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

My Lords, there were cordial discussions on a range of matters with my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State with responsibility for shipping matters and with officials. The Delegation also visited a number of outside bodies. I have placed copies of the text of a Communiquéagreed at the end of the talks in the Library of both Houses.

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for his remarks, and particularly for the statement; and may I echo his words, how welcome it was to have M. Fadika over here. But bearing in mind the requirements of the Ivorian National Shipping Line (SITRAM), and the fact that the Minister is very conscious of this country's great maritime tradition and vocation, will Her Majesty's Government do their utmost in the fields of promotion and credit terms in co-operation with the private sector and private interests so that these requirements of that organisation are met in this country to the benefit of the British shipbuilding industry?

Yes, my Lords. When the noble Lord consults the Communiqué, as I hope he will, he will see that there was an agreement to set up a suitable frame-work for continuing the discussions which were held recently, and that will be a continuing opportunity of examining the problems to which the noble Lord calls attention.

My Lords, I am grateful.

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

My Lords, we understand that the International Air Transport Association have an agreement that requires women who are more than thirty-two weeks advanced in pregnancy to produce a medical certificate of fitness to travel before being accepted by a carrier. The medical inspector at Heathrow examined the passenger referred to in the noble Lord's Question at 9 a.m. and again at 11.25 a.m. on 21st October and certified that she was fit to travel to Bombay that day. An airline then accepted her as a passenger.

My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Lord for that reply, and I would apologise to him for having to press this Question in the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, who is on another visit. Bearing in mind that the woman gave birth a few hours later, is the noble Lord satisfied that that certificate was properly issued?

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Harris has gone very carefully into this matter. I can only say that I myself have studied, albeit late last night, all the papers involved. There was no evidence at all of the onset of pregnancy. It came very suddenly.

Labour.

I am sorry, of labour—I think perhaps on reflection I can say there was no outward evidence of pregnancy either. Labour started at 2.50 p.m., the doctor was called, and the doctor delivered the baby soon after 3 o'clock. As I say, there was no evidence at all of the onset of labour.

My Lords, since this Question refers to me, while the original mistake was in India when the woman was allowed to travel on a plane to this country although she was eight months pregnant, may I ask whether it is not also the case that if the immigration authorities at Heathrow demanded that she be returned, the airlines could have no alternative except to accept her on the plane?

My Lords, as I understand the situation, it is up to the airline to decide whether or not they will accept a passenger. I am not so sure that any demand can be made upon them to take the passenger. What they want is evidence that a person who is 32 weeks or more pregnant is fit to travel.

My Lords, is it not the case that all airlines operating into the United Kingdom are required to give an undertaking that they will return any passenger who arrives without the proper entry certificate? Can the noble Lord confirm, therefore, that this pro-vision was not used to insist that the airline took their passenger home again?

My Lords, I cannot answer that from personal knowledge. I just do not know.

My Lords, I am sorry to have to press this point, but this is a matter which has given rise to a lot of public concern. Can he also confirm that the immigration authorities did not, as reported, wait until the baby's head appeared before calling the doctor for the delivery?

My Lords, there is no truth whatsoever in the statement made by the noble Lord. I do not attribute it to him. Undoubtedly he is relying on what he read in the Press. There is no evidence of that whatsoever. We have gone very carefully into this matter. There were a lot of things in the Press report that have no truth whatsoever in them: for example, that Securicor guards stood around and laughed, and that they would not move until they were shown the head protruding; there is really no truth whatsoever in that.

My Lords, may I say to the Minister that, while the woman was first ordered to be returned to India, we are grateful that the Government have permitted the woman to stay in this country.

My Lords, this is so; but I would point out to your Lordships, although perhaps it is not necessary, that this situation has arisen because this lady came to this country without a certificate of entry. There is abundant evidence that this kind of thing goes on. There is also abundant evidence that women arrive claiming to be the wives of people over here but they are not the wives of people over here at all, and the immigration authorities have a responsibility to the people of this country to see that people who present themselves for admission are entitled to come here.

My Lords, did not the husband in this case have the marriage certificate in his pocket?

My Lords, with great respect to my noble friend, that has nothing to do with it; what is important in cases of this kind is a certificate of entry.

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

My Lords, the Health and Safety Executive know of several thousand industrial plants in the United Kingdom using materials capable of emitting TDI and other isocyanates. Employers endeavour to observe the safety limit and where this has not proved practicable it is necessary for the operators to wear positive pressure air line breathing apparatus. The Health and Safety Executive itself has a rigorous enforcement policy regarding the health hazard of isocyanates. Observance of the limit is considered to give sufficient protection, but the matter is under continuous review.

My Lords, while appreciating the importance and variety of the chemical processes involved, and admiring the march of industrial chemistry in so many fields, may I ask my noble friend whether it is not permissible for even an ancient and uninformed Life Peer to wonder why a vapour of this immense toxicity, with magnified danger to asthmatics, should be used in the process of applying a little extra gloss to plastic bags?

I can only give the Government's view, my Lords. That view is that the use of these materials should receive a high priority in the work of the Health Executive. In the current year it has been a major priority and three things have happened: first, a technical leaflet has been issued to employers; secondly, the Inspectorate has given special attention to the problem; and, thirdly, there have been and are continuing to be discussions with the trade associations concerned. The Government are doing everything they can to minimise the hazard.

My Lords, will my noble friend say whether the Government are convinced that they have sufficient Inspectorate facilities to ensure that the limits are kept to?

That is another question and is a matter of opinion, my Lords. I would say that we believe we have a sufficient Inspectorate and that when we get a problem of this kind we give it the kind of priority it deserves, regardless of the size of the Inspectorate.

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

My Lords, Her Majesty's Government have not been involved in this work but the Employment Medical Advisory Service has been following published reports and I am advised that, subject to the qualifications made by the authors themselves, the Service does not dissent from the study's findings.

My Lords, do not these somewhat alarming figures add to the importance of the admirable work that is now being done by the Health and Safety Executive, and is it not a fact that they are now monitoring industrial cases over the whole area?

I wholly agree with those comments, my Lords.

My Lords, am I right in thinking that it is not only it East London where the problem of the health hazards of the manufacture of asbestos has arisen? Is research still continuing, or is the Minister satisfied that all necessary safeguards are now being taken?

My Lords, I should emphasise that the population which were the subject of this particular research had exposure to asbestos long before the 1969 Regulations. They were all before 1964 and most were before 1951. As for the 1969 Regulations, in the words of the report:

"… the conditions responsible are not those which should be achieved today".

That is not to say we feel that we have reached finality. Research is continuing and I believe that in future there will be further improvements in hygiene standards.

My Lords, as we have been told on occasions when we have had debates on diseases and injuries in factories that the Inspectorate was not sufficient to cope with the problem, may I ask my noble friend whether he is satisfied that in respect of asbestosis the Inspectorate is sufficient?

My Lords, I am afraid I did not hear the last part of my noble friend's supplementary question.

My Lords, is my noble friend satisfied that the Inspectorate has been increased by a number sufficient to cope with the problem of asbestosis?

That is a matter of opinion, my Lords. We should very much like to see the Inspectorate increased, especially those of us who have a strong feeling for the people who are open to this hazard, but we must act within our means. I believe that we shall find it necessary to increase the Inspectorate in the future.

My Lords, I understand that no Amendments have been set down to this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript Amendment or to speak in Committee. Therefore, unless any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the Order of Re-commitment be discharged.

moved Amendment No. 68:

I very much appreciate the motivation of the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, in his Amendment. However, it is really not the job of the Secretary of State for the Environment to direct local authorities in particular cases on how they should allocate their housing resources. This is something that goes very much wider than the present Bill and has been discussed in the context of other Bills. It is generally accepted that local authorities should have autonomy in this sphere and there seems no reason to make an exception in this Bill. I feel that I should repeat—although I know that the noble Lord is aware of this—that the only people who can take a sensible and sensitive decision about priorities in housing allocation are the local housing authorities because they have all the facts on the competing claims in front of them. This has always been the Government's policy and up to now it has appeared to be that of the Opposition also.

The noble Lord referred to the "maverick" council. The problem here—and I shall come to the way in which this can be dealt with under the Bill—is that if this were in the Bill it would lend a very bad flavour to the relationship between the local authorities and my Department in what we hope will be the way in which they try to deal with housing allocations. The good authorities—those that are trying to do their very best, particularly at a time of scarce resources—will feel resentful. The noble Lord himself said that he was only referring to the very exceptional authority and I believe that, if he thinks about he will realise that it would be counter-productive for the authorities to know that this provision was built into the Bill, for one cannot say in a Bill, "Of course, this doesn't apply to you though it applies to so-and-so."

The Secretary of State would not be in a position to have the detailed knowledge of the particular circumstances which he would need. For that reason, the main answer to the point—and there is, clearly, validity in the point which the noble Lord is making—is that other remedies are provided in the Bill. Clause 30(8) was inserted in response to requests from the National Farmers' Union and the Opposition in another place and it lays down that an action for damages can he brought against the local authority in either the county court or the High Court. This is not a very difficult proceeding in the county court. A local authority that is in breach of its statutory duty under subsection (7) could have such an action brought against it and it is also possible for a farmer to seek an order ofmandamus.

When it is taken into account that the duty is written into the Bill and that the ADHACs will be there to give expert advice as to how to fulfil their obligation, I believe that the authorities will be under very great and generally known pressure in the circumstances. I should have thought that this would adequately cover the point and I therefore hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his Amendment.

Despite the views expressed by the noble Baroness, I believe that we are in a difficulty here which I may perhaps be allowed to express. The Amendment proposes that the Secretary of State should he given default powers. We believe that this is necessary because, although the noble Baroness has referred to subsection (8) and has suggested that by an action for damages against an authority which is in breach of its statutory duty something could be achieved, I believe that there is a real difficulty over mandamus.

We have touched upon this matter in Amendment No. 64, but I should like to spend a few moments describing the problem to your Lordships. I can do no better than quote the Solicitor-General on the meaning ofmandamus. He said at column 783 of the Official Report of Standing Committee K of the House of Commons, on 24th June, 1976:

"Mandamus is simply an order from the court to a public authority which is alleged not to have complied with its duty ordering it to comply … It is discretionary, so it does not follow that the court must grant the relief."

Further than that there is a time limit, we understand, set over a situation of mandamus: after a period of six months, the writ does not lie. The noble Lord, Lord Peart, said at column 582 of the Official Report, on 27th October:

"The farmer always has the right to take out a writ of mandamus."

That may be so, but it is not a practical situation. It is a situation which my noble friend Lord Ferrers entirely dealt with in his reply. I believe that it is highly unlikely that any farmer would seek to take out a writ of mandamus. So we are left with a situation of the possibility of an action being brought for damages in either the county court or the High Court, as the noble Baroness described. We are once again faced with a problem of timing. The situation can frequently arise when actions of this nature take many months, and in our view therefore the situation would be much improved if the Government would consider the Amendment.

The noble Baroness referred to other remedies. I Even if the wording of Section 39 of the Land Compensation Act 1973—that it shall be the duty of the local authority to secure that alternative accommodation be provided—is incorporated, it is indicated from the Bristol Corporation case in the Court of Appeal (and this has been referred to just now by my noble friend Lord Sandys) that a writ of mandamus is very unlikely to be issued. So we are left with subsection (8) to which the noble Baroness has referred, whereby an applicant can sue an authority for damages for breach of statutory duty. But why should a farmer, let alone a farmworker or his union, be faced with the colossal expense of bringing an action for damages where a local authority refuses to perform its duty. And who is going to milk the cows during the time it will take to get a hearing? What good are damages, even if they are granted to the farmer, if he cannot get possession of his house?

I know that the Government do not like default clauses; they say that housing authorities should take their own decisions on whom they rehouse and that housing authorities should decide when to take these decisions. I am greatly in favour of local authorities taking their own decisions, especially in education. But this default clause is not intended to interfere with local authorities who are properly considering the claims of agriculture before making decisions. It is intended to ensure that local authorities who are not doing so shall comply with the Act. I am not really satisfied with the reply of the noble Baroness, and I believe that there should be some default powers to protect the national interest in food production against a local authority that will not discharge its duties. I am not going to press the Amendment, but I feel strongly about it and I shall probably return to it on Report. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

moved Amendment No. 69:

It is clearly the Government's intention that the tied cottage system should be altered in a manner consistent with their wider policies and objectives for the national economy as a whole, and they seek to ensure that there is no adverse effect upon the efficiency of the agricultural industry. I do not think that there is any dispute about this at all. Virtually the whole of the criticism aimed at the Bin is that if the key workers' houses become filled with people working either or, distant farms or outside the industry altogether, then efficient production, particularly livestock production and milk production, must suffer, and this is against the national interest.

Therefore is is essential that local authorities should exert themselves to rehouse promptly in urgent cases, and as my noble friend has just explained this is exactly what the Amendment seeks to provide. From inquiries that I have made in the North of England a three months limit is by no means considered to be imposing an impossible taste where urgent agricultural need is established, but I am admittedly speaking about districts which are predominantly rural in character. A point which has been made to me is that the new districts—since local government reorganisation—have a very much larger stock of houses than the old rural district councils; conesquently, there is more likelihood of a vacancy coming up in time to deal with a case of urgent agricultural need. Of course the other side of this coin is that as districts are larger after reorganisation there may be sonic difficulty in providing accommodation which is suitable geographically. When the new districts are largely urban in character, they normally cover a smaller area but their housing stock is larger. Admittedly, in these areas the demand for housing is greater; but, though the Government do not like to admit it, even in its present form this Bill implies that displaced agricultural workers, where there is agricultural need. must jump the housing queue.

In either case, therefore, I believe three months is a reasonable time to give a local authority in which to act where there is urgency. So I support my noble friend Lord Ferrers in the firm conviction that this Amendment would go a long way towards redressing the balance aimed at ensuring efficient production. It is a very difficult balance to achieve, and it is one which the Government were certainly at great pains, before drafting this Bill, to get right. They have not yet got it quite right; but if they accept this Amendment they will surely put to rest a great many of the fears of the agricultural industry that production may be damaged, which damage may not be in the best interests of the farm workers.

I think it is essential that there should be a time limit imposed, and your Lordships may remember that we had down an Amendment—I think it was No. 66—which imposed a time limit. However, in view of this Amendment which was to be moved by the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, we decided to withdraw that and we support him wholly in this Amendment.

I understand the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Swaythling. Dealing with the arguments which have been put forward by the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, and the noble Lord, Lord Middleton—and it was recognised, I think, by the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, that we are anxious to achieve a system which works—I think they put their case reasonably (I have no complaint) and courteously. I think, though, that there may be some misunderstanding here, so I should like to cover some of the points which were raised previously and which have been raised again this morning. I understand that, on the question of applying the time limits to the local authorities' fulfilment of their statutory duty, we are really only discussing Amendment No. 69. Nevertheless, the argument that I shall use applies to the other Amendment which has been mentioned. Time limits of course cropped up during the debate on Amendments Nos.64 and 67 on Wednesday evening. The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, then explained why this Amendment was part of the Opposition's proposals, and I set out our objections to them, as he will recall. I therefore do not want to take up too much time repeating what I then said, but I think it would be helpful to the Committee if I outlined briefly our viewpoint.

Our first objection to time limits is that they serve no useful purpose, whether the duty on local authorities is cast as it was up till Wednesday or as it now stands in the Bill. The existence of a time limit will not of its own account mean that a house can he provided if none happens to be available. It is as simple as that. It is no good tying the housing authority to a time limit if no houses are available. I would have thought that that was obvious. Now I recognise that noble Lords are seeking to get round this objection by tying this Amendment to the provision of compensation, as suggested in the next Amendment with which we shall be dealing. But, as I shall explain shortly, compensation in such circumstances is not a principle we can welcome.

Our second objection is that the imposition of time limits could mean in some circumstances according to farm-workers and ex-workers a priority which they might not otherwise merit. If that happened, in our view we should have intruded into decisions on housing allocation which properly belong to the housing authority. Finally, let me restate briefly two reasons why I believe farmers themselves should be cautious about time limits. A time limit written into the law could, especially if it were seen as an imposition, too easily become regarded as a target to be met in all cases, even those where speedier treatment could be given to the application. I recognise that the Opposition have tried to be helpful by suggesting time limits only for urgent cases. While this is certainly a step forward from attempting to apply such limits in all cases, it brings with it the risk that less urgent cases could well be delayed. I think that our distaste for time limits is well-founded, and that noble Lords opposite may now understand why we take exception to this Amendment. I therefore hope that they will withdraw it.

There are two points which arise out of what the noble Lord, Lord Peart, has said. The first is the point to which I referred earlier. He says that on occasions a house may not be available. Can he please try to find out how often this is likely to happen? Because this, in my view, is the absolute lynchpin of this Bill. If it is frequently to be the case that a house is not available, then in my view this Bill is very dangerous.

I hope the noble Lord will not mind my interrupting him. How, though, will this Amendment help the position he has set out?

I hope that it will, but it is a question of where the houses are not going to be available. This seems to me to be the total lynchpin of it. If houses are always going to be available, then the Bill, for all the fact that it seems unnecessary, will possibly work quite well. That is the first point. The next point is that the noble Lord said that the implication was that we were giving priority to agricultural workers on the housing lists by making this sort of amendment. Does not the whole Bill attempt to give priority to agricultural workers? Because, again, if it does not, we are back in the state where it is very much more dangerous than I originally thought it was.

I think this is going further than was originally stated when we had previous discussions on the whole question of priority and the role of ADHAC. Obviously, ADHAC will recommend to local authorities, and if they make a recommendation naturally the local authority will take this into consideration; but in the end they are the responsible housing authority.

It seems that it is the availability of housing which is worrying the noble Earl. I wonder whether, again, the noble Lord will consider suitable temporary accommodation being used by a local authority. As we discussed when my noble friend Lord Burnham moved his Amendment, under the Bill they cannot do this. I suggest that it might some times be practical for a local authority to use temporary accommodation. I wonder whether, if he cannot give me an answer now, he would go away and think about it. I cannot think of any other help to give him.

I cannot think of any other reply to give the noble Lord, but I will follow up that point.

In the case of temporary accommodation, when a local authority is engaged in work on, say, roads, or some development or other for which they are responsible, they allow people to live in caravans; they allow temporary accommodation. I she old have thought that it was a possibility that this might be something which could be used.

The noble Baroness will know that the question of caravans came up earlier. I think the noble Lord, Lord Swaythling, raised it on one occasion. I said that of course they could be used, but in the end siting, et cetera, must be the responsibility of the planning authority.

I appreciate the problem which the noble Lord, Lord Peart, has explained. If there is a time limit, I quite see that this could possibly be an embarrassment on local authorities where there are physically no houses. I recognised this in the beginning and before I moved our Amendments the otter day. If you put a legal imposition on local authorities saying: "You must do this by a certain date willy-nilly …" and the houses are not there, it is difficult for them to carry out. This is the fearful dilemma over this Bill because it removes the whole onus of the responsibility for rehousing on to the local authorities. If the principle of the tied cottage system is to be altered and yet at the same time one is to enable agriculture to house the people who have to work for agriculture, then the only body that can accept that responsibility is the local authority. There is no other alternative.

This was the trouble we saw in the use of the words, "best endeavours", because this does not really mean anything other than that the local authorities will try; but, having tried and being unable to achieve it, we are back to square one. I do not profess this to be the perfect solution; I do not know whether it is. The only way we could see round it was by first, putting the duty on the local authorities and saying that where there is a real case of urgency—one which the ADHAC said was a case of urgency—then the local authority must have a time limit. If the local authority say that there are no houses, then that occasion is dealt with in our next Amendment which would say, "Let the farmers provide the housing, the caravans or the accommodation which the local authority has the responsibility to provide but which it cannot provide."

That is the reason why these three Amendments hang closely together. I appreciate that there can be difficulty over this. I can quite appreciate the noble Lord, Lord Peart, saying that this will give a priority to the farm workers which they do not merit. But this is the trouble with the Bill. If you do not give this form of priority, then you "gum up" housing for agriculture. Much as I appreciate Lord Peart's views over this, I feel bound to ask the Committee to agree with this Amendment in order to try to get some kind of sense—I hesitate to use the word; I do not mean to do so in a derogatory way—into the Bill. It will give another place time to consider it again and to consider if there is a better way round this. It is a problem which has exercised the Government and the Opposition. There is nothing Party at all about this. It is a means of trying to find a way to make this a little better. I hope the Committee will agree to this.

I always listen carefully to the reasoned and (shall I say?) in many cases acceptable manner in which the noble Earl presents his case. As my noble friend has already said, everybody appreciates the difficulties; but I would point out that to press an Amendment of this kind is sheer nonsense. The noble Earl pointed out that the requirement cannot possibly be met if an occasion should arise where the local authority itself has not given alternative accommodation, because that, in itself, would mean that they have not the accommodation available. It is perfectly obvious. I appeal to him to realise that it would be impossible for the other place, or for any reasonable people, to accept an Amendment of this sort.

It is not quite as simple as he puts it. There is a considerable amount of additional protection being given in this Bill in respect of tied cottages which are not to be found in any other measures. The whole of the Rent Acts do not provide anything like the kind of protection, as far as it goes. I realise that it is not entire protection but there are a large number of opportunities which are given to the landlord or farmer to have his rights, as they were, protected so far as possible. I am sure the noble Lord would not, by his own argument, ask us to pass something which is just sheer nonsense. If the extreme case arose where it was impossible for the council to provide the accommodation, then a time limit is nonsense.

Would not the difficulty conceivably be solved if the obligation on the local authority were to provide alternative accommodation, either temporary or permanent? I suggest that the matter in dispute might be eased if there were an obligation on the local authority to provide temporary accommodation even if permanent accommodation were not available. I can understand the objections which the noble Lord the Leader of the House will develop when we come to the next set of Amendments where there is a question of compensation to farmers for providing temporary accommodation; but supposing the obligation is on the local authority to provide temporary accommodation even if it cannot provide permanent accommodation then the damage to agriculture will be minimised.

I will answer quite quickly. I know the attitude of the Opposition, but I have been pressed by the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, and others on this. May I say that where temporary accommodation is provided by the local authority or anybody else the problem is that it does not constitute housing security—which is one of the problems with the existing system. Under that system farm workers may have to accept temporary housing without any idea of what the future may hold for them. This is the worry. This is why we feel that in the circumstances—and there are arguments about caravans which we will deal with in the next Amendment—we cannot accept this. This is a difference of opinion and it is not political.

I am conscious of this problem and I appreciate the way in which the noble Earl has put the point over. I merely think it necessary to say that the workers set great store by the word, "suitable". Temporary accommodation would have to be suitable. To put a person into a tumbledown house even temporarily or into longterm occupation of a caravan I do not think would be satisfactory. I realise there is a problem. Always bearing in mind the fact that the local authority cannot be charged with an absolute duty which they cannot fulfil, I hope that some solution can be found.

I sat for many years on local authority housing committees and we often had to deal with priority cases. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Janner, has had the same experience. Sometimes we had to deal with cases connected with sickness and had to get someone into a house where it was important for them to live on the ground floor because, for example, they could not get up and down stairs or they had a doctor's certificate which said that they had to be rehoused because they were living in highly unsuitable accommodation. The housing committee always looked at that and did their best. So far as I was concerned, in our area we always managed to rehouse the person. Unfortunately, under this Bill this type of housing problem is being created. Agriculture is developing all the time and we should give priority to agricultural workers whatever the conditions may be.

A new priority is being put into the housing list. I agree that it is not easy to solve the problem and if the area is one which is not only rural, but one where there is a big demand for houses from a semi-urban area, it makes it more difficult. But this is the trouble with the Bill. I should like to be able to say: "Let the agricultural worker take his chance with all the other people on the housing lists". But the fact is that if we want agricultural production to continue and to increase they need priority. Therefore local authorities have to be told—as they are very often told cases of medical conditions—that they must give priority to these agricultural people and hope that by doing so they do not upset other people. The fact that agricultural workers have to be given this priority is the fault of the Bill.

We are in a difficulty over this Amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Janner, says that this is nonsense. It is a perfectly acceptable view to take: acceptable to him but not to me. It is at least understandable. He says that it is stupid to suggest this when there may not be any houses available. Perhaps the noble Lord did not hear my opening remarks when I said that this Amendment would be tied up with the next one which would provide the possibility of caravan accommodation if the local authority could not provide other accommodation. The real point is that we are in a jam regarding the right of the tenant to stay on, which this Bill gives, and the duty of agriculture to provide houses for its work force. This is where there is a straight head-on collision. I accept that and I know that the noble Lord, Lord Collison, accepts it.

How are we going to get round this problem? We have produced what we believe to be a possible way around it. The noble Lord, Lord Robbins, said: "Would it not be suitable if the local authority provided temporary accommodation?" I do not think There is anything in the Bill to stop the local authority from doing that; in other words, from saying: "We have accommodation here; it is temporary and you can move into it." I do not think the passing of this Amendment would stop the local authority from providing temporary accommodation.

I agree. I felt that if some indication were given n this clause that the accommodation might be temporary until better accommodation were made available, misapprehensions and misconceptions might be avoided. It might be easier for the Government to accept the Amendment with which I am in general sympathy.

That is something that we can look at before the next stage. It brings into relief the problem which the noble Lord, Lord Collison, put forward, which is that agricultural workers lay great importance on the words, "suitable alternative accommodation". They could argue that temporary accommodation is not suitable accommodation. I accept that this is a problem; but I come back to the point that this Amendment would operate only when the ADHAC say that there is a case of extreme urgency. If the local authority are to have the responsibility for re-housing which this Bill puts on them, then if there is a case of extreme urgency it is wrong that the local authority should, for whatever reason, burke the responsibility. I do not use that word in a stupid way, and I apologise.

I want to be constructive. Our intention is that we should ask the Committee to cast an opinion on this. But if the noble Lord, Lord Peart, was prepared to say: "This is a real problem, we will try to get round it before the Report stage" I should be prepared to withdraw the Amendment. But we want more of an assurance than: "We will look at it again", because I know that he will look at it again in what one might call a Parliamentary sense. We want something more than that, otherwise we shall have to come back to this matter again at Report stage. This would be undesirable. There is nothing Party political in this; it

Would my noble friend couple the following with that request: would the noble Lord look into the possibility of temporary accommodation by the local authority?

The noble Earl is being very persuasive, but I have stated the Government's case. Obviously from a Parliamentary point of view I will look at this again—naturally, one always does. That is one's duty as a Minister. I am afraid that I cannot go farther than I have gone today.

I appreciate the noble Lord's clarity and for being genuine enough to say that if he did look at this Amendment it would be no more than a Parliamentary expression. I do not devalue that expression. In that case, I am bound to ask your Lordships to give your opinion on the Amendment.

moved Amendment No. 70:

After Clause 30 insert the following new clause:

I should like to support this Amendment because, in the first place, it hangs very closely with Amendment No. 69 which we have previously discussed and, secondly, because it is a genuine attempt on the part of the industry to make the situation workable. The situation in which the farmer will find himself merits very close attention. My noble friend Lord Middleton has suggested that this could he met through the use of a caravan or similar temporary accommodation. I was particularly glad when my noble friend Lord Stanley of Alderley made special reference to the problem of temporary accommodation, as did the noble Lord, Lord Robbins. I think your Lordships genuinely recognise the predicament in which the farmer will find himself. These two proposals—first, the consideration of compensation and, secondly, the waiving of the provisions of the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act—appear to be very reasonable in these circumstances.

The Government may say that this is featherbedding the farmer and the farmers will say that it is featherbedding the farm worker; so perhaps we could say it is featherbedding everybody. Nevertheless, the situation here is one of the Government's own making and we believe that some enabling procedure should be written into the Bill. I believe this to be a genuine attempt to reach a sensible solution.

It is a great pity that in these great agricultural matters the only people who appear to speak are those who have a knowledge of agriculture and also an agricultural interest. I maintain that we poor simple eaters have a much bigger stake in this Bill than the farmers because, with the latest scientific improvements and so on, farmers can change from crop to crop and it is perfectly feasible for a farmer with a labour-intensive crop to change to something which is less labour intensive. But where does that leave us poor eaters? We are then short of the things the farmer ought to be growing. So the Government, by producing this extraordinary Bill to please the Agricultural Workers' Union, look like sabotaging the food supply to us poor eaters.

I should have liked to see a clause put in that went somewhat further than this one, because if a farmer is to have a dismissed worker sitting in his cottage for a very long time, he obviously wants immediate accommodation for the new man on his own premises. A caravan is not very satisfactory, and I should have thought there ought to he a clause to the effect that a farmer could get immediate planning permission to put up a new cottage and a loan of the money there for from the local authority. He would then be able to buy one of those prefabricated buildings which can be delivered within about a month and put up on his own land. He would thus have a new cottage and would save the local authority having to provide accommodation for the other man.

I feel that, in the course of time, the whole Bill may create a very great change in the farming situation. I can quite see that the dairy farms manned by a family will continue, but I cannot conceive how dairy farms employing several cowmen can possibly go on. They will turn over to other crops, and in the end we poor consumers will not get our milk, cheese, et cetera, and will suffer accordingly. I think that the Government have been extremely silly on this Bill.

On Wednesday evening, the noble Lord, Lord Peart, in reply to my query about planning permission and caravans, said that a farmer could apply beforehand for planning permission, in advance of the other man leaving. But surely, we all know how long it takes to get planning permission, and if for some reason a man left at very short notice a request in advance for planning permission would be quite impossible. I feel very strongly that a provision for temporarily siting a caravan on land should be in the Bill, without the need for planning permission. I had intended to put down an Amendment to that effect. If I had done so, I would have imposed a time limit of 12 months or so, and if a local council provided alternative accommodation within that time the authority for the caravan would come to an end. I consider that 12 months would he a reasonable time for doing such a thing without planning permission. I very much hope that this Amendment will he accepted.

Is not one trouble of the proposed Amendment that all experience shows that temporary accommodation becomes permanent, and that there will be very great danger if this Bill provides for temporary accommodation? We still have some of those immediately postwar temporary houses in occupation. This frequently happens.

I do not like temporary accommodation or caravans, and I like agricultural workers to be housed in the best possible houses. That is my principle, and it is one on which I have acted all my life. I hope that all the houses that I have ever had anything to do with are houses in which your Lordships would be happy to spend your holidays, to work, or to do anything else. The real problem is the difficulty into which we are put by the principle of the Bill. As I said, I do not want any accommodation for agricultural workers to be unsuitable, or not of the highest possible standard. They are entitled to good accommodation, I want them to have it and I will do everything I can to see that they get it. The difficulty is that until such excellent accommodation is available there may have to be a temporary arrangement.

I do not think there is any harm in temporary caravans—and we are talking about modern caravans, and not about the old-fashioned horse-drawn vehicles. We are talking about extremely smart, well-equipped and well-designed modern, moveable houses. That is what they really are. I agree that one does not want them to be permanent, but we are not talking about a make-shift home like they used to be in the past.

I agree that there should be a time limit on having a caravan. Here 1 echo what the noble Lord, Lord Swathling, said. There is no limit in this Amendment, and I think there should be one, but I am afraid that it would have to be on the local authority producing a house. A landlord will produce a house if he has one, because it is greatly in his interest to do so. If he has a spare house, it will go straight to the new man. But if he does not have one, and his only house is being occupied by the man who is leaving and who does not want to give up the house, the landlord will be in a dilemma. That is why it should be quite justifiable to have temporary accommodation, but, as I said, it should be only temporary and should not by any change, as the noble Lord, Lord Gordon-Walker said, be considered permanent. I hate that kind of accommodation and I would not dream of asking somebody to live in it, were it not for the fact that it probably the only alternative.

I was anxious to point out that the objection which has been made by the noble Lord, Lord Gordon-Walker, that temporary accommodation tends to be permanent, which is certainly a matter of general experience in many fields, is not relevant to this case, because paragraph (a) provides a disincentive to a council to allow this state of affairs to continue. If this clause is passed, a local council will be penalised until it provides other accommodation.

This goes back to what the noble Lord, Lord Collison, was saying about suitable accommodation. In a lot of people's minds, caravans conjure up pictures of small caravans swaying about behind cars on a motorway, or in large ranks at some of our seaside resorts. But, in fact, as I have seen, some caravans provide an extremely good class of accommodation. It is display more accurate to call them mobile homes. That is one point. It is possible to obtain good suitable temporary accommodation.

The point that the noble Lord, Lord Collison, made on the last Amendment, that we can push somebody out and that the local authority will just have to provide him with a slum house which is waiting to be redeveloped, is not what we are trying to do by this Amendment. What we are trying to do is to enable the good form of mobile home to be hired into which to put the farmworker. The point which the noble Lord, Lord Gordon-Walker made, about temporary accommodation becoming permanent is dealt with in paragraph (b) which says that:

"… and without a site licence … until such time as the local authority provides suitable alternative accommodation".

When a local authority provides suitable alternative accommodation planning permission will have to be obtained that caravan is to stay there for any length of time. Also, a licence will have to be obtained under the Caravan Sites Act.

I think that noble Lords who have been following carefully this debate will recognise that many of these points have been covered previously. Therefore I am not going to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, in his views about poor eaters. We are all anxious to have a healthy and efficient agriculture. Indeed, I believe that our agriculture is very efficient and that it plays an important part in our economy. I leave it, therefore, at that; the question is not in dispute. The argument is how to make the Bill work when it becomes an Act, and I want to deal with this new clause. The motives of noble Lords opposite are to try to make the Bill work and they have put forward certain proposals with which I wish to deal, although many of the points have been argued before. However, I appreciate the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, introduced the new clause. The noble Lord raised matters which I hope to cover very quickly.

Without going over the same ground, I think that two points need to be stressed. First, the role of an ADHAC is to advise the local authority on the agricultural aspects of an application, not to replace the local authority by effectively taking their decisions on housing allocation for them. Secondly, arguments against rigid time limits which we have discussed for re-housing have been advanced already. In this new clause the time limit proposed is particularly unreasonable, given that a local authority may well, after receiving ADHAC advice as to agricultural need, accept that they are under an obligation, but that the need is not necessarily urgent. It would be unfair to other claimants on the local authority if all agricultural cases automatically had the priority which would result from this Amendment. I believe that noble Lords have expressed this view on a previous occasion.

The new clause, however, contains further undesirable features. First—this has not been stressed too much by noble Lords opposite—there can be no question of compensation to farmers who provide temporary accommodation. A farmer who is aggrieved at the alleged failure of a local authority to provide accommodation either directly or indirectly has a remedy to hand in the Bill. We have argued about this. Thanks to an Amendment inserted in another place he can, under Clause 30(8), bring an action for damages. We have repeated that this morning. In any case, the notion that compensation should become payable as a counterpoise to redressing an injustice which farm-workers have had to bear is not a principle that the Government can endorse.

Now I come to caravans. The noble Earl, Lord Onslow, and the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, are quite right in saying that there are some very good caravans which people regard as homes; but here, as I explained to the noble Lord, Lord Swaythling, who in a previous discussion raised the question of caravans, the suggestion that farmers or anybody else should be granted automatic planning permission for a caravan is not one which the Government can accept. In individual cases it is conceivable that there could be an argument for a caravan to be used to house an incoming worker, but if a farmer believes this to be the case there is no reason why he should not follow the same procedures as any other citizen and seek planning permission from the local authority. Indeed, there is nothing to prevent him from going ahead and seeking planning permission in advance for a caravan on a contingency basis. I think that he would have a good case to put before the planning authority, but there can be no justification—

Does the noble Lord mean that every farmer in the country who anticipates that he might lose a worker can now go and ask for planning permission on a contingency basis to put a caravan on his land in case he loses a worker? What happens if that farmer should be in a green or white belt area? Again there is, surely, a complication.

I am not saying that all farmers who are affected by this Bill should now seek planning permission. All I am saying is that there could be a case for doing so in certain circumstances. I do not know how many farmers would want to have put near to their farmhouses the type of accommodation which has been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, and the noble Earl, Lord Onslow. All I am saying is that the procedure must be through the planning authority and that noble Lords opposite should not seek to put farmers into a different category from other citizens who may seek planning permission. That is why we cannot accept this new clause.

The noble Lord, Lord Peart, ended by saying that we should not try to put farmers into a different category from other citizens, but this is precisely what the Bill does. It puts agricultural tied cottages into a totally different category from that of other tied cottages, and that is precisely the reason why this Amendment has been tabled. The noble Lord, Lord Peart, said that farmers must follow the normal planning procedure. That is understandable. However, it takes time. The object of the Amendment is to get over the problem where the local authority has no house available. The farmer should be able to provide such a house and the Amendment ensures that he should be reimbursed for so doing.

The noble Lord, Lord Peart, said that compensation is unacceptable and that the farmer should not be compensated. If, however, the Bill is to result in cottages which are used on farms being unavailable because of the Bill, and if the whole point of the Bill is to put the onus on to local authorities which cannot then meet their obligations, farmers would be allowed, if this Amendment were accepted, to meet the obligation. However, local authorities would reimburse farmers for doing that which they are responsible for doing but that which they are unable to do. That was the reasoning behind the Amendment and I should have thought that it was a reasonable argument.

I am bound to say that I do not like the idea of caravans. If a farmer wishes to find a new farmworker and advertises for one and an applicant comes along, the noble Lord, Lord Peart, will be the first to recognise that high up on the list of questions that the applicant will ask will be, "What is the house like?" If the farmer says, "As a matter of fact, there is a good house but it is occupied by somebody who worked for me but who is now working at the local car factory. However, I can offer you a caravan instead", his chances of getting that farmworker are very small. Therefore I do not view this idea as a particularly good solution to the problem.

I think it is a desperate reflection on the Government and, indeed, on the housing of the country that, after an era of increasing standards of horsing and increasing demands for improved standards of housing, and after are aera of so much improvement of farm cottages, we should see farmworkers now put into caravans. It is frankly a desperate reflection, and they will be put not into improved houses but into caravans. That would be the result of the Bill.

I was trying to make a point to the noble Lord, Lord Peart, and I should like him to be able to accept it because I feel it is a penetrating point. The result of the Bill is to bring into conflict the requirements of agriculture to house its workers and the requirements of this Bill for workers to remain in their houses after leaving their employment. One of the results may well be the proliferation of caravans. The noble Lord shakes his head, but we are trying to get over the difficulty into which the Bill has put us. That is a desperate reflection on the housing situation in agriculture and it is put down solely to this Bill, as indeed was the Bill we saw through last night, the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill which virtually sounded a death-knell to the landlord and tenant system.

I hesitate to see a lot of caravans around the countryside. I hesitate to see caravans put on farms for farm workers, but it is only in order to try to get over this problem which is presented by the Bill that we have put down this Amendment. I do not know what my noble friend feels about this matter, but I should like to see something done, if not at this stage then perhaps at a later stage.

The noble Lord, Lord Peart, says that one month is totally unreasonable. But that is one month after the local authority has had the advice of the ADHAC—not in cases of extreme urgency, but in all cases where they say, "Yes, this is required for agriculture". It d Des not say that the local authority has to) house within one month; all it says is that the ADHAC has recognised that there is a requirement for the house and if tie local authority cannot house—and they may not be able to house for six months, 12 months or 24 months—at least the farmer can provide that housing which the local authority cannot provide and be reimbursed for so doing one month after the ADHAC has given its advice.

If one is to get over the problem of providing accommodation on the farm—and the noble Lord, Lord Peart, must address himself to this matter—where the accommodation already provided cannot be used because of this Bill, then the caravan seems to me to be the only answer.

In moving this Amendment, I acknowledged that this was not a very satisfactory solution to the problems that will arise from the Bill. In the first place, I would never have imagined that I should ever attempt in your Lordships' House to advocate a provision which might increase the number of caravans that already disfigure so much of our countryside. Secondly, as vice-chairman of a county planning committee, I view with some misgivings the concept of a farmer giving himself planning permission without the kind of control as to siting and so on that would normally be exerted by a planning authority. Thirdly, as a farmer and employer, like my noble friend Lord Ferrers, I should be very surprised if I could easily find a skilled replacement worker or herdsmen if all I could offer him was a caravan. If it were possible to reverse the situation so that the statutory tenant who was stuck in the house went into the caravan and the replacement went into the cottage, then many of the difficulties arising from these circumstances would disappear. But that would be so entirely contrary to the principle of the Bill that that is not what is proposed.

Finally, I note what the noble Lord, Lord Peart, said about compensation and what he said about the one-month period. Nevertheless, the necessity—and I will not labour this point as it has been sufficiently aired throughout the debate on the Bill both here and in another place—to avoid disruption of food production surely must be an overriding one. I am quite certain that where an agricultural need is established, quite impartially, by one of these advisory committees, all the disadvantages of which I am very well aware will he outweighed by the advantage in the short term to agricultural production.

I am convinced that a provision of this kind will be essential for the proper working of the industry. We must be realistic about this. It is not likely that the time limit Amendment will be regarded in another place with unmodified rapture, and the industry may very well therefore find itself back in the impossible situation forced upon it by the Bill in the form to which we are objecting. I am quite certain that the only way of resolving the difficulty will be some kind of provision for temporary accommodation.

I will not press this Amendment so that we can, perhaps in consultation with the noble Lord, Lord Peart, produce a better Amendment on Report that will cater for the need for temporary accommodation in an urgent case which I am perfectly certain will be quite acceptable. If we do not find such a solution, the balance will be so far on the wrong side that food production will be in danger. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Before we leave Clause 31, on Second Reading I drew attention to subsection (7) which lays down that all the members of a committee had to be present at a meeting. The noble Baroness, Lady Birk, kindly said that she would write to me on the subject. I was fearful that when a member of the committee was ill or for some other reason did not attend, the whole thing would be held up. When she wrote to me the noble Baroness explained that they intend to have a panel of members and that if somebody was ill they could always be sure that a committee would be in existence. Therefore, I did not move for the deletion of subsection (7).

, having given Notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 71:

Clause 32 is a new clause under which anyone who owns any houses which have been occupied by farm workers is obliged to notify the local authorities of their disposing of a material interest. I believe that this clause is far too onerous, because what we are doing here is saying that anyone who disposes of a farm worker's house—if he sells it or whatever the reason is—has to let the local authority know and the local authority has to keep records of what houses are being disposed of. The local authority will have to write to the person concerned and say: "Thank you for your letter. I note that you are going to sell your house". Then within four weeks the local authority has to write to the person and tell them what action they propose to take on the owner selling his house. I believe that that goes far beyond the scope of giving agricultural workers a statutory right to stay on in their houses.

This is the proliferation of what one might describe as "nosey parkers into the normal commercial buying and selling of houses. I think it will put yet another duty upon the local authority to have to keep all the records and to ferret around and find out what is happening to all the houses. Will they have to hold committee meetings on whether or not to buy Farmer Blogg's house? I think this is a monstrous intrusion into the privacy of individuals and indeed into the commercial operation of the housing market. Therefore I should like the noble Baroness to explain why the Government want to have this included.

I have considered this clause extremely carefully and so has my noble friend Lord Peart. I have also listened carefully to the arguments put forward by the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, and following that I am prepared to withdraw Clause 32 from the Bill at this time: but of course noble Lords will understand that this is subject to the reconsideration that the Amendments will be given in another place.

I am immensely grateful to the noble Baroness. This has really come as a great pleasure, because I have always thought that this was a very onerous clause. I am immensely grateful to the noble Baroness for having obviously considered the Amendments which were tabled to make the clause slightly less onerous, and that has possibly directed her attention and made her come to the conclusion that she would be prepared to withdraw this clause. Had my noble friend Lord Tranmire been here I would have said that this might have been an occasion when the Band of the Green Howards might have come to blow a fanfare of trumpets! We are most grateful to the noble Baroness and I think this will certainly make it a better Bill.

moved Amendment No. 74:

Page 28, line 3, leave out from ("accommodation") to end of line 4 and insert ("used for housing agricultural workers or retired agricultural workers or their dependants.")

I am sorry that I did not hear all the speech made by the noble Earl because I was called to an urgent consultation. I hope he will understand. As I understand it, noble Lords opposite are seeking by this Amendment to exclude from the coverage of the survey those cottages which at some time in the previous five years were,

"on, or held in connection with, or used for agricultural or forestry land,"

but which at the time of the survey are either empty, for whatever reason, or let outside agriculture. Although it may not have been intended, cottages housing successors of agricultural workers would also be excluded from the census by this Amendment since it refers only to workers, retired workers or their dependants. I can see no good reason for so restricting the scope of the survey.

The whole purpose of the survey is to provide local authorities with a general picture of the agricultural housing situation in the area, so that they will be in a better position to forecast the potential calls on their resources and so more readily plan the allocations of those resources to meet the demands which farmers will be making on them under the Bill. To do this I am sure that they need to know not only about houses currently occupied by farmworkers and pensioners but also about those occupied by successors, and indeed about any other cottages which the farmer may have available to house new workers.

The local authority quite rightly will need the full facts if the information is to be of real benefit. Half the story could be positively misleading. For example, it will certainly be relevant to know if any of the farmer's cottages are subject to Case XII of the 1968 Rent Act; that is the farmer is able to regain possession of the cottage from someone not working in agriculture if he needs it for an agricultural employee. This is only one example: there could be others.

The noble Earl who moved the Amendment may believe that there is something to be gained by restricting the number of cottages about which information may be gathered; but this is not so. If noble Lords will look again at Clause 29, Amendments to which we have already debated they will recall that a farmer must have considered whether he can rehouse from resources available to him before approaching the housing authority. Clause 33 does not bear on this question of the range of housing accommodation which farmers are expected to have considered before approaching housing authorities; the two are not connected.

The sole effect of the Amendment would be to restrict the survey to some two-thirds of the cottage stock, thus leaving nearly a third of the cottages owned by farmers outside the survey, to say nothing of those which are the subject of housing arrangements. This, in my view, would seriously weaken the effectiveness of the survey which, I would remind noble Lords, was designed specifically to help local authorities, and, through them, the agricultural community. I hope with that explanation the noble Earl will now withdraw the Amendment.

I wish to declare my farming interest. I have a number of tied cottages; I can do most jobs on the farm; I have a heavy duty licence and I can guarantee that I am one of the best hand roguers of wild oats in the business! I am grateful to the noble Lord the Leader of the House for commenting on the point I made on Second Reading. However, nothing which has been said since by the Government alleviates my worries. That is why I rise to support my noble friend Lord Onslow on this Amendment.

As I understand it, the ADHAC will have a list of all houses on my property. Should I wish to get a man out of one of my cottages when he leaves my employment, the ADHAC may decide that he can remain in that cottage, of which he then becomes a statutory tenant and that cottage will be taken out of agriculture. If later one of my retired workers needs rehousing, can I retrieve that cottage for that purpose? If not, there is no social justice because my retired farm worker will be the loser, even more than the farmer, and I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Collison, will appreciate that point. Surely we must be allowed to keep spare accommodation to meet our farm emergencies.

I see the dilemma we have got into. Both myself and the noble Lord, Lord Peart, are saying that the other side's argument will produce an incomplete picture. It would seem that I prefer that this survey should be confined to agricultural workers, but bearing in mind what the noble Lord has said I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

moved Amendment No. 75:

Page 28, leave out line 37.

moved Amendment No. 76:

Page 29, line 3, leave out from ("Food") to end of line 4.

moved Amendment No. 77:

Page 29, line 6, leave out ("or forestry")

moved Amendment No. 78:

Page 29, line 11, leave out ("two") and insert ("four")

May I say that I am prepared to accept this Amendment, to save debate.

I should like to thank the noble Lord. I feel that we are making great progress today.

moved Amendment No. 79:

Page 29, line 11, leave out ("service") and insert ("receipt")

I am afraid I should like the noble Earl to hear my case on this one. He has been very persuasive this morning. I know that the noble Lord may believe that by referring to "receipt" rather than to "service" he is providing farmers with more time in which to comply with a notice to provide information. In fact I am advised that there is no such advantage to be gained by the use of the word "receipt" here, in that both words relate to the time that the notice reaches the land owner himself and not to the time the notice is despatched. The advantage gained from using the word, "service" derives from the fact that it is the proper legal term for the process which culminates in receipt.

I would also venture to suggest, if I have understood it right, that the Amendment is unnecessary because later on in the clause in subsection (6)(a) provision is made for an owner or occupier to claim that he had reasonable excuse in failing to comply with the provisions of a notice within the time limit, because, for example, he was abroad on business or away on holiday at the time of service. I hope, in view of this explanation, that the noble Lord will agree to withdraw his Amendment.

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for that reply. It clears up the worry I had in my mind, and I shall of course withdraw my Amendment.

moved Amendment No. 80:

Page 32, line 2, at end insert ("but shall not include a licence granting exclusive occupation of hostel accommodation or lodgings.")

May I say right away in order to save time that there is no difference of opinion here so far as the aims of this Amendment are concerned. The problem is one of definition. What we do not want to do is to protect agricultural workers who arc living in genuine hostel accommodation or in lodgings, but equally we want to protect, for example, two farm workers who may share a large farm cottage each having exclusive occupation of their bedroom and sharing other living accommodation. At the moment this is achieved by Clause 24 in the Bill which follows the precedent set by Section 102 of the Rent Act 1968.

Many workers in hostels will be excluded from protection under the Bill because they will not have exclusive occupation of any part of a dwelling-house. Their accommodation will probably be of the dormitory type, and other living accommodation will be shared as well. More importantly, however, our understanding is that hostel accommodation on farms is mainly provided for seasonal and casual workers. These workers of course will not be generally covered by the Bill because they will not be able to fulfil the qualifying worker test of having worked for two years in agriculture. These factors between them ought to dispose of the hostel problem, and on the face of it any residual case who is not a seasonal worker and who has a room of his own is the sort of person who ought to have the protection of the Bill.

Having said all that, because I thought that I must get that clear, I certainly do not want to appear dogmatic on this point to which we have given considerable thought. What I suggest is that, if there are any details available of the sorts of cases which still, after this explanation, could cause concern, it would be extremely helpful for me to have them. What I want to mention is that there are two difficulties about this, just to illustrate that it is a complex problem. First, the Amendment as it stands could introduce doubt if a landlord were to claim that a genuine sharing case such as I have described was indeed a hostel. Secondly, everybody thinks they know what a hostel is. Frankly, I thought I did; of course everybody knows what a hostel is; but when you try to define if for the purposes of a Bill and not just for general conversation it is difficult to avoid bringing into a definition places that could be genuine dwelling-houses.

I should be happy to look at this again. If noble Lords opposite who have doubts, or if organisations like the National Farmers' Union who, I think, are also concerned about this, can give us any further information or would like to consult with us, then I am prepared to do so. I think that would probably be much more useful than arguing, because I really cannot take it any further at this stage because of this stumbling block of the problem of a definition. If we could get down to that, and if the noble Lord or his noble friends could produce some examples of where they think there could be somebody slipping between these various definitions, I should be very grateful.

This morning the noble Baroness has been both accommodating and conciliatory, and I do not wish to proceed any further with this Amendment. We shall certainly do our best to provide her with information in this field, if such information exists. But I cannot guarantee to be able to further the case unless such information is forth-coming. In the circumstances, at this stage I think it would be better for the Committee if I withdrew the Amendment.

moved Amendment No. 81:

The Amendment is consequential to the Motion to leave out Clause 20. When we discussed that I gave my reasons against making this change and, frankly, there is nothing I can add to what I said. I do not think the noble Lord would want me to repeat what I said then.

I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

moved Amendment No. 82:

moved Amendment No. 82A:

Page 34, leave out lines 8 and 9.

moved Amendment No. 83:

Page 34, leave out line 13.

moved Amendment No. 84.

Page 32, line 19, after ("shall") insert ("in their application to the Scilly Isles, have effect").

moved Amendment No. 85:

Page 32, line 21, leave out from ("order") to end of line 26.

moved Amendment No. 87:

Page 57, line 34, leave out ("occupies it under") and insert ("has").

moved Amendment No. 88:

Page 58, line 9, after ("107") insert ("(1)").

moved Amendment No. 89A:

moved Amendment No. 90:

Page 59, line 44, leave out ("clerk to") and insert ("proper officer of").

moved Amendment No. 91:

moved Amendment No. 92:

moved Amendments Nos. 93 and 94:

Page 62, line 8, leave out from ("who") to second ("a") in line 9 and insert C' has, in relation to a dwelling-house");

Page 62, line 23, leave out ("in exclusive occupation of a dwelling-house") and insert C' who is occupying a dwelling-house as his residence")

moved Amendment No. 95:

Page 63, line 37, leave out from beginning to end of line 6 on page 64.

moved Amendment No. 96:

Page 64, leave out paragraph 8.

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now further considered on Report.

moved Amendment No. 10:

After Clause 3, insert the following new clause:

My Lords, I shall be brief because the argument has been put so succinctly, so logically and almost irrefutably, and I hope the Minister will accept what is proposed. I cannot in my own heart go into the Lobby in support of the Amendment, but I would not vote against it; I would abstain. Having had practical experience at various times in my career in schools, I see the necessity of what is sought here. In a well-informed Chamber like this it is not necessary for me to make an argument for about 30 minutes because I think it is almost axiomatic. Consequently, with those brief words of comfort and succour to the noble Baroness who has spoken so eloquently I will sit down, assuring her that I cannot go into the Lobby against her, but if it goes to the vote I will have to abstain.

My Lords, I wish to support what the noble Baroness, Lady D'Arcy de Knayth, has said. One knows a certain amount about the problems not only of pupils who are physically disabled but also of teachers, and the noble Baroness has most adequately expressed the problems which exist. But I should like, very briefly, to highlight one or two of the difficulties. Children are not always kind to other children who are disabled. With the best will in the world teachers are not always completely understanding of those who are physically disabled. Therefore it is vitally important that new school buildings should be designed in such a way as to make it as easy as possible for those who arc physically disabled, not only teachers but children, to operate in those buildings.

For instance, the blind must have continuous rails right around the school building. The deaf must have ear plugs and visual aids. All doors must be wide enough for wheelchairs and there must be ramps provided. Children with crutches—and one knows so well how extremely important this is—must have non slip floors. I hate to say this, but some times the local education authorities are not as wise as perhaps they should be on the problems of the handicapped. I have had experience of this matter and I should like to say that I have full confidence at this time in the new Secretary of State. I know that she has a wide knowledge, she has great humanity; sometimes she will go against the advice that others might give her because she is a lady of great independence of thought and mind and character. I am hoping that she will take very much into consideration all that is said today on this Admendment, which I support.

My Lords, we on this side of the House will strongly support the noble Baroness who has just spoken; the right honourable lady the Secretary of State is a woman of immense humanity and I am sure that she, and the noble Baroness who is to reply, will 'agree with us that all new schools must be accessible to and convenient for the use of all categories of disabled persons, including the wheelchair-bound. those who are ambulant disabled, the deaf people and those hard of hearing, the blind people and those with limited vision. Section 8 of the Chronically Sick and 'Disabled Persons Act 1970 imposes a duty on any person undertaking the provision of a school, university college, hall of residence, teacher training college or educational establishment to make proper provision for a disabled person,

"in so far as it is in the circumstances both practicable and reasonable …"

But in fact this proviso has allowed far too many buildings to be designed and built since 1970 without adequate provision for the disabled person. So the reason why the noble Baroness has moved the Amendment is to try to close this loophole with respect to school buildings.

We believe that the Amendment would make the implementation of Section 8 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 much more feasible. It is different from the Amendment moved in Committee, because we accept wholly the arguments which were argued by my noble friend the Minister in her reply—that it is quite wrong to use the planning permission procedures for this. But we are perfectly aware that the Department of the Environment encourages the local planning authorities to be aware of their obligations to the disabled when people are submitting planning applications. We also think that an Amendment which would be tied to the building regulations—which was suggested by a number of people—would be mistaken because this Bill is concerned only with education, and it is for this reason that we have tied this Amendment to education, to schools. We think that the obligation ought to be laid on the authorities who are proposing the building, of new schools and colleges to show why they cannot make the buildings accessible to disabled people.

The reason why we think that these schools and colleges should be made accessible to disabled people is very clear. Miss Margaret Jackson, a very distinguished Member of Parliament and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the DES, has recently said that the Department's view has long been that no handicapped child should attend a special school if his needs can be met by an ordinary school. As the noble Baroness said in moving the Amendment, why on earth, if the school teachers and the psychologists and other experts think that a child should attend an ordinary school, should it be prevented from doing so because of bricks and mortar? It is no more expensive to build a ramp than it is to build steps and so on. Too many disabled children are forced to attend special schools merely because the physical structure of ordinary schools prevents their entering those schools and enjoying their education alongside their non-disabled friends who may live in the same street.

Surely nobody could want the bricks and mortar of a newly-built building to force disabled children to attend special schools and so suffer all the social and emotional handicaps of segregated education. We feel very much that this kind of Amendment is enormously important for the broader social purposes which I think are agreed by everybody on all sides of the House as being absolutely essential. We also feel that a casual inspection of the local schools in anybody's neighbourhood should convince anybody that even recently built schools lack adequate provisions for all categories of disabled people. I know, for example, that the noble Baroness is now taking A level mathematics at her local college of further education. She is too shy to say this. She has to go up in the goods lift there because, although the college is newly built, it has not adequate access for people in wheel-chairs. That is not acceptable these days.

It does not cost any more to construct buildings which are convenient. The National Theatre, for example, is perfectly accessible to people who are handicapped in all kinds of ways. Why on earth should school buildings not be built with this in mind? We believe very strongly that this country should follow very much the example of Sweden. A report on what the Swedes have done shows that the Swedish Board of Urban Planning has made regulations similar to those in the 1970 Act, and they have ensured that in each area of Sweden—the schools there are organised in areas—at least one school, if there is more than one storey, has a lift which is wide enough for wheel-chairs and has ramps, special toilets and doorways without thresholds. If the Swedes can do it, I really do not see why this country, which is a much more important and distinguished country, cannot do it.

It really is much cheaper to make all new buildings accessible to and convenient for the use of disabled people now rather than have to say at a later stage that all the buildings have to be converted. I know that the heart of the noble Baroness is absolutely with us in this matter, and I know that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education is a really remarkable woman and very loyal to all good causes, and so I am absolutely convinced that the Amendment will be acceptable to her, and I feel that we ought to hope for the best.

My Lords, I should like to support the noble Baroness, Lady D'Arcy de Knayth, in her Amendment which seeks to provide access for disabled where this is possible in any new school to be built in the future. Any school so built with ramps and everything essential to a physically disabled child also allows disabled teachers access to the schools. It would enable the disabled teacher to teach able-bodied children. Should any of these children be unfortunate enough to become disabled later in life they could then have an example before them of what can be achieved. Other disabled professional or administrative persons would also be able to obtain work in these schools. If the buildings are built with access for the disabled it would save money in the end, as it is cheaper to build schools with these facilities than to have to adapt them later.

My Lords, as we have Acts of Parliament to end discrimination of all kinds, surely it is time we ceased to discriminate against those physically less able to fend for themselves. I support this Amendment.

My Lords, in supporting this Amendment to the Bill, I should like to say a few words to your Lordships as I have been unable to speak on this most important subject until today. I have on several occasions visited schools for physically disabled children, and have found the most dedicated and wonderful staff doing their best in small schools catering for children from 5 to 17 years old. I have been dismayed to see what inadequate libraries these schools have, with short working hours. Because the schools are so small, the choice of subjects and the standard of work is very limited. I am sure that these schools benefit some children, but others are being deprived of a wide, comprehensive education which, if they had the opportunity, would better equip disabled children to take their place in the community.

I have had the pleasure of visiting Holt Park School in Leeds. This is a new comprehensive school with full access for children who use wheelchairs. There is a wonderful community library in the campus of the school, and disabled children from all over the city can benefit from this school. Leeds should be congratulated on this excellent achievement. Among others, St. Joseph's Secondary School at Laverstock, near Salisbury, have five disabled children who are helped by the other children to overcome the steps, as this school has three floors and no lift. Where there is a will, my Lords, there is a way, but some head teachers are not even ready to contemplate accepting a disabled child into their school, even if the facilities are adequate. I have personally been involved in a few cases, and I know this to be so. One wheelchair child had been to an ordinary primary school, and when the time came for her secondary education the authority concerned wanted to send her away to board. The parents refused, and she remained in the primary school for well over an extra year.

At a holiday camp for disabled people, we used borstal boys as helpers. After living together for a week, one boy from borstal said to me, after the holiday was over: "I used to take 'the mickey' out of disabled people. I now understand them, and I will never do it again". If able bodied children do not associate with handicapped children, they grow up as segregated groups fearing each other. I know some of your Lordships this week saw the film on television about the Gateway School, and I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Wotton, like myself, was impressed. This Amendment can only help encourage more people to be aware that easy access benefits in so many ways. Children and parents, where possible, should have the opportunity of choice, and disabled teachers should have the opportunity to work. Knowing personally some of the humane associations which the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, has worked for, because I have also worked for them, I cannot imagine that the noble Lord can do anything but accept this Amendment if he is truly genuine.

My Lords, I cannot imagine any Member of your Lordships' House who would be otherwise than in support of the Amendment's purpose and intention. I would ask the Minister whether in fact this is the appropriate way to deal with it. I am wondering merely whether this is something to be put in the Bill, as is suggested, or to be embodied in building regulations in very much more detail than the Amendment suggests. It seems to me that what is necessary here—and I cannot imagine any local authority opposing it—is a clear specification of what would be required. It really is not enough just to say, "Provide for handicapped children"; it has to be very much more specific. It has to make it quite clear what is necessary. By all means mention ramps for wheelchairs or lifts and rails for blind children, and so on, but they must be embodied in a set of regulations which would be complied I with by the local authorities. So I merely ask the Minister whether an Amendment is the right procedure or whether he can give an assurance that the necessary detailed provisions will be embodied in building regulations.

My Lords, I was waiting hopefully for the Minister to intervene, bearing in mind that, as this is Report stage, we can speak only once, However, I shall have to resort to the favourite trick of, "Before the Minister sits down", or some other method. We have heard this morning about the generosity and compassion of the Ministers who sit on this Front Bench, and of the right honourable lady who is now dealing with education. I think it is reasonable to say (to use a horrible paraphrase) that if, perhaps, some people would put their pens where their hearts are we might get something done. It is not enough merely to sympathise; we have to take practical action.

I was very interested in the intervention of the noble Lord who has just spoken, because I feel sure that the argument which will be deployed by the Front Bench is that this Amendment should be tied either to another Act of Parliament or to a building regulation. One is tempted to ask why these building regulations are not already in being, bearing in mind that the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act was passed in 1970. Equally, I have been long enough on the Parliamentary scene to know that there is no great objection to having a particular principle embodied in more than one Act of Parliament. At least one is certain that it will be carried out. We have no certainty that we are to have any Bill concerned with the environment in the immediate future.

This little booklet, while excellent in its own way, is merely, so far as I can see, for the purpose of bringing about public discussion. That is very useful, but at this point of time we want action. I have had the privilege of being part of the Working Party for Integrating the Disabled, under the chairmanship of the noble Earl, Lord Snowdon, which presented its magnificent report this week. Here is an opportunity to put into operation one of the many recommendations of this report. I know that it will be very slow in being finally implemented, but this is a golden opportunity. While we know that one local authority is actually doing this, we do not know how many other local authorities are doing it.

In taking part in the investigations of the Working Party, I have myself seen how reasonably a building can be adapted. It does not in any way inconvenience the able-bodied. If you have rails round the walls, this does not make any difference to those who do not need them, but it makes a great deal of difference to those who do. If you have ramps or lifts, these can be used equally by the able-bodied and the disabled. I therefore hope that we are not going to hear any more about the cost of this. The thing that came through to me loud and clear during the time I went round investigating public building and housing is that this need not be a costly operation, though we know that any operation can be made costly if you have not got the goodwill to put it into effect.

The Minister may also say that this is the wrong kind of Bill in which to include it. One has to anticipate all the arguments. Having had the privilege of sitting on the Front Bench, I have been both poacher and gamekeeper, and that does help in these situations. If we are going to hear advanced the argument that this is the wrong Bill in which to include this, may I suggest that it is possibly the wrong Bill in which to put a clause about school milk, which seems to be quite as irrelevant an argument, if you are going to use it, as that of the building. I therefore plead with the sympathetic, kind and compassionate Ministers for once to recognise that to sympathise is not enough.

My Lords, in support of the Amendment may I make a plea for the handicapped parents? Children who are not handicapped like their parents to come on speech days and open days and take part in that. Those parents also cannot come unless the schools are adapted.

My Lords, let me say at the outset that Her Majesty's Government fully share and support the intention of the Amendment that those persons who provide educational facilities should fully and effectively meet the responsibilities which are laid on them by Section 8 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act. Many people spoke this morning, and I am sure that all Members of the House accept the need of what is the policy of the Department of Education and Science, that the able-bodied and the disabled should be integrated throughout the whole of their life and not just for a very short time.

From my own association with our local physically handicapped and able-bodied youth club, I can confirm what the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, has said about the advantage it is to the able-bodied people when they work with the disabled. I know the tremendous impression that helping the disabled has made on them. I am sure that all Members of the House will share and be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod of Borve, in what she said about the support which we all hope we are going to get from our new Secretary of State.

The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, referred to the problems of allying this Amendment with the Chronically Sick and Disabled Act and with the building regulations; and we had a lot of discussion on this at Committee stage. We have to remember that we must live at the moment with the buildings which we have. The pamphlet to which the noble Baroness, Lady D'Arcy de Knayth, referred encourages local education authorities to try to improve those facilities which they have and build them up to standard. The advice which is given in the booklet referred to by the noble Baroness indicates the care that the Department's officials and HMI give to the needs of handicapped children. They are encouraged and asked to give this care by the Department as part of our policy of education of children in ordinary schools and not separating them into special schools unless there is an absolute necessity that they have specialisation.

The right place to do it, as the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, said, is not in the way suggested to us today. The noble Lord queried whether this was the right way in which to try to do what we all want to do. The right place in legislation to deal with this is in the Standards for School Premises Regulations 1972 and the Further Education Regulations 1975 and the guidance which the Department sends out with those regulations.

I know that the noble Baroness feels strongly about this Amendment but I am prepared to give an undertaking that the Secretary of State will set in hand amendment of these regulations specifically to include reference to the provisions now embodied in the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970; that she will, in co-operation with the authorities, ensure that any specification and plans of educational premises that they submit for approval shall indicate what provision is being made for the needs of disabled persons using the premises; and that she will be prepared to issue design guidance on these matters. This would secure, as I understand it, the intention of both the first part of the noble Baroness's Amendment and, through the relationship of these regulations to the provisions of Section 10 of the Education Act, of the second part.

It would do so in a much more appropriate manner, relating this to other cognate aspects of design. It would provide a natural opportunity for consultation with the local authority, with teacher and with other interests who may be affected by this work. We feel that it would be less prejudicial to desirable longer-term developments in the relations between central and local government.

My Lords, why does one have to have one or the other? Why not have the clause in the Bill and also the action that is now being suggested?

My Lords, in the Department we feel that the best way to do this is not by writing it into the Act but by regulations, by having advice between the local authorities and central Government, and by the education authorities through our HMIs when they submit their plans. We can then put a lot of pressure on them in the initial stages and give encouragement to them to alter existing buildings.

My Lords, would the noble Baroness permit me to ask this question. Does she think that what she proposes is likely to be more effective than the Amendment that we propose? If so, I think that that is very important. We should be grateful to her and to her right honourable friend the Secretary of State if she could spell it out for those of us who are not experienced in these matters.

My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, may I ask her what happens if another Government come in? They may not be quite so keen. Would it not be better to have it written in the Bill?

My Lords, far be it from me to suggest that the present Government should be kept in Office for years and years! But I am sure that a Secretary of State for Education from either side of the House would have the needs of the disabled in mind. I cannot see any future Secretary of State suddenly dropping this practice, if it has been established. We are advised that this is a more effective way of achieving what the noble Baroness and the House want than the Amendment which is before us now.

I cannot promise that the guidance that the Secretary of State will give will preclude the possibility of an authority having to make some selective provision for access where it would be unreasonably costly or impracticable to do otherwise; but we should be prepared very quickly to notify the authorities of the Department's intentions and to develop with the interested parties a much more precise view of those design features which should be incorporated into all new educational buildings.

I hope that, since the Government are sympathetic and fully in accord with what the Amendment wants, that the noble Baroness will accept our advice that this is a much more effective way of doing it, will do it more quickly and will be able to keep a much closer eye on it. I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw the Amendment.

My Lords, the noble Baroness says she is speaking of something which will be done quickly. In the copy sent me of the letter that she sent to the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, she said that this is not to say that the Department are unwilling to consider what use they should make of the regulation-making powers in the interests of disabled people but they cannot promise in present circumstances to be able to give it high priority. Is the noble Baroness now prepared to see that things will be speeded up a little since her letter?

My Lords, we are prepared to advise the local authorities right away of what our intentions are, and we are prepared to go ahead with amending our regulations on Standards for School Premises (1972) and Further Education Regulations (1975). However, in the present financial situation we should not be able to support any suggestions that involved undue expense at this point of time.

My Lords, may we thank the noble Baroness warmly and her right honourable friend the Secretary of State. This is a tremendously important concession and we are grateful for it.

My Lords, may I draw attention to a very important point? What the noble Baroness has given us an assurance on goes beyond the Amendment, which relates only to schools. It is no less important in establishments of further education. It may be more important. As I understand it, both sets of regulations would he amended.

My Lords, if I may venture the opinion, I think that the noble Baroness, Lady D'Arcy de Knayth, ought to accept the undertaking which has been given. My impression from listening to what has been said is that she has won a triple victory. First, the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, has undertaken that immediate advice would be sent out. This means, to say the least, that the Government mean what they say in expressing sympathy with the point of view expressed in Committee and today.

Secondly, as the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, has pointed out, the undertaking given will go further than the noble Baroness's Amendment. The FE regulations will be amended in addition to the schools regulations. Thirdly, I am convinced—and I was advised of such before this stage of the Bill started by the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, with all his experience—that the amendment of the Regulations will be a more thorough job than the writing of it into the Bill. The regulations, as printed in the Law of Education run to over 12 pages. They cover every conceivable sort of matter to do with school buildings. This is going to be a much more thorough job. For those reasons, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady D'Arcy de Knayth, will feel that it has been most worth while to put down the Amendment again in the different form that she has chosen and will be able to accept the undertaking that the Government have given.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her reply, and feel it has been worth while putting down the Amendment. I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords for their fantastic support and for the way they have taken this issue by the throat and threshed it out. As we have the promise of the noble Baroness that this is going to happen very soon and it will be mandatory, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.

moved Amendment No. 11:

Leave out Clause 4.

My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Baroness for moving this Amendment. The Amendments to which she has referred manifestly meet the wishes of your Lordships expressed at the Committee stage, and they have gone further than the Amendment accepted by the noble Baroness on that occasion. She has removed the one subsection that those with suspicious minds had doubts about, namely, subsection (3). This subsection will come into operation only on a day on which my right honourable friend the Secretary of State makes a Statutory Instrument. I have infinite faith in my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, but am terrified she may be moved on to an even higher office than she now occupies before she is able to make the Statutory Instrument.

From the assurance of my noble friend that this is purely for consultation with the local authority associations, clearly it is the intention of the Government to fulfil the wishes of your Lordships. I am perfectly clear that this is one of the Amendments moved in your Lordship's House which will be acceptable to the other place. That is a most important point. We think that this is a tremendously important day for education. This is a tremendously important day for the integration of the handicapped and able bodied children in our schools. It reverses the long tradition embodied in the 1944 Act which the Department has reversed, as it were, casually and by gradual process. It is now going to be on the Statute Book and it is a day for rejoicing. I am sure that my noble friends in this House wish me to thank the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, and also my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, for taking these arguments so seriously. I should be delighted to accept these Amendments.

My Lords, I am very interested in the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey; I should hate him to think that I am not as starry-eyed as he is. While thanking the noble Baroness and everybody else concerned for doing this, I have one or two small points to raise, purely of procedure. It' we eliminate Clause 4 and then we do not get the following clause, we are left in a strange position: we have lost what we have and gained nothing else. Far be it from me to suggest that the Opposition would vote against the Government; this is something we would not except, particularly in a Bill of this character. But there is just a possibility that they might. It seems to me that we have no guarantees that if we remove what we already have we shall get Clause 10. I do not think even the noble Baroness can promise us that.

My Lords, may I just intervene to assure the noble Baroness that we shall not be voting against this. As it is a Friday and we are beginning to run short of time, I shall not go into the reasons.

My Lords, it is indeed a day of rejoicing; and perhaps it is our turn to prolong matters. There are several ways of playing this one. The noble Baroness seems to suggest that the original Clause 4 referred to the arrangements made by the local education authority and that this was not perhaps the best way to do it. Since we took the original Amendment out of the original Education Act, I assume the Department has now decided that the Act did not do the thing correctly and so there has to be an Amendment. I hope my assumption is correct.

I should like to comment also on Amendment No. 19. There we have the words:

"Where the education of the pupils in such schools … would involve unreasonable public expenditure."

Why is this not in any other clause? Why does it not include the major change? Let us not balk at it: it is a major change when comprehensive education is introduced. Why do we not have this phrase put in there? We all know that a local authority wishing to drag its heels will call in aid that kind of wording. Who is to decide when public expenditure is too great? Undoubtedly I think it will be said at this moment that it would be wrong to undertake public expenditure; but in my lifetime education has always been the one thing that is cut first. Governments of all colours go first for education, I am sorry to say. I cannot remember a time when one could have stood up and said, "This is the right time to spend public money". There will always be a reason why it is the wrong time, and so I find this a very unfortunate clause in the new Amendment, and I should like to have an explanation of why it only appears here.

My Lords, the rest of the Bill is governed by the instructions that the plans and other things which are submitted to the Secretary of State concerning the principle of comprehensive education will be established as resources are available. So in that sense we have the same sort of provision that when the money is available we will do it. It is not written into the Bill, I agree; but that is the intention on the resources element. We are not going to say that on day X one month hence every school shall go comprehensive. We accept that there is a need to wait until the resources and the buildings are available. In the light of the fact that we are spending something like £6,000 million per year on education, I think that perhaps the noble Baroness is being a little unfair to say that it is as nothing. I share her worries, having had 28 years of membership of a local education authority, and I know that every time we had a stop-go policy and were in a "stop" period education was the first to go. However, I m sure the noble Baroness that this clause is intended to work and that the ultimate appeal would be to the local education authorities and the Secretary of State.

moved Amendment No. 12:

After Clause 4, insert the following new clause:

My Lords, a couple of times at Committee stage I voted with the Opposition because their Amendments were in line with the Labour Party's National Executive policy in 1976 concerning the greater interest taken by parents in the education of their children. Therefore it might seem on this particular Amendment that I should speak in his support. Quite frankly, I think that this Amendment, which purports to give greater information to parents, is too rigid.

It seems to me that the trend in the local authority world and in the teaching unions—which is far more important than what the local authorities insist upon, because it is the head teachers and others who are concerned—is very much towards giving more information about the way schools are run, and getting the active participation of parents in controlling and running them. If this were written into the Statute, it is very unlikely that the specific information required by the Secretary of State would necessarily accord with the detailed information required by individual parents. In other words, I believe that the right thing to do, in this instance, is to press local authorities and teachers to give even more information than the noble Lord suggested. Therefore, on mature reflection, I am opposed to this Amendment because, on the whole, it would in this respect have a restrictive rather than a liberating effect.

My Lords, I should like to say one word from a different point of view, and perhaps to highlight something that has not been raised before. It dates from the time when I was a vice-chairman of the education committee for West Sussex for six years, and I naturally came into very close contact with the teaching profession as well as with the parents of children. It always seemed to me very sad in those days—which was quite a long time ago, but I am not sure that the situation has altered so very much—that the position of a teacher is peculiar. Teachers are always looked upon by the general public just as teachers; as something peculiar and perhaps, in some ways, different. On the other hand, teachers have what I would almost call a chip on their shoulders, because they feel that they are unacceptable in some way. This worried me very much and it seems to me that this Amendment would help improve communications between teachers and parents, or the general public. They would get to know each other better, they would appreciate each other better and there would he a much easier social intercourse between the two parties. This is a very important matter, which would enormously help the general educational outlook, and that is why I support this Amendment very fully.

My Lords, I should like to support my noble friend Lord Elton. It is very important, for one reason more than others, for information to be given to the public and all those interested about all the schools in an area. If information on the standard is given to the public in a pamphlet, it is vitally necessary that that standard should be kept up. As we know so well, standards in schools have recently dropped and I feel that if information could be laid down by the local education authority, so that everybody could see the standard to which local schools adhered, it would be in the interests of everybody. I also feel, as regards the Amendment which we discussed earlier, that if a parent had a blind child the information given in such a pamphlet would for example tell the parent whether there were rails at that school. This Amendment is very important, and I support it.

My Lords, presumably the Citizens' Advice Bureaux would get all the information, because over the the years they have gained a very strong position in the community. Very often people may be a little apprehensive about discussing matters with local authorities, and they naturally go to the Citizens' Advice Bureaux because they have now become the friends of the people. Therefore, I think that they want to be given every opportunity to co-operate with local authorities, and all the necessary information should be in their hands.

My Lords, I think there is no difference between us about ends, and there is simply some difference about means. In our last discussion, the noble Lord introduced an Amendment to insert into the Bill a detailed list of items of information which would statutorily be obliged to be listed by local education authorities. I suggested—and I think there was a good deal of similar f'eeling in the House—that such a detailed prescription would he out of place in an Act of Parliament. This really is the only difference between us. Education authorities must issue information about schools, and I think that the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Ward, that this should always be done with the co-operation of the Citizens' Advice Bureaux is an extremely good one.

There is no hesitation on the part of my right honourable friend about the desirability of information being available. Her hesitation concerns whether this is a suitable instruction, in all its details, to be contained in an Act of Parliament. We think it would be equally out of place in Statutory regulations and, bearing in mind that different information will be wanted by different parents, about different schools, in different places, it is surely much better that local education authorities should be left with a broad measure of discretion within guidelines set by the Secretary of State. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod, that the guidelines should include such things as rails for the blind. This is the kind of information which guidelines should include. But as I told the House last time I spoke on this subject in Committee, my right honourable friend intends to consider what guidance can best be given after consultation with all those concerned. Let us at least give that proposal a fair trial. If guidance given by way of circular, or whatever other means may be seen appropriate to the Secretary of State, turns out to be ineffective, then perhaps Statutory Regulations could he considered.

The Secretary of State already has power under Section 5(2) of the Local Government Act 1974 to make regulations in relation to such a matter; if necessary, she will consider using that power to make regulations requiring local education authorities to make available to parents specified information about their schools. But she would not wish to do this without first seeing what can be done on a much more flexible basis by non-statutory guidance. I hope, therefore, that the noble Lord will not find it necessary to press this Amendment. As I have indicated, it is unnecessary because it gives the Secretary of State no power that she does not already have, and it is inappropriate that legal regulations should be applied to a matter like this, unless all other means have failed. So I hope that the noble Lord can be persuaded not to press this Amendment.

My Lords, I think that the House would be well advised to accept the concessions given by the Minister. It seems to me that we are progressing quite a lot faster and more amicably, possibly because the Secretary of State herself has now had time to become seized of the Bill, and we are moving quite a long way in the right direction. I do not think I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, when he says that this is more a matter for the teachers; I believe that this is definitely one of those areas where it is very much for the local education authority to give details of all the options open in the area for which it is responsible. What the Minister has said about what the Secretary of State is prepared to do in this situation is perfectly fair and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will feel that he does not have to press the Amendment.

My Lords, at the outset of this brief debate the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, categorised the procedure laid down in the Amendment as too rigid, although it sets down nothing but a time limit. His argument was that the trend among teachers is already towards closer co-operation with parents and one is very glad to be assured that it is, although one is less assured by Press reports of "sink" schools which from time to time come to the surface and which will be one of the targets of this particular and small reform. The noble Lord said that the information might not be that which the parents required and I would point out both to him and to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, that there is nothing restrictive in the requirements or the regulations: they can be as flexible or detailed as necessary. But they do not say what shall not be published; they say only what shall be published. That is the requirement which is laid on the Secretary of State.

My noble friend Lady Emmet of Amberley, with considerable experience, has pointed out that where teachers are in favour of closer communication there is much to be said for formalising this and therefore giving them an excuse, which one often wants, for doing what they already want to do. As my noble friend Lady Macleod of Borve has said, there is much to be said for schools publicly undertaking to do something in print and then within 12 months being subject to the scrutiny of the general public and the parents as to whether or not they have succeeded in doing it. Again I say to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, that there is no ground for supposing that the regulations will be too detailed or, indeed, not detailed enough. That lies in the hands of the Minister. I suspect that the only difference between us is that the noble Lord thinks that a power is sufficient whereas we feel that a duty is necessary, and we are strengthened in this view by the considerable support that the idea received in another place.

Since he spoke last to the Amendment, may I draw the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, who has reservations about the Bill in view of the amicable climate which now happily prevails in this Chamber, to the fact that he has mentioned, as has the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, the parents and the teachers.

moved Amendment No. 13:

After Clause 4, insert the following new clause:

My Lords, I have listened with interest to what the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has said and perhaps I might here quote back to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, from what he said in Committee on this Bill. He said:

"I think that education is a most mysterious subject and my own view is that very few people know anything about it at all."—[Official Report, 7/10/76; col.1611.]

This seems to me to be a somewhat sweeping statement and not a good basis on which to argue—if that is indeed what he is proposing to do—against the setting up of an independent committee of inquiry. On Tuesday of this week my noble friend Lord Beaumont of Whitley put forward an Amendment that was happily accepted, as he said, on all four sides of the House. I should he very happy if, on this Amendment, there could again be general accord.

In strong contrast to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, I speak partly inhibited by the considerable experience of so many Members of your Lordships' House in the various fields of education. I speak to this Amendment, as I see it, as a matter of common sense.1 understand there is uncertainty even in the Government's own views as to what size is the best for comprehensive schools, even allowing some scope for variation. I believe that, remarkably enough, they are even prepared to admit that mistakes may have been made. It is surely therefore not unreasonable to ask for this independent inquiry and I do not see why men and women of integrity in all Parties or no Party cannot agree to this.

Again there is considerable doubt and uncertainty about the value or otherwise of teaching mixed-ability classes. My noble friend Lord Beaumont earlier in the Report stage made the interesting suggestion that we need to know more about mixed ability teaching for older students. I really do ask the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, and his right honourable friend the Secretary of State to have the courage not to run away at the mere suggestion that something may be wrong.

A case could be made out that this Bill should in no way be enacted before a satisfactory report had been received from such a committee of inquiry as is here proposed. That would be highly controversial and for better or for worse is not here called for. What is here asked is, I suggest, outside Party politics. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, will bear with me if I "Hansardise" him once more. At Second Reading col. 1602 he said:

"Education is an art, not a science so no proofs present themselves."

The noble Lord continued:

"We have to make up our minds on a survey of the facts as impartial as we can manage."—[Official Report, 29/7/76].

I humbly submit that that is just what this Amendment is about. It seeks to help all those who sincerely wish to promote in this country the best education for all.

This is not the place to argue tilt case for electoral reform but if we are, as has been said, to continue the present yo-yo of Party politics at least let us see that Labour, Conservative or Liberals an not lacking the courage to find out and then to face the facts free as far as possible from prejudice and preconceived ideas.

My Lords, during Committee stage I undertook, among the other things I seem to have said, to discuss the substance of the noble Lord's Amendment with my Secretary of State. I said that I was quite sure regular monitoring with outside help was something of which she would approve and she has endorsed this whole-heartedly. In fact, a great deal is being done already. My further discussions with her also enable me to tell your Lordships of the new initiatives which she will be taking and I hope that these initiatives and the present studies which I shall be describing will meet the points which your Lordships have in mind in tabling this Amendment.

My Lords, the need for a Committee of Inquiry with somewhat different terms of reference, has been debated at length here and in the other place. The Government have argued against all such proposals as such and despite the changed terms of reference, noble Lords opposite have made in this latest Amendment to encompass all secondary schools, we shall again oppose the proposition as it stands.

It is not the case that we are opposed to inquiries into aspects of the education service nor that we do not wish for wide-ranging debate. Indeed we welcome it provided it is not based on blind prejudice or a nostalgic and often mistaken view of past practice. As I told your Lordships during Committee stage my right honourable friend the Secretary of State is very concerned about the quality of education, including the questions which noble Lords have in particular raised, size of schools, academic standards, staffing, turnover of staff, discipline and internal organisation. We recognise public concern about the new informal methods of teaching, employers' complaints about new recruits from schools being less well-equipped for the world of work than they expect. May I add also that we understand teachers' resentment at the uninformed attacks on their professional interest and judgment of educational needs.

I can do no better than repeat what my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said—and I do not see why the noble Lord, Lord Elton, should be the only one to quote him—only last week in Oxford, that

"where there is legitimate public concern it will be to the advantage of all involved in the education field if these concerns are aired and shortcomings righted or fears put at rest.…We must carry the teaching profession with us [but they] must satisfy the parents and industry that what [they] are doing meets their requirements and the needs of our children".

There are a number of things we need to do and have already in hand. Now as to some of the details.

Her Majesty's Inspectorate, a highly competent cadre of professionals within central Government, are intensifying their efforts to ensure that wide advantage is taken of good practice wherever it is developed. They are also engaged on qualitative surveys of the primary and of the secondary schools. With the former is associated some objective testing of standards on a limited front by the National Foundation for Education and Research; but the scale of application of testing will be very much enhanced, and the quality of the testing improved, as a result of the work of the Assessment and Performance Unit—to which we are giving the fullest backing. Another activity which contributes to the assessment of school performance is, of course, external examining: this is an important part of our educational system, and the Government has considered very carefully the proposals for change recently submitted by the Schools Council.

My right honourable friend the Secretary of State accepts what noble Lords on all sides have said about the need to appraise the development of comprehensive schools. But it is not possible to make an objective comparison of comprehensive and selective systems because the two systems are not self-contained. Much of the work that we have in hand has been designed not to draw comparisons between selective and non-selective schools, but to investigate how comprehensive schools work and to help them to work better. I am gratified to see from the revised terms of reference for the Committee of Inquiry proposed by noble Lords opposite that they seem to have accepted the validity of these points and to see as we do comprehensive schools and their work as part of total provision for secondary education, and to recognise their concern with the development of the whole child and not exclusively with academic achievement.

Noble Lords should know that we have decided very recently to finance an inquiry by the National Children's Bureau into the possibility of extending educational areas which they are investigating in a study, supported by the Department and by the DHSS, of various aspects of development of 16,000 children born in one week in 1958. This extension would include an analysis of the academic development of these children between the ages of 11 and 16 by reference to the kind of school they attended. We believe that using a longitudinal survey—by which I mean a study of the same group of children at successive stages in their development—will have a great advantage over any alternative method of comparing selective and non-selective schools, and will enable us to gain information beyond that of academic achievement, as suggested by examination results, including adjustment to and attitudes to school, career aspirations and expectations, A I level intentions and proposed further education studies. The National Children's Bureau project is potentially of great importance because it is a unique opportunity to consider the development of a nationwide sample of children which is as nearly perfect as it was possible to get, and to consider the children in it in some depth. The noble Viscount will be relieved to hear that, though paid for by the Department, it will be conducted independently of it. The studies to which I have referred are under-taken as part of the normal administrative process of monitoring educational policy.

Over and above this my right honourable friend has asked Her Majesty's Inspectors to conduct a thorough and objective review of the accumulated experience of comprehensive schools. This will cover not only size, organisation and so on, but also standards of all kinds, to which she attaches great importance throughout the educational system. With the same end in mind, she also intends to arrange next year a conference of all those interested in comprehensive schools. They would have the opportunity to discuss and assess all the evidence by then available: the proceedings would be published and action would be taken to follow up the conclusions.

Noble Lords in their Amendment asked that particular regard should be paid to the size of schools, mixed ability classes and the question of staff turnover.

I hope that I have said enough to show that these matters are being considered most carefully and in detail and that therefore noble Lords opposite will he able to withdraw their Amendment on the grounds that, in a different form what they are asking for, it is in fact being done.

My Lords, we are very interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, has told us of the National Children's Bureau, and especially in the investigation into all the children born in one week. But it still does not cover the need to satisfy the public that it is not the Department only that is finding out all these facts, and that only an independent inquiry will really be satisfactory. I support the Amendment for the same reason as the noble Lord, Lord Hampton; namely, that it is a matter of common sense. It is something which would commend itself to any prudent manager of a great business.

Supposing there was a textile firm which owned a large number of weaving sheds in which there were several types of loom, and along comes the managing director and recommends to the board that all types should be scrapped except one. What would the board do? I. would call for a most searching examination into the performance of the one type that it was recommended should be installed in all their sheds. This is our position. The Government now insist that all LEAs should standardise on the comprehensive model; but they have not collected, appraised, and published the evidence to date on the performance of this model. It has been in service for almost 20 years. By now we ought to know how it is received by the work force; do they like that type of model; what is its actual output compared to the maximum capacity that they were told it could achieve, and also what modifications should be made in the light of the lessons already learned.

On these Benches we have always held that variety in schools was a good guaran- tee that success would be observed and copied, mistakes shown up and eliminated, and parents given the greatest width of choice. Now that goes. There is to be no variety in the organisation. We are to have only one model, non-selective, for all schools and sixth form colleges. If genuine variety and experiments are not to disappear they must be recreated within the comprehensive system. I believe that this is the objective of the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, and his Secretary of State. How are they going to achieve that if they do not know the true facts about the non-selective schools to date?

I must observe first that if all comprehensive schools are to be neighbourhood schools, the variety they will get will be socially divisive, educationally very un-even, and often unfair. Secondly, no one knows enough about the effects of size and non-selection on the quality of the schools that we have already. No one knows, therefore, how to make a good job of the vast exercise in planning because no independent inquiry has been laid on to find out the facts.

Our Amendment refers to the problems of size, and that is only one aspect which requires investigation, but it is a good illustration of why we cannot leave this to the Department. We must have an independent inquiry. The evidence we have amply demonstrates that very large schools are more difficult to manage than medium sized schools. That is now accepted as a truism in all institutions where human relations are of paramount importance. But we do not know the extent to which this human factor is at work as a result of the large size and non-selective intake of the comprehensives, where the whole range of ability must be dealt with under one roof by one head teacher. Is it the same in all parts of the country? Is a large comprehensive viable on the outskirts of a city but not in the centre? In areas where there are many immigrant children should there be schools even smaller? What about the effect of size on the stability and work of the staff?

When in my time teachers had no reason, as they have today, to fear unemployment, HMIs used to tell us that turnover of staff increased with the size of the school, so the large school, where getting to know all the children is by definition harder than in a smaller school suffered the most. Is that still the case today? We do not know. What are the current rates of turnover in relation to size? We do not know. What effect has size on the standards of behaviour among the children? The permissive society has made the teachers' task much harder. The gap has widened between what many children are told is all right at home and what they are told, or used to be told, is all wrong at school. It is understandable that some teachers give in, and adopt do-as-you-please methods.

But surely the size of the school has a big influence in this battle for order, discipline and hard work. We do not have the facts on which to assess these problems, but we do know that a large number of LEAs have been converted to the view that non-selective schools larger than five or six form entry throw up too many administrative problems to be viable. In a large number of areas this is inevitable.

But then what happens? The smaller comprehensive schools, unless in a very exceptional neighbourhood, cannot develop a strong sixth form. What is gained in better management is lost in weaker education. This is a dilemma, and it has forced local education authorities to think of such devices as sixth form colleges. The public, who are getting anxious about all these things, want to know why so many schools appear to be teaching in the wrong way and why the discipline is often so unsatisfactory. They suspect that it has something to do with size and the total range of ability, and we owe it to the parents, ratepayers and taxpayers to examine this question independently.

It has been said time and again that it would be unfair to take a cool, hard, independent look at comprehensives because they have had no chance to show their paces when the bright children were creamed off by the grammar schools. That argument sounded plausible when the alternative to creaming off was a comprehensive school large enough to contain within it a fully-fledged grammar school. That size of comprehensive school was, on paper, a good educational project; but that size of comprehensive school is now out, so the argument can no longer be advanced as a reason for not making an inquiry into the comprehensives we have. The bright children will still be creamed off, this time into sixth-form colleges and similar institutions.

We must, therefore, examine this system on its present merits and given its future limitations. Not only the schools but the sixth form colleges, which come within the ambit of the Amendment because they are counted as schools, must be looked at, and what do we know about them? I give your Lordships one case and ask you to consider whether it is typical. Maybe some noble Lords have heard or have known of the old Brighton, Hove and Sussex Grammar School which was a good school. Two or three years ago it began to be converted into a non-selective sixth-form college. What has happened? Many of the good teachers have left, gone to teach in independent schools or taken up other careers, and the standards of the sixth form have fallen seriously. I know parents who have taken their boys away and, if they could afford the fees, sent them to independent schools for their sixth form work. Is that typical? We do not know because the Department has never dared give us the results of an inquiry into sixth form colleges.

I come to what the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, said about inquiries already in hand. Apart from the Children's Bureau inquiry, which will not tell us about the organisation of schools, which is what we really want to know about, all of these inquiries are internal; the Government are detective sergeant, jury and judge and that is not satisfactory to the public. The main inquiry, as the noble Lord said, is that by the HMIs into secondary education. Fortunately I have with me a copy of the memorandum which the Department sent out describing what is entitled "National Survey of Secondary Education". It is a very revealing document. How wide will this survey be? One in 10—that is 400 out of 4,000—secondary schools will be looked at, and of course there are some very good ones, as the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilion, said about the comprehensive at Leeds, which we all know is very good.

As I say, it will be one in ten. Who will select that modest sample? The Department of course, through the HMIs. When these schools are chosen, who will select what will be looked at inside them? The HMIs, of course, after warning the schools that they arc coming. No schools will be looked at outside the maintained system and there can be no comparison with direct grant or independent schools.

The document goes further and says that no school, authority or teacher will be mentioned in their report and no comparisons made between ore school and another. There is a curious passage in paragraph 5 which I draw to the attention of your Lordships. It says:

"It will seldom be possible to attempt total curricula coverage or to meet all classes and teachers. In all except perhaps very small schools, it will be possible to see only a sample of lessons and classes from the two years concerned. Whilst the composition of the sample will be the responsibility of the panels of inspectors, advice from schools will be welcome on subjects or activities which are thought to he milking particularly valuable contributions."

That is all very well and it is good reading for the teachers, but shall we really find out what we want to know if they are warned beforehand that what the Inspectorate want to look at is what they can do well? They are very lucky to get off so lightly.

What is needed, therefore, is a double inquiry into both the size and structure and into the quality of the teaching and an assessment of how the size and organisation of the school react on the teaching. It does not appear to me and my noble friends that the Government realise how fraught with danger the Bill is now that the sixth forms in the grammar schools cannot be recreated in the size of comprehensives dictated by non-educational reasons. We are dealing with the education of millions of children over the next 25 years. We cannot alter the system of secondary education every time the complexion of government changes. Therefore, we owe it to these young people to provide them and their children after them with a non-selective system that has the best possible chance to work, and to provide for all the ranges of ability according to their need. That we cannot do without much more knowledge than we have at present, so I personally cannot be satisfied with a departmental inquiry. I do not think that they should be both investigators and judges of a system to which they are politically committed. We are all politically committed in some way or another but, unless we can get politics out of the school system—and they were not in it at the time when I was Minister—we shall do great damage to a very large number of British boys and girls.

My Lords, I find myself in support of the Amendment, largely for the reasons which the noble Viscount has given, though with a somewhat different approach. However, towards the end of his remarks, the noble Viscount came very close to what I wish to say. I believe that there is a danger of the Government feeling that an inquiry of this kind is designed to condemn the comprehensive principle. That I hope is not the intention of the Amendment. As I have said, I accept the consensus in favour of the comprehensive principle. However, I greatly fear that, unless it is carried out carefully and after very careful consideration of all the possibilities so that we find the best way of doing it, it will fail, as it has in other countries. I do not believe that I know of a country that has gone comprehensive that has not shown a subsequent trend to retreat to a basis of selection. There are more than 500 specialist schools in mathematics in Russia, for instance.

I do not believe that we have given this enough thought. I said earlier that the trends that are emerging support the view that sixth forms in all comprehensive schools are probably neither educationally nor economically viable. That creates a new problem. I share the noble Viscount's concern to check whether the organisation of a sixth-form college—or, as I prefer to call it, a tertiary college—with a wider range of opportunity can achieve the right level of success. I believe that it is vitally important to check on the organisation within a comprehensive school to see whether the full range of opportunity for the whole range of ability with which the school is coping is being adequately provided.

Personally, I have the gravest doubts about all-ability grouping. These are based on fairly long experience and a good deal of research work. This is something that needs to be examined. Certainly, the teaching profession would argue that with all-ability grouping the staffing ratio needs to be about 50 per cent. more favourable than with homogeneous grouping. So we are also involved in an economic problem of a very major order.

Those of us who have experience of teaching know that it is a very different proposition to face a group of children ranging in ability over the entire range to dealing with a group with a relatively narrow range of ability. It is for that reason that I found teaching infants almost impossible but university students relatively easy. Therefore, we are all agreed that there should be an inquiry, not designed to condemn but rather designed to ascertain the best way to organise on the comprehensive principle to secure full opportunity for children of all levels of ability. We are all agreed on our purpose: we want every child to have his talents developed fully. The question is how best to do that with the maximum cost effectiveness and with the maximum educational effectiveness.

The suggestion that the Department can do it falls down on the basis with which the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, started: he did not mind an inquiry, so long as it was not prejudiced. Can a Departmental inquiry, under a Secretary of State committed to a given educational policy, not be judged by the public to have some prejudice? I am not suggesting that it does have prejudice: I am saying that it would be so judged. Therefore it seems to me that the case for an independent inquiry, looking at these problems over a reasonable period of time, not doing other than seeking to help the Government, to help the Department and to help local authorities to organise their schools to the best advantage, would be very desirable.

My Lords, I should like to intervene for just one minute. I am rather hurt by the suggestion from both the noble Viscount and the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, that an inquiry carried out by Her Majesty's Inspectors would be prejudiced. I absolutely refute that. My experience with Her Majesty's Inspectors is very small—much less than that of many of your Lordships—but I do not think that they are tools of any particular theory. I think that they are objective people who will do their best to find out the truth. That is all I want to say.

My Lords, with great respect to the noble Lord, I did not suggest that they would be prejudiced; I suggested that public opinion would not necessarily accept their judgment as fully independent. This is a different thing. We are seeking here to reassure the public that this is being done with the maximum degree of thoroughness. I would not suggest that any inspectorate, or any person professionally engaged in education, would seek to be other than objective in such an assessment. But here we are dealing with a major issue over which public opinion is gravely concerned. I have had, I think, over a hundred letters from parents from one area in the past three or four weeks; they are greatly concerned. Therefore to reassure the public I should have thought that an independent inquiry would carry very much greater weight than an internal inquiry.