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

The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how far they and NATO are associated with the proposal that the U.S.A. Navy should have a home port in Greece.

My Lords, these negotiations are a bilateral matter between the Governments of Greece and the United States.

But nevertheless, my Lords, are not NATO and the British Government involved? Is not Greece a member of NATO, and is it not rather a mockery that a State which the Guardian has described as "a Fascist one-man show" should be a member of NATO, which claims to stand for a free world and democracy?

My Lords, Greece is very important to the Western Alliance, and Greece is very well aware of our views about her internal arrangements which are, of course, her affair.

My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that many of us who believe in NATO as a bastion of democracy against the Communists take the view that the defence of democracy would be much stronger in Greece if Greece were again allowed to become democratic?

My Lords, we are all hopeful that Greece will be restored to full democratic processes; but I remember that it was also the view of the last Government that it would not benefit the Greek people in any way were we to undermine Greece's position in NATO, which would jeopardise the security of the Alliance as a whole.

My Lords, does not the noble Baroness's reply to my Question indicate that military strength is being placed before principle in this matter? Can she say what response has been made to the resolution of the North Atlantic Assembly that we should use our influence towards securing political freedom in Greece?

My Lords, as I think I said earlier, Greece is very well aware of our hope that she will restore the full democratic process.

My Lords, would not the noble Baroness agree that it gives little advantage to our trade with any country to be continually criticising the Government of that country, which, after all, is a matter of decision by that country and not by other Parliaments?

My Lords, my noble friend is quite correct: it is an internal matter for the Government of Greece. Nevertheless, we do wish it to be known that our views on the subject are clear.

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

The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of the quite extraordinary popularity of the Tutankhamun Exhibition at the British Museum and the consequent difficulty of enjoying it at leisure, they will discuss with the Trustees the possibility of keeping the Exhibition open until 2 a.m., making such additional charges as will generously compensate those members of the Museum staff thereby affected.

My Lords, it is for the Trustees alone to decide whether longer opening hours for the exhibition are desirable and practicable, having regard to strain upon the staff and other factors.

My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount for that reply. Does he not think that the strain on the staff is a matter which could possibly be dealt with by giving the staff the adequate recompense, or the more than adequate recompense, which I suggest? Would he not also agree that although, naturally, the ultimate decision must rest with the Trustees, this is a matter which directly concerns everyone in this country and one in which the Government might legitimately intervene in this way?

My Lords, while of course wishing to leave the decision entirely to the Trustees, I know that this exhibition is in the middle of the Museum and therefore the security of the whole Museum has to be looked after while the exhibition is open. I also know that security depends on the staff being alert, and if they had this extra strain put on them I doubt whether they would be. Further, at 2 a.m. there is no public transport to take them home.

My Lords, would the Government use their good offices to see whether the opening time for the exhibition could be extended within the normal Museum hours?

My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that while the Trustees would be prepared to consider any proposal, there are very great difficulties indeed in extending the hours of the Museum, owing to the strain on the warders, who are now on duty for eleven hours a day, and also, as the Minister pointed out, because of the requirements of security in the whole Museum while the exhibition is open?

My Lords, we very much appreciate what the Chairman of the Trustees has just told us. In view of the great public demand, is there any way of appointing additional members of the staff and so easing things? Would the Government be prepared to make a financial contribution to that end?

My Lords, finance does not enter into it because the whole cost of the exhibition is met out of the admission fees and the sale of catalogues. It is hoped that a good profit will be made to give to the Temples at Philae. I think that I must leave staff matters to the Trustees.

My Lords, I welcome the disposition of the noble Viscount to leave matters to the Trustees. But would it be illegitimate to suggest that this is a situation which might be coped with if there were more expensive days as well as less expensive days, the present position being that access to the Museum seems to be at the disposal chiefly of those who have time to spend rather than money?

My Lords, I am very glad to have the support of the noble Lord for raising the charges, but I think that when there is such a public demand and the entrance fee is 50p, it would be looked at rather badly if it were even higher than that on one day.

My Lords, would not the noble Viscount agree that so far as security is concerned—and I quite understand that the exhibition is in the middle of the Museum—the cost of putting up trellis around the exhibition room which could be padlocked at night could easily be recovered the first time that the exhibition was opened?

My Lords, we are getting interesting suggestions and details. May I suggest to the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, that he has a word with the noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan?

My Lords, does not the noble Viscount think that if the exhibition were kept open until 2 a.m., as is suggested in the Question, at that hour many of the visitors might be in very high spirits so that very special precautions to protect the exhibits might have to be taken?

, My Lords, I do not think that visitors to the British Museum are in that class.

My Lords, may I ask the Viscount to be good enough to answer my supplementary question? It was whether the Government would use their good offices to see whether arrangements could be made, in co-operation with the Egyptian Government and Trustees of the British Museum, for the period of the exhibition to be extended within the normal hours.

My Lords, I apologise for not remembering the noble Lord's supplementary question. The period is part of the Treaty made between the Egyptian Government and the British Museum and the Treaty would have to be renegotiated before a further extension could be made. If that were possible I should be very glad.

My Lords, if consideration is given to renegotiating with the Egyptian Government, may I ask my noble friend whether at the same time consideration can he given to having this exhibition in Scotland for a period?

What about Wales?

My Lords, I fully appreciate my noble friend's desire to see this exhibition outside London, but the security problem involved is very great indeed and I think that such negotiations would meet with great difficulties.

My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether he would not consider it sensible not to consider possible extension of the exhibition until some time—shall we say four months or so?—has elapsed, when we can see how things go?

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord.

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

The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have accepted or rejected the recommendation of the Advisory Committee on Police in Northern Ireland that, with certain amendments, the Scottish system of independent public prosecutors should be adopted in Northern Ireland.

My Lords, the Prosecution of Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 1972, which will be considered by your Lordships later to-day, makes changes in the system of prosecutions in Northern Ireland following on the recommendations contained in the Reports of the Advisory Committee on Police in Northern Ireland (Cmd. 535) and the Working Party on Public Prosecutions (Cmd. 554). When these changes have been fully implemented police officers will no longer act as prosecutors in magistrates' courts except in respect of minor offences.

My Lords, while I thank the noble Lord for that Answer, does it mean that the Government accept the recommendation of Lord Hunt's Committee on this point?

My Lords, the principle behind the recommendation is accepted. The principle was that there should be a system of independent public prosecutions. The form of the suggestion, that it should be modelled on the Scottish system, has been adapted in the light of the report of the Working Party presided over by Mr. John MacDermott.

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend the Leader of the House, I beg to move the Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, your Lordships will be aware that at the conclusion of the debate on the Motion for Second Reading on Thursday, April 27, a Division was called, and as it appeared that fewer than 30 Lords had voted, in accordance with Standing Order No. 55 the noble Lord on the Woolsack declared that the Question was not decided and that the debate therefore stood adjourned until to-day. I hope that your Lordships will be prepared to allow the Question to be put forthwith. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.

My Lords, the position is that the Companion visualises the possibility of the continuation of a debate in circumstances where the Question has not been decided. I do not propose to repeat all the arguments or to go at great length into a discussion. I should like to express my sympathy with the Government Chief Whip. I am bound to say, from what I know of the occasion, that it was not entirely his fault. But by his wisdom the debate was adjourned, and it is possible for us, in rather unusual circumstances, to review what happened on the previous occasion.

It is worth noting that the majority of speeches were against the Bill. There were admirable speeches from my noble friends Lord Sainsbury, Lord Shepherd and others. I am only sorry that one noble Lord (I do not see him present so I shall not mention his name; but it is one of the reasons why I wanted to speak) saw fit to suggest that my noble friend Lady Stocks was opposed to this Bill because she made a great name for herself with the B.B.C. I think that was an unworthy suggestion, which I am sure the House will agree should be rebutted. Perhaps in these circumstances I should declare an interest, because I was once a B.B.C. producer in Northern Ireland, where we had a great deal of local radio and where I am bound to say the membership of a large corporation gave a degree of independence from pressure groups. One needs to be aware of the danger of log-rolling. There is one particular issue to which I should like to refer. I believe that the importance of the independence of producers is quite fundamental, and there are doubts whether the Bill will achieve this. I say this, notwithstanding the fact that I regard the recent B.B.C. series on the Empire as intellectually contemptible. None the less, that is a price that we pay for this sort of freedom.

A second point is that a number of criticisms were made about the possibility of a monopoly situation on the part of the newspapers. Practically every speaker from the Back Benches made criticisms of these proposals. I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Fleet, said that the suggestion that newspaper influence would result in slanting the news was not true. This is one of the occasions after a debate, when, luckily, we can see what the newspapers said. Looking at The Times report, I can only say that it was so selective that noble Lords like the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, my noble friend Lady Phillips and the noble Lord, Lord Denham, were not reported at all, and of the two columns devoted to the debate one column was given, by an extraordinary coincidence, to the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Fleet. I would not accuse the noble Lord (I am glad to see he is here), because I know that he does not seek to control his editors in these matters, but gives them freedom: and that I absolutely accept. None the less, it does cause some of us a little concern. With those few remarks, I can only say that we shall seek to do something about this Bill in Committee.

My Lords, I ask the indulgence of the House to raise a point of order. Without suggesting that the House would not wish to hear, or would not benefit from, the intervention of the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, may I point out that the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack had already put the Question, and the custom in accordance with the past has always been that subsequent speakers have to give way to the Lord Chancellor?

My Lords, may I say from the Woolsack, because I think it affects me in my capacity as Speaker, that I did not put the Question. I proposed the Question after a Motion had been moved, which I am bound to do, but I did not attempt to collect the voices because the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, rose.

My Lords, I would suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, that he should give consideration to the astuteness of the editorial direction of The Times in picking out the very important contribution which I made in the debate. I am fully experienced in this business, and the noble Lord is not, and I think it was most important that the things I said should be recorded in full.

My Lords, as one who has not spent his life in Parliamentary procedure and is therefore somewhat unversed in some of its subtleties, I would call the attention of the House to another occurrence which happened on Thursday night, namely, the simple fact that the Government, on the Second Reading of a Bill of their own making, failed to get that Second Reading because their own supporters were not sufficiently interested in the Bill to turn up in numbers in order to vote for it. Therefore we are now asked to meet again. Standing Orders are quite clear that there can be a further debate on the subject and anyone who spoke on Thursday can say his piece again. At any rate, we are now here, no doubt with a whipped up majority of noble Lords who were not here to hear a most interesting debate, in which speeches for and against the Bill were made in various parts of the House. Those noble Lords missed the important speech of the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Fleet, among many other notable speeches. On this matter, for which there is clearly so little enthusiasm—in fact almost none at all; not enough to make a quorum at 7 o'clock in the evening—I have no doubt that we are going to pass the Second Reading and devote an enormous amount of Parliamentary time on Committee and later stages of the Bill. My Lords, having made my remarks, I will now sit down and keep silent.

My Lords, I am very glad to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Platt, was able to be present throughout the debate and to hear all the interesting speeches. I feel that perhaps some other noble Lords would have liked to be able to do the same. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has in fact put his finger on the situation by expressing sympathy, which we much appreciate, with those on this side of the House and I am glad that your Lordships will not wish to continue this debate for very long to-day.

On the several points that have been made, perhaps I might start with that raised by the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Fleet. So far as selectivity is concerned, this was perhaps a trifle disappointing for me because I was given only two sentences on the B.B.C.'s "Today in Parliament". As for the noble Lord's own coverage, I am sure this was most adequate and entirely righteous. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, raised a point concerning the independence of producers. This is of course a permanent matter of concern to all those connected with the broadcasting media and it is here that we shall particularly rely on the experience of the new I.B.A. when it comes into being. This is not really a matter for the Government. The monopoly of newspapers is a subject about which I expect we shall hear a good deal more in Committee. When Amendments appear, they will be given the most earnest consideration by noble Lords on this side. To-day perhaps I may leave the matter there until that stage is reached. Meanwhile I hope that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading.

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

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 Employment Medical Advisory Service 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. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.

My Lords, in moving that the Bill do now pass, may I recall that at the Committee stage we had some discussion about the reduction in the cost of the Bill from nearly £1 million given in the Financial Memorandum of the original Bill to an estimate of about £850,000 stated in the Financial Memorandum to this Bill. Fears were expressed that the Government were contemplating economies which might be to the detriment of the service given under the Bill. I explained that the reduction in the estimates was due in the main to a reduction in the estimated cost of laboratory services. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, asked me to look further into the matter and suggested that at a later stage in the Bill I should amplify what I had said. Both estimates were necessarily approximate and in the interval there have been changes in the numbers and types of staff. But I confirm that the main reason for the decrease lies in the substantial reduction in laboratory costs from £200,000 to £75.000. I wrote to the noble Lord giving him the reasons for the reduction in some detail, but he suggested—and I agree—that it may be of interest to your Lordships if I summarise the main points.

Of the four main sorts of work involved —X-rays, hæmatology, cytology and biochemical tests—there have been reductions in the cost of all except hæmatology, where there has been a substantial increase. Chest X-rays are required when there is any fear that a worker's lungs have been damaged by dust. The cost of additional X-rays for the new Service was first estimated at £15,000 but is now estimated at £10,000. The main reason for this reduction is that X-rays for a survey of asbestos workers which were included in the first estimate have now been excluded becauses the survey is already in train and the casts should therefore not he attributed to the new Service. £12,000 was included in the earlier estimates for cytology; that is, checking the urine for any evidence of bladder cancer. But this is already being done under the Carcinogenic Substances Regulations.

The major reduction in cost lies in the biochemical tests, which include all the tests on biological samples for the amount of industrial materials such as lead or mercury or of metabolites of industrial materials that they contain. The estimated cost of additional work in this field has fallen from £160,000 to £35,000. The main reason for this reduction lies in the decision to use estimations of blood lead in the supervision of lead workers rather than the excretion of coproporphyrin in the urine. This new method of estimating blood lead has been developed in the laboratory of the Medical Services Division, and can be done more cheaply and more quickly than the estimation of coproporphyrin, especially when the technical difficulties of transport of specimens of urine are taken into account. The introduction of this new method results in a saving of at least £100,000 in the laboratory costs of the National Health Service even allowing for some additional equipment and staff for the Department of Employment's laboratory.

To sum up, the short answers on the reduction in costs are that the saving of £125,000 in the costs to the National Health Service of providing additional laboratory facilities to the new Service is mostly a real saving in public expenditure and is due in a very great part to the development of new methods by the Medical Services Division of the Department of Employment, to some extent to more careful estimates, and scarcely at all to any reduction in the programme of work proposed for the new Service.

During the discussion on the Report stage of the Bill the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, moved an Amendment requiring consultation with representatives of trade unions or other organisations on the implementation of Clauses 3 and 4. I pointed out that these clauses really present very little scope for consultation, but what the noble Baroness and the noble Lord Lord Shackleton, were quite properly anxious about was that there should he the fullest consultation between employment medical advisers and workers or their representatives. I would assure them that the Department fully accepts that there should be, and intends to ensure that there shall be, such consultation. The Bill makes it quite clear that the employment medical adviser must advise trade unions and individual workers about any health problems arising from their employment. This is spelled out in Clause 1(9), which was amended in another place to meet this very point. These relations with trade unions are not limited to consultation at headquarters with trade unions; they also include consultation on the shop floor. I realise that Clause 1(9) may not, at first reading, give this impression, hut throughout the Bill the bare legal phrases cannot fully reveal, or perhaps even suggest, the administrative arrangements which will give practical effect to the measure. There is nothing new about this. Factory inspectors already have instructions to make contact with trade union representatives and shop stewards when they carry out a general inspection. This practice is followed by medical advisers wherever it is appropriate and indeed a great deal of talking at this level does go on. Medical advisers will be instructed to do the same.

The noble Baroness was also concerned that trade unions should be involved where medical examinations were carried out, whether in the factory or elsewhere. The medical examinations which employment medical advisers will carry out as part of their duties will include tests, both those required under factory regulations (for example, hæmoglobins in lead workers, X-rays for compressed air workers) and those which are done on a voluntary basis, for example, on workers), and those who are done on or benzene. Any worker may refuse to have a medical examination, statutory or otherwise. Where a statutory examination is arranged, the results have to be entered in the health registers which the employer is required by Statute to keep. Disclosure of results is governed by normal medical ethics. As for disclosure to a worker who has been examined, the Department has already prepared administrative instructions for employment medical advisers to ensure that each worker is informed of the results of his examination, and that where the employment medical adviser thinks it the right thing to do, he is given specific details (for example, blood lead) and that the employment medical adviser should ensure that he understands the significance of the results. Indeed the chief employment medical adviser has prepared a leaflet explaining the significance of various levels of blood lead for the employment medical adviser to give to a worker whom he examines who works in lead processes.

Administrative instructions also require the employment medical adviser to tell employers in general terms of the opinions which they have formed as a result of an examination they have carried out, and the same information is given to the appropriate trade union representatives. Such opinions must be confined to matters arising out of or in the course of employment or affecting the suitability of individuals for employment in particular work or processes. Clinical details about individual workers, however, must not be disclosed without the individual's consent. It is possible that the results of medical examinations or the opinions based upon them might imply criticism of environmental conditions. But it is the factory inspectorate, not the employment medical advisers, who are responsible for the supervision of the environment. Where an employment medical adviser thinks that the results of his medical examinations indicate that action to improve the environment is needed, he will get in touch with the inspectorate.

I hope, my Lords, that I have succeeded in removing most, at any rate, of the misgivings that have been expressed on the score either of parsimony in the financial provision for this Bill or of the extent of co-operation and consultations between employment medical advisers, employers and workers in implementing the practical provisions of the Bill. I trust that this Bill may now pass into law with the full support of the whole House.

My Lords, in view of the prolonged adjourned debate that we have had on the Sound Broadcasting Bill I shall be brief. First, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, for the speech he has made. Perhaps our Amendments on Report stage were not originally as clear as they became after I had the opportunity to explain them. I must say that I found it difficult to follow the noble Lord when he said he could not understand what my noble friend and I were after in the matter of consultation. His account of the changes in the tests and laboratory requirements, the change from the coproporphyrin type of test to this simpler test, will be of interest in a much wider field than purely your Lordships' House. The noble Lord was good enough to write me a long letter. I was not competent to judge it although I passed it to a number of friends. It throws an interesting light on the work of his Department, and there is a lot to be said for giving more publicity to their work. We discussed the possibility with the noble Lord of visits to the laboratories concerned. Perhaps I should take this opportunity of wishing good fortune to those who will be administering the new service. I have no doubt that the new employment medical advisers are men and women of high calibre. They will carry a heavy responsibility. I hope that the noble Lord and the Government have provided enough of them. If they have not, then I hope they will not hesitate to provide more because this is a matter of such profound importance to the happiness of individuals that the role they can play is a very great one.

On the subject of consultation, if the noble Lord's expressed views are fulfilled we shall be very happy. The difficulty is that even with the best will in the world, even with an employment medical adviser who is determined to do his duty, there are still liable to be some awkward employers. At no time in this debate have we criticised employers in a body; we have always recognised that the sanctions provided in the Bill are against the bad employer. I hope that the maximum publicity will be given to this matter and I urge the Government to issue a booklet or leaflet which would go to all employers explaining how this new service works and what the employers themselves can do to contribute to its success.

We welcomed this Bill in principle; we regretted that there was not more information in it and that we had to wait for Robens. At least in regard to one matter we have not had to wait for Robens: that is in the matter of penalties for obstruction not only of employment medical advisers but also of factory inspectors. Your Lordships can be pleased that we have succeeded in doing what in another place the Opposition were unlucky enough not to be able to do. I believe this to be a real improvement, not because the particular penalty by itself is so significant but because it emphasises the need for a general raising of penalties in this field. We believe that it ought not to be necessary to employ these sanctions, but it is right to have them. I hope that with good co-operation this small Bill (which, after all, started in the days of the previous Government) will make a useful contribution. I should like to thank the noble Lord personally for his courtesy, particularly for answering in private some of the matters that we raised. I hope that good publicity will be given to this new service.

My Lords, may I add my thanks to those of my noble friend? We are accustomed to receive courtesy from the noble Lord opposite. He has courtesy; I tell him that he is overworked and very often we have a dialogue. On this occasion I am impressed by the trouble that he has taken in examining in detail the complaints (let us say) that we made at the previous stage of this Bill regarding the relationship between the trade unionist, the medical adviser, the employer, and the unfortunate potential patient. I am particularly impressed that he has thought fit to put it on record in Hansard so that any trade unionist who cares to inform himself by reading this debate shall know precisely what his position is and what the position of the patient is. On behalf of these patients and trade unionists I should like to thank the noble Lord for that.

My Lords. I have been most interested in what the noble Lord the Leader of my Party and my noble friend Lady Summerskill have said on this Bill. I may perhaps have participated during the Committee stage had I not been prevented from doing so for other reasons. As a trade unionist my interest concerns what happens in regard to branch secretaries and so on. The noble Lord answering for the Government made special reference to the inspectorate. Some time ago the matter of the inspectorate came up for serious consideration in another place, with regard to whether the position had been reached where we were able to say that big industrial establishments, such as I.C.I., who were responsible for alkalis and so on, were able to be served by the inspectorate, and as to whether the inspectorate were able to recruit the people required for such a service. The noble Lord need not reply to my particular question at this juncture if he is not in a position to do so, but it would be most interesting to have that information if it could he given at some time or other.

My Lords, I should like to express our welcome back to this House to the noble Lord, Lord Slater; I am glad to see he has recovered from his illness. I take note of what he says. This Bill does not concern the factory inspectors except on the question of penalties, but I will endeavour to get the answer for him and let him have it. I should like to thank very much indeed the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, and the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, for what they have said. I take particular note of the point about issuing information to employers in this matter, and if I may I will write to the noble Lord and let him know what it is proposed to do.

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This Bill passed through the other place without any discussion at all. It is a Bill that is welcomed by the British Railways Board and by the Government, and has an important bearing upon travel by peoples throughout the 30 countries that are signatories to the Convention. Mr. Ogden proposed the Bill, and, as I say, it went through the House of Commons without discussion. For that reason, it is perhaps advisable that I should take a little longer in outlining the principles involved than I would otherwise have done.

The first object of the Bill is to enable the United Kingdom to accede to an International Railway Convention. The Convention deals with the liabilities of railways in cases where passengers holding international tickets are killed or injured while in, boarding or alighting from trains. It is called the Additional Convention because it extends or supplements an earlier Convention on the International Carriage of Passengers and Luggage by Rail, referred to in this Bill as the Railway Passenger Convention, to which we are already parties. This Passenger Convention enables anyone to book a through ticket from, say, Victoria Station to Istanbul or elsewhere and travel throughout on uniform conditions of carriage, without having to re-book at each national frontier. But the Railway Passenger Convention did not regulate this matter of liability for death or injury. It left any resulting claims to be dealt with by the national law of the country in which the accident happened Some 30 countries are parties to the Passenger Convention, and it is not surprising that their national laws about the rights of victims of railway accidents, or of their dependants, to compensation vary considerably in substance and procedure. The contracting States recognised that this was an unsatisfactory situation and, after several years' discussion, the Additional Convention was signed in 1966. Sufficient countries have since ratified it and it will come into operation between the contracting States on January 1, 1973

We, the United Kingdom, did not sign this Convention in 1966 for a variety of reasons, but more thought has been given to it since then and it is clear that there would be a decided advantage to our nationals in our becoming a party to the Convention. The main reason is that British claimants' chances of obtaining adequate compensation in case of death or injury on a railway abroad will be better if they can proceed under the international Convention rather than under the national law of the country concerned. A particular factor here is that the national law of a number of countries limits the total amount of liability of a railway, and in several of them that limit is less than the minimum of 200,000 gold francs—about £27,500—which by Article 6 of the Convention is the lowest permissible limit. Some countries' national laws now have a lower limit. Travel by rail between the United Kingdom and the Continent is, as we all know, substantial and growing considerably, so the better position of claimants is something of great importance to our nationals. In addition to this point of self-interest, it has for long been the policy of this country, under successive Governments, to co-operate in international arrangements about transport, including railway transport. This cooperation is generally welcomed by other contracting countries, and the United Kingdom's views carry some weight. If we stand aloof from this Convention when it is finally ratified by other States we cannot expect to exercise any influence.

There are three specific obstacles in our present law which, failing amendment, would preclude us from acceding, and these are important. They are very technical and their effect is not too far-reaching. First, it is necessary to make clear that the Convention prevails over Section 43(7) of the Transport Act 1962. That section, in effect, forbids the British Railways Board to carry passengers on terms which exclude or limit their liability for death or injury, or which prescribe the time or the manner in which that liability may be enforced. The first prohibition presents no problem, for the Convention also forbids any contracting out of the railways' liability and nothing in the Convention obliges us to adopt the 200,000 gold francs limit. The second part does make for some difficulty, because the Convention lays down procedure and time limits in Articles 16 and 17. These must he made part of the conditions of car riage if we are to apply the Convention, so that part of the Transport Act must be set aside. May I stress that this and other amendments affect only persons whose claims arise out of accidents involving holders of international tickets. The thousands of millions of passengers travelling at home here on British Railways holding ordinary or domestic tickets are completely unaffected.

The second point is rather more involved, and amendment of our law is even more technical. It concerns claims by or on behalf of the dependants of victims of fatal accidents. The Convention lays it down that persons who had a legally enforceable right to be maintained by the deceased must be compensated. The rights of persons who were being maintained without any such legal obligation on the victim's part are left to be governed by the national law of the country where the accident occurs. In the United Kingdom claims of that kind, except in Scotland, are usually governed by the Fatal Accidents Acts, and the rights of claimants do not depend upon a legal obligation to be maintained but upon facts of kinship and actual support, or the reasonable expectation of it. In order to give effect to the Convention, therefore, we have to create a right of action for the benefit of a class of claimants who are not necessarily entitled to claim by the Fatal Accidents Acts. This is an important change. In doing so, we have also to take care that the rights of dependants maintained otherwise than by reason of an enforceable obligation—those, that is, whose claims are left by the Convention to national law—are preserved; and that is also provided for.

The second object of the Bill concerns two other international railway Conventions, the Railway Passenger Convention and a companion Convention on the international carriage of goods by rail. The United Kingdom has been a party to those Conventions since 1966. They were not given the force of law by Statute, but effect has been given to them by their incorporation in British Railways' conditions of carriage. This has worked quite satisfactorily in the main, but there are certain points concerning which it is at least doubtful whether our existing law would always allow us to give full effect to the Conventions. There are points concerning the party against whom actions may be brought; the railways' right to impose surcharges for overloading wagons or mis-description of goods in international consignment notes; penalties against railways for exceeding certain delivery periods; and the attachment of foreign-owned rolling stock. This Bill ensures that the Convention provisions will prevail.

Finally, the Bill must naturally look in some degree to the future. The international railway Conventions are not immutable; they are periodically revised by the contracting States, meeting in Berne. Past revisions have changed technicalities and points of detail, not fundamental issues, but even if the text of a new Convention differs only slightly from its predecessor, it is still a new Convention. The Additional Convention could be revised in this way and Parliament would be rightly critical if on each occasion when some minor textual variation was made new legislation had to be introduced to secure consequential amendments in the Schedule. To avoid this, it is proposed that such amendments shall be made by Orders in Council, subject to approval of both Houses, provided the new Convention is substantially to the same effect as the present one and does not make any major changes. I beg to move.

My Lords, when I was told by my Leader to keep an eye on this Bill I looked to the debates in the other place to give me some guidance as to what the Bill was all about. I got a copy of Hansard and found that the only words which could have been spoken on all the stages of this Bill were "I beg to move", which did not help me very much. So I am grateful to my noble friend for having to-day placed on record an explanation of the Bill to which we can turn in the future. He certainly made it clear to me that this is a Convention to which we ought to accede and give effect. The fact is that this country has, so far as I can remember, always done the right thing in connection with international conventions of this sort which are designed to secure that the law is international where it should in fact be international.

I am not going to speak at any length on the Second Reading. I should hate to upset the Members of the other place by making them think that we were spending a lot of time on something on which they spent very little or no time. So I will merely say that there is no opposition, as far as I can tell, from these Benches to this Bill. When I turned to the back of the Bill, I saw that the Convention was written in French, and I congratulate my noble friend on having translated it for our benefit. It now appears in English within the Bill itself. I think that the House can accept this as a worth while addition to international law, and give the Bill a Second Reading.

My Lords, it is probably appropriate at this point that I, speaking on behalf of Her Majesty's Government and in particular my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, whose responsibilities of course include railways, should indicate what the noble Lord, Lord Champion, will not be surprised to hear is our welcome for the introduction of this Bill and our thanks to Lord Popplewell, and to make our support for it clear. The noble Lord has explained its purpose and outlined its main provisions. There is, therefore, no need for me to go over that ground again. Yet there are certain broad considerations to which your Lordships' attention may usefully be drawn.

In commending this Bill to your Lordships I would stress one or two points.

The Additional Convention is the youngest of a family of international railway conventions, of which the Railway Freight Convention—that is, the Convention dealing with merchandise—and the Railway Passenger Convention, commonly known as C.I.V., the Convention dealing with voyageurs, are the other two and elder members. The United Kingdom has been a party to both of those since 1956—I think the noble Lord, Lord Popplewell, inadvertently said 1966. The noble Lord has outlined to your Lordships the specific grounds for adhering to the Additional Convention. Over and above those grounds there is the more general one that it has been the consistent policy of the United Kingdom to play our full part in international co-operation in the transport field. We have, for instance, enacted legislation to give effect to international conventions on the carriage of goods by sea, on carriage by air, and on carriage of goods by road. We have given effect to the Railway Freight Convention and the Railway Passenger Convention, and the Bill now contains provisions for reinforcing that effect, It is entirely consistent with that policy that we should now also adhere to the Additional Convention, which we can do only if we make the very limited modifications to our domestic law which the Bill sets out.

Those of us who, from time to time, travel by railway between the United Kingdom and the Continent probably take it for granted that one can go to a travel agent and buy a through ticket for, say, Vienna or Istanbul. It would be extremely inconvenient if one could not. And, of course, in the case of goods carried across a number of countries by rail, it would be not only tedious, but very costly, if traders had to arrange for re-consignment at every frontier, as the goods passed from one national system to another. These railway Conventions, with the facilitation of movement which they provide, underlie and support a large and growing volume of international movement by rail, and our participation enables us to share in these advantages. Other contracting countries have left us in no doubt that our participation is welcome, and their railway administrations welcome the co-operation of the British Railways Board. Co-operation enables us to obtain a hearing for our views. Standing aloof does not. Both for the reasons already advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Popplewell, and because of the more general consideration to which I have referred, I strongly commend this measure to your Lordships.

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This is a short Bill which amends the National Health Service (Family Planning) Act of 1967 and I think it will be found that it constitutes another small step in the direction of forming a comprehensive family planning service within the National Health Service.

For those who wish to plan their families, there are, so far as I can see, three courses open to them. The first is continence, and I do not propose to go into that further now; the second is by means of contraceptive devices and the third is by sterilisation. The third is largely done on women and it is a major operation which carries with it a certain mortality. I should like to add to the possibilities that of male sterilisation—vasectomy, as it is called. This is not the castration of a man: it has no effect upon his virility and it has no effect upon his capacity for and desire for sexual relations. It merely means that he will become sterile. It is a comparatively simple operation to perform; it is done under a local anæsthetic, and the operation consists in cutting the duct called the vas deferens, by which the sperm gets from the testicle, where it is made, to the penis at the time of ejaculation when the sexual act takes place. There is little morbidity and no mortality at present, although of course this is a surgical operation and one must always remember that there is no surgical operation which has not some potential mortality. And it is 100 per cent. effective. The operation takes about 10 minutes, and some of the men can go back to work on the same day, though others may need to be off work for a day or two. There is some superficial bruising, but that is about all the ill-effects.

The 1967 Act does not empower the local authority to provide vasectomy services, or to support them financially as it can other forms of birth control. This Bill, if it becomes an Act, will permit the local authorities to provide such a service as part of the contraceptive services provided under the Act. It has always been possible to perform vasectomy under the National Health Service for medical reasons, but I think the number of such operations carried out is comparatively small. I read the other day, however, of one general practitioner who is one in a partnership of five, who performs about 100 vasectomies a year in his practice under the National Health Service.

Circular No. 36/71 from the Department of Health and Social Security encourages local authorities to establish family planning clinics in hospital premises. I think, too, that one can say that the surgeons who will be called upon to carry out this comparatively simple operation can quite properly undertake to do this work, because it certainly constitutes a form of preventive medicine, even if it is carried out for the same sociological reasons as appear in the Abortion Act, where one of the reasons given for allowing an abortion to be performed is that the effect on the mother of having more children would have a bad effect upon the children of the family already existing. I was reading to-day about a case which seemed to show this very well. It was the case of a mother in her mid-thirties who had been pregnant five times; three of her children had died and one was grossly deformed. She had tried taking the pill, but it made her unwell and her life was being ruined by a fear of unwanted pregnancy. Her general practitioner arranged for a vasectomy to be performed upon her husband, with his consent, and the result has been a great improvement in her health and probably a much better life in front of it for the single remaining child of the marriage.

The Family Planning Association has 17 vasectomy clinics and about 3,000 of these operations were carried out during the first nine months of 1971. Many other towns have many such operations done. For example, in Cardiff 4,500 vasecomies were done last year, and even now there is a waiting list there of 4,000. I know one nursing home which is supposed to specialise in vasectomy, but I think most of their beds are occupied by abortions at the present time. If the vasectomy operation has to be done privately it costs from about £20 to £25. Reports have come in from Canada where the operation is quite popular, and there they have had good results.

There is another report, from the Simon Trust, which deals with a thousand men who have been subjected to vasectomy, most of them between the ages of 30 and 45. None was over the age of 60, so there can be no suggestion that this operation is being done for rejuvenation, as was the case (some of your Lordships may be old enough to remember) when a man called Steinach performed this operation before the First World War in the hope that it would rejuvenate elderly men. I do not think that that fact comes into the matter now.

With regard to the cause of the men coming to this operation, in about 80 per cent. of the cases they did not like the contraceptive routine, and also about 50 per cent. of them had tried contraception and found that, for some reason or another, it did not work. About half of them, too, wished to spare their wives further pregnancies or the quite major operation of sterilisation. The results have been satisfactory. In a certain number of patients their health, they say, has been improved, and they feel much more comfortable and relaxed in their family relationship. In only under one per cent. of patients has there been some adverse effect, and nearly 100 per cent. of those who have undergone vasectomies have no regrets that the operation was performed.

There is no legal objection to this operation. It was thought that it might come under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. It does not come under the mediaeval law of mayhem, about which we have heard something from time to time. One of the important matters is that there is need for the written consent of both partners, and that there must be no coercion of one partner by another. The marriage must be a good and stable one, and preferably there should be a certain number of children—I am not going to say how many, because that depends on the couple. There has to be sound advice and counselling given from the family planning people to ensure that the wrong kind of people do not get involved. Certainly bachelors should not be encouraged to take advantage of any scheme promoted by the local authority. What they do privately is another matter which I cannot go into now.

Are there any dangers? According to the Medical Research Council there are really none, with the following two provisions: one, that the uninformed comments of a man's colleagues may lead him to doubts about his own virility. That is a question on which nonsense is bound to be spoken, and if people believe the nonsense they are told there is very little we can do about it. This is not an operation for unhappy or unstable marriages, because if it is done then both the partners will blame the operation for any subsequent misfortunes. One study has indeed shown that 10 out of 82 men had physical or psychological problems after the operation, but most of them had a history of such troubles before they were operated on. The advantage that the operation has over abortions is that abortions can have quite a substantial psychological effect on people; they also have a certain morbidity. It is not a very big morbidity, it is not a very serious one; but a certain number of women have some kind of fever after an abortion, and a certain number have some haemorrhage. I think that is all I want to say leading up to the provisions of the Bill.

The Bill itself is a very simple one. Clause 1 provides for the provision of vasectomy services under the contraceptive services. Clause 2 says that there shall be a report made from the local health authority to the Secretary of State categorising such persons by age, showing the amount of money spent, and that for the first two years the local health authority shall keep a record of people under 30 years of age applying for this treatment. Clause 3 deals with the financial side.

I do not want to keep your Lordships any longer. We had a long debate last week on population policy, and so I have not gone into this question at all. I hope, therefore, that your Lordships will give the Bill a Second Reading to-day. I beg to move.

My Lords, I rise only briefly from this Bench to explain that the attitude of the official Opposition to this short Bill is one of complete neutrality since it involves highly sensitive moral and personal issues that must surely be left to the conscience and decision of each individual Member of your Lordships' House. I myself welcome and support the Bill as a useful addition to the existing provision for voluntary vasectomy in National Health Service hospitals, where such operations are now being carried out at the rate of some 2,000 a year. Since, however, we know that the hospital service is not meeting the full extent of the demand, the permissive power that this Bill would give to local authorities should provide a useful extension to the range of other contraception services which they already offer and support under the National Health Service (Family Planning) Act 1967. I doubt whether it will make a major contribution to the problem of unwanted pregnancies, but it could be valuable in certain circumstances.

I should make it clear that my support for this measure is completely conditional on its firm commitment to the voluntary principle, making vasectomy available for contraceptive or therapeutic purposes only, as I would be implacably opposed to the use of vasectomy for eugenic or punitive purposes. This principle is clearly embodied in the Preamble to and in paragraphs (a) and (b) of Clause 1 of the Bill. Like the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, I agree that it will be essential to ensure in practice that those considering this course of action when their families are as large as husband and wife want are made fully aware that this is a completely voluntary and free choice, which only they themselves can determine in the light of the full consideration of all the facts of their own personal and family situation. This is already the established practice where vasectomies are carried out in National Health Service hospitals, and also in the vasectomy clinics established by the Family Planning Association in recent years, to which the noble Lord referred. These clinics are providing a most valuable service of high quality supported by appropriate professional counselling to those considering this method of birth control. I also welcome the provision in Clause 2 of the Bill, which will ensure that the records will be kept and reports made on the operation of the legislation.

This Bill has been very fully debated and carefully examined in another place and it comes to us with broad based support in a form which I hope we can consider and agree before the time of this House is completely overwhelmed with the mass of Government legislation which is shortly to descend on us. I wish it a safe and easy passage. I give my support to the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, for this purpose, and congratulate him on bringing, it before us with his usual care, moderation and brevity.

My Lords, I, too, would like to join with the noble Baroness opposite in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, for introducing this Bill most carefully, clearly and succinctly. Perhaps I could try as briefly as the two previous speakers to indicate the Government's view on it. The main statutory responsibility for family planning services falls on the local health authorities under the National Heath Service (Family Planning) Act 1967, which this Bill seeks to amend. Local authorities may provide contraceptive advice and supplies when these are required, not only for medical reasons but also for social reasons. Some authorities provide these services directly and others make use of the facilities provided by voluntary organisations, but, whatever the system, the trend over the country as a whole is now one of rapid expansion, albeit from a small beginning. Local authorities have many other important responsibilities, and of course they have problems of priorities as between different services, for each of which there is considerable public demand.

I indicated in a necessarily rather brief speech at the end of last Wednesday's interesting debate the progress which local authorities are now making in the family planning field. I do not wish to repeat all I said then, but it may be helpful if I repeat some of the salient facts. Over the two year period ending next March, local authorities intend to treble their expenditure on contraceptive services to £2½ million per annum, and within that increase to raise the level of expenditure on domiciliary services fivefold. To give added impetus to these welcome developments, the Government have approved local authority schemes a value of £170,000 under the urban programme, and announced extra grants to the Family Planning Association amounting to over £100,000. The Government have also encouraged the extension of family planning services by hospitals; and general practitioners are already a source of advice and supplies for a considerable number of people.

From what was said in this House last Wednesday, I know that some noble Lords believe that very much more needs to be done, but I hope it will be agreed that, in general, local authorities are now responding with much more vigour to the need for contraceptive facilities. There is, however, a gap in the services which local authorities may provide and this is the subject of the Bill which is now before us. Vasectomy may be undertaken in National Health Service hospitals where it is in the interests of the health of either the man or his wife, but the number of operations which can be performed in hospitals is limited by the resources available. Where vasectomy is sought for non-medical reasons, it has to be performed under the normal arrangements for private treatment.

There is no doubt that vasectomy is an efficient form of contraception, as the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, said, although it differs from other forms of contraception in that it can be undertaken only on the understanding that it is not reversible. It is therefore only suitable for those who have completed their families, and it is important that prospective patients should fully understand the implications of the operation. I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Serota, who made the important point that it must be a voluntary undertaking. It is also important that, so far as possible, any patients for whom vasectomy would be contraindicated should be identified at the screening stage. Because these are professional matters, and because of the importance that has been attached to them, the Chief Medical Officer has convened an ad hoc group of professional people interested in the subject. They will assist him in formulating advice which can be issued, if this Bill is passed, to medical officers of health on the form of counselling which patients should receive before and after a vasectomy operation, to ensure that the operation is performed only on those who really stand to benefit from it.

When the National Health Service is reorganised in 1974, the responsibility for family planning services will fall upon the new National Health Service authorities; and, as I said last Wednesday, the whole question of family planning is at present under review by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services. I cannot anticipate the outcome, but I can say that, whatever conclusions are reached, the organisational change which will take place in 1974 will make it easier to arrange co-ordinated family planning services. In particular, in relation to vasectomy we should have the benefit of the reports which local authorities will give to the Secretary of State under this Bill during the next two years.

It seems unlikely that with the limited time and resources available to local authorities there will be a very large number of these operations paid for or arranged by them. But I know that some local authorities have felt the need for the powers which this Bill would confer, particularly in cases of acute social need where other methods of family planning have failed. It is the Government's view that although, normally, the hospital would be the sensible place for a surgical operation, the proposed legislation would fill a need which local authorities have felt and would therefore be seen by them as a logical extension of their existing powers.

The Bill incorporates requirements which will result in further information being available to Parliament over the next two years, although we shall want to study Clause 2 rather carefully before we come to the Committee stage and may have some Amendments to suggest to the House. The Government have given undertakings in another place that in addition to the professional guidance which I have mentioned there will be an administrative circular to local authorities conveying our view that the operation should be seen as suitable only for married men (or those with stable unions) who have completed their families. I am sure that local authorities can be relied upon not to use these new powers irresponsibly; and if your Lordships should wish to see this Bill passed the Government would not wish to offer any objections.

My Lords, I find myself in something of a dilemma over this Bill. Certain of my friends, noble and otherwise, have asked me whether I agree with it and whether I shall support it. That is a question which I find it not possible to answer by a straight Yes or No. It is an example of the hoary old question, "Have you stopped beating your wife?". I was somewhat taken aback when I was asked whether, as a surgeon and because it is based on an operation, I would act as the sponsor of this Bill.

It is because I am a surgeon that I am unable to commend the Bill for two reasons. The object of it, we are informed, is to allow the operation of vasectomy to be paid for by the National Health Service via the local authorities. That is the essential. It seeks permission to spend money. In four years' time the matter passes from the local authorities and comes entirely under the control of the National Health Service. But this is much more than a simple enabling or amending Bill. It adds an operation to what is available under the original Act. I would remind your Lordships that it is a good thing that it is possible—and indeed proper—for this House to review and improve, or, at any rate, try to improve, Bills sent on by the other place.

My first criticism is in regard to the way in which surgery is dealt with in this Bill. I find it highly objectionable; it is mean and demeaning—perhaps not by intent, but, at any rate, as a result of lack of sensitivity and understanding of what is involved. Surgery—in this case the arrangements for doing an operation under the auspices of the local authorities—is dealt with, as your Lordships can see, in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) of Clause 1 by the insertion of certain words and nothing else. In paragraph (c) there is an insertion after the words "substances or appliances supplied". It is not accorded the dignity of a separate clause or even a paragraph or sentence. It is lumped together with various contraceptive "substances or appliances"; it is joined with lubricant jellies, intrauterine devices, occlusive cervical caps and condoms! This crude handling may not have been the intent—at least, I hope not. Perhaps I had better say no more about this, my first objection, except to comment that the way in which the proposal of introducing an operation into the list of substances and appliances to be supplied is, in itself, revealing in regard to the totally erroneous and shoddy way in which the use of surgery, of an operation, is advanced in this Bill. I suggest that it reveals an absence of understanding and it follows that it is my task and duty to try to correct this.

Vasectomy is an operation on the human body and would ordinarily be done by surgeons, and the result may well be that they will be expected to operate on large numbers of men for no medical reason or justification. I realise that various protestations have been made that the operation would be done only for medical reasons and in small numbers, but I am unconvinced. I have so far heard no suggestions that it should be done by other than surgeons—that is, by non-medicos—although this might provide an answer to the problem. I want to try to present to your Lordships what I think is the position of surgery in this matter, in contrast to the position of sociology. This is the substance of my second objection. I feel that a duty and responsibility falls upon me to present the surgeon's view, or what should be the surgeon's view, even though I am criticised for this. Many surgeons stand to be affected by this Bill and seem to have no one to speak for them.

The problem is two-fold. It is a sociological problem as well as a medical and surgical one. On sociological grounds I have no important objections to the Bill, and especially if it is the will of Parliament to accept it as a sociological measure. I have no objections if the operation is advised on strictly medical grounds, such as the case of a man who suffers from an hereditary transmissible disease. I can accept the somewhat more poorly defined category of medical reasons which are, nevertheless, recognisable. In general, these are related to the desirability of the wife not going through another pregnancy and when other methods of birth control are not fully acceptable. We must be realistic and realise that this operation will be requested and permitted for non-medical reasons and on any man of any age, even though recommendations from the Department of Health may seek or advise a wider control. We have the example of the Abortion Act to indicate that the result will be vasectomy on demand. In this way it becomes a purely sociological step. I can recognise that certain great sociological advantages can spring from wholesale male sterilisation on demand and without cost when I consider it in relation to the problem of overpopulation, with which we are told that this country and the whole world is faced.

I should tell your Lordships that many doctors will not accept my presentation of the situation. I have been told that I live in an ivory tower, that medicine cannot be separated from social conditions, and that it is wrong to try to put medicine and social matters into separate compartments. To me, the subject is not made easier but more difficult by trying to mix medicine with other matters. At any rate, I am entitled to such a view. Moreover, I am no less likely to be right in my presentation of surgical ethics than someone who is not a surgeon. My position in the world of surgery entitles me to give my views even though some, who are not surgeons, may not agree with them. My interpretation of the ethics of surgery are; conventional and correct for to-day, even though some may say that they are not what will be thought to-morrow and that the ethics of to-day need changing. I repeat that these comments often proceed from people who are not surgeons and who do not have to do the operations they advocate so readily. These doctors are confusing medical ethics with their thoughts and decisions on sociological or some other grounds. I cannot see that I am less able to speak on behalf of surgeons than those who are not surgeons.

According to the Hippocratic Code, a surgeon should do an operation only for the good of his patient, to benefit him medically. There can be no ethical justification for a surgeon doing an operation on a human being for any other reason, including for the good of the State. Hitler's régime in the last war underlined this. One attempt at excusing surgeons to do this operation on demand—and we have seen this already to-day—is that it is only a small one. Its relatively small nature must colour our approach to it, but this can create a false picture. I remind your Lordships of the young lady in Mr. Midshipman Easy who was going to be engaged as a wet-nurse. She was asked. "But that means you have had a baby yourself". She replied, "Yes, but it was only a small one".

I cannot see that the relative smallness of the operation justifies a surgeon changing his Hippocratic Code. It is a small operation, especially if done under a local anaesthetic. It has a certain amount of morbidity due to infection. I imagine it also carries the risk of psychological or even psychotic disturbances in certain types of patient. The mortality must be very low, but let us make no mistake: a mortality there must be in any effort undertaken by man. The risk of mortality increases when a general anaesthetic is used, and some patients will certainly demand this and some surgeons prefer it. I have recently heard a professor of surgery, who is already heavily involved in vasectomy, declare that general anaesthesia must have a place in this operation in distinction to local anaesthesia. This must increase the risk. Let us beware just because many doctors advocate this operation for non-medical reasons. They say that they are speaking as doctors, but I question this. They may be doctors speaking or writing, but they are in fact involved in a purely sociological matter. Their opinion is based on sociological, not medical, grounds. They should be clear about this, and not say they are speaking as doctors just because they feel strongly and sincerely about a non-medical matter.

At the risk of being thought vague, irresolute and reactionary, I must try to explain my reservations more fully to your Lordships. I hope your Lordships will agree that it is incumbent on a Member of your Lordships' House to try to present a detached, responsible view instead of just joining in the general crowd movement. I have pointed out that though this Bill seems to be essentially an enabling or amending Bill dealing with money in connection with a problem in sociology, it also contains a matter of fundamental importance to surgeons because it involves the doing of an operation. The situation seems to be not very different from the one which has arisen in the case of the trade unions. A recent leading article in The Times commented that trade unions' power, like the power of business or policemen or even Government, must be a power controlled by law, and that no responsible Government will abolish this principle whatever changes may be made in the form of law. In this generalisation I would include the practice of medicine and surgery. These are, or should be, governed by the Hippocratic Code, and until we reject or change it this Code does not allow an operation to be done on a human being for a non-medical reason—certainly not for a sociological reason; and thus for the good of the State, and not for the individual.

It is suggested by some that the Hippocratic Code is obsolete and should be changed. Perhaps it should, but until it is changed we should honour it. It still stands as the law or code that doctors should follow. If it is wished to replace it by a new code more suitable to the 20th century, we could one day advocate a further change to a communistic code or to an authoritarian one such as caused so much trouble in the last war, when doctors were persuaded to do things they never should have done and for which they were tried as criminals. It has been suggested that operations can and should be done for sociological reasons. It is even stated that, as the rise in population is due to the successful progress of medicine and surgery, doctors should join in the task of controlling and arresting it as a social duty. I find it difficult to accept this suggestion as anything but monstrous. Perhaps I am wrong. Medicine would seem to fulfil its role when it has pointed out and has detailed the physiological and anatomical facts underlying procreation, and how they may be controlled, but we tread on very shaky ground when it is maintained that medicine and surgery should play a leading part in implementing a world-wide sociological need for population control. Is it really the function of medicine to have as its main activity the saving of life and also to conspire intensively in the suppression of life?

I think we have to consider the whole range of methods and devices to achieve family planning. Most of them are certainly non-surgical, and even non-medical. Their instruction and organisation is in general not inconsistent with the medical ethic. But when we come to vasectomy, we come to a specific finite fact—an operation to achieve sterility. The implications of this require careful consideration, and certainly if it is to be done by a surgeon. I have attempted to sound a warning note against the easy passage of this Bill, which has been described as a mere enabling or amending Bill of no special importance. I have tried to explain how I feel it is my duty to indicate certain fundamentals.

I wish before concluding to make some comments on some factual details. Some of these arise from our experiences as a result of the Abortion Act, and again are related to what should be the position of the doctor, especially the surgeon, in relation to his own commitment. The Abortion Act contains a conscience clause—

My Lords, before the noble Lord proceeds to his factual detail, I wonder whether he would elucidate for me a distinction which seems to have been implicit in his observations hitherto; namely, the distinction between the function of the surgeon and the function of the physician. Would the noble Lord urge that it was illegitimate on the part of non-surgical medical research to inquire into the possibilities of restricting an increase of population which, if not restrained, it is fair to say, will certainly provide members of his profession with a far larger task than has hitherto been imposed upon them in the history of the human race?

My Lords, as a point that I was going to make—

Order, order!

My Lords, it was in pursuance of what Lord Robbins—

My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt but I think we are being a little unfair on the noble Lord, Lord Brock, who is in the middle of his speech.

My Lords, I am not quite sure of Lord Robbin's point. He asked me whether someone other than a surgeon, such as a physician, should teach a surgeon what he could do to help a world problem of over-population—I am sorry, perhaps the noble Lord would put his question again.

My Lords, I am thinking of medical research in general applied to the question of the limitation by non-surgical means of an undue increase of population. I was asking whether there was a logical distinction between such operations and the operations contemplated in the Bill on the part of professional surgeons.

My Lords, I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, is asking whether there is any objection to non-surgical methods of limiting population. I have no objection at all: I am speaking purely for a method which involves an operation on the human body.

My Lords, may I put a question to the noble Lord? Does the noble Lord, Lord Brock, feel that physicians do not have any of these ethical principles?

My Lords, I am sure that the physicians have equal ethical principles, and I hope that they follow them as closely as surgeons like to do.

My Lords, I want to comment on some factual details. Some of these arise from my experience as a result of the Abortion Act and again are related to what should be the position of the doctor, especially the surgeon, in relation to his own commitments. The Abortion Act contains a conscience clause, presumably based on religious or moral grounds, but there is no specific recognition of the Hippocratic code; and, unhappily, many doctors, and certainly medical appointment committees, have ignored the ethical position of the doctor and the surgeon.

There will always be a proportion of surgeons who will be willing to do abortions or vasectomies because they genuinely feel that they should; some who are just disinterested and produce no objection and some, as we have seen, who are only too willing to do it for the money they get out of it. If this proportion of surgeons can fill the needs of the State and do all the necessary abortions or vasectomies, then there is no further problem. But this is not likely to be so. Pressure is then put upon other surgeons to do the work, and this is wrong.

If the Government want to get more vasectomies done than can be done by consenting surgeons, other surgeons should not be pressurised into doing them. This is an iniquitous practice and is, unhappily, contributed to by doctors themselves, I like to think not through essential malignancy or perversity. We hear of this type of question being put to candidates for consultant posts when appearing before an appointment committee, "Will you be willing to take your share of the burden of abortions on demand?" In the case of applications for a gynaecological post, the question is, "What is your religion? Are you a Roman Catholic?" I suggest that this will be the danger with vasectomy. The question may be, "Will you be willing to take your share in doing vasectomies on demand with which we shall be faced?"

My Lords, I am disturbed, almost distressed, about the apparent absence of concern about who is to do the operations which will arise inevitably from this Bill. Little thought seems to have been given as to who is to do them and how they are to be done. Perhaps the administrative authorities have done so, but I doubt whether any of those actively sponsoring the Bill have faced, or even considered, the logistical problem. It seems to be taken for granted that surgeons will just do the operations out of their kindness of heart.

My Lords, may I put a question to the noble Lord, Lord Brock, in case he is not in the Chamber when we reach the end of the list of speakers? He mentioned the question of surgeons having the right to refuse to perform an operation, and that operations should not be referred to somebody else who might he forced to do them. I wonder whether the noble Lord will comment on the right of a patient.

My Lords, I have no objection at all to anybody doing any operation on a patient who has a right, medically or surgically. I am talking about a patient in regard to whom there is no medical or surgical reason to have an operation. Of course, I again emphasise that if a patient has a medical reason, or if there is a medical or surgical justification, the surgeon's duty is to help. Most surgeons already have more than enough to do in their routine N.H.S. work without taking on vasectomy ses sions, and certainly not sessions with which they have no sympathy.

At a recent meeting in one of the committee rooms in this Palace of Westminster in which vasectomy was being discussed, a urological surgeon was asked about a vasectomy clinic clashing with routine N.H.S. work and thus adding to the already heavy commitments of pure clinical needs. The reply was that the vasectomies could be done at a special evening clinic and that he would be assisted by his registrar and residents. A more unsatisfactory reply I cannot imagine. He did not state whether his juniors would do this freely or whether they would just be expected to do it; nor whether they would have been asked if they were willing to "volunteer" when interviewed at the appointment committee. Your Lordships must all know of the long hours that junior hospital doctors already work and the resentment many of them already feel. Unless the Government can be sure of getting enough surgical facilities to do the indeterminate number of vasectomies on demand that will arise from this Bill, I suggest that they will have to recruit a class of surgical auxiliaries to do these soulless sessions of vasectomies. They are not a job for a professional surgeon and I presume that trained surgeons will not be directed by the authorities to do them against their will.

I am sorry, my Lords, if I have put problems in the way of the easy acceptance of this seemingly harmless enabling Bill. I feel that someone must point out that it contains deeper implications. I suspect that nothing I have said will have any effect on the passage of the Bill to-day, but at the Committee stage I shall propose an Amendment to remove the indignity to surgery of being classified with substances and appliances, and to add a conscience clause because some surgeons are going to need protection. Many surgeons already feel that they will need protection, and indeed may expect that this House will respect their feelings.

My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Brock, sits down, may I ask him one question? In view of the fact that he objects to the sterilisation of a man on sociological grounds, does he equally object to the sterilisation of a woman who has already had a large number of children?

My Lords, I am afraid that I have failed to make myself clear. I have said that I have no objection at all to doing an operation whether for male or female sterilisation when there are adequate medical or surgical-medical grounds. I also stated specifically that there is a rather less determinate group in which there are perfectly acceptable grounds, such as those mentioned by the noble Baroness; for example, a woman who for some specific reason should correctly be prevented from having more children. I am not suggesting that sterilisation should not be done; I am suggesting it should not be done for anything but medical or surgical reasons.

My Lords, it is, of course, one of the functions of your Lordships' House to make clear that when we have a Private Member's Bill to consider all the possible objections to it receive due consideration. Until the noble Lord, Lord Brock, spoke, I was a little apprehensive that no such points might be raised, and I am sure that we are all grateful to him for having raised them. Speaking for myself, I feel that this Bill is a small but useful addition to the National Health Service (Family Planning) Act 1967. That Act did not involve the Government's doing anything for the purposes of the State; its provisions are purely permissive. It says that the local authorities may, with the permission of the Minister of Health "make arrangements for the giving of advice on contraception'', the supply of appliances and so forth. This Bill merely adds to that an additional form of contraception.

My Lords, one of the minor reasons why I welcome this Bill is that I have for some time thought that, as things now stand, far too much of the responsibility for the size of a family falls on the wife and much less on the man. Here is an opportunity for men to take their place. Of course, very few of these subjects are non-controversial. There was opposition to the Bill in the other place. By the Report stage, the opposition had fallen to three—which was really five, with the two Tellers; and on Third Reading, it had fallen to one; or three with the two Tellers. Generally, there is no doubt throughout the country, as all national polls have recently shown, that about two-thirds of our people think that full contraceptive services ought to be available on the National Health Service. and free. Then (although I do not think my noble friend Lady Summerskill will necessarily agree with it) in a recent poll in a part of the country where there might be perhaps more opposition than elsewhere—namely, Liverpool and parts of the North-West—two-thirds were of the opinion that the pill ought to be on the National Health Service: 65 per cent. among supporters of the Labour Party and 67 per cent. among supporters of the Conservative Party. That shows how completely non-Party political this matter is.

The four objections to the Bill put forward in the other place, as stated by the leading opponents, were, first, that everything to do with contraception ought to be dealt with on an entirely personal and private basis, with which the State should have nothing to do at all. I imagine that those who hold that view must be very few to-day. The second objection was that no steps should be taken about our population problem so long as we were having immigrants coming into the country. Again, I should think that that view was held only by a small number of people. The third and fourth objections I can take together. One was that vasectomy would encourage licentious conduct, and the other was that it had not been sufficiently tested.

To take first the last point, between 1966 and 1970 the Simon Population Trust carried out 9,000 vasectomies; the Stopes Memorial Centre, 500; and the 17 vasectomy clinics of the Family Planning Association (in the nine months to September last), 3,000. So there has been a considerable body of information collected about this subject. I think that I should be wise probably to leave to the noble Lord, Lord Platt, and to my noble friend Lady Summerskill the point on medical ethics which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Brock. There is no question of something being done compulsorily and still less of its being done for the good of the State. We are concerned with individuals; and I did not myself follow from what the noble Lord said why this is different from a woman I who has a plastic operation for purely cosmetic reasons. I have never understood that to be contrary to the Hippocratic oath and I am not clear why it should be so here.

What are we really talking about my Lords? The Stopes Memorial Centre made a careful record of over 100 cases with which they had been concerned. The majority of the men concerned had four or more children. What we are concerned with is this. Let us take one case from among their papers. In 1969, an attractive immigrant had children by two girls in his village. In 1971, he had two more children by the same two girls. He then married. He has five children by his wife, so that he now has nine children; and I should say at once that, to his credit, he is supporting all nine children. Is he not entitled to say, "With nine children I think I have done my bit"? And are we really to say to him: "If only you were not supporting your nine children, you would have saved some money and would have been entitled to have a vasectomy done which you would have paid for; but now you cannot. Because you are supporting your nine children, you have no money, so the doors are barred to you." That is the sort of case we are dealing with.

My Lords, if I may take up the point that the noble and learned Lord has raised, this is an exact example of where a surgeon should not operate. I can understand the man's own wish to have the operation done. He has forced himself into such a position that it is desirable. But there can be no medical reason for doing this operation on him. I think that under our present ethics no surgeon would be justified in doing it. I am sure that he can get surgeons willing to accept money for doing it. I am not moved by the fact that he has no money left to pay for the operation.

My Lords, if this particular man has been able to support the nine children himself, and very honourably, surely he can afford to get this operation done privately.

My Lords, apparently he could not; and, since he supports nine children, I must say that I am not surprised.

As I have said, there is a great deal of experience in this field. The Simon Population Trust, for example (and here I have in mind any sequelæ there might be), kept a record for two years after the operation had been performed. It is always desirable to see how large is the return. They had 1,012 returns out of 1,092, so it was a 93 per cent. return. Looking to see what the general effect had been, both the man and the wife were asked the effect on their general health—whether there had been no change, whether it had improved or deteriorated. It is interesting to note that, of the men, 88 per cent. said that there had been no change; 11 per cent. said, "Improved" and 0·2 per cent. said, "Deteriorated". When it came to the wives and their health, 68·8 per cent. said, "No change", 31 per cent. said, "Improved", and 0·2 per cent. said, "Deteriorated". When they were both asked about the effect on their sexual lives the pattern was very much the same. The husbands' returns were: "No change", 25 per cent.; "Improved", 73 per cent.; "Deteriorated", 1·5 per cent. Of the wives: "No change", 20 per cent.; "Improved", 79·4 per cent.; "Deteriorated", 0·5 per cent.

My Lords, unless we are to leave our lives entirely in the hands of the doctors I should have thought that this was a sphere in which, with other forms of contraception, the individual was entitled to some help. We shall certainly carefully consider any Amendments which the noble Lord, Lord Brock, chooses to put down, but for myself I welcome the Bill. I think the provisions in it about the keeping of records are right and wise. I would agree that it ought not to take place unless all alternative methods of contraception have been fully discussed with both husband and wife, and unless the written consent of both of them is obtained. On the present footing, as I understand it, they should be told to regard the operation as irreversible. It may he that at some time experience will show that it is increasingly reversible; but I am sure that they ought to be advised of its irreversibility at the present time. With those observations I support the Second Reading of this Bill.

My Lords, there seems to be a difference arising between the attitude to this Bill of those like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, and surgeons like Lord Brock. This tension leads me to fear that something which has not, I think, received much attention from the supporters of the Bill may be likely to occur when it becomes an Act in operation; namely, that there will be many people seeking the operation and an appreciable number of surgeons reluctant to do it: therefore, queues; therefore more people going to the private sector and quite likely falling into the hands of those who do not take quite such a strict view of the matter as was taken by the noble Lord, Lord Brock. However, this is a side point and was not one that I had intended to make. I should not have made it had I not been following those two interesting speeches.

My Lords, what worries me about this question—I was hoping that Lord Brock would turn his attention to it but he was on other equally important points—is that in the Bill it seems to me that the operation of vasectomy is being regarded in purely mechanical terms: you can justify making this slight change in the human body and everything will go on as before. I remember a few weeks ago, when we were in Scotland miles away from anyone who could call himself a mechanic—which I certainly am not—our washing machine was giving trouble. I rather hesitantly looked inside it, and I noticed that there was a broken part. I removed the broken part, realising that it was not very important, joined up the loose ends and the machine worked. That was a machine. But you cannot do that with the human body. Every part of the human body, as we now know much better than our fathers knew it, interacts on every other part, and all parts interact with fantastic intricacy upon the mind and therefore upon the personality. If this is true of every part of the body, surely it is more especially true of those parts of the body which have to do with the reproductive processes.

I cannot for one moment believe that if one severs the vas one is not going to induce perhaps in the very long term, say after ten years or so, certain changes in the personality. I cannot accept without sound evidence—and I have seen none so far—that what changes are thereby induced will be for the better. I fear that the whole matter has been oversimplified. Insufficient is known, particularly about the long-term effects. Many of your Lordships will have read the proceedings in another place, and will recall that Mr. Abse quoted some interesting research and work that had been done in the United States. But these items of research are not yet a compendious volume of knowledge. We cannot really say that we know what are the effects of this operation on a man. We have, I think, probably a little more information on the psychological as well as the physical effects on a woman, because it is indicated on straightforward medical and surgical grounds far more than in vasectomy.

There is a danger of course that if one merely says, "It is a dreadful thing: you must not do this vasectomy because you do not know what the effects will be", this can build up into scaremongering. Or, indeed, another part of the same danger, it might be said, is that anyone who draws attention to that difficulty might be accused of scaremongering. I am sure that with carefully and discreetly worked research this danger could be avoided and overcome.

The operation of vasectomy, until we know from scientific research more about its results, must I think be considered in the simple old-fashioned terms which our forefathers would have used. It is quite simply a mutilation. The noble Lord, Lord Amulree, was at pains to distinguish it from castration. Fair enough. Obviously, castration is a crude and simple way of doing what? Doing precisely the same as you are trying to do by vasectomy. The operations are not all that different. Castration is crude; vasectomy sophisticated. But it is not really stretching language too far to say that it is a sophisticated form of castration.

Ridiculous!

My Lords, I do not think one can let that pass. It is, as the noble Baroness says, ridiculous. One removes sexual function, and the other does not. If sexual function is of no interest to the man, of course there is no difference.

My Lords, I must confess that in my ignorance I have always thought that the terms "sexual organs" and "reproductive organs" were more or less the same thing.

Is the noble Lord aware that we are not removing any reproductive organs?

Yes, I am: I am not unaware of what "vasectomy" means. It is all part of the same thing that the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, should speak about a man not losing his virility. To my mind, a man has lost his virility if he is not able to beget children. But I am very old-fashioned and very simple in these things. The human being is based upon a physical body, a piece of biology. However much one emphasises, as it is proper to emphasise, all the respects in which he transcends that body and is something rather more than a body, one must never allow oneself to forget that he has this biological base. This seems to me the difficulty when one completely takes away from sex the basic biological factor, which is the reproductive function of it. Therefore I fear that, although vasectomy will certainly ease the overt difficulties in married life, it will cause many men to have a blank somewhere in their hearts, the blank feeling: "I am no longer quite a man." Something will have been lost of the dignity of his man hood, which is so closely intertwined with the dignity of womanhood.

My Lords, I wish to intervene quite briefly in support of Lord Amulree's amendment to the Family Planning Act. No one could have introduced the Bill with greater brevity or clarity than the noble Lord. The arguments in support of the Bill are simple, clear and straightforward. There is no moral issue involved for those who support and accept the desirability of birth control to-day. It is high time that men, too, took an active and responsible role in birth control. It is especially necessary to-day because of the noisy campaign against the Abortion Act; for those who shout and march against the Abortion Act are perhaps the most to blame for the increase in abortions. Your Lordships may think that that is not so; but indeed it is, because if these same people marched and shouted in a cam paign to spread knowledge about all the safe contraceptive methods, the number of abortions would fall to a minimum and we should get to a point when abortion was resorted to only when medically necessary.

This weekend, on "The World at One", a Member of Parliament said that the Abortion Act enslaved women; it did not liberate them. I have never heard such poppycock. One has to smile when one hears men pontificating about the enslavement of women, having in mind the domination and enslavement of women by men throughout the ages. What greater enslavement of women can there be than repeated unplanned pregnancies? Perhaps some men regard an outsize family as an advertisement of their virility. I have a suspicion that the noble Lord, Lord Craigmyle, may take that view. At best, a large family may be the result of Careless rapture; at worst, just plain carelessness.

I am glad that men are supporting this Bill and I hope that male participation in birth control will grow. I hope that this will stimulate research leading to the male contraceptive pill. This Bill is a logical addition to the Family Planning Act. To-day we should do nothing to slow down the purposes of the Family Planning Act: we need to speed its implementation. I support this National Health Service (Family Planning) Amendment Bill, which is careful, sensible and logical.

My Lords, I have no objection in principle and, so far as I know, the Church of England has no objection in principle to the use of vasectomy as a proper means of contraception. Indeed, I think that in the case of a mature married couple, who after taking everything into consideration come to the conclusion that their nest is full, a vasectomy supplies the cheapest, safest and most satisfactory form of contraception. Therefore to that extent I find myself fully in support of this Bill. But the Bill is very widely drawn. The noble Lord, Lord Amulree, spoke as though we could take it for granted that vasectomy would be granted only to mature people, married people or people enjoying a stable union. However, I can find nothing in the Bill which says this. I should be greatly reassured if I could

My see that in fact the Bill does say this. But so far as I can see, all that the Bill says is that the Secretary of State will issue a document of advice to local authorities, which they will pass on to their medical officers. What I want to know is whether the advice given by the Secretary of State is mandatory or merely advisory, and whether the advice given by the local authorities to their medical officers is also mandatory or merely advisory. It seems to me that if it is merely advisory we shall be in grave danger of creating a situation similar to that created by the Abortion Act; namely, that in different parts of the country different rules and different practices will come to obtain. I doubt whether your Lordships or the Promoters of this Bill would really welcome that situation.

My Lords, to have a vasectomy is a very serious matter. It is a very serious decision to take and it ought therefore to be confined to people who are really mature. I think it would be disastrous for the country if young unmarried men were to be allowed to have this operation free on the National Health Service. I think this would be to withdraw yet one more restraint: upon promiscuity and to take one further step towards the demoralisation of society. Of course it may be that the State has, or will, come to the decision that the struggle to persuade the young to live in continence and chastity before marriage is a hopeless one and had better be discontinued. The Church has not come to that decision, and I hope it never will. We shall continue the battle to persuade the young to live in continence and chastity even though we know there will be failures, possibly many failures. Still, we hope that we shall be able to improve the 'general climate of opinion over the years which are to come.

Lastly, as the noble Lord, Lord Brock, has made plain, there are many people in the medical profession who would accept only with very great reluctance the burden placed upon them for deciding in any particular case what are the social needs—not the medical needs, for the medical profession is certainly perfectly competent and willing to decide those—and the social ethics of an operation. The medical profession rightly feels that it is no more qualified to make decisions of that kind than anybody else. I think it is for Parliament to consider very carefully whether it is fair to impose this burden upon members of the medical profession. As we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Brock, there are some who certainly do not want this burden placed upon them. They do not want the conscience of the community put into their charge and care. It is a matter for the community itself. Unless we can be quite clear, and the medical profession can be quite clear, what are the criteria of social need and ethics upon which a decision to accept or reject an application for vasectomy is based, we ought to hesitate for a very long time before passing this Bill.

My Lords, I very much regret that the right reverend Prelate, as representing in this debate the Chuch of England, has adopted such a negative attitude. I listened to him very carefully. He dealt first of all with the manner in which the Bill might be abused by certain young men, and then he dealt with the social aspect that the medical profession might consider. Could he not possibly know what wonderful benefits this Bill may confer on the average family? Has that not entered into his thinking? As the only member of that Bench on this most important day—a day which will always be remembered in the world of medical sociology—he comes here and makes such a disappointing speech that once more one deplores the fact that he is speaking for the Church.

My Lords, I hope the noble Baroness has not ignored the fact that I began my speech by saying that I thought that vasectomy was the best form of contraception for mature married people, and that therefore I recommend and support the Bill to that extent. Indeed, I presided over an inquiry—

My Lords, is the right reverend Prelate asking a question?—because it is customary to ask a question and then of course the speaker continues.

Order!

My Lords, I apologise.

My Lords, may I say that this debate rather follows that of last week in your Lordships' House on population policy. I think that every speaker sought to make a constructive contribution and, so far with few exceptions, that has been the rule to-day. I feel that we should congratulate those in another place—particularly the young male Members—for the untiring manner in which they have raised the question of vasectomy, culminating in this Private Member's Bill. Indeed, there are indications that the young men of to-day are becoming more involved with the family than were their fathers before them. The long list of men waiting for a vasectomy can offer no better proof of the husband's desire to share the problems arising from the determination to avoid an unwanted child.

I have to remind the House that this has not always been the case. It is the woman who has to bear the burden of contraception and she has also to bear the subsequent pregnancy if no contraception is accepted. It is the woman, the whole time, who carries the burden of producing and rearing children, together with the agony—the physical agony—of being compelled to bear too many children and subsequently of course to lose her health and strength in middle and old age. Therefore, listening to the debate in another place, I greatly welcome the fact that contributions were made by some of the finest young men on the subject of this important advance in medical science. This I find very heartening. What is my criterion? I believe that the most important criterion to be applied to vasectomy is whether it is calculated to improve marital relationships and promote the welfare of the family. What I have to say will be related to that criterion.

Some men are uneasily aware of the potential dangers of the contraceptive pill. May I say in parenthesis that I taught contraception when I was a young woman doctor, and indeed during all my medical life. My only objection to the pill has been that innocent and ignorant women—little more than girls—have taken the pill without being aware of its potential dangers. We have not had sufficient experience yet to know whether or not the pill is safe. This has been my only objection to the pill as a contraceptive. I know that many dutiful wives take the pill with fearful mental reservations. Twenty-five per cent. of these women suffer from depression. If the wife is depressed as a result of using a certain method of contraception, far from improving family life the pill could be an active agent in promoting marital disharmony. It would seem therefore that vasectomy could make an important contribution to the universal desire for responsible and wise parenthood. I believe to-day that that is a universal desire. I agree that this may have arisen because of propaganda in our newspapers telling us of the increasing population and relating this increased population to pollution.

Having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Brock—and I say this in all kindness—I think he will agree that in his opening remarks he was a little confused. The noble Lord is a confusing character; he is so positive in certain things and so negative in others that some of us do not know where we are with him. He said in his opening remarks that he objected to the form of administration; he also objected to being bracketed with contraceptives, and therefore what he was really saying, I would remind him, was that he was annoyed at being bracketed with some of the activities of the physicians. I would remind the noble Lord and the House that at the beginning of the year 60 eminent doctors sent a joint statement to the British Medical Journal and the Lancet emphasising the relationship between the growing population and the environment, and that there should be greater involvement in family planning, including vasectomy. These were 60 eminent men, a cross-section of the country. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Brock, is big enough to know that while he may hold these views there are large numbers of men, physicians and surgeons, who take a completely opposite point of view.

The Abortion Act has been mentioned It has provided an escape for the woman who is determined not to bear an unwanted child. But this is a drastic step and should not be regarded as an alternative to contraception. The fear of some of us is simply that there are those who say, "There is no need to promote contraception because the woman will get an abortion". I regard that as being rather cruel to the woman. Nevertheless, in no circumstances would I subscribe to the hysterical outbursts by some elderly gentlemen in Trafalgar Square, I think it was, who denounced abortion. They were men who had had no experience of the field in which they were daring to make these rash statements. I asked the noble Lord, Lord Brock, if he objected on sociological grounds to a man being sterilised whether he would object to a woman being sterilised. I would remind him that it is quite remarkable how often a mother submits to the major operation of sterilisation while her husband, who has played an active part in her frequent impregnations, is left presumably ignorant of the fact that he could have saved her this further ordeal by undergoing the minor operation of vasectomy with no more discomfort than a tooth extraction.

The noble Lord opposite, who has a religious faith and therefore finds it difficult to pursue a rational argument in this matter, must also recognise that this operation will relieve countless women who have already produced large families, and have all the weight and responsibility of bringing them up, of great anxiety in the future. In considering contraception we should never lose sight of the fact that while pills can have serious side effects, the occlusive cap is not always occlusive. and the intra-uterine device can come out or have unpleasant health consequences. I would remind the House that we had some years ago (some of the older Members will remember) an intrauterine device called the Graffenberg ring. It was abandoned by responsible doctors many years ago because of its potential danger. I deplore the fact that these intra-uterine devices are being manufactured and thrust into ignorant women, particularly the ignorant, inarticulate, poor women in the East, who may not see doctors at all during the whole of their lives.

To-day we have a method of contraception which is harmless, painless and without any side-effects, a method which may relieve some of these unfortunate women. It is also 100 per cent. reliable. As has been said before, the operation takes only about 15 minutes under a local or general anæsthetic. Some of the figures of the Simon Population Trust have been mentioned. I should like to put them on record again. The Simon Trust said that only two of the 1,012 men who had been sterilised reported that their health had deteriorated; and 115 of them claimed improvement in their health. Only fifty reported any deterioration in their sex life, while 740—almost three-quarters of the sample—reported that marital harmony had much improved. Under one per cent. reported less harmonious relations.

Again, one speaker referred to the psychological effect. There arc those who will say, "What psychological effect must this have on men!". My Lords, this Bill may be new to this House. but vasectomy and the effects of it have been considered by the medical profession for many years before anyone thought of framing a Bill and bringing it before Parliament. The whole question of any psychological effect has been considered by the best psychiatrists in the country. Therefore the House should be reassured by the support for the Bill which has come from the Royal College of Psychiatrists who, after the most careful examination, gave it their strong support.

Now I come to the point raised by the right reverend Prelate: the suggestion that the operation might be used by promiscuous young men. This can be discounted by the experience of those engaged in the work—and only those engaged in the work can give the answer to it. They see the man for the first time; they can sum him up. They ask for his age, his marital record, and so on. I do not know whether any of the men described by the right reverend Prelate ever had a vasectomy, but I can only read him a letter from somebody who devotes her life to this work. The letter was written by Dr. Pauline Jackson, of the Cardiff Family Planning Association clinic. She wrote:

"The men arc first and foremost family men concerned primarily with the welfare of their wives and children and one gets a tiny hut vivid picture of a deep and shared marital happiness and devotion."

Finally (this is an aspect that I have sought to emphasise), it is the contribution to marital happiness and the consequent improvement in family life which has evoked so much powerful support for this Bill, and diminished the opposition. I hope that this House will reflect that commendable attitude.

My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, may I make one more attempt to clarify my views on this issue? It may perhaps save her the bother of reading Hansard to-morrow. I will quote from what I said. I can accept the somewhat more poorly defined category of medical reasons which are nevertheless recognisable. In general, these are related to the desirability of the wife's not going through another pregnancy and when other methods of birth control are not fully acceptable. l think there is no difference at all between us, in that if there are reasons for the wife's not going through another pregnancy then one would accept that as a medical reason for doing vasectomy.

My Lords, I will certainly read the noble Lord's speech: he knows I always read his speeches. I am only sorry that to-day we found him in a minority of one.

My Lords, I am very glad to support the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, in his moving of the Second Reading of this Bill. I feel rather diffident in addressing your Lordships on the subject, being a woman and an old widow, but I am speaking really because for the last twenty years I have been associated with the Family Planning Association and am a founder Vice-President of the Birth Control Campaign and a member of its Advisory Council. I very much hope that this amendment to the 1967 Act will he well received by your Lordships and that the House will support it. The Family Planning Association opened its first vasectomy clinic in 1968 and since then has performed 4,731 operations. It now has a waiting list of over 4,000. In providing vasectomy as a method of birth control, its experience is very much that which the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, said Dr. Pauline Jackson had expressed to her: it is requested nearly always by happily married couples—and I emphasise "couples". The woman has to agree as well as the man. It is mostly requested by happily married couples when they have completed their families, or in cases where the wife, due to such causes as thrombosis or high blood pressure, is unable to take the pill or, for other reasons, to use any other form of contraception. Of these 4,731 operations by the Family Planning Association, 166 were performed without charge, and in some cases the cost was paid by the Margeret Pike Centre, a private charity associated with the Family Planning Association.

The amendment now before the House will permit the local authority to set up its own vasectomy clinic within the National Health Service, or to pay for the vasectomy operation to be performed by one of the existing 17 Family Planning Association clinics throughout the country, or in one of the other charitable clinics, such as the Simon Community, which have the facilities to perform the operation. From my experience in the Family Planning Association over twenty years, I am convinced, very much as is the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, that the burden of birth control almost always lies with the woman—and, I think, very unfairly for her. This amendment now before the House would enable the husband who wishes to do so to shoulder his responsibility, and I hope very much indeed that your Lordships will give a considered judgment on this amendment to the Act now before us.

My Lords, most of what I might have said has already been said. I have been President of the Family Planning Association and I am sure that all Members of your Lordships' House will know which side I am going to take in this debate. I shall not attempt to answer all the points raised in full; indeed, it is not my duty to do so. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Craigmyle, once again, that we are not setting out to produce a new race of castrati, however great their services may have been to music and the Church in the 15th and 16th centuries. This is an operation of a totally different kind and I am afraid it will not produce those beautiful voices that we sometimes hear. The noble Lord did, however, along with the noble Lord, Lord Brock, refer to the possible change this operation might produce in the male. I can only say, in the first place, that statistics seem to show that there is a possibility of a change for the worse in—was it 0·2 per cent. of the cases? But I would say that there is a change for the worse in women on the contraceptive pill in a very much higher percentage of cases. It alters a woman's personality; it alters her figure; it alters her physiology; nobody knows what the end results are going to be in the long term, and it is associated with a quite definite mortality—all of which seems to have been neglected by my noble colleague Lord Brock, who was keen to tell us that this was an operation and that therefore we could not keep mortality and dangers completely out of it—with which, of course, I agree.

The noble Lord, Lord Brock, seemed to be highly concerned with the dignity and ethical responsibilities of surgeons. He did not seem to concern himself with the ethical responsibilities of physicians, with whom I include general practitioners. Every time one prescribes a pill which has a really powerful action one is taking a risk. One has the same kind of responsibility as a surgeon has with an operation. Of course, if you take extreme cases, the prescription of a fairly harmless pill involves nothing like the responsibility of a major cardiac operation, such as the noble Lord, Lord Brock, has such a splendid reputation of being able to perform. Nevertheless, the physician nowadays, with powerful remedies such as exist, takes a very big responsibility for his patients when he prescribes the pill. If you take the view that a surgeon should not perform a vasectomy because he is not doing it in order to cure some disease or malformation, then you must face the situation that you are not going to use the contraceptive pill at all. If the objectors will face that situation and say, "Yes, this is what we mean. We mean that physicians, general practitioners and others should not prescribe the contraceptive pill", well, let them get up and say it. So far as I know, they did not say so.

There is, however, one essential difference. One must admit that the contraceptive pill can (provided that it has not killed a woman in the meantime, and death is rarely the case) be reversed. Although we are not yet quite sure of the effects of stopping the pill in a woman who has taken it for a good many years, nevertheless it is normally considered to be reversible, whereas vasectomy at the present time is considered to be reversible. I believe it was the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare—and I should like to thank him and also the noble Lord. Lord Amulree; I meant to do so at the beginning of my speech—speaking not for the Government but at any rate from the Front Bench, who said that for the time being vasectomy was to be looked upon as an irreversible operation. I think that is the only fair thing to tell a patient. Nevertheless, I believe he also said that further research may throw up ways of making it a reversible operation.

My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord for one moment? I did not actually go so far as to say that I expected further research to make it reversible. I definitely said that the operation should be considered to be irreversible. May I also confirm to the noble Lord that I was speaking on behalf of the Government and not for myself.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for putting me right on those points.

I am very disappointed that there is only one Bishop in the House on a matter which seems to me—indeed I believe it is to all of us, and certainly it is to many noble Lords—to be a matter of great ethical importance. But the right reverend Prelate made one remark which I thought I might comment on, and that was about throwing the burden on the medical profession. I would of course agree with him that we have no right to dictate to the State, to the public or to anyone what the ethical principles of life should be in this day and age; but as for imposing burdens on the medical profession, I think the medical profession exists to carry burdens. For that reason I would not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brock, when he made a remark which I think your Lordships will find in Hansard to-morrow: that it was not a job for a trained surgeon, as if there was some kind of indignity in doing a minor operation although it is all right to do a major one. My Lords, I have done all kinds of minor, menial tasks for patients in my lifetime, and I have never regretted it.

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I should like to defend myself. I merely stated that it is not the job of a professional surgeon to do an operation for which there is no justification on medical grounds. This would apply whether the operation was small or large.

My Lords, I have much pleasure in supporting this Bill. It seems to me, having listened to the debate in this House, and also having read what was said in another place, that the fundamental question is whether one really believes that, so far as possible, people should be helped, both for personal reasons and in the interest of our population, in order to restrict their families as and when they want to do so. If one accepts this premise, then one must look at the whole range of contraceptives which are available; and this of course includes sterilisation, both for men and women.

A year or so ago, when I first heard about vasectomy, I was rather taken by surprise. I think the distinguished doctors who are present will agree that anything new—and this applies through the whole range of medicine—is at first received with doubt, anxiety and often scepticism. I do not disagree with that. However, I think by now we know enough about this particular operation, having heard from scientists and doctors about the operations which have been carried out, to accept that if the operation is carried out properly and if the counselling is correct, it is as safe as it can be. As has already been said by several speakers, the onus for contraception has up to now been laid mainly on the woman. In the P.E.P. broadsheet that came out in March, 1972, on Abortion and Contraception: a Study of Patients' Attitudes, one of the conclusions to which the authors reluctantly came was:

"There do appear to be powerful inhibitions against using contraception among women of all ages and statuses in our society."

I believe that this alone means that one has to see contraception, as I think so many of us here do, as a dual responsibility. And although this Bill does not go the whole way—and I think most of us who are speaking for it would like to see contraception as an integral part of the National Health Service—it will help to bridge an urgent gap. It also accepts the principle that in this area what is contraceptive sauce for the goose should equally be so for the gander.

I do not want to get involved too deeply in the medical controversy between the distinguished doctors who have spoken, but I am a little puzzled. In 1970, 44 per cent. of married women who had terminations were also sterilised, and I know, both from speaking to gynæcologists and from the evidence we received when I served as a member of the Working Party on the Unplanned Pregnancy set up by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynæcologists, that many gynæcologists were quite prepared to sterilise a woman after she had had a baby, after they had refused a termination. So the idea that women have not been sterilised for social reasons (I agree that it depends on how one defines the word "social") is, if I may say so with great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Brock, really rather a lot of nonsense. I should have thought—and here I speak for the women—that a combination of an abortion and sterilisation is a very unpleasant thing, both physically and traumatically, for any woman to undergo. From my reading and understanding of the vasectomy operation, it seems to be on a rather slighter and smaller level and also the results seem, fortunately, to be much more minimal.

The Health Education Council, of which I have the honour to be Chairman, had a contraceptive advertisement, which we have now produced as a leaflet, inserted in several popular papers for the month from the middle of February to the middle of March. This set out factually the different forms of contraception that were available. It referred to sterilisation and to "a surgical operation, known as vasectomy, for men". The advertisement then described the operation, but your Lordships will know about it. The advertisement—reprinted in a leaflet—now, as I say, explains the disadvantages, that the man cannot change his mind about having no more children. Then, under the heading, "Where can you get or buy it?", it says, "Your family doctor will advise".

I should like to put the mind of the right reverend Prelate at rest because, out of 500 letters received by us, over one-sixth—the highest number asking for information about any specific form of contraception—were letters from men (with one or two from their wives) asking about vasectomy. There was not one letter from a single man, except a man who was over sixty years of age, who had not had sexual intercourse and who, our medical advisers said, needed medical help. Since these advertisements went into the popular newspapers: the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror, the Sunday People, the Sun and the News of the World, one would have thought that if there were all these promiscuous bachelors who were going to get on to the sexual bandwagon, they would have written in, because they could have written in complete confidence. But we did not receive one letter of this sort. In fact, as has been confirmed this afternoon by some noble Lords, the letters were all from people who had thought it out, people who were desperately worried. They ranged from a husband of twenty-seven who has five children and who said:

"My wife and I have talked it over and find it is best for us. We find there is some—, thing against all the other methods."

I must say that what my noble friend Lady Summerskill said is true: there are still a great many women who are concerned about the pill and who are moving, in effect, from it. In the future we hope this will not be so, but that is the situation at present, and that is what we are dealing with in this Bill. This correspondent went on to say:

"The doctor said he could not help. I would have to wait three years for N.H.S. or go private and pay approximately £30 to have it done in six weeks. The local F.P.A. could not help as their nearest clinic is at Cardiff and it is too far for me to go."

According to the latest F.P.A. figures, which were put out on Friday, at their clinic in Cardiff there is a waiting list of 55 weeks. The ages of our correspondents ranged from about thirty to fifty years old. There was one case, not exactly typical. But more than one posed the same problem: a man of over forty; his wife forty; two children, fourteen and seventeen; the wife had had a miscarriage. They decided that one of them should be sterilised and they went to their family doctor. The man wrote:

"He has told us he cannot do anything as he is a Roman Catholic and his religion does not permit the operation at the present time."

The wife then saw a specialist and asked whether her husband could be sterilised. The specialist said it was against his religion to make any such arrangements.

While I agree— and I think we all do— that a doctor must be free to arrive at a decision of conscience and clinical judgment, I think it is also true, as I put it, perhaps not very clearly to the noble Lord, Lord Brock, that the patients also have a right to have something done, so long as it is legal and considered medically safe, for their own wellbeing and their own welfare. Here I would take very strong issue with the noble Lord over this question of wellbeing and good health. I think, if I may say so, that he is defining medical health on extremely narrow grounds. The whole wellbeing and health of a person must also depend on his or her mental and emotional health: social conditions and a number of other things come into it.

The Working Party on Unplanned Pregnancy recognised this point, for we said:

"For the doctor unwilling on grounds of conscience to refer a woman requesting termination there is an obligation to seek a different opinion ".

This, I would say, is exactly the same principle that should apply to vasectomy; and this Bill, I believe, will make it that much easier not only for the patient but for the doctor who has these very strong feelings of conscience and conviction, because then he or she can refer the patient much more easily to a local authority health clinic. I hope this will mean that this will help to increase and enlarge the facilities. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, when he was winding up the debate on population said (he was so short of time I did not have the heart to interrupt him) that there were family planning facilities everywhere in the country except the Scilly Isles. I think it was through shortness of time that he forgot to add that the facilities vary tremendously, and that whereas only about a third can be termed anything like adequate, there are some in respect of which to pay lip service would be to use the lips in a very generous manner.

I would also say to the noble Lord, Lord Brock, that our Working Party, which had a distinguished Chairman, Sir John Peel, recommended that facilities for both male and female sterilisation should be provided within the N.H.S. The report also says:

"The Working Party is concerned that so few vasectomies are done within the National Health Service, although it recognises the difficulty that it requires the same degree of concern over social and family matters by surgeons as already exists among obstetricians and gynæcologists".

I do not want to get involved in internecine warfare, but it may be that the surgeons do not consider the gynæcologists surgeons. So far as I am concerned, they all call themselves Mr., so I take it that they are. But this raises a socially much wider point which cannot be confined within narrow medical limits. I believe that this Bill, although it goes only a small way towards a comprehensive contraception service, is an important one and is a big step forward. I think underlying so much that has been said is the need for a great deal of education both on this and on contraception generally. Incidentally, a great many of the letters to the Health Education Council threw up such human tragedies, such tremendous ignorance and such desperation in which so many people were living, that what really is needed is a far greater effort of publicity and education to motivate people towards contraception, in their own family interests and in the interests of society, if not only unwanted but unplanned pregnancies are to be reduced. This, in my opinion, is the highest priority at this time in any approach to a population policy.

My Lords, we have heard some very thoughtful speeches from some very eminent members of the medical and surgical professions. I think there was some lack of unanimity about them, and so it appears that the simple layman, such as I am, has to make up his own mind. I think I can safely say that I have no personal interest to declare. I had my 74th birthday a fortnight ago and I am looking forward joyfully to my Golden Wedding two months from to-day. But I am a supporter of this Bill. During recent years I have warmly supported various Bills on matrimonial subjects brought forward by my noble friend Lady Summerskill and other Members of this noble House. I have felt that the aim of those Bills was to improve the position of women in our modern society. I feel that this Bill has a similar aim, and so it has my warm support.

Nevertheless, I have some little apprehensions, some little doubts about the precise form in which the Bill is drawn. I must confess that I know very little about women. I have read a good deal about them, and if there is one thing that emerges I think it is that they have a habit from time to time of changing their minds. In the operation of this Bill we may have a case of a woman who says, "Yes" and a little later she may be inclined to say, "No", but the irrevocable action has then been taken. Then we have to consider the sad occasion when one child in the family dies; the woman may be yearning for another child to take that other one's place, but she has to content herself with the fact that this final operation has taken place upon her husband. Then we may have the case where the wife dies. It need not necessarily be a case of death that has followed a long period of invalidism. We get sudden death these days with high speed motor cars and careless pedestrians; death may descend on any person suddenly at any moment. In that case the man may wish to marry again. But this surgical action will have been taken, and what is he to feel? Then there are cases where the divorce courts may have stepped in and a decree may have been granted.

In all these cases it seems to me that if the final decision has already been taken, then that man is going to be in a very embarrassing position. Women are going to think about him, "Well, there is something missing". I feel that while I enthusiastically agree with this Bill there ought, on the Committee stage, to be written into the clauses some provisions aiming at greater safety. I think we would want to know that the wife has really given her consent, not in a sudden emotional moment but as a result of really careful, mature thought. We do not want any impulsive decisions taken which might afterwards be regretted.

Those may be minor points; they may be matters upon which we can get an assurance on the Committee stage. It may be that the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, will be able to give us assurances now. It may very well be that he will be able to say that these exceptional points, if you like to call them that, will be covered by the memoranda that will be sent out by the Ministry to the local authorities. I am a little doubtful about what is to happen and the sadness that is likely to follow in the three or four kinds of exceptional case that I have mentioned. However, I hope that I can be reassured on those points, and I certainly shall vote for the Second Reading.

My Lords, I owe a great debt of thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland. I put my name down at the Table to say a few words after the noble Baroness, but the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, has said so much better than I could and so much more shortly some of the things that I thought ought to be said that what I have to say will be reduced from possibly five minutes, to, I hope, not more than two. It is to emphasise a point which has been put by a minority in this debate: that the principle in this Bill, unlike the principle of the Abortion Bill, is one which no honourable man, so far as I can see, can object to. Unfortunately a Bill can have intentions as honourable as the Order of the Bath with St. Michael and St. George thrown in (or ritually immersed), and still be a disastrous Bill, if it is not carried out as it is intended to be but only as people believe it to be drafted.

This seems to me essentially a Bill in which the drafting is of vital importance. The safeguards which have been promised are an intrinsic part of the Bill. I know that I am not allowed to quote from anyone in another place who is not a Minister, but may I paraphrase only two points made by the proposer of this Bill? He told us that he was satisfied that the assurances he had received in Committee, in which several Amendments were accepted, would be adequate but some would need further consideration in "another place". They will receive that. After the debate we have heard to-day we are in a much better position to consider what those points will be. I need not elaborate on that at all except as a warning that if there is an Amendment I may have something to say on it.

The second point, to make it very shortly, is that he said that he was happy that, by the Departmental circulars and the Working Party which will be set up to advise his Department, a "more adequate guarantee" has been given that all possible complexity will be fully advised upon and met. That is setting a high standard for this House. I do not think we want a more adequate guarantee; we want an adequate guarantee. But we do not want a less adequate guarantee; and, speaking purely from personal experience of the Abortion Bill, we do not need a more or less "adequate guarantee; we want as good a guarantee as we can get that the Bill means what it says and that we agree to it.

The last point I will certainly not dwell on, but it was suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, that those people who take part in marches and shout about abortion do more harm than any others. I am afraid that might have been directed at me, in that I did take part in a march yesterday in Liverpool, in which we marched, but did not shout, it was a march for which I was partly responsible because a society of which I have the great honour, undeservedly, to be Chairman had organised it. We had expected perhaps 10,000 or 15.000 supporters, and in fact we received what The Times called 40,000, the police called 65.000, and another newspaper called 100,000, supporters; but there was no shouting by the marchers. The shouting was done entirely by "members" of three organisations, who I am sorry to say are mentioned with gratitude by the proponent of the Bill. They were not of course members of the organisations, but they were young men who claimed to be members of the conservation society called Friends of the Earth, who, with rubber balloons under their pullovers, rather obtrusively thrust advertisements for contraceptives at nuns and nurses, who they seemed to think were the same, arid also at myself, on the ground that I happened at one time to be marching next to the Anglican Bishop of Warrington, who was wearing a scarlet cassock and was therefore thought to be a representative of the Vatican. They were requested by the police to desist, but they did a good deal of shouting. I only say this to defend myself from the noble Baroness sitting behind me.

As to the Family Planning Commission, which she, by a rather delightful Freudian error in Hansard the other day referred to as a "Family Panning Commission" (one will find that in Hansard, but she did not mean it)—that is an admirable society, but we do not want anybody to be attached to it who has not the same intentions as Sir John Peel and all its genuine members, such as the noble Baroness. All I am trying to say is that we want to look at the actual application of this Bill more carefully than we looked into that of the Abortion Bill, in order to avoid what I would regard as a tragedy almost as great. It would not be as great, because I think for a man to lose his virility is not as bad as for a man to kill a child. Those are my opinions. That is all I wish to say.

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord if I accused him of shouting when he did not shout. All I really meant by my interjection was that the noble Lord and his supporters and followers would be doing a far greater good if they were shouting and marching for more and safe contraceptive methods.

My Lords, may I thank the noble Baroness, and say that I shall be delighted to march, though not to shout, for them as soon as I know that they are absolutely safe.

My Lords, I should like to thank the large number of noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. I have made a few notes of one or two of the points made, but I probably cannot read them, and after this long debate I shall not say very much about them. I would express my appreciation of the kind welcome the Bill had from the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, speaking on behalf of the Government, and from the noble Baroness, Lady Serota, speaking on behalf of the Opposition. That was very encouraging. I should like at the same time to thank all noble Lords who have spoken in favour of the Bill. There are no particular points which I wish to raise with them.

To the noble Lord, Lock Brock, I say that I am sorry about the wording regarding treatment in Clause 1 of the Bill. Perhaps it will be possible to put that right as we go along. I would assure him that this work is not being done for the good of the State; it is being done for the good of the family. I think, too, that there will be no pressure brought by the Bill on doctors to do vasectomies if they do not wish to. I was very interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Craigmyle, said, but I would tell him that a great deal of work on vasectomy has been done in the past. I have here a list of references going back to 1920, and I think I could, if I looked, find some that go back even before that. A great deal of work is being done on it now, but a good deal of work has been done in the past and, so far as we know, there have been no recognisable ill effects.

The right reverend Prelate asked whether the instructions, or whatever they are called, from the Department would be mandatory or purely advisory. I am afraid that I cannot give him a very satisfactory answer. At the present time, because they have not yet been worked out, they are called "guiding lines". But I am sure that, so far as possible, we shall see that people requiring vasectomy under this Bill will be required to have consultation on per haps more than one occasion with the family planning people. I am certain that the Bill would not apply to the young man who wanted to have the operation for other reasons. Of course one could not stop him from going to a venal doctor who might do it for him; but that is something which we must put up with.

I am thankful to the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, for his intervention and I wish him good luck on his Golden Wedding which falls in the near future. The noble Lord, Lord Platt, said that the medical profession exists to carry burdens, and I think he is right. We quite often need to do, or have to do, something which we should rather not do. One noble Lord remarked how sad it was that after a vasectomy people could have no more children. The same argument applies to a woman who has been sterilised, and there may be all sorts of family dramas afterwards because she cannot have any more children. I think that what I have said covers all the points which have been raised.

rose to move, That the Prosecution of Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 1972, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, before coming on to the content of this Order, I should perhaps explain why it is that the House is being asked to approve the Order on the basis of the urgent procedure which is contained in paragraph 4(1) of the Schedule to the Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Act 1972. Noble Lords who took part in the debates on that measure before Easter may recall that that paragraph reads as follows:

"Her Majesty shall not be recommended to make an Order in Council under section 1(3) of this Act unless either a draft of the Order has been approved by resolution of each House of Parliament or the Order declares that it has been made to appear to Her Majesty that by reason of urgency the Order requires to be made without a draft having been so approved."

Your Lordships will see at the beginning of the Prosecution of Offences (Northern Ireland) Order, which is now before you, the words:

"Whereas it has been made to appear to Her Majesty that by reason of urgency this Order requires to be made without a draft having been approved by resolution of each House of Parliament."

My Lords, has the noble Lord finished the quotation?

No, my Lords, I have not, but I am quite ready to give way to the noble Lord if he would like to intervene at this stage, and then I can answer him either now or at a later stage.

I am sorry; I was not quite clear. Has this document from which the noble Lord is quoting been laid? Is it available to the House?

My Lords, this is the Report of a Working Party commissioned by the Government of Northern Ireland which was presented to the Parliament of Northern Ireland. I have been checking up in the course of the afternoon whether copies are available in this House, and I am afraid to say that, with the exception of a copy which I have made available to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, in the course of the afternoon, I find they are not. I shall be discussing, with both the Printed Paper Office and, I think, the Library, what would be the best machinery in the future. We do not want to flood the Printed Paper Office with large stocks of documents which are not going to be asked for, and it may be that something in the Library for reference purposes would be more suitable. But I should like to apologise to the noble Lord if he does not have a copy of this particular publication in front of him.

My Lords, in the circumstances referred to, perhaps the noble Lord could tell us the qualifications of the seven members of the Committee other than Mr. MacDermott.

My Lords, I am afraid I cannot do that without notice. What I should like to do is to continue with my narrative account, having made that apology for the absence of this Report from the Printed Paper Office, where it should certainly have been. It is my fault entirely that I did not think of it in time and arrange for this to be done; but perhaps I could continue, because this is a linked sequence of events. We start with the Report of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, which is available in the Printed Paper Office and with which noble Lords are familiar. We then come to the further study under Mr. John MacDermott and the recommendations which that Committee made. I will now continue with this sequence of events, because I think it is the most straightforward way to explain it to your Lordships.

A further recommendation of the Working Party was that the system under which police officers act as prosecutors in magistrates' courts should be discontinued except in respect of minor offences. As to the adaptability of the Scottish system, the Committee commented on page 4 as follows:

"We are satisfied that it would be quite impractical to graft the Scottish system on to our own system of criminal jurisprudence and administration, and we note that nowhere in England or Wales has an effort been made to adopt the Scottish system".

My Lords, this Report was accepted by the Government of Northern Ireland, and a Bill implementing its recommendations was in its full stages before the Parliament at Stormont when that Parliament was prorogued. I understand that the Third Reading of the Bill was to have taken place in the Senate on March 28, so it had been right the way through the normal Parliamentary procedures at Stormont but had not obtained the Royal Assent. It is this Bill, therefore, which has now been turned into the Order in Council which your Lordships are considering to-day.

There is only one main difference; that is, that Article 3 provides that so long as the Attorney General for England and Wales also acts as Attorney General for Northern Ireland under the Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Act, he may give directions to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Otherwise, the Director has virtual independence; and considerable security of tenure is envisaged in the method of appointment set out in Article 4(2). After consultation with the Attorney General, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has appointed Mr. Barry Shaw, Q.C., as Director of Public Prosecutions, and Mr. Shaw has already taken up his post. Mr. Shaw is a distinguished member of the Bar of Northern Ireland whose ability and integrity are widely respected, and we are fortunate that a man of his calibre is available for a job of this importance.

Article 5 of the Order sets out in some detail the functions of the new Director of Public Prosecutions, and Article 5(1)(c) is perhaps the most crucial part of this Order. It makes it a part of his functions:

"where he"—

that is, the Director—

"thinks proper to initiate, undertake and carry on, on behalf of the Crown proceedings for indictable offences and for such summary offences or classes of summary offences as he considers should be dealt with by him;…"

Article 6 requires various documents to be delivered to the Director of Public Prosecutions, and gives him a statutory right to call for any other information which he may require from the police. This Article has its counterpart in English law, but the Northern Ireland provision is designed to assure the public in quite explicit terms that nothing can be hidden from the Director.

Article 7 relates to various Statutes which require the consent of the Attorney General to prosecutions for various offences. The first two paragraphs provide that, with certain exceptions, such consent may be given by the Director of Public Prosecutions, but during the period of operation of the Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Act the Director will, by virtue of Article 3 of the Order, be subject in this matter also to the directions of the Attorney General for England and Wales. The remainder of Article 7 makes various amendments of a procedural nature in relation to consents to meet difficulties which have arisen from time to time in the Northern Ireland courts. My Lords, when the Department of Public Prosecutions is set up, it will take over all the criminal work at present carried on, on behalf of the Crown, by the Crown Solicitors in Northern Ireland, and Article 8 of the Order makes provision for compensating the part-time officials for the loss of their office. Article 9 makes a number of consequential amendments to Northern Ireland Statutes; and Article 10 makes a minor amendment of a drafting nature in a Northern Irish Statute dealing with prosecutions against corporations.

My Lords, no one can be complacent about the situation in Northern Ireland at this moment, but we can be hopeful, and we can certainly be confident that the provisions of this Order can do nothing but help in the process of reconciliation to which we have set our hands. I am sure that your Lordships will want to wish every success to the newly-appointed Director and his staff. I beg to move.

My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for the explanation he has given of this Order, and I support his invitation to your Lordships to approve it. I do so with three brief comments about the background to the Order and one qualified reservation about its contents. This is the first Order that we have had before us since the Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Act, which we passed just before Easter, became law, and it is fairly clear that we are now confronted with an onerous new range of responsibilities. It also seems fairly clear that there will need to be some new machinery if the Houses of Parliament are properly to consider the Orders and the legislation which will emerge from the Office of the new Secretary of State.

My Lords, this is not the occasion to go into detail about this problem, but I think we ought to note it. It would seem that we shall have to differentiate between Orders and legislation which are non-controversial and those which embody matters of principle. It would also seem advisable to consider having a form of Committee from the Floor of this House and the Floor of another place which can scrutinise this legislation. Otherwise, it will clearly become something that may conceivably choke us, parliamentarily speaking. I should have thought (and I imagine that Lord Windlesham would agree with me), that if a Joint Committee of both Houses were possible or is possible, or is something that we can discuss, that would be a good thing, although it is conceivable that Members of the other place might well have different views on this point.

It is a little unfortunate that this Order, the first Order under the new Act, does embody a matter of some importance, a matter of principle, and that it has come to us in a way that is possibly not the most straightforward way if we are to be able to look at these Orders adequately. I quite understand the urgency that there was behind this, and I fully accept the explanations which Lord Windlesham has given; but I think that we can take this as being an example of the way not to do these things. If we are to have Orders before us which are not capable of amendment, then some form of consultation beforehand, and certainly some proper opportunity for careful study, is going to be essential.

I was not here at Question Time. I do not know the answer which the noble Lord gave my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner. I will leave it to my noble and learned friend to take up the point that has been made about the procedure to be followed in the case of these prosecutions. To me it had seemed that the Order runs contrary to the recommendations of paragraph 42 of the Hunt Report in which, as the noble Lord himself has said, it was quite definitely recommended that the Scottish system of independent public prosecutors should be adopted. I noted what the noble Lord said about there being no alteration as yet in the system applied in the English and Welsh courts; but surely the fact that we have not made progress in England and Wales is no reason why we should institute this less satisfactory system in Northern Ireland. This does not seem to me to be a conclusive argument.

My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord was not here when I answered the Question of the noble and learned lord, Lord Gardiner, because in a supplementary question, the noble and learned Lord put exactly that point. What I said in reply was that the principle of the Hunt recommendation had been adopted. The principle was that there should be in Northern Ireland an independent system of public prosecutors, independent of the Government and independent of the police. That is exactly what this Order is doing. The actual form it has taken resulted from the further study given by the Working Party under Mr. MacDermott. The principle behind these recommendations has been accepted by the Government.

My Lords, as I have said, I will leave it to my noble and learned friend to comment on this. All I will say is that it is not apparent from the Order that this is the case. I have no doubt that we shall give this aspect further consideration. So much for the qualified reservation, as I call it, of the content of the Order.

My second general comment concerns the local background to this proposed system of prosecutions. I cannot but reflect on the way justice is being dispensed in certain parts of Ulster at the present time. We in this Chamber considering this Order must find it almost incredible that within Ulster human beings are now being sentenced to be shot in the leg, that women are being sentenced to be tarred and feathered and are being shorn of their hair. To us, in this Chamber, considering the niceties of one form of public prosecution or another, it seems almost impossible to comprehend that human beings in that part of the country should be behaving in the way they apparently are behaving.

My Lords, I cannot but make this additional comment. The last time we discussed Irish affairs I said that among those who ought to be consulted about the future of that part of Ireland were the British people. I have never had such a large postbag as I have had since making that statement, which was to some extent reported in the Press. It is obvious to me, from the expressions of opinion I received, that the majority of British people cannot understand why others, for example, in Londonderry, were being persuaded to remain in the United Kingdom. Their feeling was, "Why should we be concerned with people who behave in this way?" Nevertheless, we have accepted certain duties, and my final comment is that I have absolutely profound admiration for the way in which Mr. Whitelaw has conducted himself in Northern Ireland since he assumed his duties there. My mind went back to the time when Sir Hugh Foot undertook certain responsibilities in Cyprus, when there was a conflict between the two communities there. The very high standard of behaviour set by Sir Hugh Foot in that unhappy case seems to me to have been followed by Mr. Whitelaw. I wish him well, as I do the Attorney General, to whom reference was made by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham. We can only hope that our efforts in this regard will bear some fruit and that there will be a spread of reason. I agree that we should give this Order our approval.

My Lords, Parliament has said that subordinate legislation of this kind must have the approval of both Houses of Parliament. This is the first House before which this Order has come: it is not, I understand, to be considered by the other House until next week. It seems to me that we should look at it. It has already transpired that a very relevant document is not obtainable in the Printed Paper Office and is not in the Library; so it may be that the Question that I asked earlier this afternoon has in a sense already justified itself.

Before saying anything about the Order, may I make it plain that the last thing I wish to do is in any way to embarrass the Government in relation to Northern Ireland? I have the greatest possible admiration for what is being done by both the Secretary of State and the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham. It seems to me that they have taken a series of wise decisions, and they have my support.

My Lords, we have to look at this Order on the merits. This is a very small island, and we have in this island two entirely different systems of prosecution. In England we have the police, subject to a Director of Public Prosecutions, and in Scotland the Procurator Fiscal. Reading from the document, with which the noble Lord has supplied me, I see that it states:

"The Procurator Fiscal is central to the Criminal Administration of Scotland because:—

"a. He is responsible for the investigation of all crime in his district from Murder downwards (excepting such minor crimes and offences as are normally tried in the Police and J.P. Courts).

"b. He is responsible for the personal prosecution of crimes and offences tried in the Sheriff Court either on Summary Complaint or on indictment before a Jury.

"c. He is responsible for all preliminary procedure in cases to be tried in the High Court. He must prepare the case for trial in the High Court and assist Crown Counsel at the trial.

"d. He is responsible for the investigation of all sudden unexpected and suspicious deaths."

It seems to me most unlikely that it can be the case that each of two entirely different systems—one in the North of the island and the other in the South—is the better. I should have thought it was obvious, almost without saying, that one or the other would be the better.

I have always been impressed by the fact that while there are not many people who are familiar with both systems, everyone I know who is familiar with both systems thinks the Scottish one is much the better. There is a report to that effect from Justice. And why? Well, my Lords, they give a number of reasons, putting their heads. They say:

"(a) The honest, zealous and conscientious police officer who has satisfied himself that the suspect is guilty becomes psychologically committed to prosecution and thus to successful prosecution. He wants to prosecute and he wants to win.…

"(b) The decision to prosecute does not and should not always fall to be determined solely by the likelihood of a conviction. Public policy and individual circumstances are rightly to be taken into account."

They say they do not think that ought to be for the police.

The report continues:

"(c) So far as the committee is aware, the English system is the only one in Europe where the interrogation of suspects, the interviewing of witnesses, the gathering and testing of scientific evidence, the selection of evidence to be laid before the court, the decision as to what charges shall be brought and the conduct of the prosecution may be entirely under the control of the police.

"(d) The question of whether to prosecute partakes of the nature of a judicial decision.…

"(e) Once a prosecution is commenced the extent of police involvement—in terms of prestige; fear of public criticism …the possibility of an action for malicious prosecution…may…influence the decision as to whether the prosecution ought to be dropped. …

"(f) The dominance of the police in the prosecution process exposes them to temptation. …

"(g) Cases do occur in which pressure is brought on counsel to take a hard line against his better judgment."

I was therefore interested, my Lords, when I read in the Report of the Committee of which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was the distinguished Chairman that he recommended that in Northern Ireland they should go over to the Scottish system; partly of course on grounds of good relations, or better relations, between the public and the police. I am not very familiar with what happened after that. Of course, the then Government and the Opposition, and I know the Government of Northern Ireland, specifically accepted the Hunt Report.

I did not know, until the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, kindly supplied me with a copy of its report, that there had been this Working Party. As I understand it, this is entirely a Northern Ireland Working Party; perhaps the noble Lord will tell us when he replies how many of the seven members, apart from Mr. MacDermott arc of Northern Ireland; and whether all, or which of them, are Northern Ireland police. What they say is that they do not think that the Scottish system would be practicable. I am not quite clear why, but they say that, as in England, there should be a Director of Public Prosecutions. They go on to say that the Director should prosecute in the major cases and that the police could go on with the minor ones. Then there is a paragraph about the line between serious and minor cases, and they set out eight different classes of cases which should be regarded as serious and therefore, I assume, cases in which the Director would prosecute.

My Lords, when I read the Order I could not find this anywhere at all. It sets up a Director of Public Prosecutions. Well, we have one here; that is the English and not the Scottish system. The only relevant parts of the Order that I can find are, first paragraph 4(7)

"The Director may employ a solicitor to act as his agent in the conduct of any prosecution …"

Then paragraph 5(1)

"Without prejudice to the operation of the succeeding provisions of this article, it shall be the function of the Director— …

(c) where he thinks proper to initiate, undertake and carry on, on behalf of the Crown proceedings for indictable offences and for such summary offences or classes of summary offences as he considers should be dealt with by him."

This is nothing remotely like what Lord Hunt's Committee contemplated. It does not put any obligation on him to prosecute anybody so far as I can make out, because it is subject to the words, "where he thinks proper". The sub-paragraph reads:

"where he thinks proper …for indictable offences and for such summary offences …as he considers should be dealt with by him."

It is entirely within his discretion. He is not bound, even in indictable cases, to have anybody except the police to prosecute. Then paragraph 5(3) states:

"Nothing in this Order shall preclude any person from initiating, undertaking or carrying on any criminal proceedings, but the Director may undertake at any stage the conduct of those proceedings if he thinks fit."

Not having had very long in which to consider the Report of the Northern Ireland Working Party, I would respectfully say that the Order as it stands appears to be nothing remotely like that envisaged by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. It does not even go nearly as far as the Working Party recommended. They did, after all, specifically recommend, in effect, that the police should not continue to prosecute except in the cases which they said were not serious. That is not very satisfactory, because a vast number of cases of great importance to the citizen are what might be called minor cases; but when it comes to the Order there is no restriction on the police at all unless the Director, as in England he can in many cases, decides to take over the case himself.

While, therefore, I could not for a moment propose that the House should not approve the Order, I would venture to hope that before it goes before the other House the Government, and others interested and perhaps concerned, ought to realise how far the Justice report and the Hunt Report were both in favour of the Scottish system as being preferable to the English system; and that it is quite impossible to say that this Order, as it stands at the moment, is anything even remotely like the Scottish system. It may be that the Government may be well advised to give the form of the Order some further consideration before it goes to the other House so as at least to place some limit on both the police and also the Director as to the classes of case in which they should respectively prosecute.

My Lords, I rise to speak because I feel that I ought to say something, if it is in order for me to do so. I shall speak briefly because what I wanted to say has been said very much better—I am grateful to him—by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner. Perhaps I should preface my one or two remarks by saying to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, that I greatly appreciate the very generous remarks about my Report.

My Lords, in paragraph 142 of the Report we were concerned more with effect than method and we had no time, as we made clear in the Report, to go into method. But it is, as regards method, possibly worth noting that my colleagues included Mr. Robert Mark, the present Commissioner of Police, as well as Sir James Robertson, who was then Chief Constable of Glasgow. Although I am not now, and certainly I was not then, an expert in these matters, Mr. Mark and I fell in very readily with Sir James's advocacy of the Scottish system, for the simple reason that it removed completely from the police any responsibility for prosecutions of any kind. As I understand, the matter was dealt with by the Procurator Fiscal and we suggested that it might be put in the hands of the Chief Crown Solicitor.

My Lords, I share the doubts voiced by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, about what residual responsibility for prosecuting will remain with the police if this Order is approved; because the two reasons we gave why we thought the police should be relieved of responsibility for prosecuting at all are reasons which I think will remain valid. As regards our first reason—and this is the kind of deep mistrust which pervades the whole situation in Northern Ireland in one community or another—I think it can be said that there should be no grounds for mistrust, even if they were to have some residual responsibility for prosecuting, now that they are no longer seen to be an executive arm of the executive permanent Unionist Government, but have their responsibility to the police authority which is widely reflecting every shade of relevant opinion in Northern Ireland.

I should have thought that it must be important to remove any vestige of doubt about the impartiality of the police: and I am not in any way indicating that there was any reason for us to think that they were not entirely impartial up to the time that we made our Report. I also think that the police need every moment they can spare for their other and primary duties, particularly perhaps in the middle grade of police officers, who get so involved in court work, who have responsibility for leadership in general, for collecting information, detecting crime, administration, and not least, perhaps, in Northern Ireland, for improving public relations. The concern I have in this matter has been enhanced on listening to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, when pointing out the items omitted from this Order which were in the Report of the Working Party.

My Lords, rather like my noble friend Lord Hunt, I feel that as I happen to be here I ought to say a few words, and any remarks that I make will be of a peripheral nature not connected with the actual content of the Order. I should like, first, to say to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, that I think it would be wise—and he obviously has already raised this point—in future, when matters of this kind are being considered, that the necessary documentation should be available in this House, because otherwise I fear that substance will be given to the remarks of Mr. Faulkner at the time when the Government and Parliament were prorogued, when he described the activities of Her Majesty's Government in their treatment of the Northern Ireland situation as if they were dealing with a "coconut colony". If there is no documentation here at Westminster when Orders in Council are being considered, then this may produce some substance for that idiotic charge.

Secondly, I am not aware whether we shall be faced with further Orders based on legislation which had reached a certain stage in the Stormont Parliament before its prorogation. But if we are to be faced with these in the weeks and months that lie ahead, I hope that the Minister will appreciate that there was no Opposition at Stormont from last July when they withdrew from the local Parliament. It would not be correct to say that matters had been fully debated by that Parliament, because there were people sitting just on one side of that House of Commons after last July, and particularly after the disastrous policy of internment, which unfortunately was agreed to by Her Majesty's Government.

Then I should like to remind the Minister that the other day in this House, when we were discussing Northern Ireland affairs, I suggested that the Government should consider the Scottish system for governing Northern Ireland. I appreciate that in this there are a great many difficulties, but I hope that in this particular small matter that we are considering today the Government are not going to down-turn the Scottish system on the ground that it is something that must never in any circumstances be applied to Northern Ireland. Just as for the last two or three years every action which the Government have taken has been designed to avoid having to introduce direct rule, which has led to all this trouble, so now I hope that we are not going to enter into a period where every action they take is designed to do nothing to copy what is done by St. Andrew's House in Scotland. It may well be that that is the right way to handle it. If I may make a small addition here, I do not think the most rabid Protestant in Northern Ireland imagines that Stormont is going to be restored in its former state at the end of one year. Therefore, if Scotland provides a good example for doing things in Northern Ireland in a certain way, then I hope that the Government will not rule it out of order.

Finally, I want to associate myself with the remarks of other noble Lords. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has undertaken the most appallingly difficult role. I hope that neither he nor the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, will so overstrain themselves by flying backwards and forwards to Northern Ireland three or four times a week (I know what it is to do it twice a week) that they will find they cannot adequately attend to their jobs. I fully appreciate the great difficulties under which they are labouring. The only sad thing is that the extremists on both sides in Northern Ireland who criticise the Secretary of State in his efforts do not begin to appreciate that he took on this job out of a feeling of patriotic duty: there was no need whatever for him to take it on. Anybody who has been trying to do that kind of job himself at an earlier stage knows how difficult it is to bring about any agreement about anything. I hope that one day the extremists on both sides in Northern Ireland will appreciate that the Secretary of State and his Ministers took on this job purely as a patriotic duty. I cannot imagine anybody applying for such a job.

My Lords, I dare say the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, would feel that to draw these very fine legal distinctions is rather far-fetched, in view of the fact that the reception in Ireland in general of the three judicial Reports which have been before this House does not suggest that fine legal distinctions between fact and surmise, for example, are often appreciated. Yet I think there is something important in the proposition that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, was making. Even if Irishmen would not be persuaded that the adoption of the Scottish law was likely to produce greater impartiality on the part of what they regard as the occupying force, nevertheless the point that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, made is I think significant; namely, that if that Scottish system were adopted it would help the police by relieving them of certain duties which otherwise will have to fall upon them. I hope that the point will be considered.

My Lords, I should like to thank noble Lords for what they have said about my right honourable friend and for the support that they have given to his general policies, and also to thank the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, for the advice that he gave to noble Lords on his side of the House to accept the Order that is before us this evening. I think there may have been a little misunderstanding about the responsibilities and functions of the Northern Ireland Director of Public Prosecutions. I hesitate to say this to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, a former occupant of the Woolsack, but I have a feeling that words have been used here in different ways and that the responsibilities of the Director of Public Prosecutions in Northern Ireland are going to be different from those of his namesake in England. What I shall do in the later part of my concluding remarks is to describe how it is intended that his Department will operate. That will be available on the Record before this Order is considered by Members in another place, and I hope it will be helpful to them when they come to study it.

I think it will be found that Ireland, as so often before, is going to have neither the English nor the Scottish system, but its own system. I come back to the point that I made earlier this afternoon in my Answer to the Question of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, at Question Time. The new system will contain the ingredients which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was after in his Report, which is a system of initiating or taking over prosecutions independent both of the Government and of the police. The proposal of the Working Party chaired by Mr. John MacDermott which was accepted by the Government of Northern Ireland and incorporated in the Order, is that the Director of Public Prosecutions would not take directions from the Attorney General. So here is a major difference between the system in this country and that in Ireland.

Before I go on to describe how the new Department will work, I think I should answer the question which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, put to me about the composition of the Working Party. Apart from Mr. John MacDermott, the other members were as follows: a resident magistrate, the chief clerk of petty sessions in Belfast, the then solicitor to one of the county councils, a senior civil servant, a solicitor in private practice specialising in magistrates' court work and two senior police officers. That was the composition of the Committee.

I should like now to describe how it is envisaged that the Department of the Director of Public Prosecutions will operate in Northern Ireland. It will be the primary task of the Director to initiate and undertake, where he thinks proper, proceedings on behalf of the Crown for indictable offences and for such summary offences or classes of summary offences as he considers should be dealt with by him. This is in Article 5(1)(c). As the noble and learned Lord pointed out, it is left to his discretion; and in deciding how he should use that discretion he will no doubt have in mind the criteria which were set out in the MacDermott Report. Provision is also made for the abolition of the Office of Crown Solicitor and for the transfer to the Director of Public Prosecutions of the functions of that office connected with criminal proceedings. Accordingly, an independent Department of Public Prosecutions has now been established, to which all papers relating to the possible commission of any offence, other than a summary offence of a minor nature, will be referred. As I mentioned, Parliamentary responsibility in the interim period covered by the Temporary Provisions Act will rest with the Attorney General for England and Wales.

The new system, when fully operational, will have three main advantages. First, the initiation and conduct on behalf of the Crown of prosecutions for all but very minor summary offences will be centralised in the new D.P.P.'s Department. Unlike the rest of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland will have a national prosecutions department, responsible for the initiation and conduct of all prosecutions on behalf of the Crown, including prosecutions on behalf of the police, of the Northern Ireland Government and of United Kingdom Government Departments. Secondly, the new Department will not be open to the same allegations of bias—and I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said about the impartial way in which the Royal Ulster Constabulary had conducted prosecutions at the time of his Report—which were directed against those concerned with the initiation and conduct of prosecutions in Northern Ireland. Thirdly, the police will, when the new Department is fully manned, be relieved of the onerous burden of conducting prosecutions in courts of summary jurisdiction in Northern Ireland. Eventually only proceedings in summary cases of a very minor nature will be conducted personally by members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

My Lords, if your Lordships will agree to accept the Order, as I hope you will, I shall draw the attention of my right honourable friend the Attorney General to the remarks of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner. There will be some time for me to do that because I understand that the Order will not be discussed in another place until next week. So, particularly in the matters to which he referred, such as the exercise of discretion, the drawing of the line between minor matters and matters of great importance, the Attorney General may have the benefit of what the noble and learned Lord has said and discuss it with the Director of Public Prosecutions in Northern Ireland.