body which represents them in the same way as the Headmasters' Conference represents the well-established public schools. So although the noble Lord said—and I quite accept it—that extensive consultations will be entered into between the Deparment of Employment, the Department of Education and Science, other Ministries responsible and independent schools of various kinds, I wonder whether he can tell me what body it is possible to enter into consultation with in respect of schools for the mentally and physically handicapped.

My Lords, I should have thought that handicapped children were virtually completely covered at present. In the first place, one has the local authority schools and then one has the private schools. I believe that some of those are "recognised as efficient" and, even in the case of those which are simply registered, there has to be the consent of the Minister for every pupil to go into such a school. They will be very amply followed through, so I really do not think one needs to worry on that score. It is not that kind of case with which the Bill seeks to deal. It seeks to deal with the kind of case where it is plain, from a person's medical state and history, that he is not suited for certain kinds of job. The form that is made out by the school health service is a very simple one, which simply states the kinds of job for which a pupil is not suited. That goes to the careers officer who in due course also receives from employers lists of people taken on. He will compare the names of school leavers in respect of whom there is a Y.9 form with those on the lists. In that way the employment medical adviser will be able to see whether any of the children have been taken on for unsuitable occupations.

But in the first place, before one gets to that stage, in the last year before leaving school the school health service will have identified those children, will have made out the Y.9 forms—a copy of which will have gone both to the employment medical adviser and to the child's own doctor—and there will have been ample consultation. They will all know the sort of jobs which they ought not to go in for. It is that kind of service—and it is all done on a voluntary basis—that we also want to see provided for the independent schools. All I am saying is that we cannot make a blueprint for it, partly because the circumstances vary so much in the different kinds of schools, and partly because no consultation has yet been carried out, and it will be a matter of consultation to find out how the best results can be achieved for the different categories of schools.

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, who has obviously taken a great deal of trouble over this matter and has gone into it fully in a way which he was not able to do when he replied during the Committee stage. I feel bound to draw the attention of the House to the fact that the noble Lord has not found a solution to this problem, and that what he is seeking to do is to rely on voluntary co-operation—and I entirely agree that all this legislation requires good voluntary co-operation. But, my Lords, those of us who had to administer the Factory Acts, whether the persons concerned were individual firms' medical advisers or personnel officers, know that the law, even if the sanctions are never invoked, provides a firm base which ensures that the requirements are carried out. Under this Bill we are removing a very important safeguard with regard to young people, and we are substituting something else which is sensible, though I am bound to say that I have some slight doubts, even in this respect, about the school medical records. I have known of cases where the statutory medical examination by a firm's doctor has revealed a condition which was not previously known. This is a serious point, and before we dispense with something that is an important safeguard to individuals and a wise requirement, we want to make sure that what takes its place is satisfactory.

I find it very difficult to understand why it is necessary to make statutory provision, instead of leaving it to voluntary co-operation, in the area of State education, where it is most easy to obtain the co-operation, yet it is not sought to have powers to deal with this much more ill-defined area of the independent schools. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, gave some helpful figures about the size of the schools, and there is no doubt that in a large number of them there will be no real medical service at all; and even in the large schools, like the public schools, it is very likely that the school doctor will be a general practitioner, and he will be asked, presumably, if it is going to be by co-operation, to produce medical information to give, as my noble friend said, to another doctor. It is not proposed that it should be given to an employer. I see the difficulties about requiring doctors in general practice to do this, and I am well aware of the defectiveness in this respect of my Amendment. But what gave me the greatest alarm was that, while the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, said that the Ministry of Education and the Department of Employment were considering the matter very fully—and I do not doubt that they have given a great deal of thought to it—he made no mention of the Minister of Health; and of course it will be from the general practitioner that this information will have to come.

My Lords, if your Lordships will forgive me for intervening I specifically mentioned the Health Service twice over. I admit that I did not mention the Scottish Health Service, though I did mention Scottish education.

The noble Lord certainly mentioned the Health Service, but he said at one point words to the effect that the Department of Education and the Department of Employment were working on this. However, I do not want to make much of this.

I am bound to say that I do not regard the situation as satisfactory. I should very much have liked to accept the noble Lord's assurance, but he knows, as I myself know from experience in the past, that ministerial assurances, however sincere and however well meant, do not necessarily achieve administrative results. I should like to take this Amendment to a Division. If this Amendment is inadequate, it is open to the Government to do something about it—and the noble Lord found he managed it quite easily on the other Amendment that we carried on Committee stage against his advice. For instance, it may be that he ought to provide in the Bill that all school-children whose records are not available should be especially examined. The noble Lord has given us no assurance on that. If he had, this would have met the case and we should not need this Amendment.

I would urge my noble friends, as well as other noble Lords, who have been very helpful, to support this Amendment. We do not approach this in a par

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 5 formally.

moved Amendment No. 6:

After Clause 4 insert the following new clause

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for explaining the purpose of her Amendment, because frankly we were rather mystified about what she had in mind. I have had a little difficulty in relating what she has been saying to what is actually in the Amendment. I have no reason to doubt that it would be a good thing in some circumstances to have expert trade union advice and someone accompanying an individual who was to be examined. But this is not what the Amendment says. I have looked at this Amendment carefully to see what would be achieved by accepting it. So far as I can see, the provisions in Clauses 3 and 4 do not lend themselves to consultation between employers and trade unions. Subsections (1) and (2) of Clause 3 obviously do not. Subsection (3) has as its purpose solely to confer on the chief employment medical adviser powers similar to those at present exercised under regulations by the chief inspector of factories to approved medical practitioners, other than appointed factory doctors, who may carry out medical examinations for the purposes of the regulations. The authorisation of the works medical officer to carry out periodic examinations prescribed by regulations under the Factories Act does not seem to be a matter upon which an employer could properly consult representatives of the trade union. It would be a matter for the professional judgment of the chief employment medical adviser.

The Amendment would not in any way affect any other powers conferred by regulations on the chief inspector of factories, I am advised, nor does it extend them to the chief employment medical adviser, because of the effect of Schedule 1. Schedule 4 to the Factories Act sets out the procedure for making special regulations where it involves publication in the London Gazette and in such manner as the Secretary of State may think best adapted for informing persons of a notice of his proposal to make regulations and of the time within which objections may be made. This is the procedure under Clause 3. Again there seems to be no real scope for consultation. The procedure is completely established.

As to Clause 4, the only point on which I thought there might be consultation between employer and trade unions is the time and place of the medical examination which an employment medical adviser gives notice that he intends to conduct. That hardly seems to be a suitable subject, either, for consultation.

But that is the whole point.

If that is the whole point, then I am afraid that I have not yet seized it—

That is obvious.

—because subsection (3) says that the employment medical adviser, in issuing a notice under subsection (1),

"shall name the place where a medical examination is to be conducted."

This is the notice of the employment medical adviser and it is not a matter for consultation between the employer and the trade unions. It is not a matter for consultation, I should have thought, and I find difficulty in understanding what is to be gained.

May I interrupt the noble Lord? This is really the nub of the whole matter. It is a matter of concern to workers where examinations take place and the circumstances, and so on, and whether the accommodation is right. Admittedly there are various steps which they may take. All we are saying is that it is sensible to consult on this sort of case. It may be said that nothing is achieved but in that case the noble Lord does not believe in consultation at all.

Surely, if we read what is said here, the word "place" does not mean a room or accommodation. It means whether the examination is to be at the factory or at a hospital or clinic. That is what is intended. I should not have thought there was much scope there for consultation. As I said, we did not fully understand what the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, and the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, had in mind. We shall have another look at it to see whether there is here a point which we feel should be met. I confess that I failed to anticipate this point and I still do not understand and should like to discuss it further. I do not understand what good purpose would be served by consultation within the terms of the Bill as at present drafted. Perhaps it might be convenient if we had a further word together. We need not debate the whole thing, but I should like to know exactly what the noble Baroness has in mind and how she would like to see this carried out. If she would like to do so, we might meet and discuss this matter, but at present I find difficulty in accepting the Amendment without further consideration with the Department.

The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, was a little more conciliatory than on the last Amendment. I, and I am sure my noble friend, would be the first to accept that an Amendment of this kind drafted in Opposition without the resources to carry out a good deal of research is liable neither to be explicit nor entirely satisfactory.

Here there is a real problem, and it may well be that we were wrong to confine this Amendment purely to Clauses 3 and 4. We might have said "on the implementation of the Act" in so far as it affected the workers in a particular factory. There are a number of possibilities. As I understand it, the point which my noble friend was making seems to be valid as an area for possible consultation. The theory about how this works is perfectly clear, particularly where there is a known health hazard. For instance, there may be a suspicion of lead poisoning, of which there have been examples recently. Then there is a good deal of anxiety on the part of the workers. The purpose of the Amendment, adequate or otherwise, relates first to the arrangement to which my noble friend referred; but it is possible also that a medical adviser may wish to carry out certain tests on an extensive scale. At this point, if anxiety exists, it would be proper (I assume that good management would do this anyway but they might not) to have consultations.

The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, did not refer to the Government's own code of practice which states that management and employee representatives should make the best use of the arrangements for consultation about safety and health. This is an aspect of health and they have told us that their Industrial Relations Act is such a wonderful thing and that the code is a wonderful thing. We put down the Amendment with some trepidation on my part about referring to that ill-begotten Act to encourage them to carry out the principles to which they attach importance.

I do not blame the noble Lord for not fully understanding the Amendment, but I am surprised that some of his officials did not understand it. They have had experience of dealing with Amendments. It has been perfectly clear to those with whom I have consulted in industry and in the trade unions, so I hope that the noble Lord will consider whether there is some way in which we can give expression to the desirability of consultation on health matters. My noble friend Lady Summerskill's examples explained one obvious and important aspect—and I think there are others—which justify the sort of consultation that we seek to achieve.

My Lords, in view of what the noble Lord has said, I will not press this Amendment to a Division. But the noble Lord does not seem to have understood it. The more I read it, the more elementary it seems to me. And if the noble Lord did not understand it, I regret that he did not come to me in the House and say: "I do not understand this Amendment. Can you explain it to me?" We could then have had a discussion and threshed it out beforehand, instead of having to do so here. The duly of an employer to consult representatives of workers seems to me to be so obvious. In view of the fact that it is related to Clause 4, which says that medical examinations of persons employed in factories, dare I say, with all respect to the hardworking Minister, who I think has too much put on his shoulders and therefore has not sufficient time to examine some of these details, that perhaps the difficulty has arisen because he and his advisers have found it quite impossible to identify themselves with the unfortunate worker and with the trade unions. However, I accept the noble Lord's offer, and we will discuss the matter behind the scenes on another occasion. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 7.

My Lords, I take it that the noble Lord has not yet had time to get the answer to my question whether the Schedule needs further amendment. It occurs to me that he may have done so, but if not I will not press it.

My Lords, I am afraid that I have not had time to get an answer.

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 8.

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 9.

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 10.

My Lords, I beg to move that the Farm Capital Grant (Variation) Scheme 1972, which was laid before this House on March 16, be approved. The Scheme covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and it may be convenient to your Lordships if my remarks are also addressed to the Farm Capital (Variation) (Scotland) Scheme 1972, since its content is similar.

These Schemes give effect to the changes in the arrangements for the farm capital grants which were announced with the results of the 1972 Annual Review at the beginning of March. The Schemes continue the higher rates for field drainage which, like the rates for other works and facilities, were to have been reduced by 10 percentage points for application after March 18, 1972. They also provide for the termination of the grants for certain minor items unless approval was applied for by March 31.

As your Lordships will recall, the grant rates were increased by the last Government as a temporary measure for two years from March, 1970. Their action was taken at a time when capital investment was lagging, partly because of credit difficulties, and also because farmers were finding it increasingly hard to finance investment out of income. To-day the industry is in a more favourable situation: incomes are higher, credit is cheaper and easier and taxation less onerous. There is now greater confidence among farmers, and the temporary need for higher rates of grant for all items has therefore passed.

But, my Lords, there is still a need to give special encouragement to field drainage, which is of fundamental importance both for expanding production and for maintaining the fertility and structure of our soil. Of all the possibilities of increasing the productivity from the actual land itself, proper and efficient—and improved—drainage stands out as being the one thing that, when every other factor is constant, will result in improved output, and there are many farms, and very many acres, whose output is being directly and specifically curtailed by lack of adequate and effective drainage. But drainage—and I mean proper and complete drainage—is of course expensive. I pay tribute to the Party of noble Lord opposite, who when they were in Government increased the drainage grant from 50 per cent. to 60 per cent. I believed then—and I believe now—that this was the right move, because there-after the farmer did not have just an equal stake with the Government in drainage, but he had a definite and direct incentive to undertake the heavy capital expenditure which drainage necessitates. In England and Wales alone it is esti mated that there are still about 7 million acres of land which could benefit from under-drainage.

Over the past ten years the annual acreage under-drained in England and Wales as a result of grant-aided schemes has roughly doubled. The acreage under-drained during 1970–71 had reached nearly 200,000 acres, at a cost of £6·3 million. Comparable figures for the following year, 1971–72, are 233,000 acres, at a cost of £7·4 million. But we need to maintain this impetus. If the higher rates of grant were not continued it might well become more difficult to convince farmers, and particularly those in the traditional grassland areas, that drainage deserves a very high priority in any plans for investment, both in order to facilitate an extension of arable crops and in order to enable the grass itself to be fully exploited. These Variation Schemes therefore amend the principal Schemes in order to continue the present enhanced rates for field drainage. These will remain at 60 per cent. for field drainage work and 70 per cent. if the work is for the benefit of hill land. So far as the Exchequer is concerned, the continuance of the higher rates on field drainage in the United Kingdom is estimated to increase the annual cost of the grant by about £2 million.

It will, I think, be generally accepted that field drainage deserves this high priority in its present condition. But farming conditions have changed since grants for farm improvements were originally introduced, and we have therefore considered whether expenditure of public money is still called for on various relatively minor items. My right honourable friend concluded that grant was no longer justified in certain cases. The Scheme therefore specifies seven items for which grant has been ended in so far as lowland farms are concerned. These items are sheep and cattle grids; fencing; shelter belts; hedge removal; land clearance and reclamation (but excluding orchard grubbing); ploughing, destruction of cover for rabbits and claying and marling. To qualify for grants on these items applications for approval must have been made on or before March 31. However, before applications ceased to be accepted a period of notice was given, to allow farmers who already had plans in hand to get in their applications. Farmers throughout the country made very good use of this opportunity. The annual savings from the ending of the grant on these minor items will come to less than the figure of some £2 million, which will be required for the continuance of the higher drainage grant.

My Lords, I said that the grant on these items will no longer be available to lowland farms. Nevertheless, we intend that hill farmers shall still be able to get a 50 per cent. grant for the works that concern them, just as would have been the case if the separate items had not been terminated. The Variation Schemes therefore extend the list of works and facilities covered by the special hill item, which is Item 13 of Schedule 2 to the main Schemes. Although the ploughing grants are not specifically mentioned as being continued for the hills, I would point out that ploughing work of a capital nature will continue to qualify in the hills as "regeneration of grassland" or "reclamation of land", which are already mentioned in the hill item.

I should like to refer briefly to the technical amendment contained in paragraph (2)(a) of the Variation Scheme for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Its purpose is simply to correct a minor printing error in paragraph (3)(1)(a) of the principal Scheme. These Schemes are designed to secure the right priorities in the expenditure under the farm capital grants so that assistance is concentrated where it is most needed. The capital grants are of course only one aspect of the support arrangements for agriculture, but in conjunction with the Annual Review Award and the steps being taken to strengthen the market for farm produce. I believe they will help our farmers and landowners to achieve an expansion of production and an improvement in their returns. My Lords, I beg to move.

My Lords, I wish to thank the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, for the very detailed statement which he made—so detailed in part, I am afraid, that I shall have to be content to wait until I read it to-morrow in order that it may sink in—but I am sure that those of your Lordships who are more directly concerned with farming than I am will appreciate the value of some of these statistics quoted by the noble Earl.

Towards the end of his remarks he used words, which are now becoming familiar from this Government, about "concentrating the aid where it is most needed". These words have perhaps a less happy connotation when they are directed to rents of houses than in other directions. It is not for me to quarrel with anything that the Government may do when they decide that certain grants which have hitherto been paid to farmers are not now needed and propose to withdraw them, though it is a certain satisfaction to me to know that they continue for hill land, which has perhaps a proportionately greater importance in Scotland than South of the Border. I found myself very substantially in agreement with the noble Earl's references to grants for drainage. He indicated that the arrangements made under the last Government, by which these grants would be available for two years until 1972, are now being continued. I am not certain whether the noble Lord meant that these grants are to be continued indefinitely or for a further limited period. Perhaps he can clarify that for me.

The only other thing I wish to say concerns items which are now being dropped in paragraph (2)(b)(i) and which are being added by paragraph (2)(c) to paragraph 13 of Schedule 2 so that they may continue to apply to hill land. I am a little mystified by some of the wording. When one reads that the grant will be continued for items like

"the removal of hedges, tree roots, boulders or other like obstructions …"

what other obstruction can be like a boulder or a tree root? I presume in fact that the "other obstructions" may be the alternatives not merely to boulders but to the various things which come before them. I have become very much infected with the views of the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, who does not like to see strange or unnecessary words in legislation. Quite frankly, I wonder what useful purpose is served by including the word "like" here. Presumably what is meant is that any obstruction which is likely to interfere with work which would otherwise be done is to be provided for—or are we to understand that unless something can establish some kind of identity or similarity with a tree root or boulder it is an obstruction which the farmer must put up with and that he will not get any grant for its removal? I hope that the noble Earl can answer the first and more serious point and let me know what "a like obstruction" is. I should like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth that I do not intend to repeat any of these remarks on the Scottish Scheme, which I am prepared to accept follows the English one.