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

My Lords, we have frequently expressed concern about the external policies and actions of the Soviet Union. The Russians seek to exploit instability in the developing world. It is therefore important that we and friendly countries should continue to try to settle regional problems and to promote stability outside the NATO area.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. Bearing in mind the massive build-up of the Warsaw Pact countries which may perhaps encourage the Russians, or the Soviet Union, to expand in the South and the East, would my noble friend consider that it might be worth negotiating with South Africa to reopen the naval base at Simonstown? Secondly, would he consider it perhaps pertinent to get together with some of our Western allies to help China with modern defence equipment?

My Lords, as my noble friend knows, we are of course already discussing with the Chinese the possibility of supplying them with some defence equipment. As for the suggestion that we should reopen the base at Simonstown, that is a matter that we should clearly have to discuss with our NATO partners.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether, in view of the global strategic policy now being pursued by the Soviet Union, it is any longer possible to define a specific NATO area, and whether there is any British interest in the world which is not dependent on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation?

My Lords, the NATO Treaty does not in fact include any precise definition of the NATO area, but we understand it as meaning the countries of the NATO Alliance including, of course, North America, together with the Mediterranean and the Atlantic as far South as the Tropic of Cancer.

My Lords, is it not increasingly clear that the point is being reached where the arms race, especially in the nuclear field, is not going to resolve the differences between the NATO countries and the Warsaw Pact countries? Is it not therefore necessary to effect a radical reappraisal of our approach to both the Soviet Union and its allies in relation to the whole range of problems throughout the world, including those the Minister has mentioned; the need for stability, which is an equal interest and concern for East and West, and the need to tackle jointly, East and West together, the points of contention and of difficulty, economic and security, that arise in so many parts of the world?

Yes, my Lords, we certainly agree with that. Of course both East and West are participating in the mutual balanced force reduction talks, as they are called—MBFR—at Vienna. It is a matter for great regret that those talks are not making more progress than they are.

My Lords, would the Minister give the House an assurance that, when Her Majesty's Government decide to take action involving the movement of equipment, they have the capacity to carry it out, bearing in mind that last week when it was announced that we wanted to send Pumas, of which we have some 40—they are battle transport helicopters—to Rhodesia it was found that we had not the means of conveying them and had to borrow a Starlift, a C141, to carry them out? This is an exact parallel of what happened at Suez, and other dubious occasions when the Conservative Government were responsible for defence.

My Lords, I am afraid that my memory does not go back as far as that of the noble Lord, Lord Wigg. I certainly agree that we ought to maintain and, so far as we can, improve our transport facilities within the availability of our resources.

My Lords, does the noble Lord recall that it is not so many years ago since the Tory Party were engaged in supporting the American view that Taiwan had to be fully armed to deal with China? Now that we have established apparently friendly relations with that great country of China, with its need for expansion, might we not reflect that the continual use in this House of Russia, the Soviet Union, as an essential potential enemy rather overlooks the fact that the USSR has made considerable progress in its foreign alliances, has an expanded connection, but does itself face grave internal problems? Might we not consider not stimulating hostility against that country which, with all its lack of democracy, in which it has never believed, has a contribution to make to the reduction of armaments and to the promotion of a general understanding? Finally, may I suggest—

Finally, my Lords, would the Minister consider the remarks on the BBC last night made by Lord Carver on our present military policy and its complete impracticability?

My Lords, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Carver, is of course entitled to his views, but we have to formulate our policies in accordance with circumstances as we find them, not as we would wish them to be.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that the USSR today is training terrorists from all over the world and that the PLO and its affiliates are actually being trained in the USSR for terrorist and murderous actions? Will he try to do something about this menace, a menace not only to Israel and other countries but to NATO and throughout its European section?

My Lords, answering Questions, as I do from the noble Lord so often, I could hardly fail to be aware of the matters he raises.

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

My Lords, there is no statutory duty on the police to pass on information where there is a possibility that a person may have been wrongly convicted. Clearly, however, the interests of justice require that the police, or any other agency to whom it comes to notice, should draw attention to such a possibility at the earliest opportunity. The police are fully aware of this obligation. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary will however consider, in consultation with the Association of Chief Police Officers, whether any specific guidance is necessary.

My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that Answer, may I ask whether he is aware, from the first of the examples of this that I gave him, that the innocence of the woman who was convicted of theft and sentenced to two years imprisonment transpired only because the barrister who appeared for her happened to be in the same chambers as the barrister who later appeared for the real culprit, who by that time had confessed that she was the real culprit? Ought there not to be some sensible system, so far as the Ministry can achieve one, for seeing that the police carry out the advice which the noble Lord has given?

My Lords, there was indeed a curious chain of circumstances here, but it must be borne in mind that the fact that a person admits to an offence for which someone else was convicted does not in itself imply a wrongful conviction. Both may have been involved in the same offence and the second person may merely be seeking to exonerate an associate. The police will normally have to reopen their investigation into the offence and the circumstances of the original conviction before they are satisfied there may have been a wrongful conviction.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether the real difficulty, perhaps, is not the fact that outside the metropolis the Secretary of State has no power to direct the police as to what they are to do in such circumstances? In view of that difficulty, would not the Secretary of State at least consider remitting this problem to the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure within whose wide terms of reference the subject clearly falls?

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord is very well informed and will know, of course, that the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure is sitting at the moment. I shall of course draw my right honourable friend's attention to his suggestion, but whether it will be specifically relevant to the matters they are undertaking at the moment I cannot confirm to him.

My Lords, surely the Minister should go further than that. Is he aware that it is human to err, that the courts are human and that they err quite often? Should it not be our duty—the Government's duty—to take urgent steps when they feel there is not a certainty but a possibility that they have erred, that they have inflicted an injustice, instead of looking into every technicality? The noble Lord should go home and read the Dreyfus case where this happened in its largest degree.

My Lords, the noble Lord raises matters which are really more properly raised in your Lordships' House in the form of an Unstarred Question, and I am sure the Government would welcome an opportunity for him to do so.

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

My Lords, the Government considered that the proposal to construct a second terminal at Gatwick Airport was of sufficient importance, regionally and nationally, for the matter to be determined jointly by my right honourable friends the Secretaries of State for the Environment and for Trade, rather than being dealt with by the appropriate local planning authority. The planning application was therefore called in, and a public inquiry was arranged so that all the difficult issues involved should be fully investigated and open to public scrutiny.

My Lords, does my noble friend recall that some months ago the Government published a White Paper a major feature of which was the policy decision to develop Gatwick Airport up to a level capable of handling 25 million passengers a year? On the basis of that policy, is not at least a second terminal inevitably required and, on that basis, is not therefore a public inquiry a waste of time and public money and really no more than a work creation scheme for the planning Bar?

No, my Lords, I would not accept that a public inquiry which allows all interested bodies to make their views known, including those specifically and perhaps personally affected, should not be held.

My Lords, can my noble friend envisage carrying out the declared policy of the Government, which they are already pursuing by ordering foreign airlines to move to Gatwick, other than by deciding, after all this inquiry is over, that a second terminal has to be built?

My Lords, as my noble friend will know, the Government are presently involved in a major consideration of airport policy in the South-East, and the question of a second terminal at Gatwick is of course part of that consideration. I should not want to prejudge the outcome of that consideration.

My Lords, with regard to the Minister's original reply, can he help the House on a related matter? Can he tell us whether the British Airports Authority were acting within their powers, or were within their rights, in agreeing with the West Sussex County Council that there should be no second runway built at Gatwick; or was that decision not for them to take?

My Lords, the agreement to which the noble Baroness refers was, as she rightly says, entered into by the British Airports Authority, and as I told the House the other week, the Government were not a party to that agreement and are certainly not bound by it. As for the point about the British Airports Authority, there is, I am afraid, more than one view as to whether the British Airports Authority were entitled to enter into that agreement. The matter could only finally be decided if it came before the courts.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, if this had not been a public inquiry, people who live in the vicinity would have been most horrified and rather distressed if all the evidence had not been brought out?—because there are people who live near airports who feel as strongly about these matters as do people who merely travel in aeroplanes.

I think that my noble friend is quite right, my Lords.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that if the delays in reaching any decisions about terminals at Heathrow or Gatwick, or about another London airport, go on indefinitely, they will do infinite damage to this country? Can he not do something to expedite a decision on something, sometime?

My Lords, I agree that democracy is sometimes rather tiresome, but that does not mean that we should throw it out of the window.

My Lords, will my noble friend not agree that problems of Gatwick, Heathrow, Stansted, Maplin and the other airports have been debated at enormous length for years by the people and the Governments concerned, and that no new facts on any of them could conceivably come out?

My noble friend may well be right, my Lords.

My Lords, will my noble friend accept the suggestion of my other noble friend, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, that a declaration of policy by a Government—any Government—has some sacred quality which forbids it to be overturned by public acclamation or resistance?

My Lords, if my noble friend is suggesting that that was suggested by my other noble friend, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, then I do not think that I would agree with him.

My Lords, if a second runway were built at Gatwick airport, would it then be necessary to proceed with the construction of a third airport in the Midlands?

My Lords, I think that if I were to comment upon that, I should be pre-empting the Statement which is to be made in due course on airport policy in the South-East generally.

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

My Lords, during the inquiry an unpublished document containing an inaccurate statement alleging Government approval for a converter station at Sellindge was given in evidence. Government approval in principle was given in August 1978 for an electricity link with France. This approval, however, related to the project in general and not to any particular construction on any particular site. I am assured by the originators of the document quoted that the error will be corrected before publication.

My Lords, in thanking my noble friend for his reply, may I ask whether he can please reassure us that the Government are aware, and will communicate their awareness to public authorities, of the damage to public confidence if statements such as this are made during an inquiry? The inquiry has necessarily cost the local residents quite a lot of money, and they have already seen signs—for example, roads have been altered and road and bridge plans have been altered—suggesting that that particular statement was right and that the Government have approved the location at Sellindge.

My Lords, I absolutely agree with my noble friend that the tendency to leak things and then to bring the leaks forward in evidence is damaging to the whole procedure of sensible planning decisions.

My Lords, will the Government not agree that, wherever the converter station is located, nevertheless an electricity link with France will be of great benefit to our two countries?

My Lords, I would rather take that view, but of course we have made a decision only about this in principle. The details about costs, investment decisions, or what liaison with France herself would be involved have not yet been arrived at.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, at approximately 3.30 this afternoon my noble friend the Foreign Secretary will be making a Statement on Rhodesia.

My Lords, following the Statement in another place on Friday, the House will know that the noble Lord the Leader of the House has been appointed Governor of Rhodesia. I know that my noble friend Lord Soames very much regretted that he was unable to announce to the House personally his appointment to the post of Governor of Rhodesia during the interim period up to the elections. He hopes that the House will extend its indulgence to him and will understand that the delicacy of the final negotiations concerning the ceasefire made it impossible for him to announce his appointment while the House was sitting. I am sure that I would be expressing the feelings of your Lordships from every part of the House if I were to say that we wish him every success in what can only be a difficult and formidable task. Our best wishes go with him.

My Lords, as a consequence of his departure, it falls to me as Deputy Leader to act as Leader during my noble friend's absence, in a state, as it were, of loco parentis. It is for this reason that the noble Lord the Lord Chairman of Committees has tabled a Motion to add my name to those Committees of the House of which the Leader is a member. If I might say so, I hope that your Lordships will be kind enough to extend your indulgence to me, too, as I temporarily slip into my noble friend's shoes as far as the House is concerned. I hope that on the occasions when I may inadvertently act in error, your Lordships will not hesitate—and I have no doubt that you will not—to inform me of any such indiscretion.

My Lords, I am sure that the House will be grateful for the Statement of the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, about the Leader of the House. I am sure that the whole House will certainly wish to send good wishes and say "Godspeed" to the noble Lord, Lord Soames. He faces a great challenge, and we all hope that he will achieve success. May I say to the new acting Leader that he need have no inhibitions. I believe that he has all the qualities necessary for a Leader of the House: tact, calmness, and, most of all, a love of agriculture.

My Lords, from these Benches we should like to say that we believe that the appointment of the noble Lord, Lord Soames, as Governor of Rhodesia is a very good one indeed. It is a challenge appropriate to the noble Lord's experience and competence, and we wish him well in carrying out his new responsibilities. Of course the new acting Leader of the House will have full support when he is right, and a certain amount of sympathy when he is wrong, in carrying out his duties. However, may I ask him this. Since, as I understand it, a considerable number of parliamentary business decisions are taken in the Cabinet, will the noble Earl join that body during the temporary absence of the noble Lord, Lord Soames? I think that it would be for the better arrangement of the business of the House if the noble Earl were in the Cabinet during this period.

My Lords, I am very grateful to the two noble Lords for those kind words. I am bound to say that the question of the noble Lord, Lord Byers, is a fairly quick one to pose to a person in a new position, and all I can tell him is that whoever is a member of the Cabinet is a question for the Prime Minister, not for me.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether he will expedite that request of mine to the direct channels lower down in this Parliament?

I think that it would be presumptuous for me to do so, my Lords, but I have no doubt that others will take the noble Lord's views on board.

My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to provide for a Police Negotiating Board for the United Kingdom in place of the Police Council for the United Kingdom. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.

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

rose to move that the Second Report from the Select Committee be agreed to.

My Lords, I beg to move, as an amendment to the above Motion, to leave out ("agreed to") and insert ("referred back to the Select Committee for their further consideration"). I hope I shall be able to tempt the acting Leader of the House, despite the short notice he has had of this matter, to intervene, because I think the reply can best come from him in view of the events which I shall hope to relate this afternoon.

My Lords, I move this amendment because an undertaking was given to the full House, and was accepted by the House in good faith, no less than two and a half years ago, and this undertaking shows no signs of being honoured; and because the Procedure Committee, despite what the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees has said, shows little sign—no clear sign, at any rate—that in this lengthy period of two and a half years it has been doing the limited task (as I shall indicate it is) which the House in effect asked it to undertake in fulfilment of the undertaking given to the whole House. Since it is such a long time ago that this unhappy story starts, and despite the fact that the noble Lord has mentioned it briefly, I must myself give my own description in order to refresh the memories of your Lordships of the promise of the Leader of the House on 5th July 1977. In effect, in my view, the House reached a decision on that day, and it is still not carried out.

The Select Committee on Practice and Procedure reported in April 1977. Part 3 of that report dealt with these fresh ideas about the consideration of Public Bills. It suggested that several committees based on policy areas, as the noble Lord, the Chairman of Committees, has recalled—things like trade and industry, environment and home affairs are examples which come to mind—be set up to deal with legislation only. I emphasise that point: they should not be confused with Select Committees dealing with policy and administration. Those are a very different kind of animal, and form no part at all of the Practice and Procedure Committee's proposal in 1977. The suggested legislative committees, as they were, would watch Bills, pre-legislative Green and White Papers and delegated legislation, very much as the European Committee does in another sphere, and would be free to take some outside evidence where appropriate. Before a Second Reading, these committees would report on the features of the Bill and also on areas of it that had perhaps had little scrutiny in the House of Commons, on undertakings given in the Commons about further amendments to be introduced in the House of Lords, and so on. Thus the committee would help to focus noble Lords' attention in the full House on the areas most suitable for revision and deeper study.

After the Second Reading in the House, the same committee would take the Committee stage of appropriate Bills—I shall come to what was meant by "appropriate Bills" in a moment—and would be able to take more evidence if it wished. For this work at a formal Committee stage, as a Standing Committee, the committee would of course be enlarged; Members and Ministers would be added, and in any case, of course, all Members can attend such committees and move amendments.

As the Practice and Procedure Committee clearly indicated, and as was firmly understood when the report was debated in the House, such a system would not be suitable for very controversial Bills which would remain on the Floor of the House for all stages. There would be nothing automatic about the proposed legislative committees. Equally the suggested committees would not necessarily deal with all possible amendments. On the pattern of what we are learning all the time in the European Communities Committee, it would reserve difficult amendments for the full House to take at Report stage. That was the proposal of the Practice and Procedure Committee.

I was a member of that Practice and Procedure Committee and took some interest in these proposals. In my view, if I may humbly say so, after nearly 30 years in Parliament, many of them concerned with procedural matters, there can be little harm and perhaps a lot of good in some limited experiment to see whether the House could perform better the function which it now claims to fulfil. Following its reduction in powers and its search for influence instead, the House claims to be a revising Chamber. But most Public Bill procedure here dates from the time when the House was equal in powers and authority with the House of Commons; and most of the Public Bill procedure remains a mirror image of the adversarial confrontation system practised by the House of Commons. The European Committees indeed commented to the Practice and Procedure Committee that the House did not seem to be learning the lesson of their successful break-out from the old system.

Without detaining your Lordships for too long, may I take one small example that might have had the new procedure: the Race Relations Bill of 1975–76. Its non-political and technical qualities would have made it, I firmly believe, a most interesting candidate for particular care with revision. Clause 25 about discrimination in clubs and associations cried out for dispassionate study, possibly with witnesses. Clause 65, a very important clause, was deleted, if noble Lords will look in Hansard, after one political speech from the Front Opposition Bench, one in reply and a simple party vote. I do not call that revision. I do not believe that that is a proper fulfilment of the revising role which this House clearly claims to undertake nowadays. The element of proving intent in cases about incitement to racial hatred that was dealt with in the Bill would have benefited from relaxed study and help by witnesses. There are half a dozen, at least, of such issues where the House failed, in my view, to perform the function of careful revision.

I come finally to 5th July 1977, when the Practice and Procedure Committee's recommendations—which were, by the way, unanimous—were debated by the House. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, who unhappily cannot be here today, moved a Motion for one or more such legislation committees in the following Session. Although several noble Lords were suspicious and some confused the proposals with those for the investigatory type of committee, there was considerable support for an experiment. The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, from the Front Opposition Bench said quite clearly (in col. 179):

"I, for one, certainly approve of an experiment on the lines that my noble friend Lord Windlesham is suggesting".

In col. 180 he said:

"I should be in favour of a single experiment in a policy area".

The noble Lord, Lord Denham, now Government Chief Whip, gave his blessing to the proposals; the noble Lord, Lord Byers, took a similar line and so did the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, from the Cross-Benches. After a full debate, again with reservations, the noble Lord the Leader of the House, then my noble friend Lord Peart, said (in col. 261):

"… I echo the noble Lords, Lord Carrington and Lord Byers, in saying that I am prepared to accept the proposal for an experiment…";

and, most important, that the proposal should go to the sessional Procedure Committee for the detailed technical implementation to be worked out.

The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, withdrew his Motion with the words that he was

"willing to rest on the good faith of the Leader of the House".

Lord Windlesham must be reflecting ruefully that he might have done better to press his Motion which was set fair to win that day after that debate. It would certainly have been carried, and there would have been no further possibility of doubt or of unnecessary delay in starting the experiment.

I come, then, to the present report from the Procedure Committee that we are discussing today. For two and a half years it has failed to report on the technical implementation of the experiment effectively endorsed in principle by the full House on 5th July 1977. Rumour has it that the Procedure Committee debates the principle of what was decided rather than the implementation and rather than its technical details—completely to the contrary of what was understood when the matter was debated. There was, first, the excuse that at the time they were waiting for the new Commons committee system. On that I would make two comments. First, as in the European Communities Committee system, this House has not shirked going ahead with its own system, quite different from and in advance of that of the House of Commons, when it suited the House. We do not always wait for the House of Commons. We gave a lead in the European Communities system. Secondly, the Commons committee system is now established for all to see. So why are we still waiting for the Procedure Committee?

The present excuse which the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees has made might look rather suspicious in the light of the history that I have recorded. It is the excuse that we are short of clerks; we have clerks for only one experiment; and the claims of the Select Committee on Science and Technology come first. I have one major comment to make on this. Do we really want to go on delaying an important experiment that goes to the heart of our role as a revising Chamber because we need one more clerk? We have 19 clerks, most of whom are engaged on committee work. We do not begrudge any number of clerks to the European Communities Committee; but when a matter goes to the heart of our role as a revising Chamber we are arguing and delaying over one more clerk—although the work of the European Communities Committee, of course, is peripheral to our main activity in this Chamber while the Public Bills Committee system goes to the very heart of our role. We are liberal with one and we begrudge the other. This, in my view, is quite misplaced. As far as the proposal of my noble friend Lord Shackleton is concerned, the Science and Technology Committee, of course, is important; but it is different in nature and we should make room for both if this Chamber and this House need these activities to take place.

So, my Lords, I move my amendment. Two and a half years, I think, is long enough. The Procedure Committee should be requested in all courtesy to report on the technical implementation of the agreement on the experiment agreed in 1977. The House should decide on any amendment to the principle if staff demands are thereby intolerable. With great respect to the Front Benches, issues of good faith are at stake and those of us who toiled on the Policy and Procedure Committee and accepted the July 1977 undertakings are beginning to feel betrayed. Indeed, I hope that the outcome of today's discussion might well be that the Procedure Committee will withdraw its Motion of today, enabling me also to withdraw my amendment, and will volunteer—as has been expected of it, if I may say so—without unreasonable delay, to report further on the technical implementation of the agreement reached on 5th July 1977. My Lords, I beg to move my amendment.

My Lords, I do not know whether I am depriving the acting Leader of the House of his first opportunity to speak in that capacity; but perhaps I may make a few comments which could be of help. I have a good deal of sympathy with my noble friend Lord Northfield. As someone who is also familiar with procedure in both Houses of Parliament, I believe that my noble friend is incorrect in assuming that the Leader of the day gave a binding commitment. He could not have given such a binding commitment, because in the last resort it would have been for the House to decide. Nor could he bind the House in regard to the following Session. Even if the Motion had been carried—and I admit that undoubtedly I would have supported it—it would still have been left for the Committee on Procedure and subsequently for the House to take decisions.

As a member of the Practice and Procedure Committee, I feel rather sorry that my proposal to the Committee on Procedure should have had this effect. However, I am bound to make the following comments: first, it was a deliberate decision that the Practice and Procedure Committee's recommendations would be considered in the light of a decision in another place. The analogy with the European Committees is not a valid one because they were both seeking to go their separate ways. We decided to wait. As a result, we were confronted with a situation of a decision by another place to set up department committees and to abolish their subject committees. It is not for us to comment on the wisdom of their decision, but I am bound to draw the attention of the House to the very considerable criticism which arose both in scientific and indeed other circles, in the Press and elsewhere, at a time like this that Parliament should be left without a specialist committee which would cross the whole broad issue of science and technology.

It was in these circumstances that we considered the matter in the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee of which the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, is a past president and I am the current president. It was on the initiative of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee some years ago—and nearly 100 Members of your Lordships' House are Members of that committee—that the original Select Committee was set up in another place. Many of us were dismayed when this decision was taken. The reason that we were dismayed was that whereas I, for one, would not wish to suggest that the department committees are not valuable, there are certain subjects which are very much broader than any single department.

May I give your Lordships two examples. First, there was an excellent report by the Select Committee on Japanese research and development. This crossed many subjects which would not have been appropriate for a department committee. Another example: a recent but not wholly finished report of the Select Committee on Science and Technology in another place deals with the very delicate question of recombinant DNA. Your Lord- ships will be aware that this strikes at the very roots of life and raises profound issues. At least six departments could be involved in this matter. It could be the responsibility of the Department of Education and Science, which should be concerned with research. It could be the responsibility of the Department of Industry because of its impact in industry. It certainly could involve agriculture; it could involve the Department of Employment; and it could involve other departments.

This is a broad subject which is not appropriate for a single department committee. The case for a Select Committee on Science and Technology was a very strong one. My noble friend has not seen fit to challenge that. I accept that he is in favour of this. However, we were concerned with urgency. We were also aware that your Lordships' House is uniquely qualified, in a way that no other parliamentary chamber in the world is so qualified, to deal with this particular issue. Not only do we have 13 Fellows of the Royal Society, but we have countless technologists, scientists and engineers. All my predecessors as presidents of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee supported this—Lord Zuckerman and others. For that reason, we felt that the matter was so urgent that we pressed for an immediate setting up of this committee. We therefore found ourselves with something of a difficult choice. We were advised that it was not going to be possible to set up two committees, for various reasons. Therefore I hope that your Lordships, however sympathetic you may be to my noble friend Lord Northfield, will not reject the original proposal. This is a battle which may need to be fought again.

I should remind your Lordships that the House still retains powers to appoint Select Committees to consider particular Bills. It has done so: I remember that it was on my Motion that a Select Committee was set up to consider a Bill concerned with equal pay. Your Lordships took evidence and did a very good job on it. I hope that my noble friend will withdraw his amendment. He will have the sympathy of the House. He will certainly be hesitant about any assurances that he may feel he is to be given. My Lords, I hope that we will pass the original Motion.

My Lords, I wonder whether I may interrupt your Lordships' debate for one moment to make a Statement about Rhodesia. A similar Statement is being made in another place.

We are approaching the conclusion of the Lancaster House conference. Last week agreement was reached on our proposals for a cease-fire. The final details are still being discussed. Earlier this afternoon I made in the conference a new presentation of our detailed proposals for the implementation of the cease-fire. We have given assurances about the security of the Patriotic Front forces and that the monitoring force will be adequate to monitor the Rhodesian forces, through their command structure down to company level. We have explained that the Patriotic Front forces will be sited in their operational areas in locations which will meet their concern that they should not be in close proximity to Rhodesian bases. We have therefore been able to provide the Patriotic Front with the assurances they have been seeking about their security and the disposition of the Rhodesian forces.

It is important to see the present stage in the perspective of what has already been accomplished. The issue of majority rule, which has been the fundamental cause of the conflict in Rhodesia for 14 years, has been resolved by the independence constitution. It has been agreed that there should be fresh elections to resolve the question of who should exercise political power. The parties have accepted that a British Governor should exercise legislative and executive authority to supervise the elections and bring Rhodesia back to legality. There is agreement on our proposals for a cease-fire. In the light of what has been agreed, it would be indefensible to continue the war. Ideally, we would have preferred the final details to be agreed before beginning to put the settlement into effect on the ground. But it is essential to maintain the momentum if we are to achieve a settlement involving all the parties, and if what we have achieved so far is not to be eroded by events outside the conference.

I believe that the proposals we have put forward this afternoon should lead to early and complete agreement. My right honourable and noble friend Lord Soames will therefore leave later this afternoon for Rhodesia. Delay could risk prejudicing what has been achieved at the conference. The Governor's arrival will help to stabilise the situation and normalise relations with neighbouring countries.

A British authority in Salisbury is necessary to make the final arrangements for bringing the cease-fire into effect. Legality will be restored and sanctions will be lifted with Lord Soames' arrival and the acceptance of his authority. The Governor will set in train the arrangements for elections. The Government are determined to carry out their responsibility to bring Rhodesia to legal independence at the earliest possible opportunity.

My Lords, the House will be grateful for the noble Lord's Statement, which can only be described as "momentous". The Government clearly have made a crucial decision and they are aware—are they not?—that the decision involves the new Governor arriving in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia before important details of the cease-fire have been agreed. Are the Government aware that we are bound to express our deepest misgivings about this procedure? We have tried to be helpful in all our comments on the long-drawn-out and very difficult negotiations which the Foreign Secretary has conducted with great skill and perseverance; but we have said consistently from this side of the House and in another place that until there is a final and durable cease-fire it would be a very great gamble indeed to send a Governor out to that country.

May I put one or two points for clarification of this Statement to the Foreign Secretary. First, the Statement says:

"Legality will be restored and sanctions will be lifted with Lord Soames' arrival and"—

I stress this—

"the acceptance of his authority".

Does that mean that his arrival will not in fact mean that these steps will be taken and that they turn upon the acceptance in that country of his authority? This is not by any means a debating point. One can envisage that a Governor could arrive there with full powers but little power and, in the event, declaring legality and the lifting of sanctions without his authority being accepted. What happens then, particularly in the bush?

The second point I should like to put is this: I welcome the statement in the last paragraph but two that—

"The Governor's arrival will help to stabilise the situation"—

we very much hope so—

"and normalise relations with neighbouring countries".

This is an essential aspect for the situation in both Rhodesia and Central and Southern Africa. We are in full support of the intentions of the Government in seeking to restore working relationships of a constructive character with neighbouring countries in that part of Africa. I would ask whether this most definitely includes the South African Republic, without whose full co-operation and restraint in the next few days and weeks no lasting solution can hopefully be achieved.

Finally, may I join with my noble friend who so appropriately expressed his good wishes to the noble Lord, Lord Soames, and to Lady Soames in their momentous and perilous mission and to wish them well, to wish them success and safety. I should like also to add a personal note of felicitation and good wishes to the Deputy Leader, the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, who now assumes full governorship of this House.

My Lords, we, too, would like, first of all, to express our good wishes to the noble Lord, Lord Soames, and to Lady Soames on their departure for this very difficult mission. I am sure also that we can all agree that it is a very remarkable achievement on the part of the Foreign Secretary and his very able team of advisers to have got almost to the point at which there is a final agreement on a cease-fire—which in itself would represent a successful end to the long-drawn-out negotiations that a few months ago few of us thought would have a happy ending. It seems that the Foreign Secretary has practically no doubt that what he calls the final details of the cease-fire will be agreed tomorrow or at the latest the day after; and we must all hope that his optimism will be justified.

The only point I would myself venture to query, along with the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, is the decision to send out the noble Lord, Lord Soames, before the cease-fire has actually been signed and delivered. I note what is said in the Statement about the necessity for maintaining momentum, but, my Lords, would much momentum really be lost if the noble Lord, Lord Soames, were to go out, for instance, tomorrow or the next day when it is confidently expected that the cease-fire will be in the bag? Or is it thought—perhaps the Foreign Secretary will tell us—that his departure will somehow speed up the signature of the cease-fire by the Patriotic Front here at Lancaster House?

In any case, we note—and this is a similar point to that made by the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts—that sanctions may be, or indeed are to be, lifted as soon as the noble Lord, Lord Soames, lands at Salisbury Airport. However, it seems that they will also only be lifted once there is acceptance of his authority. But if on the arrival of the noble Lord, Lord Soames, the Patriotic Front have not by any chance finally signed the ceasefire, how will the Governor be able in practice to exercise his authority? I feel there is an important point of principle here which surely should be cleared up.

My Lords, I think the first thing I should like to do is to thank both noble Lords for what they have said about my noble friend Lord Soames. I can think of nobody more capable of doing this job or more reassuring in the way that he will do it. All of us will wish him well. I also understand the point of view put forward by both the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, and the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn. I should, of course, be misleading the House if I said that for my noble friend to go out at this moment is ideal. Of course it would be very much better if all the loose ends had been finally tied up, but I think there are very good reasons why he should go out, and one of them is partly the momentum reason, which is extremely important.

I have said in many Statements in this House over the past three months that I am really fearful of delay. I fear that the ball of wool we have so carefully wound together is going to unravel. I am particularly fearful at the moment about stability. One has only to look at the events of last week-end, for example, to see what can happen and I believe that the arrival of my noble friend will have a stabilising and good effect. Of course, the acceptance of his authority relates to the Salisbury Government, in the sense that in our deliberations at the Lancaster House Conference Bishop Muzorewa agreed, when the British Governor arrived, to step down from exercising the authority of Prime Minister. That is what that means. So that my noble friend will be in the position of actually exercising the authority in Salisbury.

As I have said to your Lordships in the Statement, I saw both sides at Lancaster House just before I came down to your Lordships' House, and the contacts that we have had over the past weekend and so on really lead me to believe that the proposals which have been put forward should allay the fears of the Patriotic Front. I am therefore hopeful that we shall get a quick agreement. I personally explained the position about my noble friend Lord Soames to the Leaders of the Patriotic Front. Salisbury also know about this and are in the process of dissolving their Parliament today.

My Lords, may I, too, wish the noble Lord, Lord Soames, complete success on his critical mission and also congratulate the noble Lord the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary on his considerable achievement. May I press him on one point; namely, the relationship of the new Governor with the armed forces of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, which have recently been making incursions over the border? Is the noble Lord satisfied that when the new Governor takes residence he will have some control over the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia forces, and that from that point of view there will be a cease-fire?

My Lords, the noble Lord is perfectly right. When my noble friend arrives there, nothing can be done without the Governor's authority.

My Lords, all I should like to say, as the oldest surviving Member of both Houses of Parliament, is that I am sure the whole House would want not only to give its best wishes to the noble Lord, Lord Soames, but also to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, on a personal triumph which, whatever the ultimate outcome, will ring down the pages of history.

My Lords, the noble Lord is very kind, but we have some difficult times to go through. With, I hope, the help and the determination of every Member of your Lordships' House, we shall get through them and come to an end where there are free and fair elections which represent the will of the people of Zimbabwe.

My Lords, at the risk of repeating what my noble friend Lord Boothby has said, because I could not be quite sure that I heard him, may I ask my noble friend whether he will accept that I believe the whole House would like to pay tribute to the patience, toleration and admirable persistence that he has shown during the time that he has presided over this most important conference.

My Lords, can the noble Lord reassure me on one point? So long as the ceasefire does not come into existence—that is, until it is effectively implemented—does it remain the duty of the Rhodesian Government to protect the people of Rhodesia against bandits, or whatever one calls them, who are attacking, and to take such measures as it considers necessary for their defence? Secondly, does the noble Lord, Lord Soames, immediately on his arrival, become the commander of those forces? If so, can we be reassured that the commander of the forces will be on the same side, and that they will have the full support of the new Governor to take such measures as they consider necessary to protect the people of Rhodesia?

My Lords, as I said, nothing can be done without the Governor's authority. I hope that there is going to be a cease-fire. Until such time as there is a cease-fire, it will be up to the Governor to decide what to do.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary to be a little more forthcoming with this House? Would he not agree that over the past few weeks the one single issue that has prevented agreement on the cease-fire is the belief—and I stress the word, "belief"—on the part of the Patriotic Front that its forces could be massacred, could be attacked, by the forces of the Salisbury régime? He has said in his Statement that there will be disengagement and that he believes his new proposals will satisfy the Patriotic Front. Could he tell this House where the forces of the Salisbury regime are going to be stationed during the interim period, by whom they are going to be monitored and what authority the Governor will have over them to prevent such incidents as the invasion of Zambia and Mozambique over the last weekend?

My Lords, the noble Lord is, of course, quite right. There is an enormous amount of distrust on both sides, and somewhat naturally if one considers the history of the situation. What will happen under the cease-fire proposals is that the Rhodesian forces will be asked to disengage first, and will go close to the vicinity of their bases. After that, the Patriotic Front will be asked to assemble in a number of places, with their arms and under their own commanders. There are a number of areas to which they will go where they will keep their arms, where they will be under their own commanders and where there will be monitors. In exactly the same measure, this will happen to the Rhodesian forces, though of course there may be more bases for the Rhodesian forces, because there are, in fact, more Rhodesians. But, of course, all this depends upon what actually happens during the cease-fire and during the assembly itself.

There is a great distrust on the part of both sides as to whether anybody really will do these things, and so the reciprocal separation of the forces will, in effect, depend upon whether or not there is a real commitment by both sides to the cease-fire. I hope, in the proposals which I have put to the Patriotic Front and to the conference at Lancaster House, that I have reassured them on this point, because I agree with the noble Lord that it is a real point. Certainly, if all the Patriotic Front forces assemble with their arms and all cross-border movements of armed Patriotic Front personnel cease, there will be no need for Rhodesian forces to deploy from their company bases. Therefore, there will be this reciprocal disengagement. The Governor will command both the Patriotic Front forces and the Rhodesian forces; at least, all those who assemble at the places and who are under his command. Everybody who assembles will be lawful and will be under the Governor's command, whether they be part of the Patriotic Front forces or the Rhodesian forces. Anybody who does not is unlawful.

My Lords, just to reassure us on one point, will the Governor have his mind particularly directed to the possible intimidation of the electors, as the election campaign gets under way, by terrorists, bandits or whatever they are who are still free in the bush?

My Lords, I think that that is something which will be in everybody's mind and it will be up not only to the Governor, but to the observers who will be there. I imagine that the world Press will be there, and then the monitoring forces will be there. I cannot believe that Rhodesia in these next few weeks is going to be a lonely place. I think that there are going to be a great many people there, and I hope they will be able to see that intimidation is kept to the very minimum.

My Lords, does the Foreign Secretary not agree that the noble Lord, Lord Soames, is being asked to carry unlimited responsibility with absolutely no power to discharge the task imposed upon him? He will doubtless have noticed that in another place and in the columns of the Press the historical parallel has been drawn of Gordon's going to Khartoum. But would he agree that that is not an exact parallel today, because had the Government chosen they could have given the noble Lord, Lord Soames, effective power to impose the will and authority of this country on Rhodesia, by stationing one or two squadrons of Phantoms? But for some reason, which one can only guess at, they have chosen to send Lord Soames out to Rhodesia, just as the Liberal Administration sent Gordon out to Khartoum to discharge responsibility with no power of any kind whatsoever.

My Lords, nobody denies that there are risks in this situation. There would have been the most appalling risks if Her Majesty's Government had recognised Bishop Muzorewa's Government on 3rd May. There would have been the most appalling risks if the Government had done nothing and had allowed the situation to continue, a situation in which the war was getting worse and worse and more and more people were being killed. There are risks in every situation. All I can say to the noble Lord is that, if in the last three months the Government had not been prepared to take any risks, we should not have got as far as we have.

My Lords, I do not know whether it is your Lordships' wish that we should continue the debate which was initiated by the Chairman of Committees and the amendment which has been moved by my noble friend Lord Northfield. May I say to my noble friend Lord Shackleton that I fully endorse the proposal of the Procedure Committee for the setting up of a Select Committee on Science and Technology. I believe that this is one of the crucial areas. However, having recognised the importance of this committee I should have hoped that we could be a little more generous in our support of the committee.

My noble friend has moved his amendment and if he is going to divide the House I shall join him. However, I should like to ask him whether that is the wisest course to adopt at this moment. My memory goes back a few years to the time when the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, introduced a report from the European Economic Scrutiny Committees. Your Lordships' House then expressed concern about manpower: whether there would be sufficient Members of your Lordships' House to support those committees. Those fears were of no consequence; we have managed to support those committees in a most admirable way. Concern was also expressed about accommodation: where were those committees going to sit? Accommodation was found for them.

There was a third issue, and I touch upon it quite deliberately: what were to be the terms of reference of those committees? If the officials who were advising the Leader of the House of the day had had their way, we should have had terms of reference which were identical to those in the House of Commons. The reason why the committees of your Lordships' House have been so successful and so admired is that your Lordships' House insisted on wider terms of reference. It was because of those terms of reference, so drafted, that the committees have been so successful.

When, therefore, I see in the report that the Procedure Committee gave the balance of advantage, on grounds of accommodation and manpower resources, to the setting up of a Select Committee on Science and Technology as opposed to the proposals relating to my own Select Committee on Practice and Procedure, I do not find them to be very convincing. I believe the truth to be more fundamental than that. I believe it to be a natural and understandable desire on the part of those who sit on the two Front Benches—and I have spent a few years sitting on one or other of those Front Benches so I know what that desire is—not to see too great a change. The desire is for the power of Members not to become too enlarged—to become too free from the control of business and the way that business is conducted. I believe that this is a fundamental and an understandable reason.

May I ask the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, to cast his mind back to one of the reasons why the Select Committee on Practice and Procedure was set up. It was set up after 1975 and 1976—years of horror, as the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, referred to them, when this House was asked to take an ever-increasing quantity of legislation, mainly at the end of the Session. There was deep concern throughout your Lordships' House that we were passing legislation that had hardly been examined either in Committee or at Report. There can be no question at all but that it was that sense of unease which brought about the Select Committee on Practice and Procedure.

If the two Front Benches are against the proposals, I can only say that four ex-Leaders of your Lordships' House sat on my committee: the noble Lord, Lord Home of the Hirsel, the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, and myself. Most of the committee members had had experience over a wide period of time, both in your Lordships' House and in another place. If one were to look at the list of membership of that committee one could hardly believe that they were a bunch of fundamental radicalists. We all sought to meet a problem.

I would say only this to my noble friend: that this may not be the time for him to press his amendment. I think that the resistance of the two Front Benches is such that whatever may be done it will be very difficult for the House to prevail. At the moment it is easy for there to be a touch of complacency. The House is sitting on three days a week and is able to take debates on the reports of the European Scrutiny Committees in a leisurely way and at the right time in the afternoon—not late at night, at 11 or 12 o'clock, as was the case in 1975 and 1976. I wonder what the Chief Whip of the Opposition foresees the position will be at the end of the Session.

Chaos, my Lords!

I believe, my Lords, that we shall be in a similar or even worse situation than in 1975 and 1976, and that Members of this House will be saying, "We are passing legislation under great pressure, legislation which has hardly been examined. We, as a revising Chamber, are once again failing to perform our real role as a revising Chamber." May I say to my noble friend that at the end of this Session memories of 1975 and 1976 may come back and that those noble Lords who have only recently joined your Lordships' House will recoil with horror and dismay at what the situation will be.

Reform comes when there are pressures for reform. I do not think those pressures exist at the moment, but they will come. It may well be that the proposals which were made by the Select Committee on Practice and Procedure will be taken up because there will be a groundswell of feeling in your Lordships' House. So I would urge my noble friend not to press his amendment today. I think that the battle will be won and that reform will come. I do not think he will get his amendment today. Nevertheless, I believe it will be inevitable. In any case, I hope that the House will agree to the setting up of a Select Committee on Science and Technology.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, invited me to join in this debate, and the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, asked me to cast my mind back to 1976. I do not mind saying that I do so with a certain modest hesitation in view of these new-found responsibilities and the evident controversy of the particular subject; but I know that my noble friend the Leader of the House would have wished to say a word about the view of the Government and his view as Leader of the House.

The Procedure Committee had to consider whether to proceed with an experimental committee along the lines suggested in Recommendation 16 of the Practice and Procedure Committee and what response to make to the proposal made by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, that a Select Committee on Science and Technology should be appointed. Serious doubts had been expressed, not least by the Leader of the House and by his predecessor the noble Lord, Lord Peart, about the viability of the proposed experimental committee and about the series of committees for which it was intended to pave the way. These doubts will not be diminished by the decision of another place to set up 12 committees to scrutinise the work of all the main Government departments. On the other hand, the proposal by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, which the Procedure Committee decided to support, was, of course, for a Science and Technology Committee—a subject which is not the responsibility of a single Government department, and one which is not within the remit of a Commons Committee, and yet one which is a subject of the first importance for this country and which is a field in which this House can boast a great deal of expertise and experience.

The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, reminded us that some 80 Members of your Lordships' House have experience in this field. He said that 13 Members are Fellows of the Royal Society, among them its president, the noble Lord, Lord Todd. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, that I doubt whether there is any other legislature in the world which could boast such distinction in the field of science. As a member of the Government I am bound to say that I for one would not relish the prospect of an experimental committee which would pave the way for a whole series of committees which would place a considerable additional burden on Government departments and which would lead to a considerable increase in the staff of your Lordships' House. The House would perhaps have forgiven my noble friend the Leader for a slight bias on this point as he has spent some considerable time since early May, since coming into office, in looking for ways of doing just the reverse and of trying to reduce the cost of the public service. Of course he did not allow this to sway him unduly and, as Leader of the House and as somebody coming in with a fresh eye to the problem, he felt that the kind of committees that were proposed would place an unreasonable burden on the House, which is already required increasingly to operate like a full-time Chamber, which of course it is not.

In addition, as I have mentioned, serious doubts have been expressed about the practicality of the scheme from a procedural point of view. When he came to weigh all these alternatives my noble friend reached the firm conclusion that in his view the interests of the House could best be served by the appointment of a Committee on Science and Technology as an alternative to the experimental committee, both on the grounds of the suitability of the policy area for the proposed committee and in order to make the best use of the time that your Lordships can give for the extra work which would be involved. A desirable and, from the Government's point of view, a not insignificant consequence of this course would also be that it would require only a modest addition to the permanent staff of the House.

The noble Lord, Lord Northfield, said that there was a question of good faith concerned in this. But there is not in fact an issue of good faith here; it is really a question of the best way forward for the House and the way to respond to changing circumstances. What one might describe as the Shackleton-Sherfield proposal was made only relatively recently, and therefore I hope that the House will feel that the sensible course will be to agree to the report of the Procedure Committee so that progress may be made with the Science and Technology Committee; and I hope too that the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, will consider that this particular bird in the hand is worth quite a lot more than further deliberation on the subject and the possibility of more flocks of birds but in the very much more distant future.

My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down will he just explain one thing before I decide whether or not to withdraw my amendment? Is he now saying that he and his noble friend the Leader of the House want finally to bury the proposal of the Practice and Procedure Committee by postponing it indefinitely? Is he saying that the agreement reached on the 5th July 1977, is not now to be honoured? If I may quote him, the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham said:

"I am willing to rest on the good faith of the Leader of the House that he will carry out this experiment".—[Official Report; 5/7/77, col. 265.)

This is a very deep matter of honour in this House, and before I decide my course of action I should like to know exactly what the noble Earl is now saying about the fate of that agreement reached in July, 1977.

My Lords, it is not of course a question of my noble friend the Leader of the House burying the report or the decisions. The decisions are a matter for the House, and all I can do is to say what advice my noble friend has to offer in the changing circumstances. His advice is that we should go for a Science and Technology Committee.

My Lords, the reply given by the noble Earl puts me in a most grave situation because it seems to me, with great respect to him, that his words are meant to cover up the fact that nobody here has any intention at all of honouring that agreement of July, 1977. That is the inference that one must draw from what has been said today.

My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Lord, he says it is the inference that no one has any intention of honouring the agreement. The only way in which any kind of procedure can be advanced is by the approval of the House as a whole. It is up to the House to decide what to do. All I can do is to give the House the benefit of my noble friend's views.

My Lords, the noble Earl still leaves me in a difficult situation. I shall beg leave to withdraw my amendment but it will be with a considerable feeling of betrayal of the work that we did over the years. The way of parliamentary reform is a difficult one. I was chairman of the House of Commons Procedure Committee for many difficult years. We have to fight over years; much depends upon coming back again and again. I also recognise that saying to this House that there are matters of good faith at stake is not very pleasant, or to challenge whether we are doing our job properly. I accept all those difficulties in my path and I fully understand that the House may be uneasy at my pressing the matter unduly. I shall withdraw my amendment, but I shall return to the matter because I do not think that honour is satisfied.

It is clear to anyone who reads that debate of July 1977 that the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, withdrew his Motion that a single experiment should take place and the implementation to be referred to the Procedure Committee because, as he said, he had the support of his own Leader, the noble Lord, Lord Carrington; he had the offer from the Government Front Bench, from my noble friend Lord Peart, of an experiment in the following Session. That was a clear promise to the House, as we understand it, in the way that understandings are reached across the Floor of this Chamber. I state again: it will be a bad day for the House if we reach the point when undertakings and understandings of that kind are subsequently broken. It will make our business impossible if clear undertakings of that kind are not honoured.

With that protest, my Lords, and with the promise that I shall insist on returning to this matter every time the Procedure Committee reports, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

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 Commitment be discharged.

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

I intervene for one minute to express what I was not able to express at Second Reading; my personal delight that Greece is joining the European Community. I believe she has much to give Europe and much to receive from Europe. I am especially happy to welcome home my dear Greek democratic friends who came from prison and from exile, Ministers now and ex-Ministers, and especially my personal friend the Speaker of the Greek Parliament, Mr. Papaspyrou. Greece is now free and now joins a free Europe. Democracy began in Greece. She invented the word. She created the word, "Europe", and all the friends of freedom throughout Europe are happy that this Bill is going through the House.

I am very glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King. I was able at Second Reading to express my pleasure at the impending accession of Greece and I will not repeat my words, but this is the appropriate stage of the passage of this Bill at which to elicit the Government's views on certain matters which will arise when Greece does accede. There will be consequences and repercussions for British industry, some of them good, such as the new opportunities which the Greek market will afford, others difficult. I made reference to this subject briefly at Second Reading, as did one or two other speakers.

That debate naturally covered a very wide area. It touched on the general effect of the accession of Greece as well as the expected membership of Spain and Portugal afterwards. The enlargement of the Community from nine members to twelve will require changes in the institutions and in the methods of the work of the EEC. All this was discussed, but, above all, the political reasons for accepting the three new members. In the reply from the spokesman for the Government on 27th November he could not, and of course was not expected to, deal with particular points affecting industry in the United Kingdom. This Committee stage today must be the proper occasion for this, as I reminded the Government at the beginning of last week. But it need not occupy much of the time of the House this afternoon. I support the Bill, as I made clear, and I hope it will be on the statute book before Christmas.

The transitional periods in the treaties for Greece of five and seven years, and the special mechanism to ensure that Greece is not a net contributor during the first five years are important. The United Kingdom industry which is likely to be the most vulnerable to damage during this period is the textile industry. Greece has for some years enjoyed associate membership of the EEC. Those customs barriers which now exist are to be reduced during the transitional periods. There is one situation, for example, which could all too easily ensue. The reduction could lead to a rapid rise in imports in cotton yarn within the present area of the EEC. That would cause serious disruption for the United Kingdom textile and clothing industries. This is one example of what may happen.

There is a general safeguard in the main Treaty of Accession in Article 130, but my noble friend Lord Trefgarne at Second Reading made a significant general statement. He said that in a serious situation the Commission can, under Article 130, authorise the United Kingdom Government during the transitional period to take protective measures. That is an important safety measure. I trust that there would be no delay and that the United Kingdom Government would press for the use of this safeguard, if such a situation did arise, on behalf of the textile or any other United Kingdom industry which found itself suddenly threatened. There is some additional action that the Government can take now. It would also be prudent to negotiate special arrangements with Greece for textiles and clothing. What is the Government's attitude to this proposal, which has been put to them before, for these direct negotiations, as well as the safeguard clause?

Then there is another matter which needs the Government's attention and on which a statement would be welcome today. Under Protocol 7 of the Treaty of Accession of Greece very generous investment aid and tax concessions could be made available to firms from outside the EEC who established themselves or expanded in Greece. There were similar provisions in the Irish Treaty of Accession, and those resulted in unfair competition and damage to our textile industry after January 1973 when Ireland became a member of the EEC. What do the Government propose to do to ensure that there is no repetition of that in the case of Greece? It would be provident to consider this now, because similar provisions are likely to he included in the accession treaties for Portugal and Spain. Indeed, Portugal will pose broadly the same problems as Greece for the British textile and clothing industries. It is timely and vital now, on the accession of the first of these three new members, to determine how fair trade is to be maintained and how sudden and serious disruptions or distortions of markets can be handled, and handled quickly.

This is a short Bill and its substance is all contained in Clause 1. The clause accepts for the United Kingdom the results of long and complex negotiations: pages of the Treaty of Accession for Greece—with all its appendages—to the EEC, and also the Treaty of Accession to the European Atomic Energy Community and the Council's decision on accession to the Coal and Steel Community. It is short, but it is the most important measure that this House has been asked to pass in this session so far.

From the United Kingdom's experience with the EEC over the last nine years, I suggest that some lessons can be learnt. I refer to the period of negotiation—1970 to 1972—and then our membership since January 1973. It is worth while to consider at very early stages the problems likely to arise and to anticipate them: know the rules of the club and assess the effects of their application. That maxim applies especially where there are transitional periods and temporary financial mechanisms. It is not too soon now to be determining the courses of action open to our Government in circumstances which, as I have pointed out, can clearly be foreseen. That is what I am asking the Government to do.

My noble friend has once more raised some extremely pertinent and valid points. I shall endeavour to give as full and frank an answer as possible without trespassing, too far, I hope, on your Lordships' patience. On the general question of safeguard arrangements for textiles, I must make it clear at the outset that the Government are acutely conscious of the need for adequate safeguards for the United Kingdom textile industry in the face of low cost imports from abroad. One such provision, as my noble friend mentioned, has been negotiated with Greece in the shape of Article 130 of the Act of Accession. That article will permit the Commission to authorise a Member State to take protective measures if serious difficulties arise in the textile sector, or indeed any other sector, as a result of Greek exports. This was the best safeguard which it was possible to negotiate, but it does not mean that we are entirely happy. A gradual phasing out of import controls would clearly have been preferable, but the obstacle to that was the fact that there are no formal quota restrictions under the present arrangements.

For the last few years Greece has been voluntarily restraining exports to the Community, but any formal or even informal continuation of this arrangement after accession could face legal difficulties because of the provisions of the Treaty of Rome on the free movement of goods. Nevertheless, we wish to make it quite clear to the Greek Government that they must leave the Greek textile industry in no doubt of the dangers of building up too rapid an increase in exports of sensitive products, and of our determination to invoke the safeguard clause should that be necessary.

It is not clear whether our Community partners will be speaking in similar terms to the Greeks. In general, the United Kingdom is more sensitive on the question of textile imports than most of our Community partners, because of the importance of our textile industry and the degree to which it has suffered from low cost competition in recent years. I am sure that the Greeks will understand our special position.

I turn now to the question raised by my noble friend, of State aids to industry. The Government fully agree that Greece must not be allowed to exploit unfairly the discretion over State aids for which Protocol 7 in the Act of Accession provides. It is, however, important to bear in mind that the purpose of Protocol 7 is to help Greece to bear the full brunt of Community competition in Greek industries which are relatively weak. This is not at all the case with the Greek textile industry. I am sure that the Commission, who will have to authorise Greek State aids, is well aware of this and will be keen to avoid worsening the distressed condition of the textile industry in the Community as a whole.

The Irish case, to which my noble friend referred, is not a close parallel in this respect, since our textile industry is now in a much more parlous state than when Ireland was authorised to give aids to its textile industry. It is also worth bearing in mind that the United Kingdom, which has not infrequently sought and received authorisation to grant State aids to industry, could be accused of inconsistency were it to complain too loudly of others being granted similar discretion.

Finally, I think that it is worth recalling that we have always recognised that Greek accession, and enlargement as a whole, would bring not only political and economic benefits, but also certain economic costs. In general, our traders have more to gain than to lose from Greek accession. However, textiles is an exception. We should not forget that, although Greek exports may increase to some extent after accession, at present Greece comes well down in the league of low cost suppliers in the United Kingdom, providing only 1 per cent. of our textile imports in 1978, worth £19 million, and incidentally taking £12 million worth of our textile exports. It is, therefore, important to see the problem in that wider perspective. I hope that that further clarification will help my noble friend and that your Lordships will agree that this clause should stand part of the Bill.

Before the noble Lord sits down, can he say whether entering the Common Market will make it necessary for the Greek Government to stop subsidising, as they have done for some years, by reduced taxation on goods exported in the textile industry?

I could not answer that question without looking into the matter. I think that it probably would be, but I shall look into the matter and write to the noble Baroness.

I am grateful to my noble friend for replying to the points which I raised—

May I—

I am so sorry. Does someone else wish to speak? We are in Committee. I thought that, as the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, was rising to his feet, he wished to address us on Clause 1. However, I understand that he does not wish to address the Committee at this stage. Therefore, I shall speak on Clause 1 in this Committee stage.

I wish, of course, to thank my noble friend Lord Trefgarne, who has given a very full reply to the points which I raised. I had, of course, given him notice of the points that I wished to raise and I am glad that he has been able to go as far as he has gone because there are a number of Government departments involved in this matter. He confirmed that the voluntary agreements which now exist cannot continue after Greece has become a Member of the EEC, because they would be illegal. However, I do not think that he dealt with the suggestion that I made—if he did deal with it, I missed it—that it might be possible for the United Kingdom to enter into direct negotiations to reach an agreement which was not a voluntary one.

I am sorry that I was not clear to my noble friend. Our understanding is that it would not be possible to do what my noble friend is suggesting without contravening provisions of the Treaty of Rome.

I am grateful for that addition because I understood that the present voluntary agreements would have to come to an end. However, I had thought, and certainly some sections of the industry had thought, that it would be legal to conclude a new agreement direct with Greece. My noble friend then dealt with Protocol 7. I was glad that he recognised that there is a possible source of difficulty there. He pointed out that at the time of the accession of the Republic of Ireland at the beginning of 1973 the United Kingdom textile industry appeared to be in a much more robust position to be able to compete with new investment coming in on a large scale, with unfair assistance in Ireland. But in saying that he clearly accepts that the position is different now and that the position of the United Kingdom would be damaged if similar action were to take place in Greece.

My noble friend gave the figures for trade with Greece in textiles, and I remind him that Greece will be setting the pace for Portugal and that what we are discussing today will also have direct relevance to the other two prospective members. Therefore, I am grateful to my noble friend for giving those assurances, which are the most important ones that the British industry as a whole needs with the accession of these three countries.

With your Lordships' permission, I should like to apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, for almost interrupting him. However, there were at least three Members of your Lordships' Committee, on both sides, who still thought that we were on Report, having regard to the previous five Bills which were, of course, considered on Report.

My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw this Bill. As the Bill deals with very important matters relating to franchise, I have been told that it is incumbent upon me to give a fairly full explanation of my reasons for asking leave of your Lordships to withdraw the Bill. However, in view of the heavy business earlier this afternoon and because I am very conscious that over 20 people wish to speak on the next important matter, I shall, with your Lordships' leave, be as brief as possible.

This Bill is identical to a Bill which I had the privilege of introducing to your Lordships earlier this year in the period of office of the Labour Government. Your Lordships passed it without amendment or Division. However, that Bill was objected to in the other place; before it could be debated, its life was terminated by the general election. I, therefore, moved the First Reading of the present Bill a few weeks ago. The prime object of the Bill was to restore to men and women designated by the term "Service spouses", resident in the United Kingdom, certain civic rights which had unfortunately been taken away from them as a result of the Representation of the People (Armed Forces) Act 1976.

Most of the Service spouses were women and they objected to the procedure which was laid down in that Act. They remonstrated and protested. They said that they were resident in this country and, therefore, should be allowed to vote in the ordinary way as does any woman resident in this country. Some of them said that they were not going to be regarded as appendages of their military husbands on non-military matters relating to voting.

One of the matters about which they protested was the fact that under the 1976 Act they were forced to register as Service voters and, therefore, on the register of electors there appears against their names the letter "S". For reasons which I need not go into now, which not only included inconvenience to these women but also involved security matters, there were tremendous protests. Your Lordships will remember that last week on 6th December this House passed the Representation of the People (Amendment) Regulations 1979 which removed the requirement that the names of Service voters and merchant seamen should be marked on the register with the letters "S" or "M" respectively. That was one of the difficulties which my Bill was intended to remove.

Also, in the other place Mr. Cranley Onslow, the Member of Parliament for Woking, was fortunate in the Ballot for Private Members' Bills. On 9th November he was able to introduce for Second Reading a Bill to amend the 1976 Act in a more comprehensive manner than is intended in the Bill now in my name. The Bill in the other place had the support and assistance of the Government and the Opposition and has, therefore, come to your Lordships without having suffered any Division in the other place. I shall have the privilege of introducing that Bill from the other place to your Lordships shortly. Accordingly, I beg leave to withdraw the Bill at present standing in my name.

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The Bill which I have the privilege of introducing to your Lordships has been passed through all its stages in another place. It is intituled:

"An Act to make further provision with respect to the registration for electoral purposes of persons having a service qualification and the correction of registers of electors; and for purposes connected with those matters".

Therefore, this Bill is much broader than the Bill which your Lordships have been good enough to give me leave to withdraw.

Many wives of Servicemen were effectively disfranchised as a result of the passing of the Representation of the People Act 1976. They did not feel prepared to register as Service voters for a variety of reasons. First, there was the question of the "S" against their names on the electoral register. Then they protested against the form of attestation which had been imposed upon them, and they were surprised and annoyed that they were not allowed to vote in the way an ordinary woman in this country is able to vote. The objections, of course, apply to a few men who are also spouses of members of the Armed Forces.

They had to make an appropriate declaration. They objected to the fact that it had to be attested by a commissioned officer, a warrant officer, a noncommissioned officer or by any officer of any Government department. Therefore, many Servicemen and Servicemen's wives have found this procedure very distasteful. The purpose of Clause 1 of the Bill is to enable the wife or husband of a member of the Armed Forces residing in the United Kingdom to have the option to register as a Service voter or to opt to register as a civilian elector and vote in the usual way.

However, the purpose of Clause 2 of the Bill is quite unrelated to Clause 1. It enacts powers for the electoral registration officer to amend the published register of electors so as to include the name of a qualified elector who has been omitted from the register. Clause 3 of the Bill deals with certain consequential matters to which I shall refer later.

As this is a question of franchise and civic rights of fundamental importance and indeed a precious possession of every person, perhaps I should take up a little more of your Lordships' time in describing the background to the Bill and its various clauses. I shall in the circumstances be as brief as I can, as I do not wish to delay the 20 or so persons who wish to speak on another matter.

Section 8 of the Representation of the People Act 1949 sets out the persons who can have the right to be put on the electoral register in order to vote at election time. Section 10 of the 1949 Act included at subsection (4) wives or husbands of members of the Services. Then came the 1976 Act, which changed the situation in regard to spouses of members of the Armed Forces in that it compelled them all to be registered as Service voters. Therefore, Clause 1 of this Bill contains a number of subsections aimed primarily to restore to Service spouses the right either to continue to be a Service voter, in which case there are certain advantages arising, or to exercise their rights as a civilian voter. There are also subsections which restate the present legal position, and those two subsections have been introduced for easy reading.

I turn now to Clause 2. Your Lordships may recall that there was a working party in 1978 which dealt with questions relating to voting rights and the procedures for voting. In Section 37 of the report of the working party on electoral registers in May 1978 it was recommended that existing legislation should be amended to permit the electoral registration officer to add to the published register the name of an elector he is satisfied was entitled to be registered on the qualifying date. Then the report goes on to cite the many circumstances in which a man or woman's name might have been omitted from the register.

Then in paragraph 38 of the report it said:

"An amendment made under the procedure recommended in the preceding paragraph should not be effective for a pending election if made during the election period. This is consistent with existing provisions for amending the register. It should be open to objections procedure and there should be a right of appeal to the courts against the electoral registers' officers' decision".

As I said, in view of the heavy business of the House I do not propose to go into all the subsections of Clause 2. I am fortified in taking this course because the Bill was carefully considered in the other place. I should like to assure your Lordships that the Bill has had the fullest consideration with outside interests, apart from having received the support of the Government and the Opposition in the other place. The consultations during last summer involved political parties, local authority associations, many electoral registration officers, and, not least, the Armed Forces Wives Association, in which I must declare an interest as I have the honour to be one of its three political vice-presidents.

The Bill was introduced for Second Reading in the other place on 9th November by Mr. Christopher Onslow.

My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to intervene? When he referred to Mr. Christopher Onslow, was he not in fact intending to refer to Mr. Cranley Onslow?

My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord for that correction. Wherever I used the word "Christopher" I meant "Cranley", and I am sorry that I in-advertently made that error. I should like to pay a warm tribute first of all to Mr. Cranley Onslow for piloting this Bill through the other place with such skill, and secondly to Mr. George Cunningham, the Member of Parliament for Islington South and Finsbury, who, as the Opposition spokesman, took so much trouble in identifying the clarifying aspects of the Bill.

The result of all these all-party discussions and discussions with outside institutions and persons was that the Opposition in the other place were able to let this Bill go through on the nod. The success of these discussions around the Bill was also largely due to the close personal interest taken in the Bill by the Minister of State for the Home Office, Mr. Leon Brittan. I should like to pay a tribute to his work and also to the assiduous efforts of members of the staff of his Department.

This Bill, therefore, does not come before your Lordships as an ordinary Private Member's Bill drafted in an amateur form. It is indeed a well-polished effort, fully examined by able Home Office officials and Members of the other place. I commend this Bill warmly to your Lordships. I beg to move that this Bill be read a second time.

My Lords, I rise to support this Bill. After the clear explanation given by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, we realise that this Bill is to provide the remedy for faults in previous legislation. Under the Representation of the People (Armed Forces) Act 1976 it seems evident that neither House of Parliament understood what a grievance they were imposing on Service wives. Apparently even in the year 1976 we were unaware that married women wanted to be recognised as independent citizens and not merely, as the noble Lord said, as appendages of their Service husbands. The sponsors of the Bill in another place freely acknowledged that this was to correct a mistake that was made previously. So much for the quality of the revising powers of this House. We apparently were at fault along with another place. Apparently none of us foresaw what indignation the earlier legislation was going to arouse.

The second part of the Bill is to remedy another fault in previous legislation. Apparently we had not provided power for registration officers to correct omissions from the list. If people were left out in slabs, they were left out and apparently there were no means of putting them in, even though it was a simple error of omission, and therefore the Bill is to be supported because it provides a remedy for those two faults.

Whenever a Representation of the People Bill comes before Parliament there are always side-effects, always other issues which merit consideration. Close on the heels of this Bill came another Representation of the People Bill in another place. Only last Friday, a Bill was brought forward to provide electoral facilities for people on holiday, a matter which has received considerable attention, especially when general elections or by-elections are held in the summer and at holiday times. At the last Conservative Party Conference approving noises were made about doing something to provide electoral facilities for those who had unavoidably to be away on polling day because they had already booked holidays or accommodation, and last Friday the Minister of State at the Home Office gave a blessing to the Bill, saying that the Government's approach to it was positive and they wished to see something done.

Unfortunately, there were procedural snags about the Bill—there always are—and the suggestion was made that it would probably be better if these matters were dealt with in a Government Bill. That is the old story; a Private Members' Bill never does the job properly so one must wait for a Government Bill which will probably do it just as badly or not do it at all. That is the chief danger with a Government Bill; one never gets it. There is always pressure on the time of Parliament and these things are squeezed out.

Anyway, the Minister of State in another place who gave his blessing to the Bill finished the afternoon by talking it out; so much for the Government's positive approach to the Bill. So the Bill was left in suspense last Friday afternoon as the clock struck four. It seems to me that we could improve the shining hour this afternoon by giving some help to a Bill which the Minister of State, after giving it his blessing, left to the mercy of the Private Members' Bill procedure, and that is the first thing I think of in this connection.

Why can we not take the opportunity of turning this small but important Bill into something even more worthwhile? I am advised that in order to do that it would be necessary to extend its Long Title. This, I understand, can be done if what one proposes to do is relevant to the Bill. This is a Representation of the People Bill, which is presumably about as wide as any Long Title can go, and I would wish to see whether we might make this a more worthwhile Bill by including in it other matters which this House might consider. We are pressed for time this afternoon and I do not wish to dwell unduly long on the items I have in mind, but we may not be so hard pressed another day when we come to consider the Bill in its later stages. Now that the Protection of Public Information Bill has been dropped and the Local Government Bill, a sizeable piece of work which was coming before your Lordships' House, is not to come after all, we may have the time which another place will not to look at further reforms in our electoral law.

The second matter which we might well consider while we are at it is the longstanding grievance of British citizens working abroad who are deprived of the vote in elections in this country and in referenda unless they have a residence in this country, and "residence" may be an actual residence or one of those legal problems described as a "constructive residence". "Residence" is a wonderful word in taxation and electoral law and the lawyers have been playing about with it for years. So that is another grievance which might be considered. I have heard from some of my noble friends that the real trouble about British citizens living and working abroad is that they are probably undesirable citizens, tax exiles, or there may be others who choose not to live in the land of liberty and endeavour but who prefer to enjoy the sunshine in the South of France; so, they say, there is no reason why we should give them any voice in the future of this country when they do not live in it or intend to return to it. That is arguable and I will not dwell on that.

I come to the third point, which is much nearer home, and that is the franchise for Members of your Lordships' House. Why do we put up with this indignity? Why do we say that lunatics, bankrupts and Peers shall be excluded from the franchise? We share this triple crown of incapacity and are not allowed to appear on the register of parliamentary voters.

My Lords, has the noble Lord forgotten also prisoners serving long-term sentences?

Along with infants and aliens, my Lords?

As to who we really are is a matter we can go into in more detail on another occasion, my Lords. All the same, what has become of that old tag about no taxation without representation? Since your Lordships' House has been deprived of all parliamentary authority on matters of taxation and finance, why have we not long since claimed, then, to have some voice in the affairs of the country relating to economics, finance and taxation, along with other citizens? I am sure there is a history to this matter, but admit frankly that I have not looked it up. I do not think we need dwell unduly on the history of some of our institutions; we look at them in the light of modern requirements, and there is not the slightest reason why Peers should be denied the vote on the parliamentary register and should be deprived of the rights of every other citizen.

It is said that these important matters should go to a Speaker's Conference. We have believed that in the past perhaps, but I was interested to see that last Friday the Minister of State wanted to put the—

"fact on record to make clear that we cannot regard a Speaker's Conference as being a necessary certificate before proceeding in these matters".—[Official Report, Commons, 7/12/79; col. 870.]

I agree with that, especially since I served on a Speaker's Conference at great length on the question of reducing the age of qualification for the franchise from 21 years of age. The Speaker's Conference, by a very large majority, decided against reducing the age of voting to 18 and proposed a compromise of the age of 20. But what did the House of Commons do with that? They brushed it aside and said, "It is either 21 or 18. There is nothing in between. If, under the Latey Report, young persons are to be able to marry at the age of 18, they should be allowed to vote. If they are to be allowed to take out mortgages, they should be allowed to vote," although originally this business of 18 was, "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote"; but when "old enough to fight" was taken out of the argument, there were then other reasons for reducing the age for the vote to 18. I mention that merely as an illustration that, even when a matter goes before the Speaker's Conference, Parliament does not always accept what it says.

I give notice, my Lords, that I will study this matter closely and see whether I can help improve the electoral law and widen the franchise to cover those who may have grievances over being excluded at present. I would not wish to imperil the Bill. I wish merely to consider making the attempt to improve it, to extend it, and to send it on its way as a more worthwhile Bill, completing a job only half done in another place at the present time.

My Lords, I rise to support the Bill, and I should like to speak in particular about Clause 2. I do so because I was a member of the Home Office Working Party on the Electoral Register, to which the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, has referred. People's names are left off the register for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes the household form A is not received, or, for various reasons, there may be a failure to complete it. Some people either do not care about it, or forget about it. Sometimes people will put on the form the names of themselves and their family, but leave off the names of other qualified persons living in the dwelling. We all know that only about a third of the eligible young voters who become 18 in the course of the year appear to become registered. All of us who are involved in elections at various stages know that at election times there are countless people who suddenly find that they are not on the register. Although there are provisions for people to check the electors' lists, the number who say, "I must go down to the post office or the library to see whether my name is on" are very few indeed. Moreover, people who have been on the register for years have no reason to believe that they are no longer on it; hence they do not check the lists.

In 1969 there was the important amendment which gave the electoral registration officers the power to place on the electoral register the names of persons who had been on the electors' lists but had been left off inadvertently. The proposal in Clause 2 of the Bill goes much further, and I welcome it. It is that where an electoral registration officer has sufficient evidence to prove that a person should be registered, even though his name is not on the electoral list, that person should be included. That proposal is in full accordance with one of the recommendations of the working party, as has been stated by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran.

I was pleased to note that the noble Lord referred to the provision for an objections procedure. The report stated quite clearly that members of the working party were greatly impressed by the views of the political parties at national level that an essential part of the registration procedure is a claims and objections stage. If, as is proposed in the Bill, we are to have a very important improvement, it is vital that the objections procedure should be maintained. I hope that during the course of the debate the House can be told whether—as I believe will be necessary—there are to be revised regulations to deal with this new amendment. It would appear to me rather doubtful whether the present regulations relating to claims and objections, with regard to the preparation of the annual register of electors, would be sufficient to deal with the amendment proposed in the Bill. Therefore, if new regulations are necessary, perhaps during the debate we can be told when draft regulations might be issued.

Of course, the Bill does not meet—and I do not believe that its sponsor intended it to meet—the position of electors who during an election find that their names are left off the register. I recall that prior to my retirement as national agent of the Labour Party we had countless complaints of this kind, and I am sure that the other political parties had similar complaints. At the last election, and in particular on polling day, the number of complaints we received from one area of London—which was featured in a television programme—could only be described as disgraceful. Whole blocks of people who had been on the register for years, and had lived in the area for years, had been left off the register. I readily accept that nothing can be done about that during the election period. There must be a cut-off date. Electoral registration officers could not possibly cope with the burden of work beyond a certain cut-off date. Therefore despite the amendment, there will be countless people left off the register through no fault of their own. This may arise for a number of reasons; and the report of the working party dealt with some of those points.

Those of us who have experience of being in touch with electoral registration officers in various constituencies know that the work on the electoral register varies considerably. The intensity of the door-to-door canvass also varies considerably. I hope that even though there is to be this amendment, the Ministers concerned, together with the people at the Home Office, will concentrate on the work of registration and will still regard the house-to-house canvass as an essential feature, and one which must be improved in many areas.

As for the suggestions of my noble friend Lord Houghton of Sowerby, many of us have always been a little apprehensive of piecemeal amendments to the Representation of the People Act. One can make mistakes. A proposal can be carried on a feeling that something ought to be done, but then the problems of the mechanics may prove very difficult.

For a number of years I was a member of the Home Office Electoral Advisory Committee, on which sits representatives of political parties, Home Office experts, representatives of other departments, returning officers, and electoral registration officers, who have great experience. My experience on that committee was that everyone was concerned with one objective: how to improve our electoral law and how to make it as democratic and as fair as possible at every stage. That often meant hours of deliberating on one simple amendment, to make sure that in making that amendment one did not cause two or three other complications.

Therefore I hope that the House will be very careful in considering any further extensions to the Bill without there being opportunity for a body to look at the matter. Here I do not necessarily suggest a Speaker's Conference, because often a Speaker's Conference refers matters to the Home Office Advisory Committee for expert opinion. I believe that that kind of expert opinion is vitally necessary. In conclusion, in welcoming the Bill, may I say that if there is one inquiry that ought to take place, I believe that it is a thorough, independent inquiry into the whole question of election expenses, a matter which every election agent goes into with some trepidation.

My Lords, I apologise for not having put my name down to take part in the debate, but I desire to speak very briefly simply to make three points. First, as the father of a serving soldier, with a highly independent daughter-in-law, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, for bringing the Bill to us and for dealing with what he is quite right in saying is a grievance among those wives of serving personnel who take their civic duties seriously—and there are many such people. Secondly, I should like to congratulate the author of the Bill in another place, my old friend Mr. Cranley Onslow, who suffered inadvertently from being misnamed. He was responsible for taking the Bill through another place—and, if I may say so, most appropriately, because in another place he represents a constituency inhabited probably by more members of the Armed Forces than is any other in the United Kingdom.

Thirdly, I want to do what over 30 years I have always found very difficult to do; namely, to offer some advice to the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby. He has never yet taken my advice, but there is always a hope that my luck might turn. However, I hope that he will take very seriously the advice given by his noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, who obviously, from his past experience, speaks with enormous authority on these electoral matters—probably with more authority than anybody else in this House.

One is always tempted, when there is a Representation of the People Bill in either House, to come forward with one's own favourite improvements; and I agree wholeheartedly, on the merits, with the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, in relation to the holiday question. It has always seemed to me very hard, particularly in these days when people have to book their holidays six, eight or nine months in advance in order to get package holiday terms, that if you are honest when going abroad and say you are going on holiday, you cannot get a proxy vote, but if you say you are going on business then it is normally made available. This is an anomaly; and as people, having booked their holidays, have very little choice if the Prime Minister of the day decides, as the Prime Minister of the day did decide this April, suddenly to have an election, they can be disfranchised. But I beg the noble Lord to resist temptation: not to follow the example of Oscar Wilde, who said, "I can resist anything except temptation". Because if the noble Lord succumbs to temptation and, at the Committee stage of this Bill, puts forward all these reasonable amendments, it is perfectly certain that your Lordships, lulled by his eloquence, will accept them.

Then, of course, this Bill will have to go back to another place, to take its place in that crowded programme, for that place to deal with the Lords' amendments; and as another place, in its infinite wisdom and mercy, has decided that it wants to have the first stab at the Local Government Bill—I am bound to say, my Lords, that I wish it luck!—there is not going to be very much time there to deal with Lords' amendments to a Private Member's Bill. Therefore, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, will make delightful speeches at the later stages of this Bill, but will not actually press any amendments.

My Lords, bearing in mind that the debate which is to follow has the names of no fewer than 23 of your Lordships down to speak, I am happily in the position of being able to say what I want to say in a matter of a few minutes. I should like to say from these Benches that in our view this is a wholly desirable Bill which will achieve something that has been long overdue.

I think the only comment I want to make in addition to that is that I understand that the Bill makes provision for the electors' register to be amended after publication. It may well be that I have missed something, but my understanding of the situation is that after the electors have returned the household form every local authority allows a period during which people who think they are entitled to be on the register and have completed the household form A can go down to their local town hall to see whether their name is on it; and, if it is not, to raise the matter of its absence with the electoral officer. I am wondering in what way this is going to be changed when the Bill makes provision for the electors' register to be amended after publication. I thought this was the normal practice, and I am wondering whether this hides some other method which is to be employed. If so, I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, or the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, whether they could enlighten me on that matter.

My Lords, on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, I am pleased to welcome this Representation of the People Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran. It is doubly welcome, both for its substance and for the fact that it is the first Private Member's Bill to have successfully completed its passage through the House of Commons during this present Session. I congratulate the sponsors of the Bill on its speedy and uncontroversial passage through another place, and I hope that your Lordships will be able to afford it a similar reception.

As the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, has explained, the Bill makes three important modifications to our electoral law. First, if enacted it would permit the spouses (mainly the wives) of Service personnel residing in the United Kingdom to choose whether they wished to register under the civilian or the service electoral registration schemes. At the moment they must register as Service voters and, as has been explained, this has given rise to much concern and, indeed, to a substantial number of people losing their votes at the elections earlier this year. Secondly, the Bill provides that the electoral registration declaration made by members of the forces when they register need not in future be attested or countersigned by more senior ranks or public officials. Thirdly, the Bill provides a new power for the electoral registration officer to correct the electoral register after it is published so that the names of those electors who are qualified but who have accidentally been omitted can be included. This is, of course, of general application, and does not apply to Service voters alone.

It may assist the House if I describe in rather more detail the background to the Bill and the consultations which have been conducted on these proposals; and, of course, your Lordships have listened with great interest to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran. I must, however, reduce my remarks as much as possible, and I hope that this will be with the approval of the House. I feel we should first of all turn our attention to the Service wives. The arrangements made for servicemen and their wives to take part in our elections—a very basic and important right—have not had a particularly happy history. The frequent removals and changes of address, often at short notice, which are suffered by Service families; the absences for substantial periods abroad, and the fact that in many Service situations electoral registration must take a second place to more pressing matters, has meant that under the several schemes tried out since special Service voting was introduced in 1918 the rate of registration, which has no element of compulsion for Service voters, has been consistently lower than all concerned would wish. This has occurred under all Governments, and despite several inquiries and all-party discussions in the Speaker's Conference.

There is some evidence, however, that for serving servicemen the position has improved since the passing of the Representation of the People Act 1976. Noble Lords may recall that this was also a Private Member's Bill, based on Speaker's Conference recommendations, and introduced in another place by the same honourable Member responsible for the present Bill. It is now the basis of the Service registration scheme, and it may assist your Lordships if I describe this briefly. Servicemen need to register only once during their Service career. Once their registration is forwarded and accepted by the registration officer in respect of their home address, or an address with which they have had some connection, it remains valid until they leave the Services. If they move house they should of course notify the registration officer of a change of address; but they are not required, as are civilian electors, to send in an electoral registration form every year. When they have registered they are entitled to the special privileges of Service voting; voting by proxy when abroad or by post or in person at all national and some local government elections when serving in the United Kingdom.

Before the 1976 arrangements were introduced registration of Service personnel was running at a rate of 25 per cent. or less of those eligible. Since then the overall rate of registration has significantly improved, to the present level of 50 per cent. But there have been problems, and because the franchise and its exercise is so crucial to our democracy the Government wish to lose no time in seeing these put right. Indeed, less than three weeks after taking office my honourable friend the Minister of State at the Home Office Mr. Brittan, to whom tribute has been paid in relation to this Bill by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, was able to indicate in an adjournment debate in another place that the Government accepted the need for changes in the operation of the Service scheme. He announced that the Government were initiating consultations with the political parties, the electoral registration officers and others closely concerned to see precisely what those changes should be.

One aspect has already been attended to, in that this House gave its approval last week to the regulations which have the effect of removing the special markings on the electoral register which denote service voters and merchant seamen. When approved by the other place—we hope, later this week—and implemented for the next electoral register, this will remove an understandable point of concern to Servicemen and their families. The noble Lord, Lord Underhill, raised the question of whether new regulations other than those referred to already are necessary. Yes, they are; and these will be brought forward at a later stage.

Two other important aspects of the Service voting scheme are dealt with in the Bill. First subsection (1) of Clause 1 provides that it will no longer be necessary for the wives of Servicemen residing in the United Kingdom to register in pursuance of a Service declaration. In future, they will be able to choose to register as civilian or as Service electors. This was the scheme which the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, unsuccessfully pressed on the last Administration in the Bill which was passed by the House last Session but which foundered in the Commons on the Dissolution. Over the summer, it has been the subject of considerable debate with electoral registration officers, particularly those in areas with high concentrations of Service voters, and the local authority associations and the political parties. We are grateful to all who have considered these matters for their constructive comments.

There was complete agreement about the need for changes in the system, although it is only fair to say that the local authority associations and the electoral registration officers, while agreeing to the principle that Service wives should register as civilians in the United Kingdom, believe that giving them an option between one system and another could unnecessarily complicate the process and cause difficulties. But, after due consideration and in the light of the support of the political parties, and, not least, of the Service wives themselves for the option scheme, the sponsors of the Bill in the other place decided in its favour; and the Government do not oppose them. We very much hope that when the new scheme is implemented the Service wives will again be fully enfranchised and that any administrative teething problems will soon be sorted out.

Clause 1(2) of the Bill deals with another aspect of the voting scheme which has caused difficulties and complaints from all Service voters. The Bill removes the requirement that all Service declarations should be attested—and I have referred to this earlier. Although the regulations following the 1976 Act considerably widened the ranks of persons who could countersign the forms, to include, for example, non-commissioned officers and justices of the peace, attestation now seems an unnecessary complication to the system. If electoral registration officers have difficulties in determining the validity of any particular application they can refer to indices of Services personnel kept by the Ministry of Defence centrally. These changes to the Service voting scheme should have the overall effect of restoring the franchise to some of the Service wives who felt unable to register under the old arrangements, and should improve the scheme for all Service electors.

The second clause of the noble Lord's Bill goes wider and affects more particularly the civilian electorate. In effect, it is an implementation of a recommendation made by a Home Office working party in 1978, established on the suggestion of the Speaker's Conference to consider the way in which the electoral register could be kept more up to date. The working party consisted of Home Department representatives, local authority officials and registration officers, academics and representatives of the political parties. I am glad to note that the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, took part in his previous capacity as a member of the working party. Their recommendation, which is now contained in the Bill before your Lordships' House, will enable the electoral registration officer to correct the register after it is published to omit the names of electors who are qualified. I should make clear that the qualifying date of 10th October (15th September in Northern Ireland) remains central to the system of electoral registration, and that electors must continue to send in their Form 'A'. Only those who can claim residence on that date will he able to have their names included; but the Bill will assist many electors who discover after publication of the final register that, for whatever reason—their fault or someone else's—they have been left off. I hope that those comments may be for the assistance of the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell. He addressed a particular comment to me and I hope that those remarks may assist him in that regard.

Clearly, there will need to be procedures to ensure that this new opportunity is not abused. There will therefore be regula- tions made to provide for proper opportunity for interested electors, including the local political parties, to register any claim or objection to the new names which it is proposed to add. The Government also intend, as the working party recommended, to keep the electoral registration system under review so as to ensure that, as far as possible, it meets objectives of accuracy and clarity at reasonable cost to the taxpayer and local ratepayer.

I hope that with these remarks I have been able to clarify points raised by noble Lords, especially the noble Lords, Lord Underhill and Lord Wells-Pestell. I do not feel that I am going to be able to satisfy the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, because the Long Title of the Bill is a very difficult matter to change; and there are three very important matters which he raised in his most interesting speech in regard to holidaymakers, to Peers and other disqualifications which will be extremely difficult; but this is, of course, a matter for the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, to consider with his advisers.

When my honourable friend the Minister of State gave on 21st May this year the Government's broad approval to changes in the scheme he could not have expected that the necessary legislation could flow through so quickly. Owing to the good fortune of the ballot for Bills in another place, and the preparedness and advance work done by honourable Members in the House of Commons, and by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, we are able with unusual speed to mend three limited defects in our electoral system. I commend the Bill to the House.

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down I wonder whether I may put this point to him. It is hardly fair, I appreciate. What is the situation of a person who, on the 15th October, is living, say, in Birmingham and who has completed the household Form 'A' and then for reasons beyond his control, a week or 10 days later moves a hundred miles away? When the list of the new area in which he is living comes out some weeks later, am I to understand that he can then go to the electoral officer and say, "I am now living in this area, although I was not living here on the 15th October"—and, that the electoral registration officer will have power, if he is satisfied that he lives in that area and is a ratepayer, to put him on the roll?

My Lords, I think it would be difficult to give the noble Lord a sufficiently accurate answer to his important question. I think that the only answer should be that this would be a matter that we could raise between ourselves before the Committee stage of this Bill.

My Lords, conscious as I am of the 20 or more of your Lordships who wish to speak in the important debate following this interesting debate, may I thank all those noble Lords who participated in this debate and who have given unanimous support to the terms of this Bill. I should like particularly to thank the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, because he has filled in many of the parts of my opening speech which I had necessarily shortened in the present circumstances. May I join the noble Lords, Lord Boyd-Carpenter and Lord Sandys, in making an appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby? This Bill is intended to deal quickly with an immediate grievance. As the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, said, there are women who object most strongly to being the appendages of their husbands in these voting rights. Some women put the matter far more graphically: they say that they object to being chattels of their military husbands on non-military matters in relation to voting rights. Therefore, my appeal is that at the Committee stage—if I may so presume—there will not be any serious amendments so that the Bill can go back to the other place and can be passed into law as quickly as possible.

The noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, made a number of interesting suggestions about further reforms necessary in future Representation of the People Acts. May I suggest to him, with great humility, that he and I on another occasion might join together in putting forward another collection of Bills to your Lordships' House, but not to try to introduce anything of the kind that he has suggested to this Bill. It is the duty of the Government and of both Houses of Parliament to make sure that those who are entitled to vote can do so as readily as possible and have the opportunity of exercising freely their basic civic rights. In my view, this Bill gives those rights back to certain classes of persons.

rose to move, That this House deplores the White Paper Proposals for Revision of the Immigration Rules (Cmnd. 7750) as racially and sexually discriminatory, incompatible with our international obligations and contrary to the principles of natural justice. The noble Lord said: My Lords, when this White Paper was debated in another place last week, 17 Conservatives abstained. It is the first and only example of such a rebellion during the lifetime of the present Administration, and a rare event in any period of Tory rule. I hope it is right to assume that, in providing an opportunity to examine these proposals before the rules themselves are laid, the Government were prepared to modify or withdraw any proposals which failed to stand up to criticism. I must say at the outset that, unless we have concrete undertakings on this situation, at the end of today's debate we shall seek to divide the House.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for providing the opportunity for this debate and I look forward to hearing the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate. This, however, is a debate which should not have to take place in a society which prides itself on its tolerance—although there are unfortunate myths among the finer realities. What, then, is it all about? It is about a Government trying to come to terms with the country's racially prejudiced, and coming unstuck. The Conservative Manifesto listed eight points on immigration. The four main ones were: the establishment of a register, a quota, the restriction of elderly and young immigrants, and ending the Labour Government's 1974 concession to husbands and male fiancés. It is to their credit that the Government have recognised the folly of the register and the quota, and have dropped these.

So what is left? The discriminatory, unpleasant and totally reactionary exclusion of husbands and fiancés, unless the woman was born here or, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, pointed out, since last week's debate in another place, born to a parent who was born here; plus further harsh restrictions on old and young members of the family and the other restrictions which, due to the lack of time and the length of the speaking list, I shall not go into, but which were also covered by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. Yet that same Manifesto stated:

"The rights of all British citizens legally settled here are equal before the law, whatever their race, colour or creed".

Further, "to support family life" was declared as one of the Government's fine major tasks. Yet how are these admirable proclamations compatible with these wretched proposals? The very thought of the plight of the already severely restricted parents and grandparents, now condemned to a lonely ebb to their lives and for ever separated from their children, is absolutely heartbreaking. For make no mistake, my Lords, the cruel Catch 22 referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, renders their entry almost impossible and, as I understand it, fewer than 1,500 were admitted last year.

In the debate in another place last week, Mr. Raison, the Minister of State, said (at column 363):

"We shall consider the argument that the combination of the dependancy requirement with the standard of living criterion makes it too difficult for parents to come".—[Official Report, Commons, 4/12/79.]

But what I am asking is how could draft rules get to the stage of a White Paper, without that very basic question having already been considered by the Government? And how could the Minister of State in a debate in another place get up as though that was the first time it had occurred to him? It seems to me quite extraordinary.

Then, to refuse admission to children is contrary to British tradition and is also contrary to the Government's promise "to support family life". The Government's concession that applications for children of 18 to 21 made before 14th November will be treated under the old rules—and this is another thing that has suddenly popped up since the debate—is minor and inadequate. Children should not be cruelly separated from their parents. Just think for a moment, my Lords, how we who are parents would feel if this were happening to us and to our children.

These provisions further restrict those who are already gravely restricted, even too gravely restricted for some of us. Reversing the present position on husbands and male fiancés is not only outrageously racist but outrageously sexist, in a climate of sex equality created by the Sex Discrimination Act and the Equal Opportunities Commission—and I am glad the chairman of that commission will be speaking later in the debate. The effect on the number of immigrants, whether the number is shrunk or stretched as it emerges from the mathematical mangle, is still very small—set either against total immigration or against Britain's population. There were 356 men who were refused permanent settlement out of 11,600 between March 1977 and March 1979, while 20,000 women came in last year and were accepted for settlement.

It really seems extraordinary, with a small number like this—something like 3 per cent.—that the Government should go to the lengths of doing extraordinary damage to themselves, to race relations and to women's rights, and also to act in a way that I should have thought was contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights (I am delighted to see that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, is speaking later and I shall be interested to hear his authoritative view on this), contrary to the Helsinki Agreement, and contrary to any concept of the rule of law that I can think of. Just imagine if a British woman, who does not meet the birth criterion, and an Italian woman want to marry Indian men, the Italian woman would be able to marry and live with her husband in Britain, while the British woman could not.

The 1977 rules comfortably cover all the problems of a marriage of convenience, and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that arranged marriages are inseparable from many cultural customs. These were strongly condemned by the Home Secretary and his ministerial colleagues as contrary to British custom, but I say that it is not the job of a democratic Government to decree how a British citizen should choose his or her spouse. Doubtless this custom will wither away, as it has in other previous immigrant communities, because, even in this country, the arranged marriage is not a unique novelty, which does not survive the exposure of young people to the British way of life. But, meanwhile, this authoritarian decree will create hardship and bitterness for just a few thousand people out of a population of 54 million—a return absolutely out of proportion to the damage done to our country. The Minister of State, again in another place, conceded that if the couple have not met—to which the Government object—the fiancé can come in as a visitor, if he can persuade the immigration officer that he intends to return to his country of origin when his visit ends. I want to ask the Minister today whether, if the man satisfies the immigration officer, he can then marry without first returning home. If not, then financial and other obstacles would nullify the visit and we should have another Catch 22 situation. I should very much like an answer on this.

The Government argue that this grossly unfair and degrading distinction between men and women has to be made, because of other legal problems tied up with the status of women. I personally do not accept this, because I think that this could have been ironed out in the Sex Discrimination Act. We are promised a British nationality Bill, although not in this Session. Yet there are certainly no sustainable grounds for taking away women's rights in the meantime, because this is what in fact is being done. It is a completely retrogressive step, so far as women are concerned. The proposals are racist, because they are aimed primarily at Asians, though others would also be caught in this sinister web.

Let us look for a moment at the position of refugees who have come to this country. We have a reputation for taking in refugees, and refugees came from Nazi Germany and became British citizens. But a woman who has been settled in this country for many years and now considers herself a British citizen, but who was not born here and whose parents were not—they were born in Germany—would also be caught by this rule. The rule makes a totally new distinction between the rights of male and female citizens, and overturns the generous and compassionate approach to immigration which was adopted by Edward Heath in 1971, in order to help the expelled Ugandan Asians, and by Roy Jenkins in 1974 who dealt with this problem and put back the situation to what it was before these draft rules appeared.

The Government believe that these restrictions will improve race relations. If the Government believe that, they will believe anything! It is true that the Government have produced some Asian opinion to support their case, but many of us recollect previous immigrations as a result of which those who came early resented late arrivals in case their own established position in British society might be adversely affected. But the approach of the Asian communities indicates that very few Asians adopt this attitude—and, in any case, the Government must be the humane arbiter and not the repository of prejudice, from whatever quarter it may come.

It is interesting that in addition to the list of people and newspapers mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, the clergy have made a united appeal about these draft rules to the Government: the Anglicans, the Catholics, the Jews and the Methodist Conference.

The real danger to race relations is that these proposals, so minimal in effect, have already fanned the fears and prejudice of white citizens. Anything like this triggers off the racism which people feel but to some extent keep hidden. They believe these proposals will stop a great influx of coloured people into this country, and are reminded of the statement about "swamping" which was made last year by Mrs. Thatcher. There is no question of swamping this country with immigrants. The legislation we have now, without these rules, makes swamping quite impossible. The Government's job is to pacify racial passions, not to inflame them.

Finally, these draft rules are being breached all the time by the Government who are under strong pressure. The Government are therefore giving to themselves bigger and bigger areas of discretion for ministerial decision, and also for immigration officers who will have absolutely impossible burdens of judgment foisted upon them. These officials will be at the receiving end of enormous acrimony and, not being infallible, they will obviously make some mistakes. Not all of these errors of judgment can possibly be picked up by the appeals procedure or routed to Members of Parliament or Peers to take up. A great many people will not even know how to go about trying to get the decision reversed; they will have an absolutely cast iron case but somehow they will slip through the net. The whole thing is a macabre and Monty Python Flying Circus which cannot possibly work. Under pressure, the door is being opened all the time by the Government.

I am sorry that I am speaking before the Minister. Nevertheless, I am hoping that he will still be able to declare a small change of heart, which is all that is needed to withdraw the intolerable parts of this White Paper. Governments are not infallible. There is still an opportunity for this Government to show the courage of other people's convictions and throw out these illogical, unworkable, unnecessary and nasty proposals which bring disgrace upon the Government and shame to our country.

My Lords, I welcome this debate which I invited when the immigration Statement was made in your Lordships' House on 14th November because I believe that it will clarify points upon which there is misunderstanding. Incidentally, it gives us, into the bargain, the opportunity to hear for the first time the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bradford who is to follow me.

I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, will not mind me saying that the more I listened to him the more I felt that my regard for his knowledge and for his genuine concern over these matters is exceeded only by my total disagreement with almost everything which he had to say. For what is the noble Lord's objective in raising the debate this evening? It is to deplore, totally, a White Paper which has been published, based upon the simple belief that this country really cannot accept an indefinite commitment to continuing primary immigration. That is not a concept which is confined to the views of the present Government. It is in accord with a recommendation of the all-party Select Committee on Immigration and Race Relations which reported in another place only last year.

"The Government should make it unequivocally clear"

the Members of the Select Committee said—

"that in the foreseeable future there will be no further major primary immigration and that such immigration will only be allowed in exceptional individual circumstances".

Because they were the sort of people who have their feet firmly planted upon the ground, the Members of the Select Committee explained that by the phrase "primary immigration" they meant people entering the United Kingdom independently to establish themselves and their families here and that the reason for their recommendation was the economic and employment prospects of this country.

Of course there remain throughout the world very many people who have a continuing claim to come to this country. Over the years, the United Kingdom has provided a safe home for refugees, the tragedy of the Vietnamese refugees being the latest example. And the White Paper, which apparently the noble Lord deplores in its entirety, is going to make much clearer the precedence of a claim for refuge or asylum in the United Kingdom over other parts of the immigration rules. We shall continue to accept certain United Kingdom passport holders under the special voucher scheme. Then there are the wives and children who have the absolute right to join men who are settled here. But outside these categories, immigration must be strictly confined to circumstances of the most urgent need.

When noble Lords have the opportunity may I invite them to look at page 1 of the previous Government's White Paper on immigration which was published only last year, for your Lordships will there see that what I have just said does not contradict the general intention of the previous Government. What I think it is fair to say is that the difference of view between the Opposition Front Bench and the Government stems from what should be done about the clear evidence that the present rules are being exploited by men using marriage as a means of securing entry into the United Kingdom. Because neither the noble Baroness nor the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said so, I feel that I have to say to your Lordships that we know that there are cases in which men overseas openly admit that they are looking for a girl in the United Kingdom to marry, solely in order to come and settle here themselves.

My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord would give way, since he mentioned me in connection with this point. The 1977 rules were drafted in order to deal with this very point. Now people have to have been married and appear to have stayed together in a per- manent marriage for at least 12 months. Therefore, the 1977 rules deal with exactly the point which the Minister is making. He does not need these rules.

My Lords, with respect to the noble Baroness, may I say that as I understand them the 1977 rules dealt with what the Government, in their rules, called "the marriage of convenience"—people who did not intend that their marriage should subsist. They did not necessarily deal with marriages which are contracted with one thought in mind—that is, for the man, by hook or by crook, to get into the United Kingdom. As I was saying to your Lordships—

My Lords—

No, my Lords. I have listened fairly quietly to your Lordships. I shall certainly give way to the noble Lord, but may I remind him that both he and, if the House will allow me, I also will have another chance to speak.

My Lords, I was going to say that the evidence has never been produced. I was in Bombay and Delhi at the beginning of 1978 and I was given the facility of sitting in on interviews at the High Commission and Deputy High Commission, and I heard a number of would-be husbands interviewed. They were all pressed intensely by the entry certificate officers to say that their motives for coming to the United Kingdom were entirely economic, but unanimously they denied this. So I have not the faintest idea where the noble Lord gets his evidence from.

My Lords, I know the noble Lord well, and I know that he is absolutely genuine and very knowledgeable in these matters. This is an absolutely fair point for the noble Lord to make, and it is absolutely wrong. Within the last month my honourable friend the Minister of State at the Home Office, Mr. Raison, has visited the Indian sub-Continent, and I am doing no more than repeating the view which he has given on the Floor of the House of Commons when I say to this House that we know that there are cases in which men overseas openly admit that they are looking for a girl to marry in the United Kingdom in order to be able to come to live here. It is clear from letters which the Home Office receive and which entry clearance officers abroad receive, that girls who are living here are being obliged to contract marriages with men whom they do not want to marry. I am saying to the House that I believe this cannot be right, but under the present rules—if I may correct the noble Baroness, Lady Birk—there is very little that can be done about it.

Noble Lords opposite are asking me for statistics. Very well; let me move on. This is a difficult problem. The noble Baroness is saying that it was solved by the previous Government, and I am saying that it was not. The problem here is illustrated by the fact that over the last 10 years the views of many people have changed, first one way and then another, and not least the views of the party opposite. In 1969 the right honourable gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, who was then the Home Secretary, removed the right of entry of Commonwealth husbands and fiancés. Five years later, in 1974, the then Home Secretary, Mr. Jenkins, reversed that ban; and finally as the noble Baroness has said, in March 1977 the previous Government changed the rules again in order to prevent entry where it can be discerned that there is no real intention that the parties to a marriage intend to live together permanently as man and wife. But while these differences in view have been occurring over the last 10 years there is absolute certainty about what has been happening.

To date, during the 12 months up to the middle of this year, which is the date for which I have the figures, 5,600 husbands from the new Commonwealth and Pakistan were accepted here for settlement. That compares with just 200 husbands coming to join wives already settled here in 1973. If your Lordships want a comparison in male fiancés wanting to come here, the increase is even more marked.

The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has previously in your Lordships' House suggested that these increases simply represent a pent-up demand from those years before 1974 when it was not open to men to come here and settle by having a claim to marriage. But the evidence does not support that argument. There is a continuing upward demand in the number of applications and no evidence of a peak shortly after 1974 with a subsequent downturn. That is why the draft new rules provide that where there is reason to believe that immigration is the primary objective of the marriage that will be sufficient reason to refuse an entry clearance.

But, my Lords—

My Lords, perhaps if the noble Baroness would like to read the rules, she will see. In addition we repeat the Labour Government's rule that where there is no intention of there being a genuine married life, entry should also be refused—and we add what I do not think is an unnatural requirement, that the couple to a marriage should have met. However, even these changes can be circumvented by people who are determined to conceal the true reasons for a marriage, and that is the reason why the Government have been obliged to confine the right of entry to husbands and fiancés of women who are citizens of the United Kingdom and colonies by birth or who have a parent born here.

I should like to remind the House of what it is that we are talking about. We are not talking about the right of women to come into this country; we are talking about the amount of latitude which the British Government should give to men, who in many cases are undoubtedly using marriage or proposed marriage as a calculated method of gaining entry. The reason why these draft rules apply to men in this respect is not only because obviously this is the immediate problem with which we have to deal, but also because of the law on nationality, which I do not think either the noble Lord or the noble Baroness mentioned.

As the law stands, a woman may enter and acquire her husband's nationality if he is a citizen of the United Kingdom and colonies, and from her husband a woman may acquire the right of abode. A man cannot do that. Also, wives and children of Commonwealth citizens who were here before 1st January 1973 remain as free to come and go as they were before the passing of the 1971 Act.

In these circumstances, the position of women under immigration legislation is wholly different from—and I am glad it is more favourable than—the position of men. I hope therefore that the Opposition will not pursue the line taken by the noble Baroness, that there is a charge here of sex discrimination, because both the previous Government and the present Government have found themselves in very much the same boat over this question. Indeed, I am surprised that the noble Baroness did not see fit to mention in terms which the House could easily understand, that when, two years ago, the Labour Government changed the rules they did so by having exactly the same method of approach as the present Government are having; namely, by making the rules applicable to a man who wishes to come into this country to marry. The fact of the matter is that we desperately need a new law on nationality and the Government are committed to introducing such legislation which, may I say to your Lordships this evening, my right honourable friend intends to precede with a White Paper during the coming year.

I should like to make clear just two points where my right honourable friend has altered his original proposals in order to meet views which have been expressed. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has said—and in my view quite rightly—that he wants to know where changes are to be made in the propoals which have been put forward. The first change which my right honourable friend is ready to make and which he feels it is quite right to make, is that if Parliament agrees there will be an absolute right for a husband to join a wife within the terms of the rules. This will be firmly written into the rules. Also, it was my right honourable friend's intention, in the case if a girl is born abroad simply because her parents happen to be out of the country at the time of her birth, that that girl should be entitled subsequently to be joined by her husband or her fiancé in the United Kingdom in the same way as if she had been born here. When I was repeating the Statement on 14th November in your Lordships' House, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, expressed the view that it would be desirable for this intention to be written into the rules and this advice my right honourable friend accepts.

With the leave of the House, I will try to reply to speeches made in this debate at the end of the debate, so perhaps I may refer only to all the other changes made in the White Paper by reference to three of the main areas of change. First, we are making new provisions for the entry of dependants. Our guiding principle has been that where there is no compassionate reason a relative really cannot expect as of right to be admitted here, given that we must set limits to our immigration commitments. Despite the fact that the noble Baroness referred to the heartbreak which can occur when relatives are divided from their families, the requirement that a relative should be dependent upon a family which is over here has already been written into the rules under the previous Government, something apparently which the noble Baroness just happened to forget. Here again, however, a point has been raised which we will certainly look at very carefully.

The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, raised the point that it is possible that this requirement, the dependency requirement, together with the criterion that dependent relatives should be suffering a standard of living below that of their own country may make it very difficult for parents and grandparents in receipt of help from their families over here to prove that they actually need to come to the United Kingdom. I repeat the assurance that was given in the other place that my right honourable friend is considering this argument.

My Lords, I am sure the Minister did not mean to be unfair, but I think he was being a little unfair in saying that I did not draw attention to that. I did say that the restrictions before these rules were already very hard, harder than many of us would have liked to see, but the added criterion of living at a standard of living lower than they would have or could have over here makes it even more difficult. This is what creates the Catch 22 position. I entirely accepted that the other criteria were the same, but now something else is added which makes it even more difficult. In fact I read out what Mr. Raison had said in another place in order to make the point that this should have been thought out before. It was not a case of not referring to this matter; I did refer to it.

My Lords, I apologise genuinely and unreservedly to the noble Baroness for misrepresenting her. I am sure that I must have misrepresented her and I am extremely sorry. With regard to the point the noble Baroness is putting to me, which is the same point that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, put, as I have said, this is a matter which my right honourable friend is looking at very seriously.

My Lords, I said that I would refer to the three main areas which remain. The second area is to do with overstayers. Here we feel that firmer rules are needed to prevent those who seek to turn a temporary visit into permanent residence. I am only too happy to record that the great majority of visitors and students are absolutely genuine and we welcome them here. Yet some of your Lordships have expressed concern to me outside the House that it may be almost impossible to trace passengers who say they are coming for a temporary purpose and then overstay.

Clearly this is a matter which worried the previous Government, because they initiated an overstayers survey, which my right honourable friend referred to in another place last week. The long and the short of it is that the survey ran into very great difficulties. It was not found possible for the survey to match the huge number of landing and embarkation cards, and the survey was not able to estimate with any accuracy the number of people who deliberately overstayed. But computer support, which was announced in the previous Government's White Paper, for the checking of departures is soon to be in use, and with that technical facility the changes that we are proposing in the rules will, I think, contribute in a fair way towards dealing with this problem of overstaying. In brief, we propose that there shall be reasonable limits set to the time for which a visitor may stay. Nor would students be able to remain perpetually for short courses, although, if I may take up the point from the noble Lord's speech, a student who is progressing in a logical and academic way from one course to another has nothing to fear from these rules.

Tighter requirements would be introduced to ensure that those admitted to the country for a temporary purpose do not become a charge on public funds. At the same time, those who enter temporarily and then deliberately overstay would find it more difficult to spin out their stay for further applications to the Home Office for leave to remain to be made. Also when a person who has remained in breach of our immigration laws reappears, as they do sometimes, at a port of entry the immigration officer would be specifically empowered to have regard to his or her immigration history in deciding whether or not to grant leave to enter. These changes are simply designed to combat exploitation. They would honestly bear only upon those who seek to manipulate our system of immigration control, and they would not affect the genuine applicant who has good reason to come here but does not intend to settle permanently.

My Lords, if I may just refer briefly to the third area, it is the position of those who come here to work. In saying that I am not referring to students or to young holidaymakers from the Commonwealth whom many of your Lordships may very well know when they come and work here. I am referring to those who wish to come to work on a longer term basis and must hold a permit issued in advance after application by the employer. The Department of Employment has recently issued stricter criteria for the issue of permits. In addition, the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration recommended last year that the categories of people who can come here without permits should be reviewed, and this we have also done and introduced an entry clearance requirement for some of them; because I have to say that, not infrequently, people entering temporarily then try to stay permanently by remaining for work or try setting up in business. We are simply saying that it is the responsibility of the applicant to reveal whether the real objective is to remain permanently and, if that is the case, to get entry clearance accordingly.

So, my Lords, I return to the Motion of the noble Lord. After more than six years, the immigration rules need revision. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, referred to greater difficulties which will be made for immigration officers. I was surprised to hear the noble Lord say that, because sheer weight of numbers is tremendous. Last year there were some 5½, million non-EEC visitors to these shores. I think what is necessary is to have more workable instructions for the officers in our hard-pressed immigration service, and this I believe the new rules will provide.

My Lords, the immigration rules do not make any difference to the number of visitors who come here. Surely the noble Lord is not trying to discourage tourism as well as everything else.

My Lords, perhaps we are getting a little tired and I did not make myself clear. I was trying to explain to the House that immigration officers are working under considerable strain. I gave the example of the very large number of visitors who come to these shores to show the extent of the number of people who pass through our ports of entry every year. I was going on to explain that in my view the rules we are putting forward in the White Paper will provide easier and more workable rules. The noble Lord does not agree with me. When the noble Lord speaks again he can explain to the House why that is so.

In addition to that, my right honourable friend has shown, as I like to think I have shown in this debate, that he is very ready to listen to the opinions expressed. Yet the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, will have none of this. The White Paper, in the noble Lord's view, must be done away with lock, stock and barrel, as being contrary to natural justice. I must say I find that a little hard, and I certainly find the noble Lord's argument a little hard to follow. Decisions will continue to be taken, as now, only after careful consideration and the rights of appeal laid down by statute will continue. A person will still be able to appeal to the independent appellate authorities against refusal of entry clearance, refusal of leave to enter, refusal or variation of extension of stay and refusal of settlement.

I fail to see that the noble Lord has even begun to make out a case that our immigration control violates the principles of natural justice. On the contrary, suggest that, as the Select Committee pointed out only a year ago, there are sensible economic and employment grounds why further immigration should be only for those who have a strong and genuine claim to come here. I believe that the noble Lord miscalculates if he ignores the Select Committee's point of view, and I believe that the noble Lord misunderstands that many people in this country are worried about the effects of continuing levels of immigration.

The Government are deeply and firmly committed to good race relations. It cannot be conducive to good community relations that there should be concern that, despite assurances to the contrary, primary immigration continues and could increase in coming years. It is in the hope of achieving a united and stable society that the Government have approached this problem by putting forward the proposals which are in the White Paper. I ask your Lordships to agree that our future should rest with that approach, and to reject the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, which is before your Lordships' House today.

My Lords, I owe your Lordships' House an apology. I have been privileged to be a Member of your Lordships' House for four years, but this is the first time that I have spoken. My reason for speaking tonight is that I have, for just over seven years, been a Bishop in a multiracial situation. I reckon myself to be inhibited by the traditions of a maiden speech from scoring some of the points regarding racism and sexism that seem to be implied in the White Paper. Indeed, if I were not inhibited I would not want to make them. I would rather try to look at what seems to me to be positive steps forward that need to be taken and which I regard these rules as not helping to be taken.

In the metropolitan district of the City of Bradford one person in 10 comes of post-war immigrant stock—that is, about 63,000 people. Of those, about 90 per cent. come from the Indian sub-continent and of those the great majority from Pakistan. I want to consider some of the positive developments which have taken place in Bradford or in the whole area around the West Riding, which give reason to believe that the path to right race relations needs more positive action than the restrictions that either Race Relations Acts or immigration Rules provide.

I have heard young people to whom I have been talking consider the institution of marriage and argue that it has so many pitfalls that they could not possibly embark upon it. I have argued, as I think many people would do, that they should take courage and look at the potential displayed in a happy marriage rather than the disasters of unhappy ones. The same principle ought to apply when we look at race relations. We must look at areas where there is some harmony being achieved rather than at those where blatant disharmony is so notorious. I do not for one moment underestimate the incipient danger in my own city. However, I ask your Lordships to consider how seldom we have read in the national Press of flagrant breaches of racial harmony in my See city and for that matter in some other places—we almost forget that they are multi-racial towns—and to reflect that in these matters good news is seldom reported. Therefore, I should like to trace briefly why it seems to me the history of race relations in the West Riding has been, in the main, good, and what efforts are proving most successful in sustaining it.

Lest anyone should be under the illusion that I am starry-eyed about Yorkshire, let me tell your Lordships what ought to be obvious—namely, that I am not a Yorkshireman. I am regarded by them as coming from the deep South—where most people are daft anyhow—that is, from Kent and, as a Man of Kent, I regard myself still as a missionary to the rude North.

Nevertheless, historically, the West Riding has been both realistic and tolerant in this matter. Its indigenous Yorkshire population has assimilated wave after wave of immigrants from many places; has accommodated them without in any way losing its decisive Yorkshireness; and, in many cases, has found the accommodation to work to the advantage of both the host population and the newcomers. The Irish came first. Then came the Italians, the Germans, the Latvians, the Lithuanians the Byelorussians, the Ukrainians, the Poles and the Hungarians—you name them, we have had them! It is surprising how far these Mid and East Europeans have consciously retained their own culture within their own families while at the same time contributing to the wellbeing of the commerce and welfare of the city.

Therefore, the Asians are but the latest instalment in a long history of immigration, Their arrival was, in the first place, made easier by the fact that their labour was invited by the textile industry. But, the size of the immigration from Asia has been far larger than that from any other continent. The difference of colour made their presence more marked. If they seek to retain their own culture they are doing no more than has happened in the case of entrants from Mid and Eastern Europe. I find that the hostility which is alleged only exists in great degree in the richer suburbs where few Asians are to be found. It is certainly much more evident there than in the decaying inner city where so many of them live.

I was once dining with a general who said to me, "My children have no race problem whatsoever. I have been all over the world in my job and they have grown up all over the world. It never occurs to them that colour has anything to do with people—there are nice people and nasty people. That is the way that they have grown up and the way that they have lived together in different places". I was reminded of those remarks last Friday when I was giving away prizes in a large comprehensive school which bore all the marks of a multi-racial society. As your Lordships know, at prize-givings children are clapped as they receive their prizes. It is always very easy to see who are the popular boys and girls. The popularity marked by the amount of clapping bore no relation whatsoever to the colour of those children coming up for their prizes. Some were cheered and some were not, but colour had nothing to do with it. Indeed, there was one West Indian boy who contrived to leave me too soon after he had received a prize and had to go right round the room to come and receive the rest of his prize. That was greeted with the type of mirth that showed that he was a popular boy in the school.

I say all this because it seems to me that the criterion by which we ought to judge any action in respect of race relations is how far it results in our treating people as human beings and how far it does the reverse. I have paid visits to many of the schools in my city and I find, particularly in the first schools and middle schools, that colour is no problem. There are problems as regards English language teaching but one can see them playing cricket and football together without any difficulty whatsoever. Colleges of higher education in the district provide various courses which are designed to promote understanding between people of different races and to facilitate the teenager of immigrant stock in his transition from school to work. It is at that point where many of the difficulties are liable to arise. The home tutoring system is very widely used and under it English women go to Asian homes and attempt to teach Asian women English—many of whom have arrived never having seen a bus before. One such woman told me, "I don't know that I have taught them much English, but we have made friends".

I do not want to bore noble Lords with a list of things. The point I want to make is that behind all the activities that really matter must be this person-to-person contact. Harmonious race relations may need the legislative framework that is implied by race relations Acts and immigrant rules, but its seeds of succeess will spring only from person-to-person contact. Where hostility is expressed by white people, it is those who have the experience of a valued friendship with a coloured family who can do more to dispel the position than any legislative process.

I recognise that what I have outlined may well not be peculiar to Bradford and that the Government-sponsored link scheme is probably doing much more good than any legislation. I hope that this will continue. For central Government—any central Government—are suspect among Pakistanis; after all, their experience in their own country is not calculated to encourage otherwise. It is greatly to be desired that those in authority will underline, both in season and out of season, their commitment to a multiracial society, or else we shall be in trouble.

I have spoken much about the Asians, not only because I know so many of them but also because it is upon them that the provisions of the White Paper would fall most heavily. I shall not rehearse debating points, but I shall make two observations of fact. Nearly all the Pakistanis I know are Moslems. That does not mean to say that they all have the same ideas, or that they all have the same view of arranged marriages. Some of them are of Kenyan or Ugandan Asian descent and their attitude may well vary from those who come from a large city like Karachi or, indeed, from those—and this is true of most of them—who come from a remote rural province in Pakistan. In any case, Moslems themselves differ. It is not only the Christians who have sects; there are nearly as many Islam sects as Geoffrey Boycott has scored centuries.

We are told that the practice of allowing husbands and fiancés into this country has been abused. I still find this very vague. In Bradford we find that the average length of time before an application by a husband or fiancé to emigrate here is granted is as follows: from India it takes at least two years; from Pakistan it takes two and a half years, and from Bangladesh it takes three years. I find what is going on in the British High Commissions odd, if there is no sorting out in that period. As this legislation is not intended—praise be—to be retrospective and as the numbers involved are so few, it appears that The Times newspaper was right to say what the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, did not say, and to use the mixed metaphor that the restriction was a smoke-screen to crack a nut.

Be that as it may, I would only make the inference that, although general legislation may be necessary to provide the framework for harmonious race relations, a Government do ill to make legislation too particular. They do ill because it infringes on the legitimate cultural freedom of other races—those cultural ways of life which are not understood by a superficial reading. They do ill when the imposition of a particular restriction is the thin end of an intolerable wedge. The appeasement of potential racialism can well lead to the particular restrictions of the thick edge found in certain repressive régimes. In Soviet Russia, for example, we see the reverse: husbands forbidden to emigrate to join their wives or fiancées elsewhere. When we read that we do not stop to inquire whether such desired unions are arranged or are unions of romantic love. We, rightly, give the prohibition a blanket disapproval—all of us would.

I have spoken of what is happening where I live. In doing so, I have quite probably painted too rosy a picture. After seven years, I believe that notwithstanding the efforts that have been made, we are in a greater state of explosive danger than we were. This is not because numbers have increased, but because we are now in a state where many of those of immigrant stock are of the third generation. They know no other country but ours, which is also theirs. They need encouragement to believe that in it they are not regarded as second-class citizens. Whether or not these rules become the rule, the effect in their minds has been to make most of the Asians I know believe that they are second-class citizens. That can be righted. I wonder to what extent the Government make sufficient use of consultation with those, whether white or coloured, men and women of great calibre who devote their lives, their thoughts and their efforts to understanding the situation as it really is at a level where lives are really lived.

I should like to repeat two points. First, at the risk of being monotonous, harmonious race relations only spring organically from person-to-person contact. That may seem simplistic, yet even in so great an area of concern, it is a powerful lever which in the end operates to influence the whole. For when there is such contact men and women are judged, not on their colour or on their culture, but on their worth as human beings. That is the judgment we should all be free to make. Secondly, a Government—any Government—have a duty to create and to foster conditions in which incipient goodwill may be released. They do that first by making their commitment crystal clear.

My Lords, it is a very real pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate, who made a magnificent and, I believe, non-controversial maiden speech. It was non-controversial because virtually everything that the right reverend Prelate said was right. I hope that we shall not have to wait another four years before we hear him speak, and certainly not another four years on this subject.

I should like to declare an interest in this debate, for I am vice-president of the Gravesend Community Relations Council; my wife is the chairman of that council. Together with Sir Peter Kirk, the former Conservative Member of Parliament, whose attitudes on race relations were impeccable, and Jack Barnett, the Liberal candidate, we were responsible for setting up the first community relations council in Gravesend in the early 1960s.The Council has had its difficulties, but I believe that in Gravesend we have as good, if not better, race relations and racial harmony than anywhere else in the country. I think the introduction of these new rules sets race relations back. It makes me sad to see the Government doing it. They are falling into the trap of bowing to the bar-room gossips, and to the talk of "swamping", and I think they are going to do race relations in this country a great deal of harm.

My noble friend Lady Birk on the Front Bench said that she was glad to see that the Conservative Government had dropped the quota and the register. I do not think that they have done that absolutely out of the goodness of their hearts. My view is that it is too expensive at the present time for them to do it. That is the problem they face. Every time there is a nibble away on race relations, or curbs on immigration, the same people come back again and again "We want another piece. We want another piece". This Government are wrong, and I am sad that they have fallen for it.

In virtually every speech I make in this House I produce something from the Conservative Manifesto. So far, in all the legislation that this Government have introduced, in all of their views—notwithstanding the fact that they tell me that my party is the party of restriction—they are moving and restricting in every area, whether it be trade unionists or British citizens living in this country who do not happen to have the same colour of skin as most of the rest of us. They have the audacity in that Manifesto to talk about the rights of people legally settled here and say that we are all equal before the law, and then on the following page we come to, "Helping the family". That really is cant and hypocrisy. What families are they helping? Are they helping the families of migrants settled here, and settled here for many years, by restricting the rights of their parents or grandparents to come and spend the remaining years of their lives with them without any cost to the state?

People who are speaking against this are not a bunch of Left-Wing "nutters" and do-gooders. Let us have a look at some of the criticisms levelled against the immigration rules.

"Wholly illegal and quite unnecessarily restrictive … Should be opposed by anyone with any sense of decency and fairness",

said the Financial Times.

"Tainted by discrimination … Insensitive to long-held cultural traditions … Contrary to the whole intention of the Race Relations Act",

said the Commission for Racial Equality.

"A shabby ploy … A nightmare apparatus riddled with absurdities",

said the Evening News.

"Throughout all of it, it must be apparent that the Government's only purpose is to remove a right at present enjoyed by black women settled here. This would clearly be discriminatory. If the rules as laid before Parliament are of this character, we shall oppose them vigorously",

said the Bishop of Truro, Chairman of the Church of England Board of Social Responsibility.

"Two different definitions of the family running through the White Paper … For non-EEC nationals the proposals impose further harsh restrictions on almost every category of dependant",

said the Catholic Commission for Racial Justice. This is the level of the criticism now arising.

What is it that the Tory Party have suddenly found against arranged marriages? What worries the Sikh community, the people I know in Gravesend, is that they are now being told by the Conservative Government that arranged marriages are just a ploy to get past the laws on immigration. We cannot get any figures. Where are the figures? On Wednesday, 14th November, when the Immigration Rules were being introduced, the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, said at column 1272:

"It is for that reason, and because we are certain that many of these partnerships are arranged to the detriment of girls living in this country, that we felt it right to make the Statement to your Lordships today".

Where are the figures? We have not had a figure. We already have rules that deal with abuses of arranged marriages that are marriages of convenience.

Where are the figures? The Government were pressed in the Commons. They have been pressed by everybody. Where are the figures that say that this is being abused, that people are flooding in, that we are being swamped by men coming to marry women in this country? Mrs. Thatcher uses these words like "swamped", and we do not even know the number of people that this is going to affect. Is it 2,000? Is it the 3,000 that Mr. Merlyn Rees, the former Home Secretary, suggests, or the 3,000 to 4,000 suggested by the present Government? We have not had a figure to substantiate any of it. This is what people are concerned about—people have lived in this country, worked in this country, paid their taxes and been allowed to vote and have all the rights of a citizen, and now there is this implied criticism of the whole of their cultural and religious beliefs on the question of arranged marriages.

The Sikh community, which is the ethnic minority I know more about than any other, cherishes the honour of its families and the integrity of their marriages. I suggest that the divorce rate within the Sikh community, or within groups that have arranged marriages, is a little lower than the divorce rate of the indigenous people in this country. They are very concerned about it, and so are many more people.

The custom of arranged marriages is dying out, but is it for us as a people to say to these people, "You have got to abolish a custom that you have had for hundreds of years and that is part of your culture and your religion, because we think you are using that to abuse the immigration laws"? It is not for us to say that. We cannot act as God in these matters. It is for the people to decide that in those ethnic groups. Our society in Britain is always priding itself that it has the sense and thought of family. But there are large numbers of old people's homes in this country and people like to get their old people into them, and families like to get rid of old mothers and fathers because they are a bit of a nuisance. In ethnic minorities—at least among the Sikhs I know—they do not want to do that. They want to care for their old people. They want their old people to have a decent standard of living, which many of them have not had during their years in the Indian sub-continent.

They have strong and durable family relationships, and you cannot judge them by the standards that the Government are trying to apply. How can you regard parents or grandparents who are over 65 as primary immigrants? How can you believe that this is a new generation of primary immigrants coming over here and going to set up huge families? It is unbelievable, but it is the view that the Government are taking. How can they say, "If you have a relative in the country of origin, go and stay with them"? What sort of relative? A cousin twice removed? A sister? Perhaps a brother who is even older than you are? What relative?

Let me come back to my noble friend's point about Catch 22—the substantially lower standard of living. Which person from the High Commisson is going to go to the farms in the Punjab and examine how many acres of land a person has, or to see whether they are just tilling a small plot of land which they have themselves? It disturbs me, because this country prides itself on the question of family.

A statement was recently made after the Tory Manifesto was published at the end of April this year. It was not a statement issued by a bunch of Left-Wing "nutters", although some people might think they are, but I do not. In that statement it said that

"existing legislation already strikes at the root of the family life of our coloured brethren—demand for further legislation can only in the end degrade the society which requires and enacts it even more than it does its victims",

and that

"Christians in our country have all too often taken refuge in pious platitudes and plausible evasions; their commitment to the proclamation of the Gospel as it affects immigration and race relations has all too often been secondary to their political affiliations. We therefore urge Christians, and all men or goodwill, to support the endeavours of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and other organisations seeking to oppose and mitigate the cruel consequences of such un-Christian and inhuman legislation".

That was signed by the Bishops of Birmingham, Bristol, Chelmsford, Litchfield and Liverpool, by the Archbishop of Mauritius, by the Bishops of Rippon and Saint Albans, by the Assistant Bishop of London, by the Bishops of Lewes, Sherbourne and Stepney and by various other Church dignitaries. I believe that is a damning condemnation of this Government's attitude and policies. I conclude with a quotation:

"A law which is pointless, harmless, divisive and directed against a specific section of society is inherently repulsive and cannot deserve to find a place on the statute book of a free society".

That was said over 200 years ago by Edmund Burke. It was true then. It is true now.

My Lords,I do not believe anyone can approach this subject without considering with great gravity the consequences and effects of everything one says. Nor do I believe that anyone disputes for a moment—as the right reverend Prelate said in a most distinguished maiden speech—that it was the size of the primary immigration in the 1950s and up to 1962 that did affect British society, did cause concern at the effect on the social conditions in our overcrowded island, and did create anxiety on the consequences to housing, education and social security.

It was obvious by 1962 that there was need to have control. But I recollect in another place the fierce opposition from Members of the Labour and Liberal Parties at the thought of any control whatever on immigration into the United Kingdom. I remember the then Leader of the Opposition, Hugh Gaitskell—which was unusual for a Leader of the Opposition—going so far as leading in the Committee stage of the Bill on the Floor of the House, so passionately and deeply and most genuinely, did he believe in the wickedness of the Bill which my noble friend Lord Butler of Saffron Walden was then introducing.

That was the genuine feeling at that time, but it was undoubtedly the ordinary feeling of most people that there had to be some control; and if there has to be control then there has to be some regulation. I believe that the core of this problem rests in the absence of any separate citizenship, a matter which was referred to in the speech of my noble friend Lord Belstead; it is the absence of any separate citizenship which has really created the problems for this country, for the citizen of the United Kingdom is a person unknown to United Kingdom law.

Since 1914, legislation of the United Kingdom dealing with nationality was based on the concept of a common British nationality of all subjects of the Crown throughout the Commonwealth and Empire, and it had grown from and was perpetuated by the common law doctrine of allegiance to the Sovereign. But by 1948 there had emerged the independent countries of the Commonwealth, and the British Nationality Act 1948 gave effect to the principle that each self-governing country in the Commonwealth—and oddly, considering the Statement we heard today, that included Southern Rhodesia at that time—should by its own legislation determine who are its citizens. Thus, after 1948 the status of a British subject was derivative because it was acquired only through the possession of local status citizenship.

But with the progress to independence of so many nations, there developed the practice of nations within the Commonwealth becoming republics, with the Sovereign merely head of the Commonwealth, and therefore the basic concept of nationality based upon allegiance to the Sovereign faded away. But there remained, and still remains—all of us here in this House know—the status of "Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies"; and that is an unreal situation. It is an unreal situation if it really could afford, as it would unless controls were imposed, legal right to millions—some people put it at 600 million and others put it as high as 950 million—to come and reside in this over-populated island. Therefore, the imposition of some control, having regard to the British Nationality Act 1948, was essential, but of course once you impose control then inevitably you get incidents of evasion.

My Lords, may I ask the noble and learned Lord to tell me how he arrives at the figure of 600 million or 900 million?

My Lords, at that time I believe those were the figures suggested. The figure was put at two different scales.

If the noble and learned Lord is talking about 1962, my Lords, then that could not have been so even then because India and Pakistan were already independent.

But they still had the right of entry, my Lords, and that is what I have been trying to explain. We have a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies—

But they were not colonies.

and citizenship was derived from the status given by the independent nation. That was the position at that time and therefore, as I said, control had to be imposed, and then we got, and obviously got, evasion. The evasion over the years—this is accepted and I do not think anyone would dispute it—has on occasions been organised, elaborate and ingenious. It was not the immigrants who were getting money out of it but those people who were organising it, and finance of a very considerable extent has been involved, with secret routes established in this human traffic, people being passed from country to country; the smuggling in of people.

That was an incident of the immediate past and with it went the alternatives of disguise, trickery and impersonation. As usual, therefore, once you have the imposing of control, the lot of the legitimate immigrant is necessarily affected by the need for preventive measures to thwart the illegitimate cheat. And it seems to me from the impression I have gained over the past 15 years that there is constant and massive pressure. That is a fact, and it was for that reason that the present Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Callaghan, introduced his measures in 1969; and they were dealing, as he said, with only about 2,000 people, but he thought it necessary to deal with them, and so he introduced his measures. And it was necessary to introduce the measures of 1971 and the rules of 1973, because to permit evasion is unacceptable to all people residing in the United Kingdom and is unfair to legitimate immigrants.

The fact that these new rules, as I understand them, affect only some 3,000 to 4,000 people per annum is, in my submission, just as necessary as it was when Mr. Callaghan introduced his measures in 1969. And in regard to what Lord Belstead said—that there is no doubt that marriage is used as a method of obtaining entry, and he quoted the figure of 200, in 1973, up to nearly 6,000, in October 1979, of husbands and fiancés in sub-continent queues—if that is so, then it is right for an Administration to make sure that that evasion is stopped.

I want to turn to the suggestion that these new rules are a breach of our international obligations—and I suppose that that is particularly referring to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to the guarantee of the right to marry and the guarantee of the respecting of family life. The question arises as to whether as a consequence a person ought to be regarded as being entitled as of right to come to the United Kingdom, whenever he or she wishes to marry a person already here. I believe that in looking at this matter one has to look at the whole background. There is no right under the convention, nor under the jurisprudence, to enter, or remain in, another country. The jurisprudence does not confer that right. There is the Fourth Protocol, but to that the United Kingdom is not a party. Certainly this has not been considered by the Court. The Commission has published decisions in individual cases on Article 8 in respect of obstacles to enjoying family life in another country. But the right to respect for family life does not, in itself, carry with it a right to enter, or to reside in, a particular country. With a background of no right to enter it is very far from obvious—though I have read, and it has been said, that there has been here quite clearly a breach of the European Convention—that to keep out fiancés could be a breach of Article 8.

I was the counsel for the Government in the case of the East African Asians, which arose out of the independence in Uganda, or East Africa. The Commission's opinion there has never been published, so we are left with the position that it was not endorsed by the Committee of Ministers, which has the function to make the actual decisions. The Commission's report therefore is the result of its fact-finding role, its expression of its opinion; and the Ministers certainly made no actual decision.

There is no obligation on a State to enable a person to marry, and recent opinions at Strasbourg say that it is no breach of the convention if in particular circumstances a person has to leave the country in order to marry the person of his choice. The Belgian languages case, which is the case on which much of the jurisprudence is founded, says that even the right to respect family life can be disregarded if there is reasonable justification. So in my view the position certainly is not clear, and if fresh complaint is made about these rules there is a very substantial argument. I doubt whether it was ever conceived that the effect of the convention is to give a right which would override the powers of control over immigration. The United Kingdom has always been in a very special position. It was probably because of that, your Lordships may think, that the Committee of Ministers made no decision in the East African Asians case. The United Kingdom, in the aftermath of Empire, must be unique in its situation, and it faces a problem which was never faced by any other country.

As I understand the new rules, they are specifically designed to counter a racket admittedly only in a limited way. As I understand it, the refusal is to be based upon circumstances where the marriage was entered into primarily to secure admission to the United Kingdom, or where the parties have not met. In the circumstances of the existence of schemes of evasion, are the proposals so unreasonable, and do they merit some of the violent criticism that has been levelled against them?

But the core of the problem remains that out of which all our troubles grow: the imperative need for fresh legislation on nationality—to rationalise the status of British citizenship, and to return to the principle of allegiance to the Sovereign—based upon descent, birth place and residence. It will be difficult and complex, and I accept that it may cause repercussions in international jurisprudence. But it must be done, it has to be done—and I am glad to hear the Minister say that the White Paper will be presented next year—because we must remove from the shoulders of the British people this impossible burden which gets us into these wretched conditions when we have to make rules and regulations. They are of course makeshift rules, which cannot be wholly satisfactory, but they have to be practical and defensible. I wonder whether they really merit the criticisms which we have heard lodged today and which one has read about. I accept the most honourable of motives on the part of those who rightly feel passionately about these matters, who believe in the exercise of compassion, and in all the great principles of all the great religions, but are they not overlooking the weighty responsibility—and I believe it is very weighty—of those in authority, on whose shoulders rests the care and the order of our modern, but volatile society?

My Lords, a few months ago I had the privilege of chairing the annual conference of Asian women. They were a most impressive group. In the main they were intelligent, sophisticated, enviably elegant, and, as they made clear, determined to keep their loyalty both to their own culture and to this country, to which, in statement after statement, it became very clear they had great attachment, and for which they had the very greatest respect. They had of course understandably been shaken by the virginity testing episodes—and who can blame them? But women such as those are the best possible agents for good race relations in this country. They have contacts with groups of people—young and old, newly come to this country and long established here—who, with the best will in the world, those of us here cannot reach, or who, if we do reach, we do so in a way quite different from the way of these women, who were working in their own localities and on behalf not only of their own community, but also this country, which they saw as their country of adoption. Their work, and their view of us, is surely of the greatest importance in the maintenance of race relations.

What can these women think today, faced with these proposals? And what are they to say to the critics whom they meet in their ordinary family and social life, when these new proposals are put in front of them? How can they defend their country of adoption when they see these proposed regulations put forward and they see them interpreted, as they inevitably are, by the many critics in this country and the very many critics in their own community? There is no question about it—these regulations are sexist, as the Home Secretary himself admitted, though he defended it. But he did not deny that they were sexist. But from the point of view both of these Asian women and of race relations in this county, the fact that the regulations have been improved in regard to white women makes it all the more offensive to Asian women, for the attack now is focused not on women as a whole—and we could moan about that together—but only on coloured women. So the sexist element which remains is made worse and it is seen as a greater offence by the Asian women against whom it is inevitably directed.

It is very difficult to understand why the Government are doing this. The numbers concerned are agreed by all to be small. Fair enough, it is some increase in immigration; but the total numbers coming in are really negligible in relation to the population as a whole. For that matter, there cannot be such a large number of young marriageable Asian women who are prepared to take on these chaps who want to come here. After all, there is plenty of opportunity for other people in this country. It must be a limited market; there must be limited opportunities and limited numbers. How can the decent men who make up the Government have agreed to a proposition of this kind? How can the Conservative Party, in the light of its own beliefs, of its own better beliefs, really go along with this kind of proposition? The Conservative Party believes that the individual is important, and it believes in individual rights. What individual right can be more important than the individual right to choose your marriage partner in whatever way you will?

It seems extraordinarily insular to take the line that there is something totally inappropriate about the arranged marriage, and that it is a mark of degradation that you are prepared to marry someone you have not seen. It would not suit most of us, but it is, as has been said by other speakers, the established tradition for many of the people for whom we are concerned. What right have we to say that in this most personal of all relationships they should not be allowed to follow the culture of their long-established tradition? Among my own students, educated in this country, I have had girls who have gone back, and apparently gone back happily and subsequently satisfactorily, to arranged marriages. It seems odd to us, but we seem very odd to them. Surely this is a matter which should be left to them.

Then, as other speakers have said, there is the question of family life. I believe the Conservative Party genuinely believes in the importance of family life, but there are the extraordinary requirements for bringing in old people to be looked after by their relations here. Here again is an area in which it is not too difficult to say that the standards of the immigrants are higher than the standards, in many ways, of the native population. Among the many overseas students whom I have had the pleasure to teach, as they got to know one better they would sometimes say—and I have had this happen on a number of occasions—that there were many things about this country which they liked and respected, but one thing they neither liked nor respected, nor had any intention of copying, was the way in which we treat our old people. For them not to bring their old people in, not to look after them, to see that by regulation of government they are to be kept out—this is something which will inevitably sour and embitter their view of us and add to the contempt which some of them already feel.

It cannot be that the Conservative Government have fallen for that evil doctrine of the domination of the mandate; that there is the mandate of the manifesto; that because there was an unwise line in the manifesto referring to this matter they feel, as their predecessors (to the point almost of dementia) felt, that every comma which was written into the manifesto had to be turned into legislation. Surely the Conservative Party has not caught that disease from the Labour Party. No, one fears that they are doing it to placate the nastiest and most extremist elements in their own ranks—and what on earth are they doing it for? I have never been a member of the Conservative Party, but I do not believe that most of them are nasty. In any case, why do they have to bribe them? Where will these nasty people go? Thank God!, the last election showed that the Fascist party, the only proper home for them, has no real support in this country. They would not go to the Labour Party and we would not have them if they wanted to come. It can then be only as a bribe to the more vociferous elements of their constituency parties. One sympathises; one has met them; but they are surely a small proportion of the total whole.

It has been suggested—rightly, I think—that what we are urgently needing is a new Nationality Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Belstead, has said that a new Nationality Bill is in preparation. Would it not he more logical to wait until we have this new Nationality Bill and to look at the question which is being discussed in relation to these regulations in the light of that legislation? The new Nationality Bill makes a wider approach to the whole issue. This is one little bit of the issues which will be affected by that Bill. Surely that would be more sensible. Surely every party, every person, takes false steps from time to time. This Bill, from the way it has been viewed in the responsible Press, by the Churches and by members of all political parties, including the Conservative Party, is a mistake. The Government would give themselves credit in the country, except for among a small number of people who really need not be taken too seriously, if they would now withdraw this Bill, drop these shabby proposals, and say that a Nationality Bill is due to come before us soon and that the whole issue will then be considered together.

My Lords, first I should like to add my congratulations to those expressed to the right reverend Prelate for his eloquent and moving speech, which underlined the moral values which the law should exist to cherish and support. I shall be following the right reverend Prelate by passing to the law and leaving to others of your Lordships the political, the social and the human questions to which this debate necessarily gives rise. I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for initiating this debate. I think he has performed a public service, and is enabling this House to do that which it must from time to time do; namely, discuss in a rational and calm way issues that go to the very heart of our society.

In my speech, I shall concentrate solely on one part of the noble Lord's Motion—that is, the question of the compatibility of these proposed rules with our international obligations—but before I do so I should like, as a lawyer and as an old law reformer, to applaud the action of the Government in laying before the two Houses of Parliament and the public a White Paper containing draft proposals. I think this is the correct way for a Government to go about law reform, or indeed the creation of new rules, in relation to a subject as sensitive as this; and I, for one, am conscious that the Home Secretary in another place and the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, in this House have said that they will pay particular attention to what emerges from our debate. I hope also, of course, they will pay very great attention to the organs of public opinion outside our two Houses, from which the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Gravesend, quoted so powerfully in the course of his speech.

I ask myself only one question. Are these proposed rules, or some of them, incompatible with our international obligations? If they are, or if there is a real risk that they are, then it is the duty of those of us in this House who take that view to say so, and to say so now before the Government take the final step of laying them before Parliament. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Rawlinson, said that this was a very serious debate. So it is, my Lords. Just for the short span of our discussion, this House, I would suggest, is the guardian and sentinel of the honour of our people. I think it is as high as that when one is considering the international obligations side of the matter. Of course, when the debate is over, that responsibility will pass to Her Majesty's Government who will have the opportunity which they have so wisely given themselves of reconsidering these rules in the light of all that has been said.

What are our international obligations? In the space of a short speech, one cannot conceivably cover them at all comprehensively. I am going to quote some of them and, as I do, I will ask noble Lords to bear in mind what is to be found in the proposed rules and to keep on asking themselves this question: Really, do these rules stand up to those internationally accepted obligations? Let me begin with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passed almost on today's anniversary in 1948, passed by the General Assembly on 10th December 1948, with not a single vote cast against it. All that I am going to do is to quote the Preamble from the Declaration. I ask noble Lords to have in mind, as I read this most solemn Preamble, what it is proposed that we should do in regard to certain families. Of course, it will be said by the quibbling lawyer that this is not an international obligation. No, my Lords, it is an international moral obligation; but none the worse for that, as the right reverent Prelate in his speech has reminded us. These words appear in the Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

"… recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family"—

I repeat: all members of the human family—

"is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace…".

I ask rhetorically: Are your Lordships satisfied that all of these proposed rules are consistent with recognition of the dignity and equal rights of all members of the human families? What about those poor little au pair girls? What about those aged parents and grandparents?

I pass from the Universal Declaration because it is binding in honour only—but, as I say, none the worse for that—and I come to the more specific obligations that we have accepted under the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Again, because the European Convention has been bandied about in argument in the other place, in this House and in the Press, let me read to your Lordships the very first article. This is an instrument which, in almost all its provisions, has been ratified by the United Kingdom:

"The High Contracting Parties"

and that includes the United Kingdom—

"shall secure to everyone within their jurisdiction"

I repeat; to everyone within their jurisdiction—

"the rights and freedoms defined in Section 1 of this Convention".

I will come to those in a moment.

In the course of his very able speech, if he will allow me to say so, the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, kept speaking about men, these wicked men, who are seeking to avoid the prohibition against primary immigration—and I say nothing as to the wisdom or otherwise of that because that is not my province—in the sub-continent of India and elsewhere. What we are discussing as a matter of law is not the right of those who are not yet here, even though their moral case is strong and powerful, as noble Lords have shown. We are discussing the rights that we must, by our international obligations, accord to persons within the jurisdiction. Take the case of the husband of the arranged marriage who wishes to come here. The right that we must preserve as a matter of law is the right of his wife who is settled here to have him with her; just as the man, if settled here, can have his wife here, even though the marriage be arranged. That is why there is an element of sex discrimination in that particular rule.

Concentrate your attention, my Lords, on the woman who is here; and then bear in mind Articles 8 and 14 of the convention. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Rawlinson, rather pooh-poohed Article 8. Let me read it; and again bear in mind those rules, those proposed rules, that we are discussing:

"Everyone has the right"

that is, everyone within this jurisdiction; that is women who have settled here, whether they were born here or not—

"to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence".

The woman who cannot have her husband join her in this country, is she really enjoying a right of respect for her private and family life? I have not heard it suggested, and neither do I think for one moment that anyone will suggest, that the exception clause in Article 8 can conceivably apply. There is no evidence of emergency, and, as I followed the speeches of noble Lords, no evidence of any great rush of this type of immigrant.

There is the fear of primary immigration. Whether the evidence supports that fear, I do not know. I have not heard it and I make no further comments than that because I am not here to argue a case against the control of immigration; I am merely arguing the case that some of these proposals, though designed for that purpose, are offending or infringing upon international obligations. If one therefore disregards, as I suggest one can in the circumstances in which we are placed, the exceptions clause, paragraph 2 of the article is important:

"There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right"

That is the right to respect for private and family life.

It does not end there. There is also Article 14. That article is particularly relevant. That is the article which provides:

"The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Convention shall be secured without discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status".

Again, if it be true—and it seems to me to be inescapable—that this particular rule that I am considering at the moment, which prevents a woman settled here from being joined with her husband, is limited only to certain women in our country but does not apply to others, how can one in an international court—and there is one at Strasbourg—avoid the charge of infringing Article 14? How can one avoid the charge that this woman, unlike other women within the jurisdiction, is not having the respect for her private and family life which should be given her under the convention? It is, I say with respect, a powerful case. It may or may not be right. But is it sound that we should run the risk of allowing that issue to find its way ultimately and in a most degrading fashion through the European Commission and up to the European Court years later, where again the United Kingdom, with a red face, is found to be guilty of an infringement of the Convention? It should be avoided in the interests of the honour of our country, if for no other reason.

There is another very unpleasant possibility—I put it no higher than that. It is possible of course for a contracting party to derogate in certain circumstances from the obligations that it has assumed under the convention. It is possible also in certain circumstances that some of the exception clauses contained in the convention will apply so that a country is for certain periods excused from complying with its obligations. But there are certain articles in the convention so fundamental that they contain no exception clauses qualifying them, and it is not possible to derogate from them. Article 3 is such an article. Article 3, among other things, provides that no one shall be subjected to degrading treatment. I do not know, and it will be foolhardy for me to suggest, that this will happen; but it may happen. It may happen one day, if these rules stand, that the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg will say that to have a rule which makes it impossible for the husband of an arranged marriage to join his wife in this country, she being settled here, is degrading treatment when it is done merely upon the ground that the marriage is an arranged one and they have not met.

I understand why the relevant rule prohibits settlement where it is proved to the satisfaction of the immigration officer, or he has reason to believe, that the marriage is a marriage of convenience entered into for the purposes of getting into this country. That is perfectly sound, I have no complaints about that. I understand the rule which makes provision that if he does not intend to live with her he should not be allowed to come in. But what of a blanket provision where there is an arranged marriage and the parties have never met? Why should we assume, in the absence of evidence, that that is a mala fide marriage? Noble Lords have already explained the importance of honouring and respecting the social customs and practices of ethnic minorities in our midst. All of us know that the arranged marriage has been a feature of society—and of a very civilised society—in the Indian sub-continent. To impose a rule such as this is surely a very degrading treatment of those people who come from such a civilisation, whose custom it is to have arranged marriages between parties who have not met, and of whom there is no evidence that they are doing it for some mala fide or illegitimate purpose. If it should ever happen that the European Court takes that view of this particular rule, I suggest it will be a very serious day indeed for this country. I put it no higher than this: here is a risk which surely the Government can avoid without undermining their determination in the slightest degree to prohibit or control primary immigration.

May I take just one further instance—I have already gone over my time and I apologise. But there is in these rules a nasty little paragraph about au pair girls. Why should au pair girls be limited to those between 17 and 25 years of age, coming from Western European countries and, I think it is, from Malta, Cyprus and Turkey? They come to learn English; they come to live with an English family. What business have we to say that we will have none from other countries? This is surely a discrimination on the grounds of national origin which is utterly unacceptable, bearing in mind the nature of our international obligations to which I have drawn attention. And what part does this play in the battle against primary immigration?

I could—and indeed I did intend to—go on for very much longer, but I must draw to a close. This House has a proud record of standing up for the honour, international and national, of our country and for the fundamental human rights of our people. It is only a few days ago since this House gave a Third Reading to the Bill of Rights Bill. What was that Bill doing? It was seeking to incorporate into our law the relevant parts of the European Convention. I hope I have said enough to indicate that there is ground to believe that many of these rules are in contravention of obligations assumed under this convention. What are we doing, sending to another place a Bill incorporating the European Convention and allowing these proposals to go by without public and emphatic protest?

I am sorry that, owing to an inescapable engagement, I shall be unable to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, has to say in reply. I do not ask him to enter into a legal controversy with me. My object in making these few remarks is not to create difficulties for the Government in their immigration policy—that is a matter for them, not for me. My object is simply to urge them to use the opportunity they still have of reconsidering those rules which are not necessary for their purpose, but which put us at international risk and could in certain circumstances display us dishonoured before the world.

My Lords, may I say how honoured I am to be following the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, and how grateful I am sure we all are for his clear exposition of the legal position. I, like him, would like to congratulate the Government for producing the White Paper before bringing out the final rules, and thus giving a chance to see if we can prevent them making bad errors. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for giving us the opportunity to have this debate, and, also, I should like to congratulate and to thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bradford for his very positive contribution to this debate. I hope he will give us many more opportunities like this to listen to him, although I hope it will not be on this subject.

I want to begin my speech this evening by indicating how these rules would, and could, have affected me. I was born in Grenada; my wife was born in Trinidad; my two older children were born in Trinidad and my younger daughter was born here. I should have said that I have two daughters and a son. I am now 66 years old. I have spent 32 years in London and five in Edinburgh, so that more than half my life has been spent in this country. My older childen came here when they were four and three and, as I have said, my younger daughter was born in London. My elder daughter was, in fact, working at Barts up to the beginning of 1975. In December 1975 she married a Trinidadian and is now living in Trinidad. In 1975 if she had desired to come and live here with her husband, she could have done so under the rules existing at the time. Now, of course, she would not be able to do that under the present rules.

I am not suggesting that either my daughter or my son-in-law would want to come and settle here—I do not think they would—but these rules are depriving her of certain rights which she previously had. What is more, if I had been born in Martinique or Guadeloupe instead of in Trinidad, she would have been able to come here with her husband, and settle. What is more, since her primary medical qualification is in Edinburgh, she could, if she wished, go to live in France and take her husband with her. Yet she could not do it in this country, where she has lived from the time she was four years old!

I am sure that I am not singular in this. There are a lot of people who will be in this position and they are not all black. My noble friend from the Front Bench mentioned the refugees who came here to escape from Hitler's Germany. I am sure that some of those who came here in 1936, 1937 or 1939 had small children with them who were born in Germany and who are now British citizens, as I and my children are. The funny thing about it is that those children, were they to marry Austrians, could not bring them here, but they could take them to Germany—the Germany their parents escaped from in 1936, 1937 and 1939.

I hope the Government will give more thought to this problem. I did in fact tell my noble friend Lord Belstead, if I may so call him, that he should tell his noble friend there is no point in doing what I described as closing the supermarket in order to stop shoplifting. If there are in fact people abusing the rules, let us find ways and means of dealing with them. I would have thought it is possible to have discussions with the leaders of the Communities from it which is alleged that people are coming and abusing the rules, to find ways and means of dealing with the abuses. Certainly this blanket provision, in order to deal with an abuse, is a wrong way of approaching this matter.

The second way in which these rules could have affected me concerns my late mother. Between 1958 and 1960 she lived with me. In 1960 she told me she was happier in Grenada and had more friends there and that she wanted to go back. I understood that, and she went back to Grenada and died in 1975. When my mother came there was no problem, but had she wanted to come to me now she could not possibly have done so under these rules. After all, she had a sister still living in Grenada and a large number of nephews and nieces, and not by the wildest stretch of imagination could we have said that her standard of living was lower than the average of the people of Grenada. Therefore, she could not qualify under these rules.

I know that the Government have promised to look at this. There is no need for anything more than for somebody who is bringing an aged relation to be able to show that he or she can support and accommodate that relation. What more do you want? I hope that the Government, having given us an opportunity of advising them, will take our advice and abandon this attempt to restrict the rights of women to have their husbands with them, and relax these rigid controls on aged relations.

I hope that they will also amend the rules in a few other ways. There are a few which I hope the Government will look at. One of them is a pet of mine, because it is one which I have tried to get previous Governments to change but without success. It is related to the fact that in order to get a child here you must have sole responsibility for it. I previously asked friends of mine, when they were responsible, merely to change the word "sole" to "main". I never succeeded. I hope that this Government will see the wisdom of doing that. What happens under this rule is that, so long as the father is giving a shilling or two to the child, the mother—and it is usually the mother who is working here and sending money to support the child, who is living with her grandmother—does not have sole responsibility for that child and, therefore, she cannot have that child with her. I have had lots of cases like that. I even had an interesting one in which a man had been made to pay through the court. I was told that because he was maintaining the child there was no question of the mother—she was not his wife—having sole responsibility, and therefore she could not have the child. These absurdities could be removed by changing that word, because it is the interpretation of "sole responsibility" that causes all the trouble.

I am also disturbed about the double standard in relation to the family. Why cannot the rules be the same for members of the EEC as for non-members of the EEC? Why cannot families from non-EEC countries have the same rights as families from EEC countries to have their dependants up to the age of 21? What is so difficult about that? I intended to make a few comments about students, but they have been made by other people and I do not intend to repeat them, except that I should like to make two points.

First, I should like to ask whether the rule which prohibits working after studies will apply to nurses. If it does, it will play havoc with the National Health Service. Secondly, I find it difficult to understand about sponsored students. When I studied medicine, I was sponsored and I obtained a scholarship. But if, after qualification, I now wanted to take the MD, and I wanted to do it privately, then I could not. Under these rules, I must go back home. I hope that the Government will look at this in a practical way.

I meant to say something about au pairs, but the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, has said it so much better that I shall not bother. However, I am disturbed about paragraph 79, which permits an immigration officer to detain someone for up to seven days without even telling him that he can apply for bail, and it is only after seven days that he is obliged to state that one can ask for an adjudicator.

My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to interrupt? Even under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, it has now been agreed that persons can have access to a solicitor after three days.

But not if someone is coming in. What is the defence for such an attitude? Having dealt with that point, I want to make a comment on the general attitude of immigration officers. Your Lordships will know that last year I chaired a commission which was investigating the Bermuda riots of December 1977. There were four members of the Commission from Bermuda, and three of them were black. One of the conditions that I made on accepting the appointment was that the report would be written in this country. I had my reasons and they were very firm ones. When the commission was told that, one of the members said, "Is that essential? I hate going into that place. The immigration officers always treat me badly".

Since that man is a business man and comes to this country only to do business which helps Britain's export trade, I was flabbergasted to think that he could be having such problems. The rules state quite clearly that the examination should not be carried further than is necessary for the purpose of deciding whether leave to enter should be given for a limited period, subject to any conditions. I cannot see why anyone coming here to do business should have difficulties, and I hope that my noble friend the Minister will ask his right honourable friend to give a general pep-talk to the immigration officers, because, when all is said and done, people get their first impression of this country from the attitude which immigration officers adopt towards them. If immigration officers adopt hostile attitudes toward them, then that is bound to affect them.

That is all I want to say about the immigration rules, but I want to invite your Lordships to ask yourselves how we find ourselves in this position. It is important that we should do this now. That is why I said to the right reverend Prelate that, although I hoped we should hear many speeches from him, I trusted that they would not be on this subject because I want this debate to be the last one. We got ourselves into this mess because of our attitude to immigration. During the war, lots of men came from the black Commonwealth to serve in the forces, while others came to work in the factories. At the end of the war, many of the chaps in the forces took their demob here, and those who worked in the factories stayed. At that time we were short of labour. Therefore, what we usually call the grapevine, the ground telegraph, indicated to those at home that there were opportunities here which could be taken. As a consequence, they came in larger and larger numbers.

The Government of the day realised the way in which people were reacting, but instead of recognising that racial prejudice was at the back of it and explaining to people the value to society of immigrants and stamping upon that prejudice so as to try to help to build a proper society, they responded by saying: "We will control immigration, because that is what we have to do". What is worse, they responded by also taking the power to deport, and that power to deport was the underlying point for racists—for the people who were complaining—because it showed them that these people were undesirables who needed to be sent back. That was in 1962.

The reason I intervened when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Rawlinson, made his point was because I heard at that time the nonsense about the 600 million to 900 million. I argued then, and I still argue, that all that was needed in the 1962 Act, assuming that we were going to take the power to control, was the power to exempt citizens of the United Kingdom and the Colonies. The others were independent; control over them could have been defended. To attempt to control somebody who is a citizen of your country merely degrades that citizenship. But we went on to do that.

That was the first step in the degrading of our citizenship. Then we proceeded further. The trouble was that Governments of both political parties were working on a certain principle. The principle was that white immigration created no problem—therefore there was no need for new policies—but that black immigration, particularly those from the New Commonwealth, created problems and needed to be controlled as carefully as possible; such immigration needed to be kept at the lowest possible level, as though these people were some form of pollution that had to be controlled so as to make sure that society was not poisoned by it. That was the underlying principle of the legislation, and it still is the underlying principle of the legislation.

We had the 1962 Act, the 1965 White Paper, the 1969 withdrawal of the rights of women to bring their husbands, the 1971 Act, and now this, because we are failing to approach the matter in the proper way. There is no reason why we should not have just and reasonable immigration controls. But they must be just and they must be reasonable. The trouble is that there is a myth in this country—as a matter of fact, the Minister gave expression to it—that when you have got this steady control it helps to create the right atmosphere for good race relations. The opposite is the case, and I will tell your Lordships why.

These frequent arguments about immigration control, and these frequent proposals for immigration control, make race relations worse. They make race relations worse because they create expectations that cannot be fulfilled. When you say to somebody in Bradford that you are controlling immigration because there are too many immigrants, that person expects to see in his neighbourhood fewer black people than he saw before. But he cannot, because black women cannot make white babies. Therefore he sees more black people and concludes that you have not controlled immigration properly, that people are cheating, and that there are all kinds of reasons why he is seeing more black people in Bradford.

Then there are all these politicians who are willing to interpret the situation for him. He thereupon says that he wants more control. And when all the additional controls do not meet the case he says, "There is only one solution; they must be repatriated". And when politicians again help him by saying that they will help people who wish to go back to their country—because that is what we did in the 1971 Act—he then says, "Ah, repatriation is the answer". We have come the whole distance. What we now have is a demand not for voluntary repatriation but for compulsory repatriation. That is the underlying demand that we are now getting.

In other words, I should like everybody to recognise that the logic of the policy that has been followed until now is the gas chamber. The sooner that is recognised the better. It is only when that is recognised that we are going to get the sort of policies, the sort of approach which will enable us to build the kind of society which we can so easily build. In the past, this country has absorbed large numbers of immigrants and it can absorb them again.

The only difference between the present immigrants and those of the past is the colour of their skin. That is the barrier we have to get over and we must help people to get over it. They need that help. We do not help people to get over that barrier by telling them that all we need to do is to keep out more and more immigrants. As the right reverend Prelate indicated, we help people by inviting them to work together so as to build a society of which we can be proud.

Since I have been in this House we have twice debated the family. Members have indicated how important they regard the family to be. These rules are an attack on family life, and this House must show by its action that it means what it says. I cannot do it so eloquently as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, but I want to make one last appeal. This House can say to the Government and to the people, "Enough is enough. We have had enough of this"—how shall I put it?—"backing away from the real issues, this backing away from the real contribution which we could make towards showing the world how people of different races can live together in equality and friendship". We can do it; I know we can do it. My appeal this evening is, let us do it.

My Lords, first I should like to make a very sincere apology to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. I had to attend an important committee meeting in the other House and thought that I had tied up the arrangements to be telephoned the moment this Motion began. Unhappily, however, the messenger who knew me from long ago went to tea, and the gentleman who took his place did not know Lady Hornsby-Smith from a bar of soap. So I never got the message. So I owe a very sincere apology to the noble Lord. It was certainly a most unwitting discourtesy that I was not present to hear his speech. May I also add to the congratulations offered to the right reverend Prelate for a most enlightening and human speech, and I am sure we shall hope very much that it will not be four years before we hear him again.

In view of the late hour, I can tell your Lordships at once that I have already cut my speech by half and I will try not to keep you too long. We are a small and a highly populated island and I think the critics of this White Paper have substantially ignored this country's long and very generous contribution to the problem of refugees and Commonwealth immigrants. In the early days of Kenya's independence and certainly after the draconian decrees of General Amin in Uganda, we had the unhappy victims who were both Commonwealth immigrants and refugees from a country they had been forced to leave. Nor should we forget the thousands of refugees from Nazi oppression we accepted before the War, the half a million Poles after the War, the thousands of Hungarian victims of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and the Anglo-Egyptian expellees of 1957. More recently, we have had the Vietnamese boat people. For a country of our size I think we have a record of which we can be proud, and I think we take more abuse than we deserve.

Over and above the legitimate entries, there is still widespread abuse which all Governments of whatever political complexion have tried to stem in this country. If we subtract the figures for embarking Commonwealth immigrants and aliens from whatever source, the figures of admissions for those categories consistently over a period of time, the net intake very considerably exceeds the numbers registered for legal and permanent entry. There are illegal immigrants coming into this country, and no one has suggested—nor does this White Paper suggest—that they are exclusively African or Asian.

Those of us who have had experience in the Home Office know that many thousands of them come from the Mediterranean, some of them come from the white Dominions, from the Arab States. In my view, it is quite reprehensible that this recommendation in the White Paper is being represented as being exclusively anti-black, which it is not. The way in which it has been presented and exploited as against the coloured races does enormous harm to race relations by the presentation that it is exclusively against those people. In many Commonwealth countries admission is denied to all but those who have the skills which the host country wants or who have very substantial means indeed with which they can sustain themselves. Most of our immigrants arrived without means, were immediately afforded equal benefits with our own citizens, and we now face a situation which I think we must face, where with heavy unemployment and the shortage of housing, our first priority must surely be to do justice to those immigrants whom we have already accepted.

Having spent three years in the Home Office with particular responsibility for immigration, may I emphasise that the abuses are not confined to Commonwealth citizens. There is, for example, no valid record of those who enter this country as so-called students, take permissible part-time student employment and worm their way into the permanent employment market, sometimes drop out of the university or college and after a few years stay on for good.

The catering trade in particular is a happy hunting ground for Mediterraneans, young and middle-aged. They flit from job to job, changing location as the authorities look like catching up on them and, further, the police just have not the manpower to catch up with these visitors or "students" who overstay their time and jump from one police area to the next. We have the professional student who comes to us at 18 and we find that he is still a student, having been through three universities, swopped his courses and not done particularly well in any, and is still a student after seven or eight years, virtually living on the British taxpayer and such benefits as he can pull out of assistance.

In my day at the Home Office I can remember a spate of young women from strictly Catholic countries who, finding themselves pregnant, raced to England, took a job for a few months, later had their babies and not infrequently did a midnight flit, leaving the British born babies in our lap. Indeed I can remember joining forces with the late Mrs. Bessie Braddock who was a leading member of the Liverpool Social Security Committee and who brought me massive evidence of this abuse from Liverpool and told me to do something about it. It was substantially halted, I may say, by the intervention and help of the late Cardinal Heenan.

When we tightened up the legislation on foreign prostitutes we had a spate of arranged marriages between lonely elderly gentlemen who, after a register office marriage, drinks in the local pub, a visit to Holborn to produce the marriage lines and get the bride registered as a British citizen, the elderly gentleman then went back home with £100 in his pocket and never saw his bride again. Some Mediterranean ladies used their newly-born child—a British citizen—to try to blackmail us into allowing the mother permanent entry, on the basis that if we sent her home she would dump her British-born child in our lap.

The Immigration Rules and, in this case, the draft rules by the Home Office, have not been devised merely to go against the blacks. The noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, always regarded as a very balanced and fair-minded man, I thought today made a speech which was a little extravagant, with a bias. When he made the point about the deportation being levelled at the coloured people, I can remember, a few months after that legislation came in, being asked a question in the other place: what nationality are the people who are being dealt with under the Deportation Act? Of the first eleven, nine were Mediterranean and two were Australian, which I remember saying with great relish because it had been put about that we were only going for the coloured people in that legislation. In fact, if the figures for the total period were shown I think your Lordships would find that there were very many white Mediterraneans who have offended our laws and have been deported for behaving in a reprehensible manner and probably more than there were coloured people being sent back.

My Lords, if the noble Baroness will allow me to intervene, I am sorry to disturb her and I thank her for her courtesy. I know that a very small percentage of the people who have been deported were in fact black. The point, however, was that the intro- duction of the power to deport at the time it was introduced created certain impressions. That was what I was saying.

My Lords, the noble Lord has emphasised a point that saddens me very much, that any regulation is immediately exploited as being anti-black when it is equally applied to aliens or Commonwealth citizens, whether they be black or white and from whatever part of the world they may come. It is this deliberate exploitation which does so much harm to race relations. In my experience immigration officers have a thankless job. They have types of persons to look out for whom we have not even mentioned this afternoon, criminals trying to get out of the country or people on the run trying to get in, of whom they are told by Interpol. They are supposed to have eyes in the backs of their heads to try to find them, poor chaps. There are people who have already been sent out of this country and have a nefarious reputation in other respects.

There are many types of people with whom the immigration officers have to deal and to whom they have to apply the regulations. I have been privileged to visit over 50 points of entry in this country and stand behind our immigration officers as they have carried out their arduous duties, from those dealing with the hordes of people who stream into Heathrow, to the lone officer in Sunderland with an endless stream of Arab seamen all claiming they were born in Aden, and therefore they must have a special certificate applying to somebody who was born in that British territory—when most of them have come from the Yemen or Syria or goodness knows where, and none, of course, has a birth certificate. If the unfortunate immigration officer gave a certificate to every Arab seaman who swears he was born in Aden, they would number more than the total male population of Aden. He has to use his experience. If we are not going to be over-burdened, he has to deal with them as fairly as he is able.

Then, I have seen the middle-aged tubby gentleman from the Lebanon trying to get in at Harwich at half-past six on a cold wet morning, who claimed to be coming as a student to take a diploma in clairvoyance. All I can say is that I did not have to be a student of clairvoyance to see that his wife was about eight months pregnant and that was the only reason he was trying to get in.

Immigration officers have also to be vigilant about security. There are times when the Press build up an enormous anti-immigration officer, anti-Home Office case. I can remember one campaign, as some Members who were with me in the other place will—the Farkas case, Hungarian refugees who had opted to go to Latin America. They left. They were smuggled on board a P & O liner—two men, two women in advanced state of pregnancy, three children. Initially the Home Office—and I equally shared the stick we got—did not believe their story, thought it was a plant. To cut a very long story short, the Press built it up. We had three weeks of yards and yards of publicity, thousands of letters, debate in the Chamber, when it was obvious the Home Secretary would have been defeated and had quite rightly to yield to what was inevitable; he let them in. The babies were born under one of the greatest consultant obstetricians and gynaecologists at Queen Charlotte's. Families sent them layettes, local authorities gave them delightful housing, furniture firms gave them furniture, grocers sent them food. All this we had for weeks in the Press. But when they skipped out one night on the Polish S.S. "Batory", when they went back to Budapest and gave the filthiest broadcast about this country I have ever heard—saying that we treated them like cattle in their pregnancy, that they had no medical attention—not one newspaper would admit that the Home Office and those much vilified immigration officers, who were given hell for weeks, in their wisdom were right.

In turning to the Commonwealth immigration problem on which so much has been said today, the Commonwealth immigrants who have opted to come here and stay with us, I agree fully that many of them have made an invaluable contribution to our economy and are good and valuable citizens. It is common knowledge nevertheless that a minority have seized upon the right of entry of a spouse to build up a revolting traffic in arranged marriages. A Commonwealth citizen who has no right of entry at any time on any grounds can jump the queue over the genuine United Kingdom passport holders patiently waiting in the queue by paying a large sum of money to a disreputable resident or agent who will arrange a technical marriage with some poor young girl in this country, who, even if the marriage is never consummated, must act and behave as a formally married wife until such time as her father and the divorce court will release her from the bondage. There is evidence produced recently from high level sociological inquiries that many young women of Eastern parentage, educated and growing up in this country, yearn to share the individual dignity and rights which our law provides for our young women. I wonder what has happened to our humanitarians, who will fight to the death just one case of someone penalised, and yet we hear them dismissing as of no consequence—"too trivial to be worried about", said a leading Member of the Opposition in the other House—the appalling abuse when these young women are forced into marriages they do not wish.

Timing has a great effect on the Press in this country. If before this White Paper had been published a couple of girls had rushed to the Council of Civil Liberties pleading and imploring and saying, "My father is forcing me to marry", if that had hit the Press first, the women's libbers would be talking about another aspect of the Charter of Human Rights—about the rights and freedom of women, about what has never been implemented by the eastern countries, the limit at which you can let a girl marry, about the rights of the girl not to be forced into the bondage of marriage, let alone as a human being to be sold into marriage. I wonder what the difference in attitude might have been had the timing been just that much different.

I am at one with those who recognise the problems which still face us in employing and housing immigrants—whether white or black—whom we have already accepted. I believe that we should be doing our utmost to make life happier for them and to improve relations. I passionately believe that the Government are right to try to contain the numbers so far as is fair and reasonable and, above all, to stop this country being made a soft touch by abuses that defy our law.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, asked why the whole world could not have the same freedom as the EEC. Does he honestly think that this country could take probably a quarter of a million Vietnamese boatmen who would seek to come? Does he really think that we could take the Chinese who try to get to Hong Kong, which is trying to keep them out? Does he not think that there are many thousands of Iranians who would now like to pour into this country and get away from their new Moslem dictator? Surely even he thinks that there must be a limit somewhere.

My Lords, like so many others who have spoken I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for giving us an opportunity to debate these rules today. I must say that I speak with some reluctance in this debate, because I do not like speaking in your Lordships' House as an Asian, although I think that perhaps on this occasion I should do so as I believe I am the only Member of your Lordships' House—at any rate of those who attend—of my precise ethnic background. I would much prefer to talk to your Lordships as a Yorkshireman having lived there for 10 years but, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bradford said, people did not accept him as a Yorkshireman and thought that he came from the deep South and was daft. So, my Lords, what do your Lordships think those people think of me?

I am a second generation immigrant. My parents came here from India, although I have lived here all of my life. So far as I can make out, if there is an ethnic question in the 1981 census, then I would put down my ethnic group as being Asian. However, I have always hoped that was not the most important feature about myself. I have never wanted only to involve myself in the speeches that I make in this House, or in the work I did outside, in the race relations business. Generally speaking, other than perhaps my private tastes—the music I may like to listen to or the food I may like to eat—I prefer to forget that I am in fact an Asian. Indeed, I suspect that that position is true of most members of the Asian community in this country. They do not want to find that the only things they can do is make careers in the field of race relations by taking jobs with the CRE or community relation councils or whatever, or that the only voluntary activities in which they can involve themselves are the ethnic group associations. Many of them have not found themselves confined in that way to very great effect.

The Asian community has provided this country with a number of distinguished professors, successful company executives, successful businessmen and so on. Indeed, the only really sophisticated social survey that I have seen on the composition of the Asian community in this country, commissioned by the Government, showed that their profile was remarkably similar to that of the white population. Indeed, I would argue that the Asian community here has a number of qualities which, far from being foreign and alien to this country, fit in very well with what might be called "traditional" or "old-fashioned" British values. I am referring to matters like a respect for education, for family life, for the care of the old, and a spirit of enterprise.

All those things really have, in the past perhaps been one of the glories of Britain, and the Asian community shows them to some effect. Indeed, it seems to me that these are not only old-fashioned and traditional British values: they might even be called Conservative values with a large "C". I suspect that if we took away the colour from most of the Asian community in this country, they would turn out to be natural Tories, far more than the relatively few who are members of the Indian Conservative Association or whatever it is called. However, the trouble is that we cannot take away the colour from a member of the Asian community in this country any more than we can evidently take away from a party its natural colouring.

The point that I am trying to make is that, before the Asian community in this country will make up its mind about the actions of a Conservative Government, they must first look at the Conservative Party which produces that Government. When they do so, what do they see? I wish here and now to acquit absolutely the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, of any kind of racial prejudice. Although I might say that, when he makes the point that if the Conservative Government are doing beastly things to immigrants, then "yah-boo", the Labour Government did it as well, that may be a satisfactory answer to politicians, but it is not a particularly satisfactory answer to the Asian community. Anyway, I certainly acquit him of that.

But he must realise that Asians have eyes and ears, and Asians every year look at the television coverage of the Tory Party Conference. I am thinking of the Tory Party Conerence over the last couple of years. Having looked at that coverage, they come to much less charitable conclusions than the noble Baroness, Lady Seear. Every year we hear speeches made by people from the rostrum which are frankly racist. It may be said, "But you know every party has these mad men in it; every party has these lunatics who every now and again up and speak".

I have managed party conferences in my life and I know perfectly well how easy it is to keep people away from the rostrum if one does not want to see them on it. Secondly, when these people say things, what are the sentiments that are cheered? How does one get a rousing roar from a hall at a Tory Party Conference? So far as I can make out from my experience, one does so by saying pretty unpleasant things about immigrants. We notice comments made by a leading Conservative—it has already been mentioned—about the danger of this country being "swamped" by immigrants. However, in the spirit of the way in which these regulations have been framed, as the statement was made by a woman we need not take it too seriously. I noticed that a prominent Conservative threw a fit of hysterics when a relative was rash enough to go out with a relative of mine. We notice the Questions tabled by Members of the Conservative Party on the Order Paper of this House, Questions which refer to the non-white human population of this country in terms which at the very least make us feel that we are separate, if not unwelcome.

So, the Asian community here decide that the Tory Party does not much like them. It is from that basis that they begin to look at the proposals that are made by the Conservative Government now. When they do so, they become extremely insecure. I suppose it is inevitable that I receive a larger postbag from members of the Asian community than other members of your Lordships' House. I can only say that I find pitiful the worries that have been induced in an otherwise hardworking, responsible set of the community. They are not the worries only of the people whose own lives will be affected by these proposals if they are carried through—they are the worries of people who are not quite sure what the regulations will be and are worried about what will happen to them, worries of people who say, "If they do this today, what will they do tomorrow? That is what the Government have done to what I think is a very useful part of the British community.

So the conclusion that I have come to is that if the Government want us to accept, as the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, said at the start of his speech, that these regulations are free of any kind of racial bias, they are what any Government would have to do in the circumstances; this is an absolutely neutral and responsible action; then I think we must realise that Asians will never accept this from the Conservative Party as it is. If the Government want their good faith to be accepted, then I think that before they start putting forward these new regulations, they ought to put their own party house in order first, and look at some of the people who are office bearers of the Conservative Party in the country. They should take a very close look at some of their parliamentary candidates and if they want a few suggestions I can tell them some. They ought to have a major campaign in their party to educate the Members of the Conservative Party to the fact that the immigrants in this country are not only inevitably here but are desirably here and are making a great contribution to life here.

Do that, and we may accept their good faith; do not do that, then, in fact, the Asians will not go rioting in the streets. Throughout the debate this afternoon one seems to get the impression that people from the sub-continent are a collection of petty crooks sitting down, filling in forms, trying to flog their daughters off as somebody else's wife or whatever. No, every chief constable will tell you that the Asian community is one of the most law-abiding sections of the community of this country. We shall not take to the streets and throw stones through windows, but we shall remain suspicious of everything that the Conservative Government do, that has anything to do with a racial community. We shall be desperately disappointed that many hopes that we had regarding the Conservative Government in other areas will not be realised in this case. Also, if they go ahead with these regulations, and if they do not withdraw them, the Conservatives will have passed up a chance to teach the Asians perhaps the one thing that we can learn from the British—tolerance.

My Lords, may I again declare an interest and seek the indulgence of the House to speak on a subject on which I have spoken on a number of occasions in a different context—namely, as chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission, a Commission which has as its responsibility to eradicate discrimination on grounds of sex and to promote equality of opportunity between the sexes generally.

I have spoken on this issue on numerous occasions since the Commission was established in 1975 and have made representation to consecutive Home Secretaries. Therefore, so far as I am concerned this is not a new issue. However, I want to take advantage of the Motion which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has put before the House. I want to thank him for this opportunity to discuss the White Paper on these proposed Immigration Rules.

In my comments I want to concentrate, of course, on those aspects which I regard as being sex discriminatory and which have aroused a great deal of anger among a great many women in this country—so much so that the Home Secretary has conceded that he will make changes in the rules which have been laid before Parliament in two important respects. The noble Lord, Lord Belstead, has referred to those changes which will withdraw the distinction between women born here and women born abroad; in so far as those British women who were born abroad and have one parent who was born in this country, they will be treated in the same way. Both these groups of women will be given a right under the rules rather than a possible claim under the rules, in the case of women who were born here, or total discretion on the part of the Home Secretary for women who were born abroad.

We are grateful to the Home Secretary for these concessions in so far as they will ease the minds and the position of a number of British women who otherwise would have had to struggle to obtain their right to settle with their husband in this country. But—and it is a very big but—this concession does not alter the fundamental position of British women. I regret to say that we are second-class citizens compared to men. As the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, has said this afternoon, British women have no right in law to bring a husband from a foreign country to settle here. They are being given a right under arrangements which can be changed, not by legislation which has a full scrutiny by both Houses of Parliament, but by administrative rules.

It so happens that on this occasion we have had a White Paper which has been debated in both Houses, but this need not necessarily be the position. Moreover, not all British women are covered by the rules. Those British women not born here who do not happen to have a parent born in this country are still left completely outside the rules. Therefore, we have three groups. We have, first, the group of British men with rights under our nationality law; we have British women with rights conveyed by this rule and we have British women with no rights either under nationality law or under immigration rules.

Noble Lords have said and the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, in particular said, that the concession makes the rules more discriminatory on grounds of race because the effect of the proposed changes will be to exclude mainly Asian and other new Commonwealth groups. I have a great deal of sympathy with that point of view because what has happened is that many of the articulate white women who were concerned about their position have had their position mitigated, whereas the newer British women citizens have not. I would remind the House that all British citizens, irrespective of colour, have, or should have, rights as citizens of this country. Obviously, some very difficult decisions will have to be made in future by Home Secretaries.

In the period 1969 to 1974, successive Home Secretaries had to deal with difficult cases of hardship on humanitarian grounds. I do not think that any of us envied them in their task in deciding whether or not this claim or that claim should be admitted. I regret to say that the present Home Secretary and his Ministers will be faced with similar difficulties. It was the very pressure of these cases between 1969 and 1974 that led to the change in the rules at that time.

Let me give just one or two examples. Reference has been made in the debate to refugees. Only a few days ago I was contacted by a Polish woman who obtained British citizenship 13 years ago. She lives in her own property; she is supporting a paralysed mother. Both she and her parents were born in Poland and came here because of political difficulties. She is engaged to an Iraqi student who is here for five years and who has already completed four years of his studies. Her position is that she does not want to live in Iraq; she does not want to leave her dependent mother and she does not want to lose her home here. That is the kind of situation with which the Home Secretary will have to deal.

Another group which will cause difficulty was brought to my attention only last night when I was talking to a manager of a very well-established multinational company. I was told of the concern of this company. It has been their policy to foster service abroad. This has meant that second and third generations of British families have served the company overseas. The company believe that they could well have British women who were born overseas of British parents themselves born overseas who will have no right of settlement under the present rules. Furthermore, they fear that British couples serving overseas at the present time with rights themselves will be careful to ensure that any children they have must be born in the United Kingdom; for they have sensed the danger which the White Paper, as published, makes clear: that the rules can be changed with retrospective effect to deny a girl born abroad her full right as a British citizen.

In order to avoid this danger the price to be paid will be that some pregnant women will fly back to the United Kingdom in order to ensure that their child, if a daughter, will have British citizenship. Of course if it is a son, it will not make any difference and the journey will have been in vain because a son would have his rights guaranteed. As the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, and others have said the basic problem is rights under nationality law. Rather than tinker in this restrictive way with immigration rules we need to firmly establish in law equal nationality rights for men and women. I regret that the Government did not give this first priority.

I now turn to some of the anomalies in the rules themselves. If we look at paragraphs 50 to 52, for example, presumably even those women who are being given a right under the rules will still have to clear obstacles (a), (b) and (c). The first is that the marriage was one entered into primarily to obtain admission to the United Kingdom. If it was, then the right will disappear. Secondly, that one of the parties no longer has an intention of living permanently with the other as his, or her, spouse. Presumably again, if that is so the right will disappear. Thirdly, that the parties to the marriage have not met. We have already had comments from different noble Lords on this third clause—that the parties to the marriage have not met.

The fact is that these three clauses again underline the different status that is given to men and women. Men will have the automatic right to bring a wife or fiancée here irrespective of these three rules, but women will not. I wonder whether the Government have thought carefully through the implications of paragraph (c)—that the parties to the marriage have not met—because the effect of this could be that to allow men to continue with arranged marriages (as is assumed under the rules) will mean that those Asian girls who are living in this country will suffer from a double discrimination. They will find that they cannot follow their traditional culture and go abroad to bring a husband back into this country through the arranged marriage system, but equally they will find that their male peers are doing so. Thereby, the pool of possible, eligible young males whom they might marry will be that much smaller. This could place the Asian girls in a very difficult situation.

Customs die hard, particularly in the first generation, and this is a problem which I think is not going to remain with us for long. Nevertheless, it is a problem which is with us at the moment. I hold no brief for arranged marriages which are against the wishes of one of the parties, but I hesitate to make a general judgment on a culture which I do not share. I wonder whether we are approaching the problem in the right way, and whether it would not be better for us to be more understanding of the difficulties that our Asian colleagues are going to be faced with.

Reference has also been made by a number of noble Lords to the situation in Europe. As well as our friends in the European Community having the right to bring a husband into this country if they wish to come over here to work and settle, they will have an added advantage which British women will not have, and indeed which British men will not have. The noble Lord, Lord Pitt, referred to this. If we look at paragraph 131 of the proposed rules on the subject of families, we find that members of the families who are allowed to accompany an EEC settler include "the person's spouse". It is not a question of the person's wife, a man's wife, or, in the case of a woman, a husband. It is neutral: "the person's spouse". I wish we had that same clause in other sections of the rules.

In addition to the spouse, their children under 21 are included; that is, both male and female; whereas under other sections of the rules for a British person it is a child under 18 or, for a girl but not for a boy, between the ages of 18 and 21. Equally, the definition includes parents, grandparents, and other relatives. Therefore, we have a wide definition here of the family which I think could well apply to the position of British people under their own rules.

There are a number of other requirements. For example, it is going to be a fact that a widowed mother will be allowed to come into the country, but a widowed father could only be brought in if he is aged 65 or over. So again we have here this question of sex discrimination between parents. We have an age limit for men, but we have no age limit for women. There are a number of anomalies of this kind in the rules which treat men and women differently. I hope that the Home Secretary and his Ministers will look carefully at these anomalies.

Finally, there are a number of categories of persons coming into this country for temporary purposes. They are not coming to settle here, nor are they British citizens wanting to return to this country, but people coming from other countries abroad for a temporary purpose where they are going to be allowed in under the rules, and again where a man might bring a wife and dependent children to accompany him provided they can be maintained and accommodated without recourse to public funds and provided they do not take employment. But again the fact is that even with these stringent restrictions, a woman could not do the same; in other words, a woman coming here for temporary purposes under the rules would not be allowed to bring with her her husband and children. This relates to the position of students, if one looks at paragraphs 21 to 25, as it relates to businessmen, self-employed persons and to persons of independent means such as writers, artists and so on.

What I think this does is to reflect an outdated approach to the relationship between men and women. All these categories assume that the woman will be the dependant—that the wife will be the dependent person in the marriage—but these days there are situations where the primary person in the marriage, the wage-earner, is the woman. The proposed rules take no account whatever of that situation. I hope the Minister will look carefully at this.

Having said that, I come back to the basic and fundamental point I made at the outset, namely that the women of this country will continue to feel aggrieved until they are afforded equal status and rights under nationality law. I hope the assurance the Minister gave—that there will be a White Paper on this subject—will be followed by early legislation which will deal with this primary and fundamental problem.

My Lords, I apologise for being slow to rise. Apparently I was so attentive to the speech of my noble friend, and have been so little attentive to some other developments, that I thought there were two or three speakers in front of me, as indeed there were on the list and still remain on my list, although I had been told that the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, had decided not to speak again after his gifted speech earlier in the day.

The last person on the Benches opposite with whom I would wish to argue is the noble Baroness, Lady Hornsby-Smith, who has been particularly kind to me in my dotage, but I thought some of her extremely graphic and interesting pictures failed to take cognizance of some of the relevant position. We had one picture of her standing behind an immigration officer, known to be a good one, interviewing immigrants, and she was shocked at what she saw. One would have thought that no immigration officer would be allowed to be ignorant of the visit of a distinguished and gifted Minister of the Crown and one would have thought it extremely unlikely that the persons being interviewed would have any knowledge whatever that the very charming and attractive lady standing behind the immigration officer was in fact a Minister of the Crown and was keeping them under observation and watching their behaviour.

In Kenya the noble Baroness found some quite astonishing things. It was Mr. Kenyatta who stopped the difficulties in Kenya, or the fact that his system of government, which remained the government by two tribes, rather eliminated a lot of poor Africans from having any great part in the State. His behaviour was such that instead of sending him a rope, they sent him a gun carriage, and the two in quite different connections.

My Lords, I recall the exodus from Uganda, which was a paradise when I saw it. I think it was the loveliest country I have ever seen, with very much the nicest people. I heard some of the schoolgirls in school uniforms singing On Ilkley Moor baht 'at in Swahili, which was a special privilege. They were driven out by Field Marshal Amin, and Field Marshal Amin was put in by the British Government, while Mr. Obote, who was regarded as a little off-colour, was attending a Commonwealth conference far away in Singapore. Perhaps to say "put in" overstates the matter, but they knew of it; that he had been recommended as a member of the Scots forces serving under a very gallant and distinguished British officer, who was for a brief time a Member of the other place, is certain. So there is a situation in which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hutchinson—

I must not forget the noble and learned Lord's name for the second time; it is a sign of my dotage that names come a little less readily to me. I know the noble and learned Lord, Lord Rawlinson, well and I respect him. He was of course a Law Officer of the Crown, and indeed he delayed his appointment in order to defend the Member for Oldham. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Rawlinson, was right of course. We do need a Nationality Act; but heaven knows what this Government might produce after this. The noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, saved me what was going to be an extremely unpleasant duty, though it would have been performed with some rigour. Few politicians have ever spent less of their lives attending party conferences than I have. I have never spoken at the Labour Party conference, and I remember only about one occasion when I managed to stay right through; and I was the Member for Oldham for 23 years. Probably because I switched on the wrong knob and did not get the cricket I heard the debate on race relations at the Conservative Party conference, and it was not a triumph for Saatchi and Saatchi. It was there, as Lord Chitnis said; one could see the weight of the pressure to try to prevent aspirants to speak from expressing their own views, and to express instead the muted views of the respected members of the Party.

May I say that the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bradford must surely have brought a little shame for those who are being pushed through the Lobby tonight to defend these proposals. The proposals have an unpleasant smell from start to finish, and that they are produced by a Minister so widely respected as is William Whitelaw is astounding.

My noble friends referred to the reception of the matter by the Press. Our trouble used to be the Press. Our trouble was that so much of this antagonism had been fomented by the Press; and it is a measure of the situation to which Britain has been brought that a large portion of her daily Press today is controlled from abroad.

My Lords, I have spoken before of the town of Oldham. I speak of it again in the light of what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bradford has said, because Oldham actually touches the borders of the West Riding of Yorkshire, which used to have a Conservative county council which spent rather less on any kind of social reform than almost any county council in England. But they are fine people there; many of them grand people. When the Pakistanis came to Oldham we were apprehensive about what might happen. People in Lancashire had no great acquaintance with foreign people at all in those days. Nowadays, of course, they have massive lorries driving almost non-stop from Constantinople through to Scotland. Our one great good fortune was that we had what was perhaps the best local paper in England; a liberal paper which has tried to give absolutely fair representation to all three parties, with considerable success, and which I read now because they insist on sending me a copy once a week. So I turned up this week's copy and found that at this late hour they have felt it necessary to form an all-party committee, with its members drawn from all types of employment, to fight for the victims of these racial laws.

My Lords, they have some cases under consideration. There is one in which two young boys flying to join their father, and being met by their father, were told on arrival that they did not fulfil the qualifications, and were sent home. As a result of the activities of the present Member for Oldham West, fairly rapidly they were given a passport, with their mother, and complete freedom to join their father. Think of the agony! Think of the costly mistake that was made! My objection to this particular White Paper is that almost every test is a subjective test, and it is a subjective test by the immigration officer or the person who is administering it. Who is to decide, and how can one decide? How does one estimate this business of saying that the old man, the grandfather, might be able to come if it can be shown that his standard of living is not notably less than the average standard of living in this country? Think of that to a Pakistani!

Then there are the grandparents who have been refused permission to join a couple of exceedingly prosperous doctors—we were told in another place—who are anxious to make them a home and make their lives agreeable. For whose benefit is that? Why are there all these regulations? I know it is difficult; I know it is complicated. I would think that the fact that the Baader-Meinhof criminals can come into this country without detection, and remain without being recognised for months, undisguised, suggests that there is a difficulty in keeping track of people. It is, roughly speaking, impossible. The numbers are so small and the possibilities of future emergency so great. One speaker on the other side said that we shall be having the Iranians next. I think it is said that 300,000 have come in already in the last week or two. I may be exaggerating the number in my mind, but a large number have arrived since the moment they heard of the Ayatollah. For what purpose or on what grounds they are admitted, we do not know.

The Minister enjoys as much respect, personal respect, as almost any Minister. He did see the error in the ways of the person who drafted this document and gave certain undertakings to deal with some of the problems. A junior Minister made the quite gratutious statement that we would be surprised at the number of girls who had written and said, "Do not let him come in to marry me." I am surprised. Under the rules I cannot say more, but it is difficult to understand why people write to a newly-appointed junior Minister in the Foreign Office about their marriage before seeing their local advisers, and what reasons they gave and what hopes they have. This is really a rather gratuitous insult to these ladies which need not have been made. There is not the slightest reason in the world to believe that the arranged marriage is not as calculated to have success among the people with the faith that they have, the beliefs and customs that they have and the relatives that they have. My Lords, I apologise for having spoken a minute or so longer than I intended. I hope that this debate is not a sign of further things to come.

My Lords, in view of the time, I have decided not to make a speech but to put one detailed question to the noble Lord. May I draw the attention of the House to paragraph 39 of the White Paper, the paragraph entitled "Writers and artists"? I should like to quote the first two sentences for the benefit of those who have not got the document:

"A passenger seeking entry as a writer or an artist must hold a current entry clearance granted to him for that purpose. He may be admitted for an initial period of up to 12 months subject to a condition prohibiting his freedom to take employment".

Could we consider these visitors for a moment—these writers and artists? It makes no difference to me whether they come from America, Africa, Asia or the Mediterranean—from where so many people come. This is of no significance to me. Wherever they come from, they are very unlikely to be numerous. They are among the most unobtrusive of temporary immigrants. They do not take up much space. They do not eat very much because they cannot afford to—and this is the point. It is extremely important for an artist or writer to travel; but it is often necessary to find some part-time employment, some odd job, to keep alive. The rules completely forbid it. For example, would such a visitor be deemed to be taking employment if he gave private tuition in his own native language? Certainly these particular visitors are very unlikely to qualify under the plutocratic requirements demanded of the self-employed.

It is worth a thought that had these rules been in force in Paris at the relevant time, George Orwell could not possibly have worked in that ghastly restaurant and the world would have been deprived of a remarkable book. I want to suggest that a small change could greatly improve the lot of these temporary immigrant writers and artists. Could they not be treated at least as generously—if that is the word—as the working holidaymakers that are referred to in paragraph 30? However, that paragraph applies only to young Commonwealth citizens aged from 17 to 25. To meet my point fully, the discrimination against non-Commonwealth citizens would have to be removed and the upper age limit would either have to be raised or abolished. That is all I am going to say. I suggest that this is a very small point which the Government might consider and even concede without violating the spirit of the White Paper. I will spare your Lordships what I was going to say about the White Paper.

My Lords, probably the most unhappy night of my life in this House was that of 29th February 1968. I know that because I know the agonies that some of my well respected and well meaning friends on the other side of the House must be feeling tonight because on that night on the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill, so far as I was concerned, we made one of the worst insults possible to our intelligence; and, secondly, a denial of the whole nature of human rights. This is important. I am being very generous and I am trying to save the Government opposite from making the mistakes of proceeding down the slippery slopes on which we found ourselves with the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968. That was a confirmation and it was a panic measure. Nobody can doubt that. From thereon, having once betrayed the principles of my own party, we slipped and everybody has been dragged into this.

This is what I feel about this draft White Paper tonight. It is a warning to all of us of what is liable to happen. As has been pointed out, this is a draft. The House should thank the Government for giving us the foresight of what were their intentions or thinking in this matter. I hope that the Government will take it away and look at it again and realise what a hopeless and insulting document it is. It is not just the immigrants, potential immigrants or people who were immigrants and are now settled citizens in this country; it is the British people who are being insulted. We are denying their long-held illusions about the generosity and justice of our race. I speak as I must with some feeling about this because I was on the original Community Race Commission with my noble friend Lord Pitt who was the deputy chairman.

We did, I think, foresee at that time the kind of things which would happen because we at that moment, if I may say so on behalf of myself and my noble friend, were dealing with our own party and our own Government. Therefore, we were fighting the kind of "skid" situation of which we see a culmination tonight. But what we were doing, meaningfully I think, was getting a recognition throughout the country that provided we had, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bradford pointed out—and I should like to thank him very much for his maiden speech—I actual and direct participation, people to people, that was what mattered and not what was put down in books of rules or anything else. But we were then fighting the kinds of things which people thought they could put down in books of rules. We fought them, we struggled with them and so on. But this is now something in a concrete form which I find so utterly distasteful and—I repeat again a word keep on using—insulting. It is insulting my intelligence and insulting, as I say, the intelligence of the people of this country.

There is one thing we must realise, as the noble and learned Lord pointed out, in what, if I might say so, I thought was a magnificently objective speech, although I speak of my reading of what he was talking about. Here we are, confronting a Declaration of Human Rights. It is not a convention but it is our avowal of universal principles and I think your Lordships will agree, on his examination of the definition, that we are definitely out of court on the European Human Rights Convention.

I would urge the Government to go away and look again very hard at this because, as the noble and learned Lord pointed out, this is where we are really going to have our noses rubbed in it. Here we are in this Bill, making all our genuflections to the EEC—and think of all the care we are taking of EEC members, who are going to have all these privileges and all these rights which are denied to the Commonwealth people and to the general run of immigrants. We have to look at that because, as the noble and learned Lord said, we shall be brought to the bar.

The thing which I find equally revolting is the condescension, if I may put it that way, with which we are looking at what we choose to call the arranged marriage. I do not approve of arranged marriages. I would not have let anyone arrange mine and I would not arrange anybody else's; but we have to realise—those of us who have had some experience of travel—that in some of the greatest cultures of the world there is this acceptance of the arranged marriage. This includes what has now become a fatal barrier; namely, the fact that you do not see the bride. In my own part of the world, you were not allowed to see the bride, at least in her bridal dress, which is one of the last remaining signs of what was there with us.

We really are, in this matter—and I will hammer this home—insulting the cultures. We are suggesting, as was pointed out by a previous speaker, that this procedure, which is very deeply valued in the cultural divisions of many religions and not just on the Indian sub-Continent, is somehow being used as a method of evading the immigration laws and smuggling in husbands, and so forth. As was borne out by some of the references here, the number of occasions on which the man in an arranged marriage is doing it simply for the purpose of becoming a settled immigrant here is extremely small.

We still insist that we have not had, and nobody has been prepared to give us, the figures or even the relative proportion, which would justify this egregious act of saying that any arranged marriage is simply a devious device for smuggling in a husband. At each stage, we are dealing with smaller and smaller areas of potential immigration. I think we all agree that the primary immigration problem is well under control, and has been for a long time, in spite of some of the yelps.

But I want to emphasise what my noble friend Lord Pitt said. It does not matter what you do. It does not matter what you throw to the NF or the racists. They will come back for more. As he said, one way of demonstrating that you are doing something about the coloured immigrants is to line them up, march them through the streets and put them on a boat at the docks. Of course, you could put them somewhere else, as the Nazis did. This is what we have come to and I endorse what my noble friend Lord Pitt said. The only choice we have is to send them home in this most discriminating way, after we have broken down the family, broken down their cultures and treated them as second-class citizens. What else can we offer them? What are we going to do about race relations, when we have reached this stage of being one step away from the final solution?

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord McNair, I have torn up my speech and propose to make just a few comments in a couple of minutes. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for initiating this debate today, in order that we may talk about the proposals for revision of the Immigration Rules. The Home Secretary said in another place:

"I now invite the House to approve these proposals. This does not mean that my mind is closed to suggestions for modification of the draft rules contained in the White Paper".—[Official Report, Commons, 4/12/79; col. 253.]

Therefore, it is right and proper that we should be discussing these today.

I should like to thank the right reverend Prelate for his most constructive and positive speech, which indicated a love of mankind, caring for each person whatever his colour, race and creed; this love of mankind which is so dependent upon personal relationships. I have many friends from all nations among the immigrant population. May I first mention remarks made to me by people in that great country of India? Somebody in the Indian Government had a map of India and he put on it a map of England. He said, "It is incredible that your little country will take so many of our people. Nevertheless, I wish that our people would remain with us and I am sad and sorry that we are losing to your country some of our best people, whom we could well keep in our country and whom we need and need sorely. But there is the point of view of freedom. If they wish to go, they must go."

Equally, I remember a perfectly magnificent community relations officer in Manchester, a coloured man from India, saying to me, "You English are extraordinary! You think that we enjoy being here, and many of us do; but we long to get back to our own land". I wonder sometimes whether we are going about things in the wrong way: whether we ought, instead, to be conferring with the Third World to find out how conditions could be bettered and developed there, with help from the rest of the world, so that people did not have to leave their homelands but could remain there.

By the same token, many members of the coloured population, wherever they have come from, have been to see me about their children. Their children cannot get jobs, and therefore are unable to work. This worries them. They have said that for the sake of this country, of themselves and of their children they hope that we may bring in rules which will perhaps prevent primary immigration taking place but which will at the same time, as I said earlier, help their own countries to become better places in which people can live.

There are many things in the White Paper which I consider should be revised, particularly those relating to the elderly and the au pair. Today's debate has given us an opportunity to discuss them. However, these questions have been dealt with in a far better way than I could deal with them. Therefore, I propose to make the shortest speech in this debate.

My Lords, I should like to join other noble Lords in congratulating the right reverend Prelate on his maiden speech, which I found to be quite exceptionally interesting. We are only two weeks away from Christmas and it is the season of goodwill. Therefore, strongly as I feel about mass immigration and its consequences and the motives of those who condone and encourage it, I had given serious thought to toning down my speech. But so fierce, so intemperate and so uncompromising have many of the speeches from the Labour and Liberal Benches been that I feel that I ought not to pull my punches. There is another story to be heard; there is another side to the case. It concerns the wishes of the British people. As so often happens, it has not had much of a look-in today.

The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, will not, I am sure, expect that I am going to agree with him very much. As a matter of fact, I agree with him on one or two small points, in particular on the question of students and why students are unable to take temporary jobs. I am also inclined to agree with my noble and learned friend Lord Scarman about the question of au pairs. On the whole, however, I believe that the proposals contained in the White Paper are moderate and fair. There are many sensitive touches, such as the provision relating to unmarried girls between the ages of 16 and 21 and that which allows children in certain circumstances to join a single parent in this country. Indeed, in the case of former illegal immigrants the proposals seem to be positively generous.

In view of the lateness of the hour, I do not want to go too much into the question of sex discrimination. Certainly there is discrimination in theory; but how much is there in practice? My mother is American, but it would never have occurred to my father for one single instant that that gave him the moral right to go and live in the United States, if he so chose; and I doubt very much whether he had the legal right, either. I realise that with women's liberation, and so on, times have changed; but in the real world, none the less, 999 women out of 1,000 go where their husbands go. His career is the one which takes precedence.

I agree with the criticism made by the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, about the way in which an Italian girl can marry an Indian and bring him into this country, while an English girl cannot do so. It is a ridiculous anomaly. However, I think it is well known that I do not believe that this country should be a member of the EEC, so my position on that point is perfectly consistent.

Undeniably there may be hardships in a few individual cases if these proposals are implemented, and to that extent I do not deny that it is regrettable. However, I have always understood that more often than not politics means having to choose between the lesser of two evils. The choice here is between the evil of a possible injustice to a few individuals or the evil of a greater injustice to the British people as a whole. By "greater injustice" I mean perpetuating the great wrong done to the British people by condoning and encouraging large-scale immigration—and I emphasise the words "large-scale"—and failing to make long-overdue amends to them. Make no mistake, my Lords, it was a great wrong to alter the character of large areas of this country so drastically. It was a great wrong to store up trouble for future generations, because after all the people are not ignorant of the fact—although they may not know the precise data—that for every successful multi-cultural society in the world there are at least 10 unsuccessful ones. If there were time I would gladly give chapter and verse on that. It was a great evil to do all this without consulting the people—without a referendum. Whether or not noble Lords disagree with me, I am sure that they must know in their hearts that if there had ever been a referendum the people would have voted overwhelmingly against what has happened.

Instead, what did happen? Working class people who complained about the impact upon their way of life were sneered at by sociologists who accused them of adopting petit bourgeois attitudes and of being "not on the side of life"—that favourite cliché of the early and mid-1960s. Professional people, academics and others, who so much as ventured to suggest that totally unlimited immigration might on the whole not be a good thing were virtually accused of being on a moral par with Nazi concentration camp guards, and if anyone thinks that I am exaggerating I suggest that they look up some of the speeches and the articles written at that time. They were often accused of this by the very people who, a few years later, were voting for immigration control. That was what compounded the wrong: the Establishment, the politicians and opinion formers tacitly conceded their mistakes towards the end of the 1960s by starting to support immigration control, although still remaining unusually tolerant of illegal immigrants in comparison with other countries. However, they refused to admit their own mistakes openly or to show a true sense of contrition which might have reconciled the British people to some extent to what had happened. Instead they pretended that everything had gone according to plan and everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Accordingly, to the man in the street, it appeared as though people living in comfortable circumstances in Belsize Park and Belgravia—and I say Belgravia because at the outset there were plenty of Conservatives who were just as contemptuous of the fears of the people as there were people on the Left—were looking down on, and disregarding the genuine fears of, people in Birmingham. Bolton, Bradford and Brixton. Whenever the latter objected, those at the top would intimidate them with a threat of ever more draconian race relations laws.

I believe that is why Mrs. Thatcher struck such a responsive chord when she spoke of people feeling swamped. Mrs. Thatcher was absolutely right. A great many people do feel swamped and quite a high proportion actually are swamped. I have never felt swamped nor, I suppose, have many of your Lordships. I live in a pleasant part of London. A great many Middle Eastern people have come there in recent years, but they are transient—or so one believes. We have a number of Asian shopkeepers and West Indian council workers who do an absolutely first-class job. They are agreeable and pleasant people and there is absolutely no problem whatsoever; but my part of London is not necessarily characteristic.

I remember an old lady whom I met who was born and brought up in West Ealing, who told me that the place where she lived had been transformed out of all recognition. So in anticipation of today's debate I went last week to Southall to see for myself. When I arrived I stood and did a count of the passers-by. Of the first 100 83 were Asian and two West Indian. As I got further into the town the proportion of English people dropped to about 10 per cent. I found it as a matter of fact a very attractive place; the shops were bright and full of delicious looking Indian confectionery, the fruit and vegetable stalls were doing good business, the women looked charming in their saris and the children were well dressed and well behaved. But the fact is that it was not England as the people who were born and brought up there knew it. They felt strangers in their own district. This is not an isolated instance.

It is all very well for me to enjoy this colourful and exotic ambience but what about the people who have been born and brought up there and have had the place changed without their consent? Suppose the boot were on the other foot and that 18½ million English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, plus 10 and one-third million people from the West Indies and Africa had gone to settle in the Indian sub-Continent over the past 30 years and that their numbers were forecast to increase to between 53 and 57 million by the year 2000 as a result of further immigration and a higher birth rate than the indigenous population's. The Indians, the Pakistanis and the Bangladeshis would be up in arms, and understandably and rightly so.

My Lords, has it not occured to the noble Lord that that is exactly what we did do in the British Empire in the imperial days. We did go in, we did colonise and did totally change, and we were rather resented for it, but in a very different way from the way the noble Lord is describing.

Yes, my Lords, of course we did, but that is the past; the noble Baroness is talking about the 19th century. I am sure she would agree when I say that I do not think there were ever more than 100,000 British in India at any one time. It is a rather different matter from the equivalent of 50 million or so. We have not had that impact on Indian society.

My Lords, we have had much criticism of the "numbers game", but the numbers game is no game at all, it is the very essence of the problem. There are two extreme positions it is possible to take on immigration. At one extreme you have the National Front and people of that ilk who believe that nobody should be allowed to live in this country at all unless they can prove they are of 100 per cent. Anglo Saxon or possibly Celtic origin. At the other extreme you have the Young Liberals and other groups on the Left who believe that the country ought to be totally open to up to 1,000 million people. Indeed, that view was much more widely heard 15 or more years ago. Any position in between does involve the numbers game; so what are acceptable numbers?

One of the famous incantations of the open door lobby is that we have absorbed other waves of immigrants before without any problems, so why not this one? The answer is that this wave of immigration bears no relation to any previous influx. It is quite without precedent in its sheer size and also without precedent in the relative educational standards of the immigrants in relation to the rest of the population and in the relative birth rate in relation to that of the indigenous population. Virtually nobody in this country, I believe, would have any objection to the entry of students, tourists, businessmen, people who come to work on short-term contracts, just as British people go to work on short-term contracts in Africa and in the Gulf.

Very few people, apart from a few extremists, have ever objected to refugees. Of course, in the past we have happily accepted Jewish, Polish and Hungarian refugees from totalitarian and bloodthirsty régimes. The great tragedy of the excessive immigration that took place in the 'fifties and early 'sixties is that it made British people less willing than they have traditionally been to accept Asians fleeing from the murderous régime of General Amin and other Asians fleeing from the almost equally appalling régime of the successors of Ho Chi Minh. I do not think, either, that people would ever have objected to a modest number of immigrants other than refugees. When you ask me who I would include in this modest number I would think that the ex-Serviceman referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, would have high priority.

It may be pertinent to refer to the subject of Kenya at this point, because Kenya is frequently cited as being a model multi-racial society which not only Rhodesia but other people should follow. Kenya is a most impressive country in some ways. It is a long time since I have been there, but I was certainly impressed when I did go. But multi-racial in a true sense it is not. The permanent European population of Kenya is now down to 15,000. (There are many contract workers, but they do not count). I doubt that the Asian population exceeds 50,000. The total population of Kenya is 13 million. Therefore, the immigrant population is a mere one half of 1 per cent. That type of multiracialism, of course, creates no problems for anyone. The minority races are small and are declining because the indigenous Europeans admit that there is little future for their children there and no future for their grandchildren. So, the numbers are declining and they present no problem of any sort to anyone. The Africans can afford to be magnanimous and elect one European and one Asian to Parliament.

I have spoken previously about the 1 per cent rule. I believe that any country can positively benefit from absorbing a strongly differing cultural group so long as it does not exceed 1 per cent. by very much. Once one goes above that figure problems start. My feelings as regards that rule stem partly from intuition and partly from the experience of other countries. The larger the nucleus of the differing cultural group, the more of a magnet it is to those who want to come in from poorer countries. I do not think that anyone can deny that Britain will remain relatively richer to most of the new Commonwealth for many generations to come. The larger the group is, the easier it is to be discreetly absorbed within it. The noble Baroness, Lady Hornsby-Smith, gave many examples of the tremendous lengths people would go to to get round the controls.

Furthermore, the larger the group the more likely it is to demand special dispensations, which are quite reasonable from the point of view of the members of the group. At this stage some of your Lordships may say, "What about Rhodesia? Has not the minority there been granted special dispensations?" That is perfectly true. But, for all the fine words that we shall hear about a multiracial democracy, my sad prediction is that within 10 years of a new Government being elected in Rhodesia, the minority population will have shrunk from its present 300,000—that is to say 270,000 Europeans plus about 30,000 Asians and people of mixed race—down to about 50,000, whatever Government come to power. This will happen faster if the Patriotic Front get in. It will not be due to any bad faith on the part of Bishop Muzorewa, the Reverend Sithole, or indeed the Patriotic Front leaders: it will be due to the inexorable pressures of an exploding population. People simply have not realised the de-stabilising effect that the population explosion will have worldwide.

It is ironic that we should be encouraging a multiracial society at a time when almost every country in the world is becoming more homogeneous and less cosmopolitan. It is sad, but it is so; it seems to be the human norm. The other day the New Statesman published an article showing how the Common Market was discreetly changing rules to prevent immigration. The Germans have 250,000 illegal immigrants about whom they are worried stiff.

My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Monson, is aware that he has not altogether carried the House with him in taking the discussion away from the rules and on to the subject of Rhodesia and the Common Market?

My Lords, I did not want Rhodesia to be quoted against me and so I simply mentioned it to save other noble Lords the trouble of doing so. The Gulf States are practically the only true—

My Lords, they have nothing to do with it.

My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, will bear with me. My point of view has not been heard much in the House today. The Gulf States—which are perhaps the only true growth area in the world—attract labour, fellow Moslems, from Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan, but they take great care not to give them citizenship rights. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, may ask how I can reconcile my libertarian principles with opposition to large scale immigration.

My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt the noble Lord. He has spoken for 17 minutes. Many speeches have been made. I wonder whether he would be kind to the House and be as quick as possible, as we have many more speeches to hear.

My Lords, I quite appreciate that. I am just about to wind up. I make no apologies for being a nationalist rather than an internationalist. I believe that nationalism runs with the grain of human nature rather than against it. Robert Ardrey put it rather more bluntly. In referring to the claims made by internationalists he spoke of "sentimentality and self-delusion". I am fortified in my support from perhaps an unexpected quarter. One of the most powerful defences that I have read of the right of a nation to decide who shall and who shall not come to its shores, in other words, the right of a nation to discriminate, came from the pen of that world famous and almost universally-respected liberal, the late Don Salvador de Madariaga. I am not ashamed to find myself in such company.

I want to see goodwill and harmony among the different peoples of this earth—the different races, cultures and linguistic groups—just as much as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and his friends. But I believe sincerely that this is most likely to be achieved if the separate peoples in question do not tread on one another's toes. Whatever the criticisms of this White Paper—some of which are possibly valid—the proposals it contains, if implemented, would go some way towards ensuring that the toes of the British people are trodden on rather less often than has been the case in recent years. For that reason I support the Government.

My Lords, I do not intend to follow the noble Lord who preceded me, except to correct him on one fact. There are now about two to three times as many Europeans living in Kenya as there were before independence. Is it not remarkable that in the latest election in Kenya one of the white citizens of Kenya was elected a Member of Parliament by a massive majority from an almost entirely African electorate?

My Lords, will the noble Lord not agree that three-quarters of the Europeans at present in Kenya are on short-term contracts and are not permanent residents?

My Lords, no, I would not agree with that. One cannot judge the time that they will spend there, but it is a very common feature of black independent Africa for there to be far more Europeans living in those countries today than there were before independence.

I pass to a much more pleasant task, which is to congratulate very warmly the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bradford on his maiden speech. As my noble friend Lord Pitt of Hampstead said, I hope that he will not have to speak on this subject again. As one who was brought up in Yorkshire and who is honoured to be an honorary member of the University of Bradford at present, may I assure him that he has a very long way to go before he will be accepted as a Yorkshireman. This also applies to my noble friend Lord Chitnis who will be an "off-corned-on" for several generations to come and the right reverend Prelate's missionary work will be in vain.

I shall now address myself for a moment or two—and it will be only a moment or two—to the Government Front Bench. Several times on many subjects which we have debated in this House I have pointed out what seems to me to be self-evident: that the present Government are constantly acting in defiance of accepted Conservative principles. We have heard talk about arranged marriages. How many hereditary Peers would there he in this House today if there had not been arranged marriages through the ages?—on that side of the House in particular. We have heard talk about rolling back the frontiers of the State. Can the frontiers of the State become more intimate than they are shown to be in the intentions of the White Paper which we are discussing today? Is it enough for the Government to talk about rolling hack the frontiers of the State when it comes to the protection of welfare and social facilities, but pointing forward the frontiers of the State when it comes to the personal life of married people?

Again the party opposite has always claimed to be a party of the family, and yet look at these sordid little provisions in the White Paper on the entry of widowed or elderly parents and grandparents! Can we not convince the Government that there are cultures and societies where the value of the family, and particularly of the extended family, is still preciously held and where it apparently fits in with their own desire that the family should look after its own, rather than the State?

Finally on this section, the Government claim to be the protector of the self-employed. Has the noble Lord's attention been drawn to the protest made by the Chinese Association in this country on clause 35 in his White Paper, under which nobody is allowed to enter this country on the basis of self-employment with less than £100,000? According to the Chinese—and they must be only one of several communities in this situation—if nobody is to be allowed to enter the country on the basis of self-employment with less than £100,000, that very valuable section of our self-employed businesses will simply disappear.

Twice before—and I want to address this specifically to the noble Lord, Lord Belstead—at Question Time I have asked the noble Lord a specific question, and on each occasion he has avoided an answer. The question is simply this: In the Conservative Manifesto, as has already been mentioned from our Front Bench by my noble friend Lady Birk, this sentence was included:

"The rights of all British citizens legally settled here are equal before the law whatever their race, colour or creed

And then the Manifesto goes on:

"and their opportunities ought to be equal too".

I have asked the noble Lord to try to equate that pledge on which his party was elected to government with the measures that are included in this White Paper. Is it not obvious that if there is a conflict—as surely there must be—then the Government have taken the wrong path? If the Government believe in the pledge they gave to the nation—and I know that the noble Lord has said to me before that they also pledged to cut down immigration, but surely that is not the answer—which I have just quoted, then this way of cutting down immigration, by making separate categories of citizens, is not the way of honourable fulfilment of that election pledge.

In my view—and I no more than summarise the whole weight of argument throughout this debate—this White Paper can be described in three words: it is racialist; it is sexist; and it is illegal. The argument on its racial character has been fully explored by my noble friend Lord Pitt and others. All I would say on that is that I believe that this Government are doing what other Governments have done before. There can be a case for the control of immigration; that case must not be mixed up with race or colour.

The argument on sexism has been more than fully put by my noble friend Lady Lockwood, and also in the remarkable speech from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman. All I would say is that the kind of sexism which is apparent in this Paper reminds me of the Hitlerian description of the role of woman of the 1930s, Kinder, Küche, Kirche.

On the last point, that of illegality, on which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, made such a fine speech, I have only one point to add to what he said on the European Commission of Human Rights. Have the Government considered their position in regard not just to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, not just the European Commission of Human Rights, but their position on the Helsinki Agreement? I remind them of what they are pledged to according to the Helsinki Agreement:

"The participating States will examine favourably and on the basis of humanitarian considera- tions requests for exit or entry permits from persons who have decided to marry a citizen from another participating State".

It goes on:

"The participating States will deal in a positive and humanitarian spirit with the applications of persons who wish to be reunited with members of their family, with special attention being given to requests of an urgent character, such as requests submitted by persons who are ill or old. They will deal with applications in this field as expeditiously as possible".

I simply ask the Minister, as did Lord Scarman, whether the Government believe that the proposals contained in this White Paper can be equated with the pledge we have given as parties to the Helsinki Agreement. We rightly condemn breaches of the Helsinki Agreement when we point them out in the case of the Soviet Union and other nations. Are we not in these proposals breaking our solemn pledged international word, and are the Government content, satisfied and happy that that is the inevitable conclusion to be drawn by the rest of the world, and by the citizens of this country, with regard to the proposals they are now making?

My Lords, as the 20th speaker in this debate I am reminded of the old saying, "Patience is a virtue. Catch it if you can"—sometimes in a woman, but I will not say what the end is. Like my noble friend Lord Belstead, I have listened to every speech, so we can both claim some patience. At the outset, I wish to pay tribute to the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bradford which was magnificent and I hope we shall often hear him. I have some association with Bradford, in that one of my relations is at the university there and I would confirm everything he said about the community, the variety of people, in Bradford and the way in which they manage to work together most successfully. As I say, I hope we shall hear from the right reverend Prelate many times in the future.

I was also much impressed by Lord Belstead's speech. I am one of those in my party who has been anxious and rather nervous about the rules in the White Paper and I came to the debate today in a rather uncertain frame of mind. Having listened to all the speeches, I have been tremendously impressed by what Lord Belstead said, and we must remember as we debate this matter in this House and in another place that we are debating something which is not yet decided. The Home Secretary has said that he is open to conviction about changes; and the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, said that himself today. In the debate in the other place, which I read with great interest, Mr. Merlyn Rees said:

"I have always believed, and I am not prepared to change my belief in opposition, that there should be control of immigration".â€