My Lords, in asking the House for permission to ask this Question may I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, upon his promotion and also say how glad we are that he is still to answer Questions for a time on foreign and Commonwealth matters? My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Lord for those kind words. The Government support the proposal for a conference on disarmament in Europe tabled at the Madrid meeting on 9th December by France. The proposal envisages initially the negotiation of militarily significant, verifiable and binding confidence-building measures applying to the whole of Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals.

My Lords, while very deeply welcoming that reply, may I ask the Minister this: Does he not agree that the session which ended last year was one of criticism, and that the session which will begin next Tuesday will be one of construction? Are there not three proposals for European disarmament: the Warsaw Pact, the French and Yugoslavian? Is he aware of our deep appreciation of the fact that the British Government will support one of those proposals?

My Lords, I think that there were even more proposals along the lines that the noble Lord describes than the three that he referred to. Romania and Sweden also made certain proposals in this connection. As for his suggestion that the first half of the conference was one of criticism, it was hardly our fault if that is what took place. What really happened in Madrid was a review of the implementation of the Final Act by all the participating states, and I am afraid that it was necessary for us to criticise in fairly forthright terms the implementation of the Soviet Union.

My Lords, may I add my own congratulations to those of my noble friend to the noble Lord and hope that he will continue for some time to come to assuage the insatiable curiosity of your Lordships on foreign affairs questions? I have had a little experience of doing what he is doing, as he knows.

May I put these two queries to him? Is he aware that we greatly appreciate his reference to the Swedish and the Romanian proposals in addition to those mentioned by my noble friend? Secondly, is it clear that any move in this direction, which we are glad to see is supported by Her Majesty's Government, will not confuse or cut across the existing talks in Vienna and Geneva on multilateral force reductions and related matters?

My Lords, again may I thank the noble Lord for his kind words? The noble Lord is quite right, these proposals should not cut across initiatives being taken elsewhere. Of course, what were being discussed in Madrid were the measures flowing directly from the Helsinki final accord, and that is quite separate from the MBFR talks in Vienna and the disarmament talks in Geneva.

My Lords, I apologise to the House for intervening once more, but this is very important. May we take it that the Madrid initiative is more or less confined to confidence-building measures, while the extant discussions, which are continuing in Geneva, in Vienna and in the disarmament commission in New York, cover a much wider field?

My Lords, of course the Helsinki final accord deals with matters much wider than just disarmament. There are all sorts of provisions in relation to human rights and other matters, all of which are being considered in Madrid. The disarmament proposals that we are referring to now form just a small part of the total Helsinki package, if I can call it that. I have referred to the specific proposals of France and the other countries which we shall develop and pursue; but of course our main disarmament fora are elsewhere.

My Lords, may I add to the congratulations which have been expressed already to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and wish him well in his new appointment when he takes it up? May I ask him whether he is aware that today is the birthday of the distinguished computer scientist, Anatoly Shcharansky, who is incarcerated in the Perm labour camp, where he is prisoner No. 35? He has been prevented continuously from joining his wife Avital in Israel. Would the noble Lord say what progress has been made in the case of persons such as Anatoly Shcharansky in implementing the family unity provisions of the Helsinki final accord?

My Lords, we are somewhat selective in the specific cases which we raise with the Soviet Union of those people, such as Dr. Shcharansky, whose unfortunate plight is drawn to our attention. In general terms, we have most certainly drawn the Soviet's attention to the appalling decline in the number of Jews who have been granted exit permits from the Soviet Union in recent months. But, as I say, on specific cases we have to be a bit selective, because otherwise our representations would carry less weight.

My Lords, would not the best confidence-building measure be for the Soviet Union to clear out of Afghanistan? Would it not, indeed, be an essential one?

My Lords, it is true that détente, as they say, is not divisible and it seems difficult to imagine how meaningful progress can be made on measures proposed, which relate, perhaps, specifically to Europe, while the Soviet Union remains encamped in Afghanistan.

My Lords, in circumstances of world slump, is not disarmament piling disaster on disaster? Is this not particularly unfair on a new Minister of Defence, whose sole qualification seems to be hope for his success as an abrasive arms salesman?

My Lords, I think that goes rather wide of the Question on the Order Paper. But it is certainly the case that we need to maintain a credible defence posture if we are to have any kind of success in disarmament negotiations.

My Lords, while associating myself completely with the protests about the treatment of dissidents in the Soviet Union, and about the invasion of Afghanistan, may I ask whether the Madrid Conference has not now passed to the position of considering constructive affairs? Will the noble Lord add to his already agreeable Answer by saying whether the Minister will be supporting Malta in its proposal for security in the Mediterranean?

My Lords, I do not have details of the Maltese proposal in front of me, but, like all other proposals, we shall wish to consider that one in the context of what is necessary to maintain our security. That does not mean that we will not look at the proposal with care and urgency. But it is also true, as the noble Lord said, that the next phase of the meeting in Madrid will be to consider the proposals that have been put forward, including in particular, of course, the French proposal which is referred to in the Question.

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

My Lords, these matters are entirely for the discretion of local authorities who, in determining whether or not to make charges and, if so, the amount, are required to have regard to the means of the mentally handicapped people concerned. I understand that the local authority associations are at present examining the possibility of devising basic ground rules which could be adopted by all local authorities when assessing clients for charges. The Government's view is that authorities should not charge people living at supplementary benefit level.

Yes, my Lords. But is my noble friend not aware that it is quite absurd to have all the palaver of finding out how much private means mentally handicapped people in adult training centres possess, because very few of them ever have any private means? Is it not time that we changed from a system which so much discourages them in their attempts to get trained for work and enabled to earn a very modest amount, which is then taken away from them by some authorities, but not by others? Should we not change the system altogether now?

My Lords, the views of my noble friend will, I am sure, be of great interest to my right honourable friend, but, as I said, the position is that it is for local authorities to decide on these matters. As my noble friend said, local authorities vary in the way they do this and I do not think it would be right, and it would not be the Government's philosophy, to interfere with local arrangements which, on the whole, work well.

My Lords, while acknowledging the good work done by the adult training centres in so many parts of the country, may I ask whether it is not most important that the widest publicity be given to the views which the Government have just declared on this matter? Would not the Government consider in cases of genuine hardship that some ex gratia repayment be made to some of the people who have wrongfully been charged, when people in other parts of the country have been allowed to have the benefits of these training centres without any cost whatever?

My Lords, I hate to repeat myself, but the arrangements are that local authorities are responsible for these matters and it is up to them not to charge unfairly. Certainly the Government take the view that nobody on supplementary benefit should be charged, and local authorities should make sure that they are not causing hardship. It is their business, and I feel sure that my noble friend is in a very good position to get in touch with any local authorities which are not doing what he thinks is right.

My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether he is aware that the reply which the Government have given on this matter is totally unsatisfactory? When an anomaly of this kind exists, the Government cannot run away from their responsibility and say that this is a matter for local authority associations. Surely the Government should give a directive that when a stupidity and absurdity of this kind exists, it should stop? Surely it is the Government's responsibility?

My Lords, as I tried to indicate in my first answers, the local authorities have complete discretion in these matters. But the Association of County Councils and the Association of Metropolitan Authorities are currently examining the possibility of devising basic ground-rules which could be adopted by all local authorities when assessing clients for charges. This is currently going on, and I think we should leave the authorities to carry on with their work. If it is unsatisfactory, then we can see what can be done.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that many of us are entirely happy that these decisions should be left to local authorities, provided that the local authorities take the right decisions? When the local authorities take decisions which are manifestly wrong, then we are not quite so happy.

My Lords, I understand very well. We should all like to live in Utopia.

My Lords, in the meantime, would it be possible to publish a list of the authorities which are making these charges? They might be ashamed to see their names on the list, bearing in mind the lack of humanity and commonsense in the circumstances, as the noble Lord has said, in the making of these charges.

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord's point will certainly be taken on board.

My Lords, in view of the question asked by the noble and learned Lord, and also in view of my noble friend's earlier suggestion that we should consult the local authorities, may I point out that I have a little list? We have consulted all the local authorities and the Question which I tabled was based upon the answers. Therefore, while thanking my noble friend for the interest he has taken in this matter, may I persuade him to carry it a stage further, with a view to ending this ridiculous system?

I think perhaps, my Lords, that my noble friend and I might get together on this matter afterwards.

My Lords, I am sure the noble Lord will be aware that, under the new supplementary benefits arrangements, regulations are being formulated to avoid discrepancy in payments in other fields. Would not the noble Lord think this would be equally advisable for local authorities and that clear directives, after consultations with local authorities, ought to be issued in order to clarify this point and to create uniformity, one would hope, on the basis of a zero payment?

My Lords, I am grateful for the comments.

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

My Lords, as I think Hansard shows, my statement on that occasion has been misquoted and misunderstood. In that Answer I was only concerned to point out that many tickets are legally supplied and sold. I do not dispute that there are some agents and sub-agents, presumably in collusion with some airlines, who are selling some tickets at prices which are below the officially approved level or are in breach of the conditions attached to the particular fare. As I have said, we believe the problem would largely disappear if legitimate low fares, particularly, for example, standby fares in Europe, were accepted by our international partners and made available.

My Lords, in spite of that reply, may I first of all ask the Minister whether he is aware that I am both glad and sorry that three previous speakers have stolen my thunder but that, as a persistent nuisance. I was delighted at his promotion? I can think of nobody who deserves it more and I think the whole House agrees with me in that particular matter.

Moving on to more unpleasant affairs, may I ask him whether he is aware that my Question is founded exactly—and I have it here—on his statement which appeared in Hansard, col. 724 on 10th December; and that it is not true to say that the scheduled airlines expect these discounted fares to be correctly charged? Would he agree that there is surplus capacity on planes, that airlines want to fill it, that passengers want to travel, that the bucket shops have these tickets and that these tickets are offered at a price that the bucket shop operators can get from various travellers? The scheduled airlines know this and welcome it. Would the noble Lord look again at what he said in column 724, which is exactly as I have quoted, and would he feel able to change his mind on what he said?

My Lords, I fear not. Perhaps I should first thank the noble Baroness for the mailed fist in the velvet glove which she has offered to me at the start of her remarks. To deal with her supplementary question, I certainly agree that there is considerable economic pressure from passengers and from airlines, for different reasons, for lower air fares. We believe that in very many cases air fares ought to be lower and we are seeking to achieve that by means of negotiation where we can with our international partners. The fact of the matter is that we are at present governed by international agreements in this matter and the pressure which the noble Baroness has been bringing to bear upon me and upon my predecessor continuously in recent months is, as I understand it, to secure the breach of those international agreements; and that I cannot agree to.

My Lords, may I just insinuate the velvet glove a little further before we move on to other matters? May I ask the noble Lord whether he is aware that, on the same date, 10th December, at col. 725, the Minister did tell the House that fares had to be agreed between the two Governments concerned? In fact, this is complete nonsense. May I ask the Minister whether he would suggest that the bucket shops contact these various Governments before they sell the tickets? Also, is he aware that these tickets are sold at a discount of up to 60 per cent? Does he know that I have in my hand here a bucket shop price guide issued by the Business Traveller of this month, which gives the fares available from London? I am wondering whether perhaps he would feel that this matter could be looked at again in view of the evidence I have given to him.

My Lords, the noble Baroness is mistaken to say that what I was saying was rubbish, because it is not. The fact is that—and I have made this clear to the noble Baroness before and I will make it clear to your Lordships again now because I know that many of your Lordships are interested in this matter—international fares are agreed between Governments. Authority granted to airlines of either country to operate their services is conditional upon their adhering to the terms of the permits issued; and one of those terms is the fares to be charged. If they fail deliberately to charge the agreed fares, they are in breach of the permits that have been issued to them.

The noble Baroness ought to know that this matter was one of the first that came on to my desk when I took up my post a week or so ago, and it is one which I propose to pursue with the utmost vigour.

My Lords, as one who buys bucket shop tickets and is very happy to do so at the nice fares that are charged, which enable people to travel to other parts of the world, may I ask the noble Lord what is the precise position? Is it the case then that, pending some international agreement with other countries on lower fares, the Government are happily conniving at the breaking of these regulations at home by allowing bucket shops to sell at these prices? Are the Government saying, on the one hand, that they believe in these international agreements but that, on the other hand, they cannot do anything at home to stop them being broken?

My Lords, the legal position is not clear. I must tell the noble Lord that if we had been able to secure the necessary evidence in recent months we should have instituted prosecutions. If the appropriate evidence comes before me in the months to come, I shall authorise the introduction of prosecutions.

My Lords, if it is of any comfort to the noble Lord, may I ask whether he is aware that the noble Baroness was just as strict many years ago when I was in his position and exactly the same problems arose? We did prosecute a number of people. It made not the slightest difference and it is going on now in exactly the same way as it was in 1970 and 1972.

My Lords, I might perhaps add to what my noble friend has said that there may be steps I can take which fall short of prosecution, and I shall consider what might be done.

My Lords, would my noble friend recognise that there are many travel agents who are facing serious financial problems at present and that the operations of these bucket shops seriously damage their prospects?

My Lords, I have heard that view advanced and I have no doubt that it is a just one.

My Lords, has the noble Lord any information about the profits being made by these bucket shops, which are engaged in intense competition with each other? Could not a list be published, for the benefit of the travelling public, about the relatively low charges, even if they are legitimate, for the various fares that these bucket shops charge now?

My Lords, there are of course a number of legitimate low fares—for example, standby fares on the North Atlantic—which doubtless are among those offered by the so-called bucket shops. It is also the case that a number of tickets are sold by bucket shops where the conditions that should be attached to the fare are not applied or where, blatantly, the wrong fare is applied. Those are the matters with which I am concerned.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that these so-called bucket shops are operating in the best traditions of the free enterprise that is sanctified by the party opposite?

My Lords, I am aware of that. The general pressure for lower fares is one which I accept and acknowledge, but it has to be done through the legitimate channels.

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

My Lords, British Rail's manpower productivity has improved substantially since the early 1960s but the rate of improvement has slowed in recent years. The latest information available indicates that British Rail generally compares well with other European railway undertakings in this area. Nevertheless, both the Government and the board recognise that there is considerable scope for further improvement and that this is vital to the future business prospects of the railways. We therefore welcome the board's commitment to productivity and efficiency improvements set out in their 1980 corporate plan, published last December.

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl very much for his reply. Since I put down the Question I have received an admirable summary of the European railways performance comparisons and I am glad to see that our railway system compares quite favourably. However, I hope the Government realise that this is a vital service and that it is desperately important that enough investment should be made in it. I hope the noble Earl will support the British Railways Board in their efforts to try to improve the services which they give to the public.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that question. I, too, have the European railways performance comparisons in front of me and I agree with all that she has said. I assure her that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport is bearing this report very much in mind.

My Lords, is the noble Earl able to give the House any figures of performance related to the different categories of workers—both those concerned with traffic movement and other members of the staff of British Rail? Also, is it correct to say that there must be some relationship of performance to investment and that the investment in British Rail is the lowest in any European country?

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, has looked at these comparison tables, as I have. They are interesting but they do not produce any particular trend; lots go one way and lots go another way. The Government have adopted a realistic attitude towards railway finance. We have increased the board's external finance limit for the current year to compensate for traffic losses due to the recession. We have increased the limit for next year above previous plans. We have increased the cash ceiling on subsidy for 1980–81 to help the board to maintain the 12-month interval between fare increases. Both the Government and the board recognise that productivity improvement lies at the centre of this.

My Lords, could my noble friend tell the House, which does not have the figures in front of it, how the Government borrowing of £700 million by British Rail in the current financial year compares with the borrowings by rival and competitive railways in Western Europe?

My Lords, my noble friend ought to read this report. All I can say is that comparisons are particularly difficult. They suffer from general inadequacies, such as differences of accounting convention characteristics. This is particularly so in the financing of the railways.

My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that in his first Answer he did not refer to the United Kingdom's performance in this sphere compared with other EEC countries? Is he also aware that he could have answered his noble friend who raised the last supplementary question by informing him that investment by the German Government in the German railways is three times the amount that is invested by the United Kingdom Government in British Rail?

My Lords, then may I ask the noble Lord whether the product is the same at the end of it? I think he will find that British Rail's labour productivity, measured in terms of output of train kilometres per staff employed, is broadly comparable with other European railways.

My Lords, could my noble friend tell us whether increased cleanliness is included in the increased productivity, compared with European railways?

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that question. I have no statistics of relative cleanliness as between our country and European countries, but I do know that in our country British Rail is paying particular attention to it.

My Lords, notwithstanding the number of train kilometres per members of staff employed, would not the noble Earl agree with the remark made by the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, a minute ago that these figures can only be compared between the British and the European railway systems if you know what are the capital investments in those different systems? Therefore, instead of purely looking at productivity per British Rail staff, should not the noble Earl relate that productivity to the amount of total investment? And is not this a figure which emerges from the comparison?

My Lords, I think the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is very much using the same equation as the noble Lord opposite. The answer is that you need every single one of these statistics to make the final equation. That is very difficult to do. Anybody can try it on an accounting basis.

My Lords, although much of the criticism which has been made is valid, is it not also true to say that the Inter-City line in Britain is one of the best in the world? Furthermore, would the noble Earl ensure that the Cambrian coastline railway, one of the most picturesque and important in Britain, is kept open?

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord very much for his excellent remarks about British Rail. I feel sometimes that they are being hit on all sides. If we look at the pamphlet which we have been talking about, we find that we come top in one or two of the leagues, as well as not so high in others.

My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that as a regular traveller I am loud in my praise of British Rail staff who are engaged upon sleeper attendance tasks? However, could the noble Earl urge the railway authorities to encourage station staffs to provide luggage trolleys where passengers want them and not have them reserved for the private use of porters?

My Lords, although I thank my noble friend for that question, I feel that it falls a little outside the topic of the present Question. However, I will bring it to the attention of the railways authorities.

My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon my noble friend Lord Trenchard will repeat, with the leave of the House, a Statement that is to be made in another place on defence expenditure.

rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 2nd December be approved.

rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 2nd December be approved.

rose to move, That the regulations laid before the House on 26th November be approved.

My Lords, may I say that we on this side of the House greatly welcome this provision and the provision of forms in Welsh for election purposes. Can the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, indicate what is the significance, if any, of any changes between the new proposed forms and the old ones, and may I ask whether he is happy about the first provision in Form P:

"Os anfonir y ffurflen hon i'r Swyddog Cofrestru drwy'r post, rhaid talu'r cludiad ymlaen llaw"?

My Lords, while from these Benches welcoming the form and the reason for the introduction of it, may I also draw attention to the third report of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. I see that the explanatory note attached to the form is entirely in English. It consists only of 10 lines, and surely it is not beyond the wit and the energy of the translators in the Welsh Office to translate the explanatory note into Welsh. If it is necessary for the form to be in Welsh (as it is in certain parts of Wales) equally it is desirable that the explanatory note should be in Welsh. From what the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, has said, I gather that the Government are going to consider sympathetically what was said by the Joint Committee in their third report, and as I understand that that committee is currently considering another Welsh form concerning housing, where it may be even more important that the explanatory note should be given in Welsh, can the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, tell us whether the Government intend to introduce into that form an explanatory note in Welsh?

My Lords, I should like to support my noble and learned friend in the welcome that he has extended to these regulations. They will be greatly appreciated in Wales, and particularly in those areas of Wales where Welsh is generally spoken and in some cases where Welsh is by far and away the primary language.

I think the point which my noble and learned friend made, and which was referred to by my noble friend Lord Hooson, about the explanatory note is the most important. If I may say so, the Welsh is admirable and the translators deserve all praise for that; but although, on the whole, Welsh people need explanatory notes less than English people, I think it would be a courtesy if that was provided.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, and to the noble Lords, Lord Hooson and Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, for the welcome which they have been good enough to give to this statutory instrument. The noble and learned Lord asked me what is the significance of the two new forms which are the meat of this statutory instrument—Forms Z and P—and indeed the noble and learned Lord quoted from Form P, elegantly and incomprehensibly.

The significance, of course, is that the regulations which were made last year and which in my opening remarks I suggested were widely welcomed, and indeed have been welcomed again today, have a fundamental effect on the right of someone (be it man or woman) who is left off the register and instead of finding, once the register is published, which is to be this year on 16th February, that, either through mistake or inadvertence, one may have lost one's right to vote in the ensuing year, the effect of last year's regulations, which are now repeated in the Welsh language in Form Z, is to ensure that anyone can make a claim for inclusion on the register at any time, so long as it is not a time after which an election has been announced. Form P flows from that in the sense that the electoral registration officer, as your Lordships may remember, is then bound to advertise that a claim has been made and it is open to somebody using Form P to object to that particular claim. Form P has had to be changed very slightly because of the changes which have been made in Form Z.

So far as the prepayment of postage is concerned, I will certainly ask for this matter to be looked at, but I rather think that it is a practice hallowed by time and applying across the periods of different Administrations to both England and Wales. The noble Lord, Lord Hooson, and the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, both drew to the attention of the Government the inappropriateness (as they felt) of the explanatory memorandum being only in English, which of course is a matter to which the Joint Committee has also drawn attention.

I think it is right to make the point that these regulations—not, I admit, the explanatory memorandum—are made under the powers provided by Sections 4, 42 and 171(5) of the Representation of the People Act 1949, as extended by Section 2(2) of the Welsh Language Act 1967, and neither of those two Acts provides a power for regulations to be expressed in Welsh. The powers provided in those two pieces of legislation enable the Secretary of State to prescribe in Welsh, or partly in Welsh and partly in English, any document the form of which is specified by virtue of any power conferred by any enactment if the document is or may be used for any official or public purpose. That is why the regulation is in English.

So far as the explanatory note is concerned, I must admit that it has never been the practice to provide a Welsh translation of statutory instruments made under the Welsh Language Act, a piece of legislation which, of course, is itself expressed in English. But I think that in practice this will work out all right, for the forms in respect of which translations are prescribed will of course in practice be provided to electoral registration officers. Members of the public in Wales who speak Welsh need to have the forms translated, and it is for that that the regulations provide. Nevertheless, I take the point which has been made by both noble Lords, and finally by the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, that it would perhaps be more courteous if an explanatory note was expressed in both English and Welsh. We believe that this is a matter which should be looked at as being a matter of general application to all statutory instruments. I hope that noble Lords will allow me to take this away to be looked at, and that they may feel that it is right now to approve the instrument.

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

moved Amendment No. 15:

After Clause 7, insert the following new clause:

I should like to support my noble friend on this amendment. In my submission a matter of principle is raised. I shall not, of course, refer to the case which has given rise to the amendment, particularly as I myself played a very small part in it. But the matter of principle is important, and it seems to me to be as follows. Should it be possible to limit or hedge round the reporting of or commenting on matters which form part of the public record of proceedings in a court of law, save where the court has the power to forbid publication?

Personally, as an advocate, I have always taken the view that it was part of my professional duty to the court to assist anybody whose job it was to report or to comment on what forms part of the transcript of the proceedings, if that person happens not to have heard what transpired, or to have heard it wrong, or by inadvertence to have been absent at a crucial moment or, indeed, to have been totally absent from what had taken place in public. Often to give that assistance has in fact been against the interest of one's client, because one's client may well have not wanted any publicity, or, on the contrary, may have wanted it. But one has a duty to the court and my view has always been that if asked to show a document or give a name or assist with anything that has been said in court at which I was present and heard, then I would give that assistance.

If there is not this rule, or this principle, it seems to me that one lays the whole matter open to the strong incentive to anyone who takes part in proceedings in a court of law to resort to every form of stratagem—such as mumbling essential names, referring to matters in documents by referring to the document and not referring to the name, by having cosy get-togethers between advocates as to what shall be mentioned and what shall not be mentioned.

It seems to me that it is deplorable that the necessity for this particuar amendment should ever have arisen at all, because surely everybody would have taken it for granted that anything which forms part of the record of a court of law, which will appear on the official transcript, is open to be quoted or commented upon. If there is not such a principle it seems to me that it throws the whole matter open to every form of subtle suppression of the truth among those who are taking part in the proceedings. For those reasons, I support the amendment.

I understand that the Statement has now been cleared. As we cannot finish this debate before the Statement—and I am not trying to stop the noble Baroness opposite—if the Committee agrees I should like to move, That the House do now resume. I beg to move.

My Lords, with the permission of the House, I should like to repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence this afternoon in another place. The Statement reads as follows:

"Mr. Speaker, with your permission I would like to make a Statement about expenditure on defence.

"In the financial year 1981–82 defence expenditure should rise to £9,753 million at 1980 Survey prices. This takes account of the reduction of £200 million in planned expenditure announced earlier by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This figure is about 8 per cent. more in real terms than the defence out-turn in 1978–79, the last year of the previous Government. So far as this year is concerned we are likely to exceed the 3 per cent. NATO aim but until the out-turn is clear we cannot assess the distribution of growth between this year and next. In cash terms, although the cash limit has not yet been finalised, next year's defence budget is expected to be of the order of £12¼ billion, more than £1 billion higher than the budget this year.

"The scale of the increase, in relation to the containment of expenditure on other programmes, fully accords with the Government's expressed determination which I re-affirm today, of giving the highest priority to our defence in the face of the growing threat from the Warsaw Pact. It also represents an increase in defence expenditure per head at a time when the proportion of our GDP devoted to defence is already much higher than that of our main European allies, and close to that of the United States. Let me make it plain beyond doubt that I share without qualification the objectives stated by my predecessor in the House to sustain and improve the front line quality of our forces and of our contribution to the alliance, which remains the cornerstone of our security and the ultimate safeguard of our freedom against any aggression.

"In accordance with these objectives, I can confirm that next year the major programme of improvements will continue. Even after trimming recruitment, there will be over 5,000 more regulars in our services than in this financial year. A nuclear-powered fleet submarine, two new air-defence destroyers, an anti-submarine frigate and several other vessels will enter service; other new warship orders, including anti-submarine carriers, nuclear-powered submarines, destroyers and frigates, together with major maritime weapon systems such as Stingray and Sub-Harpoon, will be moving forward; substantial further orders for ships and other naval equipment will be placed; and the Trident programme is under way. The Army's new Challenger tank, the new armoured personnel carrier, the Milan anti-tank and Rapier and Blowpipe air defence systems and the Ptarmigan and Clansman communications systems continue in procurement. Deliveries under the very large Tornado programme, the core of the RAF's future capability, will be accelerating.

"Contrary to some reports, development work on the Sea Eagle anti-ship missile will continue although further consideration will be needed before its place in the programme can be confirmed. Large sums will be spent on the Nimrod airborne early warning aircraft, improvement of our Harrier and Jaguar capability, and air-to-air defence missiles. We spend a bigger proportion of our defence budget on major equipment than any other NATO country. Next year we shall spend over £5 billion on equipment, which will sustain hundreds of thousands of jobs, many in the highest field of technology.

"Nevertheless, there remain hard choices, for next year and further ahead. The problems are well known to the House, but they are worth recalling briefly. The real cost of defence equipment, much of it inevitably highly sophisticated to counter the threat, continues to rise. The recession has led industry to concentrate more heavily on defence work, which means that certain equipment has come forward faster than we expected. This is to the benefit of our services but has continuing effects on our cash flow. With so much of the programme already committed, it is not easy to make adjustments quickly. Defence, like other departments, has to make adjustments every year, in all sorts of ways, to fit its programme to planned expenditure, but for the reasons I have given the scale this year is more extensive than usual.

"In order to avoid continuing speculation and uncertainty harmful to the services and to industry, I think it right to give the House before the Defence White Paper is published an early indication of the character of the adjustments.

"The main changes which I propose accelerate the phasing out of some older equipment, the deferment of certain equipment procurements, the trimming of our works and training programmes, and further reduction of overheads; in essence, to concentrate our resources where they are most valuable.

"Some older ships of the Royal Navy will be sold or scrapped; HMS "Bulwark" will be disposed of about six months earlier than planned and the planned reductions in the Vulcan force and Shackleton airborne early warning aircraft and the rundown of Canberra photographic reconnaissance squadrons will be accelerated. There will be some adjustment to the forward warship construction programme which will involve the slowing down of a number of orders. Logistic support road vehicles, Jetstream and Hawk aircraft orders will be deferred. The Skyflash Mk 1 missile will continue, but instead of the Skyflash Mk 2 we will proceed with a programme to demonstrate a new technology for short-range air-to-air missiles. To save overheads, No. 41 Commando will merge with the other Commandos, without reduction in the present overall strength of the Royal Marines and with a continuing Royal Marine presence in Deal for the time being.

"The Naval Communications Squadron at Leeon-Solent will be disbanded. The extra Lightning squadron will not be formed as planned but we shall provide for a squadron to be found out of training units which could rapidly be made operational in emergency.

"I turn now, briefly, to the future beyond next year's Estimates. In accordance with the expressed objective of NATO, it is our aim to continue from the revised 1981–82 base line an annual increase in defence expenditure in real terms in the region of 3 per cent. Even with an increase in expenditure, however, we face, as do other countries, a major task in matching resources to our clear defence needs—a task made more difficult for us than for other countries because of our low growth. Talk of apocalyptic choices between key defence tasks is wide of the mark; but we must, over the next year or so, look realistically at our programmes in order to match them to the resources which may be available. We shall do this in an Alliance context and, we hope, in close concert with our allies. But let it be clear that whatever our economic problems, the maintenance of effective security within and through the Alliance remains an overriding commitment of this Government."

My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, for repeating that Statement. This is more than a Statement; it should have been a prelude to a major debate on defence. I congratulate the noble Viscount, and I very much regret that the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, will not be able to deal with some of these matters. I do not think that it is any reflection on the Minister who has just spoken, but we always admired the ability of the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, and in every defence debate he was courteous and gave us a tremendous amount of information.

I believe that this Statement should have been in the White Paper. It is a long Statement. On the other hand, it recognises that the Government must face a certain reality in relation to cuts. In real terms defence expenditure is to be increased in the region of 3 per cent. As the noble Viscount said:

"Even with an increase in expenditure, however, we face, as do other countries, a major task in matching resources …".

The noble Viscount mentioned our low growth. Who is responsible for that?—the Government. Furthermore, when the noble Viscount spoke about:

"the Government's expressed determination"

—which he reaffirmed today—

"of giving the highest priority to our defence in the face of the growing threat from the Warsaw Pact",

I believe that it should be the major thrust of the Government to achieve Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. The Americans have accepted this. The strategic talks are important. But there is a negative approach in this document.

There is another matter about armaments which I have often stressed. It may well be that our defence capability in this country could be affected by our stupid policy in relation to a major industry concerned with defence; I refer to the steel industry. I would simply say that inevitably we have had a Statement which confirms some of the press rumours which have abounded outside. I notice that in the Guardian David Fairhall—that very distinguished defence correspondent—has actually hit the nail on the head. I shall not go into his figures, and all that, but he comments:

"We all know that there has been an attempt to cut, but in reality there will be more spent on defence in the end".

I am one of those people who believes in adequate defence, but I still think that we should have had a major White Paper before committing ourselves to a policy.

My Lords, I too should like to associate myself with what the noble Lord has just said in congratulating the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, on his appointment. I should also like to associate myself with what he said about the services rendered by the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, which we all deeply appreciated, as I am sure he will realise. In thanking the noble Viscount for this Statement I am sure he will realise that without much further study it is not easy, in fact it is impossible, to comment very intelligently on all the detailed proposals which it contains.

On the face of it—I say "on the face of it"—many of them seem to be satisfactory and at least to dispel the sinister rumours we have heard recently that the Government were in some way going back on their obligations to increase defence expenditure by 3 per cent. over the next two or three years. In particular I welcomed the news that the Sea Eagle is not to be scrapped, although at present its precise future is, I understand, still under consideration. Again on the face of it I personally would not necessarily object to the so-called adjustments which have now apparently got to be made, although I trust that these will not in any way affect the possibility of an increase in the stocks of materials stored in Germany which now I believe are at a pretty low ebb.

My final comment is that the sting of the Statement is surely in the tail. We must, it seems, look realistically at our programmes in order to match them to our resources. Too true; but no doubt next year, if the recession continues, we may well find that our resources are such that further grave cuts in our defence estimates may be necessary. All I can say is that if we do make such cuts while spending £500 million a year, and probably much more, for the next ten years on a so-called independent strategic nuclear deterrent which could never be used, or its use threatened, independently on a first strike, it will hardly be understood by our allies and notably by the Americans, with probably disastrous effects on the whole of the North Atlantic Alliance.

My Lords, I thank the two noble Lords for their comments. My predecessor has heard their comments. I would only echo that, in his usual way, he has been extremely helpful to the new boy, and I am very grateful to him too.

May I start with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, when he suggested that we were going to cut our announced commitment by some 2 per cent., I think he said, over the next two years.

My Lords, I said that I was pleased to find from the Statement that it was not the Government's intention to go back on their obligation to increase their expenditure by 3 per cent. over the next two or three years.

My Lords, I totally misunderstood the noble Lord, and the Statement makes clear that over the period of three years the figure will be 8 per cent.; over this year and next year it will be of the order of 5 per cent. This indeed is slightly less than the announced commitment in a huge programme where the exact out-turns and the exact control of this number of billions of pounds is, as noble Lords know better than I do, not entirely easy.

The next point I should like to take up is again one made by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, about matching resources to the needs of defence. What we mean by this is not that we do not intend for the years concerned, which I have mentioned, to continue at approximately the 3 per cent. real growth level, but that due to the ever-increasing sophistication of defence equipment, and thus its much greater degree of cost, there will inevitably have to be adjustments to existing programmes. If costs for greater sophistication continue to climb at the present rate, it inevitably means that in some areas there have to be deferments or cuts. The whole of the weight of my right honourable friend's Statement is that we have tried to make those cuts wherever possible in deferments and in the phasing out of the older weapons systems, rather than in expenditure on the newer weapons systems which are so important to us.

The noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition raised the question as to whether we should not have had this somewhat long Statement in the form of a White Paper in order to have a debate. Those opportunities will come later. My right honourable friend felt that with the degree of speculation about defence expenditure in the press and elsewhere as a result of the Statement which my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer made in November on the £200 million cuts, it was important that a Statement clarifying our broad intentions and making entirely clear the continuity of the Government commitment notwithstanding ministerial changes should be made as soon as possible. I think I shall leave the other points to detailed questions on a further occasion.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Viscount whether it would be a correct interpretation of the Statement made in another place and repeated in your Lordships' House that, apart from certain adjustments which may have validity, our committed programme has not been adversely affected, and indeed has not actually been reduced? Having regard to the totality of our military expenditure, any reduction in any event was of a comparatively minor character. May I ask him, therefore, in view of the interpretation in which I have indulged, and with which I hope he will agree, whether he can explain why it was necessary to replace the three defence Ministers, Mr. Pym, the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, about whom I expressed high regard when some reference was made to the subject a week or two ago, and yet another? Why this mystification? Why the vast change and the shrugging aside of quite competent Ministers? So far as I know there was no objection raised in your Lordships' House to any of those Ministers.

I go further and say that Mr. Pym, who on one occasion came to meet the all-party defence group, of which I was formerly chairman but am now just a Back-Bencher, spoke with a remarkable clarity and knowledge of the subject. As for the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, I cannot recall any serious objection or criticism while he was occupying the position of Minister of State. Can we get an explanation? Can we get an explanation as to why it was necessary to replace these estimable Members of Parliament and members of a Government? What was all the trouble about?

May I put just one further point? I shall not be long. This is a very important subject. May we have some assurance that, having regard to our total global obligations, in the readjustments which are to take place in the next year or two due regard will be paid not only to the need for nuclear weapons, but to strengthen our manpower in all our forces and in particular our territorial contribution?

My Lords, I shall deal with the noble Lord's first and last comments before dealing with his rather longer comments about the appointment of Ministers. His first point was to ask whether I could confirm that there had been little or no change. Other than the Statement made by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in November, to which I have already referred—it was an important one; it was a £200 million adjustment due to the pressure on the programme caused by both the earlier delivery of military equipment and the greater costs of it—I can confirm that we are on course in the main, subject of course to the problems of the future to which I referred. I was pleased to hear the noble Lord's reference at the end to the necessity of nuclear weapons.

Coming to the middle section of his comments, I would merely say that it is not the place of a junior Minister in the Lords to give a full statement on changes at Cabinet and ministerial level. I am surprised that the noble Lord, who is himself a bit of a permanency in this House and indeed in our affairs, does not recognise that all Governments and Prime Ministers will find it necessary to make changes at certain times. He will have noticed that my right honourable friend Mr. Francis Pym is now in the all-important job of Leader of the House of Commons. It would be inappropriate for me to make any further remarks in relation to my own appointment or the position of my noble friend Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, except to echo what I have already said in that I have the highest regard for my noble friend, and that I have in common with the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell.

My Lords, will my noble friend take it from these Benches that we—I am sure this goes for many parts of the House—are delighted at this early announcement? It was highly desirable and it will give great confidence to those interested in defence in this country and particularly to our allies in Western Europe in view of rumours that have been circulating. This has therefore been entirely helpful to both Houses. My noble friend was right to put the good news first; it is pleasing to learn that there will be an extra 5,000 men under arms in the coming year. That is very welcome after 11 years of Labour rule when the strength of our forces was cut dangerously low.

May I ask my noble friend also to note that very welcome in the warship building yards, particularly those which are seeking orders, will be the announcement that extra warships will be ordered fairly soon? That is particularly welcome from the employment point of view in those yards which are badly in need of extra work. There is one area, however, which my noble friend could perhaps clarify. He said that as a result of the early delivery of complicated equipment there was a cash flow problem for the country. Is he aware that there is a much greater cash flow problem in industry? May I ask him to remember that while the prime contractors can probably stand on their own feet, their sub-contractors and the small sub-sub-contractors cannot indefinitely carry the financial load which a further moratorium would impose on them? Will he bear those points very strongly in mind?

My Lords, first I wish to apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, for not answering his question on the numbers in the services and in particular in the Territorial Army. The Territorial Army will increase in size in the coming year and it is certainly not our intention to do anything other than to sustain its very important place. I have already covered the fact that the numbers in the Army and Navy will also increase. Recruiting is going forward well. The effect of this Statement is that we can and will be a little more selective in recruiting and shall take a little longer to reach established strengths. I have partly answered the question asked by my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing in those terms, but I would also assure him that the cash flow of industry is indeed very present in my mind, particularly as a result of having been at the Department of Industry for the last 18 months.

My Lords, may I make two comments and ask two questions, first associating myself with what has already been said in my pleasure at his advancement and my commiseration with the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal? My first comment is that it should be clearly understood—I am sure the Minister will confirm this if it needs confirming to your Lordships—that it is no good going on about the strategic arms limitation talks, which have nothing whatever to do with this country; they are bilateral talks between the United States and the Soviet Union. We can help but we cannot either bring them forward or contribute to them.

My second comment is that the £200 million announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in another place last year takes no account of cuts of equal magnitude, possibly greater, imposed by the rigorous application of cash limits, which is entirely inappropriate to Defence Votes. Cash limits may be perfectly appropriate to other spending departments but they are not appropriate to Defence Votes, mainly for the reason mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing; you make things, you sell them and you expect to get paid for them, and this is not a matter which can be shoved to the right. What is going on in the back reaches of the defence-based industries is that the component manufacturers are going out of business and their people are leaving the country and going elsewhere, and when we want their components they will not be there to make them. This is a very serious matter which arises entirely from a failure by the Government to understand that the doctrine of cash limits is not applicable to the defence-based industries.

My first question to the noble Viscount is simply to ask will he please assure me that the cuts which are to come—never mind the cuts which have already been made, about which I am as well informed as he—will not apply to the sharp end? Training has been reduced in all three services below, in my professional judgment, a safe level; men cannot drive their tanks and vehicles, young men cannot fly their aeroplanes and ships cannot go to sea because of cash limits imposed on training. I should like an assurance that that will not be carried forward to the extent where we are no longer able to discharge our duties.

My second question is simply to ask the Minister whether he will do whatever he can with his colleagues in the Ministry of Defence to stop the most regrettable tendency, which is prevalent now in the press and elsewhere in the country, to polarise defence discussions between some sort of land-air strategy and a maritime strategy, because we need them both.

My Lords, I thank the noble and gallant Lord for those important observations and questions. I thank him for pointing out that SALT II, which the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition mentioned, is between the United States and the Soviet Union. It remains true that Her Majesty's Government will take every practical step towards the limitation and control of arms, and the word "practical" of course covers noting very carefully the degree of preponderance of conventional weapons the Soviet Union currently has over the NATO Alliance, which cannot be left out of the calculation.

With regard to the question of the inapplicability to defence of Treasury systems which apply to every department, this is a subject which I, as an industrialist for some 30 years, know fairly well. However, the fact remains that no matter how long-term your projects, you actually do have to regulate your programme in accordance with what you can afford. I assure the noble and gallant Lord that the importance of the long term, and of not changing long-term programmes, is well understood in the MoD, and certainly by me.

May I give the noble and gallant Lord an assurance about cuts at the sharp end? I would agree entirely with his last point—namely, that this whole affair must not be seen, as is sometimes reported in the press, in terms of competition between one service and another. Nevertheless reviews within the services and within the MoD of which bits of sharp end are to be the most applicable in the future against the fantastic costs of these weapon systems have to be carried out continually and every year.

My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware what pleasure will have been given to the town of Deal by the statement that the barracks there are to continue in existence? The existence of the barracks means so much to the economic situation in that small seaside town.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that observation.

My Lords, there has been some public speculation about the future size of British forces in Germany. I do not think that the Statement mentioned that point in particular. Can the noble Viscount tell us something about that?

My Lords, our commitments to NATO in Europe have not been altered in any way.

My Lords, can the noble Viscount say precisely how much longer we in Britain will have to stand a much greater cost for defence per head of the population than our allies in Europe?

My Lords, the history of various countries is different. We have long made a great contribution to the defence of the free world. As a result, we have a great deal of knowledge and skills in certain areas, and I as an industrialist am clear that we get a tremendous fallout from our strong position, know-how and skills in that area.

My Lords, I hesitate to intervene on an important subject like this, but we have been discussing the Statement for 35 minutes, and I think that it might meet with the approval of the House if we were to move to the next business.

I rise very briefly to support the amendment. I do so mainly because as a life member of the National Union of Journalists I am very concerned about the effect that the case referred to by my noble friend is having among people who work for the press. It is very many years since I did any court reporting, but certainly we were given to understand and appreciate that there were strict rules that had to be scrupulously adhered to. I am puzzled by the present situation. A court reporter takes down in his own shorthand a statement read out in open court. It is then transcribed, and I was always given to understand that it was perfectly proper to use it, because once a statement had been made in open court it was the property of the public. Therefore, there could be nothing improper in the reproduction of that statement in one's newspaper.

Now we are given to understand that if perhaps a reporter's shorthand is not as good as mine once was, or if the speaker is not as audible as one would wish, and therefore the reporter seeks assistance by borrowing the document from which the statement was read, that process somehow introduces a question of illegality and punishment. I can assure Members of your Lordships' Committee that this is a matter of great concern to all those who work in this field and that it is an essential part of the openness of our courts and of the necessity of justice being seen to be done that there should not be imposed any restriction which seems illogical and which does not seem sustainable in common sense.

I shall not detain the Committee further because the more legal matters have been very fairly put by those who have spoken already, but I felt it only right to remind your Lordships that this important question of informing the public of what is going on and what is being said in the courts of this land is essential to the freedom of full and fair reporting, and I very much hope that the amendment will be supported.

The proposition that to show a journalist, after it has been read in open court, a copy of a document, however confidential, which could have been freely and fully reported, and indeed quoted in the press, can, if the document is subsequently used, amount to contempt of court, appears remarkable. As my noble friend Lady Jeger has said, openness about, and reportability of, what is said and done in what is significantly called open court is a vital feature of our court proceedings. Exceptions to that principle and practice are few and are carefully defined, and I think that we owe a sense of gratitude to my noble friend Lord Gifford for having moved this amendment.

We are not I think precluded by the sub judice rule from referring to the desirability of legislation to clarify—and it does apparently need clarification—an important point of principle and of practice of the kind with which we are concerned in the amendment. I support it, and I am sure that we all await with interest the views of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor on a matter which, as my noble friend Lady Jeger has said, has caused considerable concern to Fleet Street and to the public at large.

I, too, want to support the amendment in the same terms as my noble friend Lady Jeger. I, too, was a professional reporter and a court reporter, and a pretty efficient shorthand writer. I thought it was very commendable if I checked my shorthand against the documents of the court. Is it to be alleged that, had I been imperfect in my shorthand, I was committing a crime by checking my shorthand against a document?

I should like to add a few words in case the noble and learned Lord would like to help us on the point. One matter that has troubled the public a good deal about this case is its obvious contrast compared with the contemporaneous case of Tuite. Tuite had been committed for trial, and so there was no question whatever that the period of strict liability had begun. Having been committed for trial, he escaped from custody. In those circumstances it would of course have been quite proper for the police to put out a notice stating,

"This man is wanted. He has escaped from custody"—

and, if they thought it right, adding

"Tell a policeman, but don't try to arrest him yourself—he may be dangerous".

What in fact happened—and I take this from a leading article in the Guardian of 23rd December, the accuracy of which I think is not in question—was that after the escape Commander Peter Duffy, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad, told a press conference that Tuite was

"a prominent member of the IRA and a public enemy";

that his escape from Britain would be a major coup for the IRA, and that he was dedicated and dangerous. He said:

"I accuse him of having put bombs in central London".

What many people fear is the extraordinary contrast between a solicitor who gets proceeded against, not by the Law Officers, not by the Attorney-General, but by the Home Secretary, who then offers to withdraw the case if the costs are paid, and this sort of statement made by the police, because in these circumstances it looks as though the police are not subject to the law of contempt of court at all. I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord might think it right to make some comment upon that extraordinary contrast.

I think perhaps this is a convenient moment at which I should intervene in this debate. If it has shown nothing else, it has shown the necessity that I should explain to noble Lords what the Harman case was about, although, of course, it is desirable that I should be very careful not to express any opinion about the merits of the appeal, which is now before the Court of Appeal. I believe it is to be tried by Lord Denning, so we all await his decision with bated breath.

Perhaps I may start at the opposite end and deal first with the remarks of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, not only because of his immense eminence but also because they are fresh in my mind. There is no doubt that the law of criminal contempt of court applies to the police no less than to the press, and it may be that at a later time in this Committee stage we shall have to say more about that. I hope that others will say it rather more vigorously than I shall, but there is no doubt that they are bound by the law of contempt. At least, that is my view.

Secondly, I would say to the noble and learned Lord that there is no contrast between the Harman case and the Tuite case, as portrayed by the noble and learned Lord. What he was saying was relevant to the law of criminal contempt but not relevant to the law of civil contempt. The Harman case, as I shall develop in due course, has nothing to do with the law of criminal contempt, with which this Bill is almost entirely concerned, and has everything to do with the law of civil contempt.

Now may I, again following the matter up in reverse order, say a word to reassure, I hope, both the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger? Again there is no fear for the press in this. The Harman case, whatever its merits or demerits, never suggested that the journalist concerned had committed a contempt of court. Nor, indeed, could it have done so on any view of what took place. I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, and I think to the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, that this had nothing at all to do with the report of the case in the press. That would in any event be protected by Clause 4 of the Bill. It had to do with a feature article which subsequently came out in which certain parts of the documents were used for the purposes of the feature article and not for the purpose of a press report of the case. Having said that, I must now, I think, begin again at the beginning.

Can the noble and learned Lord help further by telling a poor journalist what is the difference between a report and a feature article? They are very close together.

In this case they had nothing to do with each other, and so there was no question of a difference. They were just quite different things. This was a feature article about the activities of a certain group inside the Home Office, but I think that perhaps the thing will disclose itself syllable by syllable as I proceed with my rather boring remarks. I have really got to begin at the beginning again. I was not quite sure what the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, had to do with the case. He said he played a part in it, but in my report of the case, which comes solely from The Times newspaper, he is not marked down as one of the counsel. I can remember one time when I put down a Question in the House of Commons about the use of the prerogative, in the days when there was a death penalty, in a case in which I defended somebody for murder. Somebody (I think it was the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones) warned me off doing any such thing, and I had to withdraw my Question. At any rate, that, perhaps, again, is another story.

First, there were two quite separate issues in the Harman case, with only one of which Lord Gifford, with respect, dealt. Let me first deal with the one with which he did deal, and then with the one he did not. This has to do with what is technically called the law of discovery. I know that I am talking to some people who know far better than I do, and certainly as well as I do, exactly what the law of discovery is, what it is used for and how important it is to civil but not to criminal litigation. But I think I ought to say something about it on the assumption that one starts with a mind completely blank of knowledge as to what it is about, and I hope that my noble and learned friends on the Cross-Benches and noble and learned Lords opposite, and the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, and the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, will forgive me.

When you bring an action against somebody else—it may be a commercial action or it may be some other kind of action—you are in the ordinary course liable to what is called "discover your documents"; that is, you have to swear an affidavit to say what documents are in your possession relating to any of the disputed matters in the case. The awful thing is that you have got to "come clean". Very often your clients come to you and say, "This was a confidential document; it was an inter-office memorandum; I cannot possibly disclose it to the other side". You say to them, regretfully but firmly, "I am very sorry, but you have got to; and, what is more, I am very sorry but if you do not I shall have to withdraw from the case, for if I do not I shall probably be charged with professional misconduct, because I will have condoned an affidavit which to my knowledge was not complete". This surprises people. I do not suppose noble and learned Lords will have failed to have had numerous cases in their own practices where they have suffered a good deal of discouragement from their own clients at the unpopularity with which this advice has been received. But it is a matter of honour among members of the Bar that we insist upon it with the utmost punctiliousness.

But there is one safeguard, and that is that the documents are disclosed only for the purpose of the litigation. The courts will not allow them to be disclosed for any purpose other than the litigation in question. It is a matter of very important public policy that discovery should be complete, honest and absolutely candid, and that the other side should be put into possession of all the documents in the possession of their opponents, other, of course, than those which are protected by legal professional privilege—and any rule of law or any alleged liberalisation of the law which encouraged lack of candour in discovery would be a real blow against the administration of justice. That is the first question which has to be investigated when Lord Denning comes to discuss the issue in the Harman case.

I do not want to take the thing too far lest I transgress the sub judice rule. But that was the first issue in this case, the use which can be put to documents discovered. But now I am coming very much closer to the nub of the case because as, again, noble and learned Lords will know—and again I apologise to them for teaching them the elements of what they already know—until about (I forget the date) certainly the end of the last war it was universally accepted in English law, although not in Scots law, that if a Minister swore an affidavit to say that it was against public policy to disclose certain types of document owing to their confidentiality that affidavit was taken at its face value and nobody could go behind it at all.

Of course, the effect was that, to a greater or lesser extent (usually to a lesser extent but sometimes to a crucial extent) the interests of the public as a result of this peculiar privilege of the Crown—and it was called "Crown privilege" although it extended to certain other types of information—could be to interfere with the rights to justice of the litigants in a case, whether or not the Crown was a party to the case. Crown privilege applied to libel cases, for instance, between two individuals just as much as it did to a case between Mr. Williams and the Home Office. From a case called, I think, Conway v. Rimmer but, at any rate, not very long ago, the House of Lords, reversing a decision of the House of Lords during the war in a case I think called Duncan v. Cammell Laird (which disclosed the law to be what I have just stated it used to be) said that this was such a serious infringement of the right of the subject to justice in a civil case in a civil court that the courts in England would take to themselves a right which I think they have always possessed in Scotland, in a class claim for privilege—not a claim about a particular sensitive document, but a case related to the class of a group of documents because they were members of a class to which Crown privilege was attached—without in any way disputing the veracity of the affidavit by the Minister to inspect the documents themselves in respect of which privilege was claimed; and then took to themselves the right to say whether, having looked at those documents, they were so intimately connected with the subject of the dispute and necessary for the doing of justice between the parties, that the Crown privilege would be overridden by the courts in the interests of one or both parties to the litigation. That is the law of England at the present day as it has been, for very much longer, the law of Scotland.

Obviously, this presented a good deal of difficulty to a judge who in the first place might have to exercise a certain amount of judicial gymnastics if he had to forget what was in the documents in question. That was quite easily got round because the question of privilege would then be decided by a different judge from the judge who ultimately heard the case. The present case, which was a case between a person called Williams and the Home Office, related to the activities of a particular group within the Home Office; and the Home Secretary (I think it was the present Home Secretary but it might have been his Labour predecessor) swore an affidavit claiming class privilege for about 8,000 pages of documents of a group on the basis of class privilege.

The plaintiff, not unnaturally, challenged this group affidavit and Mr. Justice McNeill, I think in Chambers, having produced the documents ordered the disclosure of a very great number of them, although perhaps it may be not all, in the original affidavit. He did so after there had been correspondence between the parties in which the solicitor for the defendant, Miss Harman, had given an express undertaking that they should be used solely for the purpose of the litigation. Even if she had not given such an undertaking, there would no doubt be such an implied undertaking inherent in the nature of discovery; but in this case there had been correspondence in which the undertaking had been expressly given. There is no saying that Mr. Justice McNeill who was dealing with the privilege claim would have come to the conclusion that he did—namely, that the documents should be disclosed to the other side—if such an undertaking had not been either implied or given.

I am not suggesting that was the slightest bad faith on anybody's part in the whole of this proceeding; but, in fact, what happened was that some of the documents were read out in court and some of those which were read out in court were, contrary to the undertaking, given by the solicitor to the defendants to a feature-article journalist who subsequently founded a feature article upon quotations from them. This was not a report of the case. I can well understand that all parties acted in good faith. There never was, or could have been, a suggestion that the journalist in question could have been guilty of contempt and it certainly could not have applied to a journalist who simply wanted to report the case accurately and fairly within Clause 4.

There is no connection whatever, I hasten to say—and I hope that by now I have persuaded your Lordships of this, if of nothing else—between that and criminal contempt, which consists in interfering with the administration of justice in advance of trial in a criminal case—which was the situation which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, was considering. I am afraid that I take my stand, first of all, on the point that I raised when my noble and learned friend Lord Scarman in our previous debate raised an amendment the implications of which I said I would consider further: that, on the whole, I am resistant to attempts to enable a Bill which is designed to implement the Phillimore Report relating almost entirely to criminal contempt to be used as a vehicle for investigating the whole question of civil contempt.

It would open up a very much larger field and, although I do not expect to be cross-examined—and if cross-examined I shall plead some kind of privilege from a candid reply as to the exact state of the Government's programme—I can tell the Committee that this is no idle statement on my part. I am anxious to get this Bill on to the statute book this Session if I can. If I open the field at all much wider than it is open, I shall not succeed. At any rate, I take my stand on the principle that this was a case about civil contempt and not about criminal contempt at all. It does not directly affect the freedom of the Press. What it does relate to is the degree to which discovery should be confidential. That is the general point. The narrower point is that discovery had in fact been given of the documents in question after a plea of Crown privilege had been made in relation to documents. I may say that that related to documents about the previous Government, not about the present Government. I do not make a party point about this but raise the point in order to illustrate that there is no party point about it. One of the documents was a statement inside the Government machine of Dr. Shirley Summerskill as a Minister.

I put my own view before the Committee quite frankly. Apart from the question of the principle that I am unwilling to enter into the field of civil contempt because I do not know there where I would stop, especially after Lord Scarman's amendment last time, this matter has yet to be clarified by the courts on what is a much more complicated issue than the press has so far realised; namely, the law of discovery. It may take a little time. I do not think that necessarily it will. Not all Lord Denning's judgments are appealed to the House of Lords; there are some that are not—perhaps even the majority which are not—and sometimes the Court of Appeal are not unanimous in their opinions.

I think that Parliament would be much wiser to see how this matter is illustrated before it tries to legislate it. I hope that I have persuaded the Committee that this is not the simple thing it looked at first sight when one read the reports in the press. If anyone wants any further detail, I will try to give it. I can refer them to a report in The Times Law Reports which is rather fuller than the account of the matter that I have given.

Having said that, I do not want finally to close the mind of the Government at some stage in this Bill (though not the present) to examining any issues, when they emerge, with a little greater clarity. I hope that I have shown myself both reasonable in my approach and understanding of the points which various noble Lords have raised. Having said that, I urge the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, who I agree has rendered a service to the Committee in raising a matter which has attracted a great deal of legitimate public attention, not to press his amendment, at least at the present stage.

I feel very heartened by the debate which has taken place on this amendment. I should first like to thank all noble Lords who spoke from this side of the Committee for their warm and distinguished support of this amendment. I am heartened also that nobody has raised technical problems or suggested that the amendment I propose would not cure the serious state of affairs which those who have supported this amendment believe exists.

I am even more heartened by the fact that there has not in any quarter, even from the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, been a speech of opposition to the principle of this amendment. What the noble and learned Lord said in seeking to clarify the issues in the Harman case concerned principally the question of Crown privilege that arose in that case.

This has to be said in reply: the question of Crown privilege, with great respect, does not affect one jot or tittle the issues raised by this amendment, because however these documents came to be read out in court, however they came to be disclosed, whether the Crown objected to their being disclosed or not, the fact was that these documents were read out in open court and—to quote the words of Mr. Justice Park:

"Further, it had been accepted that reporters who had been in court during the hearing could have made notes or obtained a transcript, and that the use of such material in making the article would not have been a contempt".

Having said that, I certainly accept that this is not the right time for the Committee to take their considered view. The Houses of Parliament should not determine this issue until at least we have seen what at the very last moment is the up to date state of the law.

Having said that, I am grateful for the indication that has been given that once the law is clarified this is a matter which will, as it should, be given consideration by the noble and learned Lord, and in that spirit I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

moved Amendment No. 16:

Page 3, line 26, leave out ("subsections (2) and (3)") and insert ("subsection (3)").

The purpose of this clause is a very limited one; namely, to deal with the mischief which was identified as a result of the decision in the Divisional Court in the New Statesman case. With a good deal of what the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, said, we would agree, in this sense, that up until now the situation has been reasonably satisfactory, having been regulated by convention, and, of course, it is in that reasonably satisfactory situation that the research, to which the noble Lord referred, has been carried out.

So far as interfering in this matter is concerned, the view that we took was that it was right to interfere to the extent necessary to deal with the particular mischief, and the important point about the particular mischief was that it was by way of publication and identified the particular case. We are doing nothing more than legislating to prevent that from happening. We are not, as I understand it, seeking to legislate to allow any other undesirable practice.

It seems to us, particularly having regard to the way this matter has developed, that it would be unwise to put the prohibition further, against the people who might be involved, than is necessary to deal with the particular mischief that I have mentioned. It is clear from what the noble Lord said that he accepts that if his amendment were to be carried a great amount of perfectly innocent conversations would be subject to it. In my view at least, it is not satisfactory that the only protection an innocent conversation should have is in the fact that the consent of the Attorney-General is necessary before proceedings are taken.

Parliament, in legislating in this form, is surely expressing its disapproval of all that is covered, but is saying, "It is wise that the Attorney-General's consent should be required" simply as an added protection. It is not intended, surely, that the Attorney-General, in applying his mind to this matter, would be asked by Parliament to apply his mind to considering situations which Parliament thought were perfectly all right. Therefore, certainly, I would strongly suggest to your Lordships that it is not right to cover in the clause, even subject to the consent of the Attorney-General, situations which are perfectly in order, perfectly innocent and perfectly harmless. As I said, what we have sought to do is to deal with the matter on the basis of the harm which we see has developed.

A good deal of what the noble Lord said related to the possibility of research. Of course, that is a possibility which exists, apart altogether from the clause, and it is true that there are some persistent researchers who are anxious to get information from sources. It applies, surely, far beyond the jury room. It is not only jurymen or jurywomen who are subject to requests, from researchers. People who come out of aeroplanes, come off trains and all kinds of other people are often subject to so-called market research by very persistent people. But that is not a particular reason for dealing specially with the matter.

Accordingly, what we have thought it right to do—and I respectfully suggest to your Lordships that this is the correct approach—is to make a rule prohibiting as contempt of court the publication of the material described in Clause 8(1) but not to extend it where the mischief does not arise; namely, where the particular proceedings are not identified. That does not, in our view, affect the present situation so far as other matters are concerned. The jury system, great institution that it is, surely can stand up to properly conducted research. The judgments that are reached by the researchers will depend on their methods, the weight of their authority and the power of their arguments. I took it from the way the noble Lord described the particular piece of research to which he referred that he was not particularly impressed by it as a useful piece of research, notwithstanding the eminence, apparently, of some of those who supplied answers to the researchers' questions.

Good research is a good thing; bad research is no doubt a bad thing. This particular clause does not attempt to distinguish between these but simply limits the mischief to the situation in which, as we see it, the mischief arises. Accordingly, I would respectfully invite your Lordships to take the view that, as it stands, the clause does what is necessary to deal with the mischief that has arisen and that in the present situation it is not wise to do more.

I know that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Advocate will accept that nobody is seeking for one moment to make party capital out of this discussion. There is a very deep and genuine perturbation throughout the criminal Bar that the entirely unintended result of this clause is going to be disastrous to the process of criminal trial.

What this clause does is for the first time to make a statutory contempt of court in relation to the publication of jury deliberations. That is in Clause 8. I add that in Clause 6 there are the words:

"Nothing in the foregoing provisions of this Act— … (c) restricts liability for contempt of court in respect of conduct intended to impede or prejudice the administration of justice".

That does not apply to Clause 8. Once Clauses 6 and 8 are passed in their present form the argument will be almost irresistible that the only form of contempt of court which can be proceeded against in relation to the disclosure of jury room secrets is the form of contempt set out in Clause 8 and that no other form of contempt is therefore going to exist except for the statutory form, as set out in Clause 8. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, made clear, it is arguable that for practical purposes there is at this time no common law contempt of court in relation to jury room secrets. There have been a small number of cases where applications have been made for committal for contempt of court on the grounds of disclosure of jury room secrets. As the noble and learned Lord will know, in the great majority of those cases the applications have not been granted and the proceedings have failed. So there is very little in the way of a common law contempt that can deal with the disclosure of jury room secrets.

The only other branch of the law that can possibly deal with such disclosure is the offence of attempting to pervert the course of justice. The result of the Government's introducing this clause into the Bill and making clear that what might otherwise have been regarded as dealt with by the common law, or in one or other of those ways, is now to be dealt with in this statutory form is inevitably to lead a very large number of people to believe that provided they are not caught by Clause 8 or by the offence of attempting to pervert the course of justice they arc free to do as they like so far as jury room confidentiality is concerned.

I want to put three simple examples to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Advocate and ask him two questions about each example: first, would he agree that once this Bill is passed the behaviour which I have indicated would not be any offence known to our law? Secondly, would he agree that such behaviour would be utterly undesirable? The first example is this. It is of a juror who in the course of a trial happens to meet the defence solicitor in the cafeteria and says to the defence solicitor, "You may like to know that our jury thought your client gave his evidence very well in this case, but there is one point that is troubling us. Nobody seems to have realised this, that and the other. What is the answer to that?" If a juror did that, it would certainly not be a contempt of court under the common law, nor would it be, in my view, an attempt to pervert the course of justice.

May I give a second example, the one touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, who I follow with pleasure, not for the first time. Let us suppose there has been a disagreement at the end of a jury trial, that the defence solicitor, or a friend of the defendant, gets into conversation with a juror and that the juror says, "We were nine to three. What worried the three of us on one particular side was the evidence about such-and-such a thing, which some of us thought was acceptable but which some of us thought was not acceptable". That disclosure by a juror would not be an attempt to pervert the course of justice. It would not be a contempt of court. But it would be thoroughly and utterly undesirable.

My third example is this. After the proceedings have been completed there has been the conviction of, let us say, a gang leader on serious gang warfare charges and, for one reason or another, the gang want to get at those on the jury who were the ringleaders in securing a conviction. The members of the gang would be entirely free to go up to the jury, to cross-examine all of them in turn, as and when they could find them, in order to establish which members of the jury had swayed the jury into bringing about the conviction in order that those jurors might be taught a lesson in one way or another. That would not be a contempt of court, either under this clause or under the common law. It would certainly not be an attempt to pervert the course of justice. But it must surely be thoroughly and totally undesirable. I beg the noble and learned Lord to recognise that a series of very, very serious situations would arise once this clause was made law, and that really ought to be avoided and requires this clause to be reconsidered.

It might be possible to reconsider this clause and at the same time to allow scope for bona fide research. I do not think that the words "bona fide" appear anywhere in this clause. It might be possible to redraft the clause to allow bona fide research under limited conditions, with permission given by some judicial authority on certain terms. That would be one way of approaching the matter.

With the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, I myself prefer to approach the matter the other way and to suggest that what is required is an amendment to this clause which would in fact prevent any such research. I can only say that I do not believe there are in existence researchers who will think that they are going to make their fame and fortune by writing learned treatises demonstrating that the jury system works fairly and impartially and is entirely satisfactory. Anybody who sets out on research into that topic is going to set out from the beginning with a bee in his bonnet and attempt to prove a thesis because he knows there is going to be profit from establishing that particular thesis. That is the reason why the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, and I would prefer revising this clause in order to prevent any form of investigation at any time into jury room confidentiality. But if the Government take a different view and they take the view that some form of research should be permitted, I still invite them most earnestly to say that even then this clause requires drastic amendment if it is not to have disastrous consequences.

Perhaps I ought to say a word in view of the eminence of the speakers, although the word I say will almost inevitably be a reiteration of what my noble and learned friend said from his position beside me.

There is a curious reversal of roles in this little debate that we have been having. Hitherto the "ranks of Tuscany" have been attacking us for lack of liberalism; further liberalisation of the law is what they have been demanding. Here we have a situation in which they are saying: "Tighten it all up. You are lax; you are 'wets'; you are a couple of sociologists"—which I gather is a new word of abuse, according to the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington.

"Leaking" is also alleged, if the noble and learned Lord will permit me to say so.

And I am going to leak some more before I am finished. I am not going to say that there are not things which might be looked at again, but I really think we have it about right. We have decided, in the light of the New Statesman case, that there was a mischief and we wanted to legislate by creating in fact a new form of an old crime—a new offence—to deal with that particular mischief and not to make too big a meal of it. I want to draw a distinction which was drawn in rather a different connection by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, and others in the second of the reports by Lord Wolfenden. There is a difference between a sin and a crime. Personally I have always regarded the confidences of the jury room as sacrosanct. I know perfectly well that the sacrosanctity of the confidence of the jury room is pretty "leaky", to use a phrase popular among the present generation.

For instance, I was briefed (a million years ago!) in what was called the Brighton trunk murder No. 2, and I was told by the circuit butler after a verdict of acquittal that the jury had been 10 to two for a conviction but that the two had sat the 10 out. I have a father-in-law who sat in a libel case and he told me exactly what went on in the jury room. I was in a case, which is reported, called Boston v Bagshaw which was a civil libel case in which I was opposed by the chairman (no less) of the Bar Council—not the present one but a former chairman. After the verdict, and after I had acquired judgment in my favour, he got 12 affidavits from all 12 jury men to say exactly what they had intended to say. I was shocked to the marrow but the Court of Appeal dealt with the matter quite adequately. They decided not to look at any of the affidavits. Nobody was prosecuted and the world went on much as it had gone on before.

I do not really believe that it is necessary to create crimes on this scale. Obviously, after the New Statesman case we had to think about it. We had to think, first, shall we make a new offence? Second, if we make a new offence, shall we prohibit any leaks, except for the purpose of offences which might be committed inside the jury room? Third, shall we alter the jury oath? We considered all these things.

Years ago when, as Judge's Marshall, I used to swear the Grand Jury, there was in the Grand Jury oath a direct prohibition against disclosure, but there is not in the jury oath as it stands now. These considerations were thought through quite carefully, and we decided that the mischief, as my noble and learned friend has put it, was in fact quite adequately dealt with in the way we had dealt with it. A lot of other things are immoral, a lot of other things are a breach of confidence, a lot of other things are very shocking and should not take place, but they do. Are we going to make it a crime? Answer, no. That is my present view but, in view of what has been said, I will of course consider whether there are cases that we have not looked at.

To be honest, I was not particularly impressed with the three cases raised by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, and following my usual practice I will start at the wrong end and work up to the beginning. Where there is an attempt, for the purposes of retaliatory action against a member of the jury—which was his third instance—to ascertain which way the jury had voted for the purpose of "taking the mickey" out of them, in my opinion that is clearly a contempt of court. It is criminal contempt already, and it will continue to be a criminal contempt whenever it is committed and by whomsoever it is committed; and it is of course a lot of other things besides.

Secondly, as regards the case about disagreement, both the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, raised it: supposing the solicitor for the party who is to suffer a second trial tries to find out what affected the jury, I think this is an undesirable practice but I doubt whether it is a crime. I was shocked to the marrow when the solicitor in Boston v Bagshaw got affidavits from the members of the jury—not just private disclosures. I think it is highly undesirable, but I do not think it ought to be a crime, nor do I think it would be particularly helpful.

I have had cases where juries have disagreed and there have been retrials. One resulted in a conviction the second time and my client complained of me because I had made a speech for two hours in reply on the first occasion and made a speech for only an hour and a half on the second occasion. He thought I was neglecting my duty and there was a complaint against me, which I am happy to say never resulted in my being disbarred.

I was in another case where there was an acquittal. That was because I refused to act the second time. I said to the client: "Somebody else will do this better"—because one always does it worse the second time round. I really do not see what value there would be to a defendant in asking a juror after a disagreement: "Did you believe Police Constable X or did you believe my witness Y?" The next jury might take the opposite point of view and come to an agreed conclusion.

On the noble Lord's first case, I am not at all clear that an attempt by a solicitor to interview or to be spoken to or to be replied to in any way by a juror during the course of the trial is not in itself a contempt now. I should have thought it was an act of gross professional misconduct.

Clearly I did not make myself clear on that matter. I was suggesting for that very reason that it was the juror who volunteered the information to the solicitor.

I followed that and, as a matter of fact, it happens much more often than one would think; but in those circumstances the right course quite clearly is not to prosecute the juror, which is what this amendment would do. The right course is to tell the judge at once what has happened, to discharge the jury and start again. That is the only way in which it can be handled and it is not an infrequent happening. To my knowledge it has happened in the course of my lifetime on dozens of occasions.

There are times when there has obviously been a mistrial and then the case has to be stopped and started again. Judge Bernard Gillis used to tell his fellow Benchers of a story that they discovered, when a jury returned their verdict, that from the beginning there had been 13 jurors in the jury box and the trial had to be started again. The first time they had noticed it was when the verdict was returned. There are lots of things which can go wrong with jury trials but we do not want to make them all contempt of court. I will, of course, without any prejudice report this and discuss it with the Attorney-General and with my officials, because there may be cases where we ought to tighten it up.

Perhaps I ought to say one other thing to the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson—one of the many people who have defended me from criminal prosecutions, I am happy to say, as successfully as my noble and learned friend Lord Rawlinson. I have great scepticism about sociology and research, but I do not endorse the hostility with which he regards this, with apparent impartial malevolence, without fear or favour, affection or good will—as a judge improvidently once said to me when he took the judicial oath and was made to say it again, rightly the second time.

I am not hostile to research. Let me give an example. There was a very useful work done by Dr. Hood of Oxford University on the jury trial, which did not involve as a matter of fact any of the malpractices the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, objected to. He had a dummy jury at the back of the court which he then interrogated, and he had some very interesting results comparing the verdict of the dummy jury with that of the real one in the jury box. I thought it was a very good piece of research and very well done. So I am not endorsing the atttack on research. I remain myself an unbeliever, an agnostic, but not an atheist on the subject. Having said that, I do hope the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, and the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, will take it from me that I shall look at this again, but without any real desire to deliberalise it.

I am most grateful for those last words coming from the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor—if I may say so, a most enjoyable but difficult ex-client. I am bound to say on the question of research that, when the learned Lord Advocate says that the clause does not seek to distinguish between good and bad research, that is really the essence of the objection to it. I am afraid I remain filled with impartial malevolence towards that type of research.

I am not against research, research into conduct of members of the Bar, research into my conduct in court, research into the whole way that the process is conducted. Let that go on; I have no fear of that; that is perfectly right and perfectly proper. What I do object to is research which involves ordinary members of the public being asked questions about what they have done and said in the privacy of the jury room. That, I would have suggested, and I still maintain the position, is an entirely different matter. It is a harassment of members of the public who already do an incredible job in coming to the courts and spending hours and hours listening to evidence and giving verdicts. If they are going to be subjected to questioning afterwards, questioning which in itself can achieve absolutely nothing, I should have thought that all noble Lords here would have agreed that that was wrong. Listening here, with all their experience of debates, and then, if they are not voting according to the Whip, coming to a conclusion as to how in the end they feel about the matter, how many noble Lords would be able, if a sociologist grabbed them in the corridor afterwards, to point to the specific matters that, after four or five hours of debate, had convinced them that they should go one way or the other? It is a perfectly idle form of research, and I would still say may do irreparable harm to the whole system of jury trial.

That is all I wish to say. Of course, having regard to the last words of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, if he undertakes, as I am sure he will, to give this matter more thought and take soundings, certainly in the profession, and elsewhere, I will certainly withdraw this amendment and will not move the two other amendments which follow it.

I have not tabled any amendments to Clause 9, but I suggest to my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor that it requires a little more thought. I think it could be improved in the direction of some liberality, which I will explain. Of course, the clause as it stands is based on the Phillimore recommendations in paragraphs 42 and 43 of their report. But it is now more than six years since Phillimore reported and since then there has been a great advance in the use of tape recorders, and indeed in the construction of tape recorders. I believe that there are now some quite effective ones which would fit into something the size of a pocket watch, and which by way of receiving microphone have something just stuck into the lapel of one's coat like a trade union badge or British Legion badge, or something like that. So we have to think in terms of the general availability and increased use of these, and indeed the difficulty of detection sometimes when they are used. We want the law to be enforceable and we do not want to create a situation in which there has to be a lot of searching of people in court to ensure that the law is being obeyed.

Of course, the court reporters, whom we used to refer to at one time as the shorthand writers—that term is now obsolete—now use them in many cases as a matter of course; that fact is acknowledged in subsection (4) of the clause and there is no problem about that. But I think that subsection (1)(a) needs to be looked at. I suggest that it should be the other way round from the way that it is expressed. At the moment it is to be a contempt of court to use a tape recorder or other instrument for recording sound in court except with the leave of the court. I suggest that such use should be allowed unless the court otherwise orders. This arises mainly in relation to the use of tape recorders by counsel and by journalists.

So far as counsel are concerned, although counsel have not got into the habit of using them, there would be an obvious advantage to them in doing so, especially in cases lasting (shall we say?) several days in which there is only one counsel employed, and nobody else to take a note. Then there is the case, which sometimes one has experienced in practice, when there are two counsel but one of them falls ill. Moreover, there is even the deplorable circumstance, which luckily I only experienced in its most acute form on one occasion, when I asked my junior for the note that he had been taking of a rather long cross-examination and I took the note home for the night and, of course, it was totally illegible. Of course, there may be other examples—the circumstances could easily be multiplied.

But, so far as journalists are concerned, they already use tape recorders regularly at public meetings and on some other occasions, and I would stress that their reports are more likely to be accurate by reason of the fact that they have used tape recorders than if they have not done so. That being so, why should we not let them use tape recorders freely for preparing newspaper reports of court proceedings, subject, of course, to the kind of safeguards that are already contained in subsection (1)(b) and fortified in subsection (2) and subsection (3) of this clause?

It obviously would be very wrong if the broadcasting media were to use tape recorders in order that there could be broadcasts of extracts from court proceedings. That might, indeed, be said to be prejudicial to the outcome of those proceedings because such extracts would be edited. They might be loaded for or against one side or the other. So that should be forbidden. Those are the thoughts which occur to me. I think that the suggestion that I have made for putting subsection (1)(a) the other way round is something that is more likely to reflect the realities of the situation and introduce more liberality. I trust that my noble and learned friends will give this favourable consideration.

I was one of those who criticised Clause 9 on Second Reading. But, like, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Renton, I decided that it was preferable to raise points at this stage—on the question, whether the clause shall stand part—rather than put forward any specific amendments. On reflection, the worries that I have about the clause as it stands can be allayed if the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor were able to give some indication of the sort of circumstances in which he thinks that trial judges ought to, or would, or would be likely to give their leave for tape recorders to be used.

There are two particular instances where I feel that tape recorders can be a positive assistance to fairness and justice. The first is where an impecunious client is facing an opponent with large resources and the opponent with large resources has stenographers in court busily writing everything down word for word and providing transcripts to that side for use during the case, the impecunious client having to rely on notes. The second case where I personally would be very keen to use a tape recorder—I would not normally, I think; I prefer to use my notes—is when a county court judge is delivering judgment. County court judges do not, as a rule, have tape recorders installed in their courts and there can be the most awful wrangles in appellate courts as to whether a certain county court judge really said the things which counsel's notes have recorded him as saying.

Having given those two instances, I hope in a helpful way, I hope some clarification can be forthcoming.

As a former trial judge, I should like to intervene for one moment to express my respectful disagreement with the proposal which has come from my noble friend Lord Renton. Leaving on one side the examples which the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, gave a moment ago, and to which I shall come in a minute, I can imagine nothing more alarming and more terrifying than to try a case, either criminal or civil, which has perhaps attracted a large amount of public attention, with an absolute battery of tape recorders around the court. Anything more distracting for witnesses, anything more distracting for counsel and anything more unnecessary to the successful trial of the action, it is difficult to imagine.

The noble Lord mentioned the case where no note is available. I have never known a case where the trial judge in any court has not taken a full and elaborate note and if someone does not know what has been said he always makes his available to counsel. The suggestion is quite unnecessary. But what is much more serious is that there is in the High Court a proper system of recording. There is a shorthand note taken of every statement from a witness and copies are available, admittedly on purchase. In criminal trials there is a shorthand note available and the judge, of course, always takes a very full note because at the end he has to sum up. It is totally unnecessary to have recordings.

As a trial judge I have from time to time been asked—and I remember one request at the Central Criminal Court—to permit a tape recording to be taken of the evidence. I refused and I refused without any hesitation. One result would be that we would get rival versions of what a witness has said. Tape recorders will be set up in different parts of a court, the acoustics of which are notoriously unsatisfactory, and bits will be picked up by one tape recorder and other bits picked up on another.

There is only one way of properly recording a trial and that is the way in which trials are perfectly properly and adequately recorded at present. There is not in the Court of Appeal today the slightest difficulty except—and I come back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Gifford—as regards county courts where the Court of Appeal is entirely dependent upon the note taken by counsel or solicitors. In that case I would accept that there is a case for some system of recording the judgment, although in the vast majority of cases one gets, by agreement between the judge and counsel, a perfectly satisfactory note. But in my experience I have known county court judges take their own tape recorders into court and produce a perfectly good tape which is made available to the parties on request. With that limited exception I think that this would be the most retrograde step and one not to be encouraged.

Before the noble and learned Lord sits down, I should like to say that I listened very carefully to what he said and it would seem to me that the logic of his remarks would be that we should not have anything like subsection (1)(a) at all, whether in its present form or in the form which I suggest.

I said not universally—there are the occasional cases, as I have mentioned.

Perhaps I might intervene for a moment in this dialogue from behind me. I think that really the Phillimore Committee got it right. Quite obviously technological advances have taken place, as my noble friend Lord Renton, has said, and they have taken place, I may say, in video as well in audio equipment. No one has so far suggested that we ought to allow anybody to take a video into court.

What really emerges from this discussion is that there are some uses of tape recorders in court which are legitimate and desirable, others which are questionable and others which are unquestionably bad. What the Phillimore Committee said and what is in my clause is as follows:

"The basic principle in all such matters is that a court must have power to regulate its own proceedings,".

It goes on to say:

"but some uniformity of practice is no doubt desirable. We see no objection in principle to the use of recording machines. For many purposes they are no more than a modern substitute for shorthand, and in some courts they are officially used as such. The main objection to the use of recorders is that they produce a more dramatic but not necessarily more accurate account of what occurred in court. We consider that it would be particularly undesirable for recordings to be broadcast or otherwise made public especially since, in the wrong hands, they can be tampered with so as to produce a false record of what occurred. Such a practice could well make witnesses even more nervous than they tend to be already ".

Respectfully, I think that the Phillimore Committee got it more or less right. I certainly visualise a liberal use of the permission to be granted by judges, in the regulation of their own proceedings, to authorise the use of a tape recorder to legitimate persons like court reporters and counsel, as my noble friend Lord Renton suggested. For instance, I visualise a judge saying to a particular reporter—and there is usually only about one in a county court—"Mr. Smith, you can use your recorder generally unless I tell you to the contrary". But, for the reasons given by my noble and learned friend Lord Roskill, I think that the judge must give leave.

At the idea of a battery of people coming in without any kind of control, recording not all but particular parts of proceedings and perhaps selling them to other people, my mind begins to boggle, if my mind ever does boggle—it is past boggling at my age. But, on the other hand, somewhere in my brief it says—though I cannot turn up the actual passage that says so—that there were pirate tape recordings of particular witnesses during the Thorpe proceedings which were on sale to America. I cannot believe that my noble friend Lord Renton would have liked that, or would have thought that the judge ought expressly to prohibit it before it became illegal.

One starts with the proposition that a court is entitled to regulate its own proceedings, and the form which regulation takes must vary with the development of technology and also with the type of court, the type of proceedings and perhaps even with the temperament of the judge or the nervousness of the witnesses. But I think that we have it right, and, with those explanations, I hope that the Committee will be prepared to let the clause stand part of the Bill.

I think that it would be discourteous if I did not acknowledge the careful thought which my noble and learned friend has given to this matter. However, I would simply point out that under my alter- native proposal the court would still have control of its own proceedings and, under the clause as it stands, there would be occasions when my noble and learned friend's mind would still boggle because the judge, feeling that he should allow a tape recorder to one counsel, would hesitate to deprive other counsel of having one. Then we would have just what my noble and learned friend Lord Roskill feared, a battery of tape recorders displayed by counsel alone, to say nothing of the journalists. However, I certainly would not wish to press this any further. As I say, I am grateful to my noble and learned friend.

moved Amendment No. 20:

Page 5, line 9, leave out paragraph (a).

With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, I think that he is making rather a meal of this. I think he has overlooked two important facts. The actual wording to which he objects is lifted verbatim from Section 157 of the County Courts Act. I have done a little research and I find that the County Courts Act is now dated 1959, but the particular words to which he objects have been in the County Courts Acts, so I am informed as a result of my secondary research, since 1846.

During that entire period, which included the reigns of the glorious Judge Cluer and the glorious Judge Hill-Kelly, whom some of us remember, and others, not once has there been any trouble of any kind resulting from these words. I really think that it is better to have the same words in the two Acts than different words in the two Acts; otherwise I can see a large number of cases going to the Court of Appeal based on the difference in nomenclature.

The Magistrates' Association has always pressed me to do something of this kind. The Phillimore recommendation at paragraph 37 is:

" We recommend that similar powers"—

that is, similar powers to the county courts—

"should be given to magistrates' courts to deal with contempt in the face of the court".

The difference between Phillimore and the present draft relates to penalties. It is partly due to inflation that we have increased the monetary penalty, but it is not entirely due to inflation that we increased the monetary penalty, nor the penalty they recommend in respect of imprisonment. The reason for that is that the Phillimore Committee recommended that the magistrates' courts could certify for the Divisional Court who would have the unlimited powers of committal, and this arises as a summary offence only.

I am quite prepared to look at the penalties which are higher than Phillimore recommended, but, on the whole, I stick to Phillimore on the substantive law. I quite agree that the word "wilfully" has given rise to criticism in some directions, but if you look up Halsbury's Statutes you will see that that has been now the subject of some judicial determination and definition and is the now familiar word. I think that "wilfully misbehaves might, if it became frequently used by the magistrates—but I do not suppose they will use it any more frequently than the county court judges—be the subject of some judicial determination. But I would prefer to keep it as it is. When the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, says, "Well, people must put up with a certain amount of insult", I wholly agree with him; but then they do, and I do not see on the whole why magistrates and witnesses in magistrates' courts should be subjected to any greater degree of insult than county court judges and witnesses in county courts.

I can remember one case—I think probably before Lord Gifford was born—when I appeared in one of the Norfolk county courts, North or South Walsham, I think. A witness whom I had cross-examined most ineffectively, but successfully as it turned out, appeared suddenly from behind a pillar as I left the court and said, "Young man, you made me out to be a liar. Take that and that and that!" And hit me three times with her umbrella. Why that should he permissible in a magistrate's court and not in a county court, I do not know. As it was a county court I went in and said to the judge that this peculiar episode had happened. He sent for the policeman. The policeman looked at the witness and said, "Now, now, now", and that was the end of the whole of the episode. It seems to me that on the whole I was right to complain.

I can remember another occasion when the lady who was prosecuting a client of mine brought all her friends to witness the discomfiture of my client, and he got off rather lightly thanks to a merciful plea of mitigation which I had put forward. All the friends chased me down the corridor of the Central Criminal Court, and I think I would have been hatpinned but for the fact that the lift suddenly came down, opened its doors, I leapt in, the lift closed and took me up to another floor. Why this should not happen equally in the magistrate's court and the Central Criminal Court, I do not know.

On the whole I am content with this. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, is satisfied that I am not a true enemy of human liberty, but I think "wilfully misbehaves" would have covered both types of conduct.

When one is just about to give an example one always finds that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has experienced the situation one is going to give in a far more excessive form than any example one can give oneself. I am rather surprised that he would not welcome with open arms this amendment. He talks about making a mouthful, but surely these eight or nine lines are in themselves a mouthful. All that is wanted is simply a provision for the disruption of the court proceedings. Surely to be insulted is an occupational hazard that all those who go to court are prepared to accept and suffer, and regrettably there are justices of the peace throughout the land who have a somewhat inflated view of their own importance.

The fact that these words come from 1846 is, if I may say so, to the point, because society has developed since 1846. It is not such a paternalistic situation as it was in 1846 in the Petty Sessions around the countryside. I would have suggested that if you keep these words, "or otherwise misbehaves in court", you will have examples of ladies coming into court in trousers and being told to get out and put a skirt on, and people who chew gum or break peanuts, or do all sorts of things of that kind, considered by some justices to be misbehaving. Having regard to the enormous powers which they have in this clause, I would ask the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to look at this again and see whether it could not be put in one line that this should simply cover behaviour which causes disruption of court proceedings, and that that is surely enough.

I frankly do not think so. Magistrates are entitled to have their proceedings conducted in a dignified manner. Witnesses and counsel who appear as advocates in court should be entitled to be protected from the sort of thing which has happened to me in my own time. A form of words which has served county court judges—including those whom I have mentioned, perhaps disrespectfully, from my own youth—over 100 years will serve very well at the present. I will of course think about the matter between now and Report, but I am not very much inclined to change these hallowed, sanctified words which have served us so well for so many years. After all, I am a Conservative.

I am grateful for the assurance that there will be another look, and I hope that when it is given it will be remembered that when we come to the magistrates' courts we are dealing with a much wider range of dispensers of justice, many more of them; we are dealing with laymen; and dealing with laymen who are having to deal on the whole with more controversial issues than come before the normally quiet county courts.

Therefore, while there may have been no complaint about the use of these powers, while I think the noble and learned Lord said that they had never been used, which perhaps indicates that they are not really needed, I should like to look at it again, and I am glad that the Government will. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

I invite attention to subsection (4), which is a flagrant example of non-textual amendment when it should be done by textual amendment. The provision reads:

"The foregoing provisions of this section shall have effect as if enacted in the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980; and for the purposes of section 108 of that Act (appeal to Crown Court) an order under this section shall be treated as an order made on conviction".

The Magistrates' Courts Act 1980 is a valuable piece of consolidation and we will not get anything like a clean statute book unless we follow up consolidation with textual instead of non-textual amendment, as we have on this occasion. I do not have with me my copy of the Report of the Committee on the Preparation of Legislation, but this was one of the things they were most keen about, that we should try to get the statute book into a good state. Under the direction of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor fine work has been done on statutes in force, but that work will be nullified if we have non-textual amendments of this kind, so I hope the draftsman will be asked to put this in order between now and Report.

I certainly take on board what my noble friend said. I am not sure I would accept his description of it as a "flagrant example of non-textual amendment". All that this subsection was designed to do was to ensure that, for the reasons given by the noble Lords, Lord Gifford and Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, in discussing the last amendment, there should be an appeal by way of rehearing to the Crown Court if someone suffered any of the penalties under the preceding provisions. However, I shall of course refer what my noble friend said to the draftsman. He is one of the most experienced draftsmen in the business, so my noble friend can he sure that the point will be taken and examined in very safe hands, better than mine.

This clause, by amending Section 344 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1975, provides that in Scotland a witness in a summary prosecution who wilfully fails to attend court after being duly cited or unlawfully refuses to be sworn or refuses to answer any question which the court may allow or to produce documents in his possession when required by the court or who prevaricates in his evidence, shall be guilty of a criminal offence rather than being guilty of contempt of court. On reflection, I consider that this new provision would not work satisfactorily and that it would be advisable to retain unamended the present provisions of Section 344, which leaves this matter as a particular type of contempt of court, and accordingly I invite the Committee to agree that the clause should not stand part of the Bill.

moved Amendment No. 22:

Page 7, line 34, leave out ("(4)") and insert ("5)").

Regarding subsection (2), I have two questions for clarification. Bearing in mind the interpretation in subsection (1) of "court" and the provisions in Clause 7, I am rather puzzled as to the necessity for the specific reference to tribunals of inquiry under the 1921 Act. Further, the second part of subsection (2) refers to the time when a contempt would be active. I ask these questions because the Schedule 1 is specifically set aside for providing for the times when proceedings are active, and I am wondering whether that might be a happier place in which to place the timing of contempt as it applies to the 1921 Act.

I support my noble friend Lord Morris in what he says, especially on his second point. It is strange in an interpretation clause to have this point of substance made about the time at which proceedings become active when all other such points are dealt with in Schedule 1. I support Lord Morris in suggesting that this point also should he stated in Schedule 1. To the reader of the statute this could be regarded as a bit of a trap; one does not expect to find in the interpretation clause matters which are plainly dealt with elsewhere in the Bill.

This is a highly technical piece of drafting. I do not want to be a bore about it and I will explain it in, I hope, intelligible language. The first thing to remember is that under Section 1 of the Tribunals of Inquiry Act 1921, contempt of court applies to tribunals of inquiry. What is a tribunal of inquiry, and what are proceedings in front of it? A tribunal of inquiry is not a court, and proceedings before it are not judicial proceedings between parties at all, and therefore a totally different series of considerations applies to the application of contempt of court to tribunals of inquiry.

Noble Lords will remember that tribunals of inquiry were started in 1921 owing to the very unsatisfactory nature of the Marconi scandal proceedings before a Select Committee; it was found that members of that Select Committee of another place voted on purely party lines, and not a great deal of public satisfaction was had by anyone. Thus, tribunals of inquiry, which on the whole have proved themselves over a number of years, have, I think rightly, taken the place of the old Select Committee procedure in a great number of cases. However, having attended or read debates about almost every tribunal of inquiry under the Act since it came into force, I am bound to say that in almost every case there has been controversy after the report has been delivered, as well as a complete attack upon tribunals in principle and in detail. Contempt of court does apply to tribunals, though the nature of the proceedings before them is not the same as the nature of proceedings before a court where advocacy is practised between parties and issues defined by pleadings of one kind or another.

In other words, in order to define the activity there is needed a definition different from that contained in Schedule 1, which applies to courts and judicial proceedings. I dare say that it would have been possible to draft the point the other way by adding an entirely new schedule or an entirely new paragraph to the provisions of Schedule 1, but the experienced draftsman thought that it was better to treat tribunals separately. They do not exercise any part of the judicial power of the state in the ordinary sense of the word, and they arc animals of a colour that is very different from the other animals with which we are dealing in connection with contempt of court.

The separate provision as to when proceedings of tribunals become active is necessary because it was desired to follow the Salmon Committee recommendation in this regard. In addition, because tribunals are unlike any other court proceedings it is better to deal with them expressly rather than to leave the position in doubt by letting them be covered by some other general words in Schedule 1, especially under the heading "Other proceedings at first instance", which occurs in the schedule. The reason why the special provision is contained in Clause 19(2) is that it seemed better not to scatter around too many different parts of the Bill the provisions about the 1921 tribunals Act. At present the provisions are all in Clause 19.

The last question which my noble friend Lord Morris adumbrated, and of which he was courteous enough to give me notice, was why the Bill speaks of the "time" when the tribunal is appointed and not the date of the instrument by which it is appointed. The reason is that the press deals in times of day and not in dates. For instance, let us suppose that a tribunal was not appointed until the afternoon and we had inserted the word "date" instead of "time". The newspapers could in the morning still be technically liable under the strict liability rule. So we put in "time" instead of "date".

This is a highly technical drafting matter. However, I am myself content with the drafting, and I hope that I have dealt with some of the questions which both of my noble friends have asked me.

I am very sorry to appear obstinate. I try not to be, especially when my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor is dealing with a matter. I fully accept what he says in relation to the first part of subsection (2), and I take his point that when dealing with the 1921 Act and the tribunals under it it is an advantage to have the references to it all in one place.

However, I must confess that even after having heard him—and he is so persuasive—it sticks in my gullet that the last part of subsection (2) should be placed simply in an interpretation clause when all other references to the moment when proceedings become active are contained in a schedule. As a happy and constructive compromise may I suggest to my noble and learned friend that subsection (2) of Clause 19 is simply turned into a clause on its own. Then the various difficulties which have been mentioned will have been met, and I do not think that any of the views which my noble and learned friend has expressed will have been defied.

I shall certainly take the advice of the draftsman on this matter, but my noble friend must not complain if the advice of the draftsman, which I shall probably follow blindly, proves to be not identical with his own advice.

But may I remind my noble and learned friend that it is not draftsmen who are responsible for the contents of Bills, but rather the Ministers who are in charge of those Bills?

That is perfectly true, but sometimes Ministers prefer to follow the professionals rather than the amateurs.

moved Amendment No. 23:

Page 9, line 45, leave out ("12,").

moved Amendment No. 24:

Page 10, line 8, leave out from second ("proceedings") to end of line and insert ("commenced by motion for committal or attachment in").

moved Amendment No. 25:

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, has said, this is a point at which the Bill departs from the recommendations of the Phillimore Committee. I think that I can fairly claim that this is a matter which has given us a good deal of thought and we have tried to propose a solution which seems to us to be right. We have sought to approach the matter as one of principle. It is true that in matters of this sort one might expect the newspapers to favour the later time rather than the earlier time—and not everyone to whom the noble and learned Lord referred has yet seen the force of the reason which prompts us to adopt this particular test. So far as the preservation of order is concerned, we consider it important that the machinery of justice, the administration of justice, should be sufficiently protected to enable civil order to prevail—so that the last point that the noble and learned Lord made is a point with which we have sympathy but, in our view, what we have done will tend to promote that in this particular area.

When the Phillimore Committee came to consider this matter it is obvious that they found the considerations to be rather finely balanced. May I remind the Committee of precisely what they said:

"The choice lies between an earlier moment, such as the issue of a warrant for the arrest, or possibly the actual arrest, of the wanted man and a later moment such as when the accused is charged or first appears in court. The disadvantage of a later date is that it would allow comparatively unrestricted comment during a police search for the wanted man which might culminate at any moment in an arrest and charge".

They clearly recognised that particular disadvantage of the later date—and there may be others. The report goes on:

" On the other hand, a warrant for arrest is usually issued in private, and even an actual arrest may not, for good reasons, be immediately announced by the police. In these circumstances the Press might well not know whether they were at risk".

So the essence of the reason for which they chose the later time is this basic one, that, if they chose the earlier one, the press might not know that the time had already started. They go on to add in relation to the more exceptional cases:

"Moreover, if the wanted man was never found publication would be restricted, at least in theory, as long as the warrant for his arrest still existed".

They recognised there the practical point which I think was raised in relation to the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, put forward on the last occasion to seek to deal with that particular matter. But the basic reason for which the Phillimore Committee went for the later date was, I would submit, on that passage, that the press might not know whether they were at risk.

That point is completely dealt with by the provision to the press of the defence of Clause 3:

"A person is not guilty of contempt of court under the strict liability rule as the publisher of any matter to which that rule applies if at the time of publication (having taken all reasonable care) he does not know and has no reason to suspect that relevant proceedings are active".

Accordingly, we have sought to deal with that difficulty in that way by providing to the press a defence in that situation. It seems reasonably clear that if the case is one which the press are interested in reporting they will follow it sufficiently closely to be able to make the necessary inquiries.

In our view, the proper way to approach this question is to consider in principle when proceedings have started. Since the Phillimore Committee reported, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner has, mentioned, the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland, constituted as a five-judge court so that it could review earlier judgments (and, therefore, in a particularly authoritative judgment as far as Scotland is concerned) considered this matter from the point of view of principle. They said in the course of giving their opinion:

"We have no doubt that it can be said that from the moment of arrest the person arrested is in a very real sense under the care and protection of the court".

Then I pass on for the sake of brevity. They continue:

"From the moment of arrest the process of apprehending, charging and bringing a person to trial has begun and the beginning of that process is one of two points of time at which relevant proceedings have commenced so as to bring into play the contempt jurisdiction of the court where prejudicial publication is concerned".

Analysing the position properly, at the time of arrest proceedings have started. If they have started, then why not take that as the time at which proceedings have started? Why create an artificial rule for the purposes of contempt of court laying down that proceedings, although they have, in fact, started, have not started until some later date? The other point of time that they mentioned is in relation to a case where the court grants a warrant. They go on to say:

"At that time the court, in the person of the sheriff, is informed of the identity of the person accused on prima facie information and grants its authority for his apprehension for the purpose of being formally charged and thereafter, it may be, of his committal for further examination or until liberation in due course of law with a view to possible trial on indictment. At this point of time it cannot be disputed that the court has become seised of proceedings against an individual which, if they move through all subsequent stages of the process, will end in trial. The machinery of the administration of criminal justice has in these circumstances been set in motion by the court itself and there is no more ground in logic or expediency, and certainly none in authority, for denying to such an accused person, any more than to a person who has been arrested, the full measure of protection against the injury which he may sustain by the publication of material prejudicial to a fair and impartial trial".

That decision was very carefully considered. It departed, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, has said, from the earlier view taken in Scotland; and the court approached the matter as one of principle. I venture to claim, although it is a Scottish case and I know it has no direct authority in the common law system, that the method of analysis, the way in which the court reached its conclusion, should, I would suggest, commend itself to the Committee. The disadvantage of the later starting point is, in our view, a strong one. At the moment of arrest or the time of issue of a warrant or summons, the identity of the suspect is linked with the particular crime that is in question; and it is in relation to that, that the most prejudicial material can be directed. Some of the most damaging prejudicial material is an account of the suspect's past history, especially if that contains matter which it would not be appropriate to bring out at the trial. It might even be worse if it includes an account of previous acquittals, because that might suggest that on this occasion at least he should not have the benefit of the treatment that he obtained earlier.

In our view, it is quite wrong that at this time, when the accused person has become linked in this way with the particular charge, he should be deprived of the court's protection and should be exposed to publication of prejudicial material affecting the particular matter with which he is charged. Accordingly, our view is that, while the Phillimore Committee's recommendation is entitled to very considerable respect, the reasons which they have given on this occasion are overcome by other matters in the Bill and by the considerations to which I have referred.

I should close by saying that the consideration that the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, referred to regarding the experience of recent weeks is a strong reminder to the Committee that this may be a most important matter and that this interval of time between the time proposed in the Bill and the time proposed in the amendment may be of very critical importance.

Perhaps the experience of the past weeks also casts a little doubt on what the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, said at Second Reading (at column 688 of Hansard of 9th December 1980):

"If anybody argues that few editors have been arraigned for contempt, it is because contempt makes cowards of us all … Most of us, faced with the law as it is, act as though the better part of valour is suppression".

It may be open to doubt whether that is as true today as it was when he said it. In that situation, I would commend to the Committee the time which we have chosen in the Bill rather than the time suggested in the amendment.

Since the noble and learned Lord the Lord Advocate of Scotland has spoken, may I intervene as a Scottish crime reporter. I think what we are discussing here, from a long experience of reporting crime, raises all the issues which I suggest my noble friend has raised. As a crime reporter—and I am talking now not about the responsibility of editors but people finding and deploying the facts—you are forced into the most incredible situations if you do not know where you stand.

We see it now in this incredible euphemism which annoys me every time I hear it on the air or read it in the press that somebody is "assisting the police in their inquiries". What you can attach to that as a crime reporter is unlimited. You are talking about people whom you may have interviewed outside the charge itself and therefore by reference are identifying because they are now "assisting the police in their inquiries". We are beggaring the language. We are going to drive reporters and, I suggest, editors into the most incredible, tortuous ways of avoiding contempt. I am talking as an ex-crime reporter—I do not mean an ex-criminal—and you know what the police are thinking, you have been well-informed about what the police are thinking, you know exactly whom they are interrogating. Most of the time—certainly in my experience of crime reporters—we are assisting the police in their inquiries. We were not trying to interfere with their inquiries, we were assisting them in their inquiries. Therefore at a point at which you are talking to Norman Thorn, are you identifying him? Are you at risk in a case like the Norman Thorn case, in which I was actually involved? When you ask him you know exactly why you are asking him because you know the police have told you information leading directly to him. At the moment you are committing somebody like Norman Thorn.

All I am trying to say is that in terms of practical journalism it is not just a question of protecting the editor or the lawyer who advises the editor. But we are concerned in this definition in protecting the man on the job who is not going out to wreck law and order; he is trying to determine the facts and he does not know at what point he is involving his newspaper in contempt.

I am not sure that the expression used by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Advocate about experience in recent weeks takes us very much further in this particular amendment. Perhaps all that that experience shows is that if the case is sufficiently notorious whatever rules are laid down they are going to be quite flagrantly and deliberately broken.

Having said that, may I go on to say that I think that this is one of the controversial issues in this Bill on which—although there are arguments both ways—the Government are right. I say that with some reluctance because I appreciate that in saying that I am to some extent imposing a restriction upon press freedom which in principle I would very much not want to do. The reason I say it is that the test proposed in the schedule when the time should run is "arrest". The test proposed in the amendment is "charge". Between arrest and charge a period can elapse in which press comment—unrestricted—could be very very harmful to the prospects of a fair trial.

This is a development since Phillimore reported and I have in mind particularly the Prevention of Terrorism Act under which a terrorist, after some bomb incident which may have killed a number of people, can be arrested and may well not be charged for seven days. It may even be for a longer period than that. I find it difficult to see that we should cater for allowing the press the right of unrestricted press comment on the man who has been arrested and the crime he is alleged to have committed during a period as long as seven days. If one is going to allow comment of that sort, then it may be we are laying the way open to press comment that will seriously interfere with the administration of justice.

I want to be as discreet as I can about this matter, but I think that the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, compels me to say what I am about to say. He quoted a very large number of citations including The Times and the Guardian. He did not quote one quotation after Sutcliffe—not one. He did not quote what The Times said about Sutcliffe. He did not quote what the Guardian said about Sutcliffe. There you had a crucial case. Article 6 of the Convention of Human Rights says:

"In the determination of his civil rights and obligations or of any criminal charge against him everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law".

We heard the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, at our previous meeting refer indirectly to the Sutcliffe case, and what he said about it will be within the recollection of the Committee. This is precisely the point at which the amendment we are discussing is crucial. It is the point: it is the only point, I venture to say. What did The Times, from which the noble and learned Lord cited pre-Sutcliffe, say about it?—

"The press and television have little to be proud of in their treatment of the arrest and subsequent charge for murder of Mr. Sutcliffe".

That is what they said—"little to be proud of". Even this afternoon, the noble and learned Lord cited the case of Tuite, which was active, and he asked whether the police were bound by the law of contempt. What did The Times say about that in relation to Sutcliffe? It said this:

"Even more seriously, perhaps, members of the police must have told representatives of the media details of evidence which would almost certainly form part of the prosecution case".

I could go a great deal further than that if I wished. The Telegraph published a photograph of that euphoric press conference held by the police. What is the time at which a man is entitled to a fair trial, and what is the point of time at which he is entitled to the protection of the law of contempt? What did The Times say about that? It says very precisely that it is the point after arrest and before charge very often; and that is the point which arose in the Sutcliffe case—after arrest and before charge. The noble Lord's amendment would reverse that. The Times said:

"It is precisely in that sort of case—where a heinous crime is alleged—that a defendant most requires the protection of the law".

What did the Guardian say, post-Sutcliffe, which the noble and learned Lord quoted pre-Sutcliffe? The Guardian produced a cartoon in which two Eskimos were looking at a police helicopter coming down in the Arctic waste; and one Eskimo was saying to the other:

"They are looking for an impartial jury".

I wonder why the noble and learned Lord divides his mind into compartments like this. He attacked the Government over a wide range of criticism, but on the one vital point—and I repeat "the one vital point"— of his amendment he failed to notice what had happened in the last few weeks. If ever I had doubts as to whether our judgment about the point of time was right—and I did have doubts; I expressed them on Second Reading—they were dissipated by what happened in that critical case. There we had a man before charge being brought to the court for the purpose receiving it, being put in fear of his life by a demonstration, started by the press and perhaps instigated by members of the police force—and the noble and learned Lord asks us to accept his amendment without disclosing a word of that.

I have never felt too competent on the law of Scotland and I do not propose to express any opinion about it. So far as Sutcliffe is concerned, this is of course a case which I believe at the moment is sub judice, which is why I took Tuite in preference. It is no good the Government suggesting, with the greatest respect, that the reason they decided to jettison the unanimous report of the Phillimore Committee on this point and choose the opposite period was because of the case of Sutcliffe. They had decided this quite apart from the Sutcliffe case. I gather from what has been said both by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, that it is accepted that no legal society can be found which thinks the Government are right on this point and that Phillimore was wrong. I have never known, at least in the last 10 to 20 years, such a unanimous body of opinion among lawyers—who by no means always agree—and not only legal societies but the press as a whole.

I will consider what they said about Sutcliffe, which I did not go into earlier for the reasons I have given, but I will certainly do so before the Report stage of the Bill, and I shall be grateful, if the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, if he thinks it right, would also consider what I have said before the Report stage, and then we can consider the matter anew. But I think it is desirable in these days to have laws which, if possible, have the general support of the public; and I feel it is a real obstacle to the choice which the Government have made that there is this very unanimous broad support among nearly every public organ for the solution of the unanimous Phillimore Report. With that, I will ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

The Government have been asked a question and I will answer it. Yes, of course it had nothing to do with Sutcliffe, which had not then happened, which led us to make the decision we did. I quite agree; that is obvious and that is true.

Secondly, of course one must not be unduly influenced by recent events; but I think there has been a great public revulsion of feeling since Sutcliffe, when people saw the dangers of what can be done between arrest and charge. The noble and learned Lord's citations all derive from the supposition that nothing much can happen between arrest and charge. Sutcliffe has shown that, however unanimous, that opinion is wrong. Phillimore admitted that the balance of argument was very fine; that was the burden of his thought. I agreed on Second Reading that I thought the balance of argument was very fine. I said then, and I say again, that I thought the point of time we had chosen was the right point of time; and in our debate last summer the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, agreed and pointed out that the press was protected from the main arguments in Phillimore by Clause 3 of this Bill. But I will of course look and see what can be done. There may be an intermediate stage, of course, between the warrant for the arrest and the actual arrest.

I will make all these inquiries, but I am bound to say to the noble and learned Lord that I absolutely reject the kind of general charges he was making at the end of his first speech. I deeply resent the kind of suggestion which was then made; and although I will look at this again, my own mind has been very much altered and the doubts I had have been very much reduced by the experience of the last few weeks. I believe that we are living in an age when law and order is in doubt, and the assumption appears to be made too readily that populism, in its various forms, is always on the side of mercy and freedom. That has not been the experience of my lifetime and it has not been the experience of the last few weeks. It was not demonstrated outside the magistrates' court the other day. On the contrary, it is vital that a man should have a fair trial, and my noble and learned friend Lord Rawlinson was right when he wrote to The Times and said that what had occurred on that day undermined the presumption of innocence.

I should like, if I may, to say just a few things about this. I started off when considering this matter at the beginning very much taking the same view as my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner, but I am bound to say I have changed my view to some extent as a result of what happened in the Sutcliffe case. It raises substantial issues, which make one go back and consider one's own position very carefully indeed. But I am bound to say to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor that I am worried, if I may go back to Clause 3(1), as to whether this does represent an adequate defence for a newspaper. That is because subsection (1) says this:

"A person is not guilty of contempt of court under the strict liability rule as the publisher of any matter to which that rule applies if at the time of publication (having taken all reasonable care) he does not know and has no reason to suspect that relevant proceedings are active".

About the first proposition—namely, whether "having taken all reasonable care" he knew—I have no difficulty at all. I think that is perfectly reasonable. But I am, bluntly, troubled by "has no reason to suspect". That goes a great deal too far. It makes it very difficult for a newspaper to defend itself adequately, not in a case such as Sutcliffe, but in much more marginal matters, when it has to be decided by subeditors, working under very heavy pressure late at night, whether that represents an adequate defence—all the more so as the onus of proof will naturally be on the newspaper to prove its position in the matter. All I would say to the noble and learned Lord is that I should be extremely grateful, as one who, on balance, shares his view on this matter, if he would look at the language of Clause 3 of the Bill.

I certainly will.

We have several things to think over. I thought, in Sutcliffe, that the real trouble was the police. If the police call a press conference, I doubt whether we shall ever get a state of affairs in which the newspapers accept that it is quite all right for the police to prejudice a man's trial as much as they like, but the newspapers must not say what the police told them. But I shall certainly review that again, in the light of what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has said.

May I say that I agree with what the noble and learned Lord has said, and I repeat what I said in connection with an earlier amendment, that policemen must remember that they must obey the law no less than editors? If editors are provoked by policemen to break the law, I know who is most to blame.

May I say to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, who has thundered about the Sutcliffe case, that the law at the time of the Sutcliffe case was in relation to proceedings being imminent? It is perfectly obvious, in view of what the noble and learned Lord has said, that the police and the press were breaching the law. If that is so, no clause here will make any difference to that. And why have no proceedings been taken against those persons who have breached the law? It is not a question of a new clause being required to fill a lacuna which has been disclosed by the Sutcliffe case. As the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, pointed out, it has never been answered. But the Sutcliffe case is nothing to the point. In the Sutcliffe case it was obvious that proceedings were imminent. Therefore, with the greatest possible respect, I do not quite see the argument that this clause is suddenly being revealed as a necessity by the Sutcliffe case.

The noble and learned Lord the Lord Advocate has talked about the moment of charge as being the logical moment when the protection should come. But, in an accusatorial system, the moment of accusation is the logical moment when protection should come in. Taking up what the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, has said, the practical reality is that when a person in a police station is charged he can be asked no more questions about the matter concerned. He has to be cautioned and the reality is that that is then publicised. When a person goes to the police station to help with inquiries, in many cases the police say that he goes voluntarily. He remains in the police station voluntarily. You are told, when you ask in court whether he could have left if he had wanted to, "Oh, yes, at any moment he liked".

But there comes a moment in the police station when, if that person says "I am going", they reply, "No, your aren't. You are under arrest". At the moment, that can happen at any time up to four or five days. But at some moment when someone is incarcerated in a police station, he suddenly wakes up to the fact, as he is prevented from seeing a solicitor, that he is entitled to leave that station if he wants to. That is the moment when the police say "No, you don't. You are under arrest".

How on earth are the press to know, when someone is in a police station, whether he is under arrest or not under arrest? The whole trouble here is the lack of certainty. The moment of charge is the realistic moment when everybody knows what is the situation, and there is no playing around. The police admit and say at once when a person is charged. When the subeditor, or whoever it is, is deciding what comment is permissible, it is the nature of the charge which will be relevant to what can be said.

It may well be that everybody thinks that someone has been taken in for a murder charge, but after three days' hard interrogation all they can charge him with is stealing. When the charge is eventually made, it is one of simple theft and not of murder at all. During those three or four days, the press has been entirely gagged, because they should have suspected, they think, that the man in the police station was, first, under arrest and, secondly, was under arrest for murder. In reality, neither was so.

I must say to that that the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, has missed two absolutely vital points. First, he has asked a question in relation to the Sutcliffe case which, in the nature of things, I should be quite wrong to attempt to answer. Prosecution is not for the Lord Chancellor. I make no comment at all about whether or not an offence was committed in that case under the existing law. All I say is that, above the importance of the freedom of expression, there lies the necessity for a fair trial, and the moment of arrest, or the moment of the warrant, as the Bill now says, may be the moment at which the man who may be charged is entitled to the protection of the law. To my mind, that overrides the other consideration. Article 6 overrides Article 10 in terms of the Human Rights Convention.

Secondly, as regards helping the police with their inquiries, naturally enough, I have a certain amount of sympathy with some of the things that the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, said, but the difficulty is when the man is identified personally." A man is helping the police with their inquiries"—what does it matter if that is said? "X is helping the police with their inquiries "—the whole scene changes. I believe that the press is responsible. I also believe that, in the case which I felt it necessary to describe, they were in many ways provoked, and I have not uttered a word which I have not quoted from newspapers, particularly for that reason. I think what happened was most unfortunate and I hope that, in one way or another, it will never happen again.

Nevertheless, before we leave this matter—I was listening very carefully and am partially convinced by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor—and I hope that we shall come back to it on Report, one of the points that has struck me about a debate in which I have not pretended to be as expert as noble Lords who have spoken is the place of the police. I believe that the record will show that the description of recent events by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor brings that out.

There is a sense in which they are central and yet they are not in the Bill at all. The moment of charge—that is for the police. The moment of arrest—that is for the police. The moment of identification, and who is helping them with their inquiries—those are for the police, unless someone finds out in another way. They may even hold a press conference, which may or may not be improper. If one can put it in this way to the Government, whether or not the amendment is right, the Bill as it stands does not seem to be right when the police occupy that crucial, central position in the whole procedure and the only answer is, "If you have fallen unfairly beneath the spell of the liability, go back to Clause 3." As my noble friends Lord Ritchie-Calder and Lord Harris of Greenwich pointed out, that is inadequate. One can envisage many cases where as a result of action by the police, not necessarily intentionally directed towards the liability of a journalist or any other person but because of the way that the police have acted, it would be very easy, as the Bill stands, to fall within the strict liability rule and not to have a defence.

My suggestion to the Government is that they should look at it again. If the moment in Schedule 1 to their Bill that would be replaced by the amendment is wrong, they must then somehow reconsider Clause 3. If they keep their moment of initiation of liability, then they must have another look at the terms of Clause 3. I hope that the Government will do so before the Report stage.

I take the point which the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn of Charlton, has made and I will certainly ask that it should be looked at again. However, the noble Lord is taking a more generous or a more liberal view than I am of the responsibility of the police who hold press conferences. This law applies to publications. If you allow yourself to be photographed and give a press conference and statements to the police for the purposes of publication, I should have thought that it comes within the law as drafted. However, I will certainly consider that point and ask that the draftsman shall.

moved Amendment No. 26:

Page 11, line 15, leave out ("in England and Wales or Northern Ireland").

moved Amendment No. 27:

Page 11, line 18, after ("plead") insert ("or, in Scotland, is found to be insane in bar of trial").

moved Amendment No. 28:

Page 11, line 22, at end insert ("or, in Scotland, where a transfer order ceases to have effect by virtue of section 68(1) of the Mental Health (Scotland) Act 1960").

had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 29:

moved Amendment No. 30:

Page 12, line 4, leave out paragraph 14.

First, I must make a very boring, pedantic point to the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder. It is that if his purpose is to disapply the strict liability rule to appellate proceedings, either in criminal or civil proceedings, the omission of paragraph 14 would not have that effect. It would be totally ineffective. The first schedule, of which paragraph 14 is a part, is concerned solely with the period of time in which proceedings are active. Therefore no omission of any paragraph in it would do anything other than make doubtful the period during which proceedings were active. It would not disapply any rules.

I now come to the substance of what I understand to be the purpose of the amendment. The amendment is based upon a discussion we had at an earlier stage of a slightly academic kind as to the applicability of the strict liability rule to cases where there are not juries. I do not want to dogmatise particularly about the extent to which judges can be influenced in the absence of juries. I think I hold the unfortunate view that judges are human and are probably not quite so immune as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Salmon, suggests, or possibly quite so vulnerable as some people would also suggest. I think they are human and I will proceed to develop on those lines.

The first thing I want to say is that I reject the theory which the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, put forward in his first sentences, that this is a broad restriction upon the liberty of the press. The whole, or nearly the whole of this Bill—the whole of it which is important for this purpose—is covered by Clause 2, and we have to start from the proposition that what is done or what is complained of, before the strict liability rule applies, is something which creates a risk that the course of justice in question will be seriously impeded or seriously prejudiced. In other words, obviously quite a different range of considerations will apply to a trial at first instance before a judge alone, where primarily very often what you have to consider is the parties and the witnesses rather than the judge, or a trial by magistrates or a trial on appeal when the witnesses have normally given their evidence and are no longer on the scene.

I think the courts must be trusted to apply the provisions of Clause 2 and I think they will apply them in accordance with their words. That is to say, when they are dealing with appeals they will say that quite a different range of considerations applies as to whether the course of justice is seriously prejudiced by what is complained of. That is the real safeguard which is provided by this Bill, and if I did not think it was a real safeguard and a real liberalisation of the law I do not think I should have gone to the trouble of producing this Bill at all. The same is true of Phillimore, with whose recommendations (with a few relatively unimportant exceptions) I am not only in agreement, but whose recommendations I am trying to bring on to the statute book.

I point out again, possibly pedantically, that appellate proceedings are not confined to the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division. They cover—and cover for this purpose rather more importantly—appellate proceedings from magistrates to the Crown Court, where the witnesses are all heard again; and if the object is to exclude appellate proceedings I certainly would not agree for a moment that different considerations apply to an appeal by way of complete re-hearing from those which applied in the original hearing before magistrates.

The next point I wish to deal with is the extent to which the appellate proceedings ought to be within the ambit of the law of contempt at all. This was discussed at very great length in a case which took place quite a long time ago before the Court of Criminal Appeal—it was a division of the court—and it was about an unpleasant abortion case concerning a doctor whose name I will not mention because he may still be alive although the case was in 1945. After the verdict and before appeal the News of the World, I think it was but at any rate a newspaper, published an article which said:

"Doctor unmasked, Scotland Yard had been after him for 20 years. The first complaint was 20 years ago. Without evidence they were patient and the principal question that Scotland Yard is puzzled about is the whereabouts of the fortune he is supposed to have amassed".

That case came, I think, on the motion of the convicted man himself, before the divisional court, and on that court there were two very experienced criminal judges, Humphreys and Oliver, who will be remembered, I think, by all the professionals present. They said a number of things which I think need to be borne in mind when one is approaching this problem. They took the view which I take, namely, that judges are human. I may say that on the facts of the case the judges held that no contempt had been committed and the editor was acquitted with flying colours; but the principles were discussed at considerable length.

The first point made by Mr. Justice Humphreys was that among the powers of the Court of Criminal Appeal, as it then existed, was to order in certain very rare cases a new trial; and in 1966 the Government, of which the noble Lord opposite was a member, widely extended the circumstances in which a new trial could be ordered from the completely aborted trial in cases in which fresh evidence had been discovered between the verdict and appeal and to other cases, too. Mr. Justice Humphreys said that the effect of that is that in any case coming before the Court of Criminal Appeal it may direct that a jury be sworn to try the issue on the indictment which has never properly been tried. It is therefore quite a fallacy to treat this case as if all that the Court of Criminal Appeal could do with regard to it would be to decide the question of law. Since 1966 that is a very much more live issue than it was then.

He then went on to discuss the question which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Salmon, discussed, about which Lord Dilhorne expressed an opinion and others expressed similar opinions. Mr. Justice Humphreys was one of the most experienced criminal judges of his day, and he said:

"I think it is a fallacy to say or to assume that the presiding judge is a person who cannot be affected by outside information. He is a human being and while I do not suggest that it is likely that any judge as the result of information which had been improperly conveyed to him would give a decision which otherwise he would not have given, it is embarrassing to a judge that he should be informed of matters which otherwise he would much rather not hear and which make it much more difficult for him to do his duty".

He went on to say, quoting from an earlier judgment of Mr. Justice Wills:

"The tendency and perhaps the object of such publications is to deprive the court of the power of doing that which is the end for which it exists, namely to administer justice duly impartially and with reference solely to the facts judicially brought before it".

Then Mr. Justice Humphreys said again:

"I venture to think that no judge with long criminal experience will fail to be able to recall instances in which the publication of matters such as that to which I have referred has had the effect of making the task of a judge extremely difficult and no-one has the right to publish matter which will have that effect".

Mr. Justice Oliver, who was, if anything, as experienced as Mr. Justice Humphreys, said much the same thing. He said:

"One of the evils of inadmissible matter being disseminated is that no one can tell what effect a particular piece of information may have on his mind. Why, as my Lord has asked, and I can think of no better word, should a judge be embarrassed? As an illustration of the proposition, the Court of Criminal Appeal has expressed not once but many times its thorough disapproval of evidence which is sometimes given by police officers at the end of a case when a man has been convicted. On such occasions all sorts of allegations are frequently made against the man's character, sometimes in the nature of hearsay, sometimes not supported by evidence at all. What is the ground for the disapproval of the Court of Criminal Appeal regarding such statements. It can only be that the judge, who after hearing the statement has to pronounce sentence, may quite unconsciously have his judgment influenced by matters which he has no right to consider".

I take exactly the same view as those two judges; although the range of facts and considerations which apply to appellate proceedings are totally different from those which apply to proceedings at first instance, the protection of the law of contempt ought still to be available.

I make the further point that we are not only concerned with judges, we are concerned with parties. Supposing you get a case where there has been a violent attack by the populist press against a convicted man, which has been the case from time to time throughout my life. There was a publication called John Bull, edited by Bottomley at one time, which had a column devoted solely to matters of that kind. How can a party who has been the subject of a violent attack and who has appealed think he has had a fair deal from the Court of Appeal if he has been made the subject of such an attack. He will say—I think he will certainly say—either that the court was intimidated into dismissing his appeal, or, if he succeeds, the public, which is very often on the side of severity, will take another view.

Do not let us think the public is the mild-mannered beast that we see portrayed on the Liberal Benches in both Houses of Parliament and in the National Council of Civil Liberties. The public is quite a different animal altogether. I have had many more complaints from the public in the past three months through Members of Parliament about undue leniency than about undue severity. So if the public see that the appeal succeeds they will say the Court of Appeal fell over backwards, they thought they must support the judge in the face of this violent press attack, and that is what they would do. The truth is that all judicial proceedings whether held in the rather rarified atmosphere upstairs or in the magistrates' court have to be conducted with some sense of decorum and with a sense of comparative calm and decency.

Since we are having this discussion and I am being unduly frank about some things, I think it right to tell the Committee certain things which have happened to me since we had the Second Reading debate. In the first place I went down to a bird sanctuary with a solicitor, and the solicitor told me that he had been approached by a judge as a client. The reason he had been approached by the judge as a client was that a press campaign against the judge had caused his boy to be bullied intolerably at school, and what remedy had he got. Is one really going to say that judges are incapable of being influenced by that sort of thing.

I was approached by a judge who had been trying an appeal on divorce; I was myself approached, and this is all since the Second Reading of this Bill. In that case the circuit judge—this was an appellate proceeding, but not a criminal one—had found that the wife, who had apparently rationed the amount of sexual intercourse that the husband should be permitted to have on the rather strict basis of enjoyment, had committed conduct such, to paraphrase the words of the 1969 and now the 1973 Act, that the husband could not reasonably be expected to live with her, with the result that the marriage had irretrievably broken down. In fact the Court of Appeal said "Really, this is not quite good enough. Marriages do not necessarily irretrievably break down because wives do not want to have very frequent intercourse with their husbands". The headline in the press was "Once a week is enough". I do not know whether once a week is enough; I am too old to care. What I do know is that no fewer than three newspapers tried to interview the wives of the judges concerned. I am not saying whether they were right or wrong. All I am saying is that judges whose wives are approached in this way are entitled to some kind of protection. Perhaps I ought not to go on with these indiscretions. The fact is that all these things have happened to me since Lord Salmon made his speech in the House of Lords on Second Reading.

All I am really saying is that, although I absolutely agree that a totally different range of considerations apply to actions which can seriously prejudice the course of justice, the ambit of the law of contempt is not cast sufficiently wide if it does not cover cases in appellate courts as well as cases in courts of first instance. And I am not going to answer the question which was put to me by the Lord Chief Justice.

I am still not entirely clear why the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor was in a bird sanctuary with three judges wives! I must admit I was beginning to lose the tenor of the argument. I only want to make one or two short comments, if I may. First, on the technical matter of the amendment, I do not propose to go into it; it is clear that the purpose of the amendment was apparent because the noble and learned Lord has spent some time dealing with it. Secondly, when the noble and learned Lord says that if there is press comment on proceedings pending appeal, there is nevertheless a substantial limitation provided by Clause 2(2) of this Bill, I wonder whether he is right and I wonder that because that subsection simply reads at the moment, "The strict liability rule applies only to a publication which creates a risk". We come back, as on many other arguments in the course of the Bill subsequently, to the question of whether it is not absolutely necessary, if it is to operate fairly, that some word such as "substantial" should be put in front of the word "risk", if it is to provide the sort of protection the noble and learned Lord has repeatedly said in the course of these discussions it will provide.

I accept, of course, that different considerations may apply to proceedings before the Court of Appeal Criminal Division and the Crown Court on appeal from a magistrates' court, except, if I may, to say that it is unlikely that there would be much in the way of substantial press comment on an appeal pending to a Crown Court from a magistrates' decision, because it follows that that must have been there for summary trial and is unlikely to be the sort of matter that would arouse substantial comment in the press. I do not know whether the noble and learned Lord would perhaps consider at a later stage whether there might be separate consideration given to the position of the Court of Appeal. I really think that it is going a little far to suggest that they are going to be as easily influenced as the noble and learned Lord has said. I accept that judges are human beings, or at least some of them are; I would not dispute that for a moment. It may well be that press comment does make their task more difficult. But judges are there very often to face difficult tasks and they are not unused to it.

The only other observation that I would make at this stage is that the noble and learned Lord referred to the possibility that the Court of Appeal might order a new trial and, of course, press comment would be undesirable there. That I suggest is still safeguarded by paragraph 15 of the schedule which makes proceedings active where a new trial is ordered and would, therefore, not be affected by the amendment that I am putting forward this evening. Having said that I should like, if I may, to read through at my leisure the observations of the noble and learned Lord and to reconsider the matter later. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

I am so sorry to detain your Lordships at this hour of the evening, but there are two matters which I wish to raise on this schedule, and I raise them very briefly—one is substantial and the other is just plain tedious. The substantial one is as follows: under paragraph 11 of Schedule 1 proceedings are to be active in civil proceedings once arrangements for the hearing are made. That does, of course, mean that in both jury and non-jury civil trials the press are to be under the strict liability obligation, it may be for a period of years, before the proceedings are, in fact, heard. An alternative proposal was put forward in Phillimore by Sir Robin Day (as he now is), and I wonder whether the Government would care to indicate whether they have considered the possibility of introducing into the Bill a limited strict liability in relation to civil proceedings on the lines of that minority report in the Phillimore Committee's Report.

I turn to the other matter. It is tedious, but I have tried to make the point and I feel that I clearly failed to be understood. It is the question which arises where the strict liability rule remains as it is under paragraph 4 and, therefore, begins to run from the issue of a warrant for arrest and where, in fact, that warrant is not executed for weeks or months on end.

The noble and learned Lord on Second Reading referred to the Lucan case as being a gigantic red herring. I am not sure that it is not, in fact, the beginning of a whale of a problem. I say that because it is by no means an exceptional case. There are a very large number of cases where warrants for arrest are issued and never executed. Under the Bill the proceedings would remain active indefinitely and strict liability would run indefinitely. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack said then that he thought that the point was a red herring; first, because of Clause 3 of the Bill, which provides that a person is not guilty of contempt of court if he does not know that the proceedings are active. That would be no defence in this class of case because, of course, the press would know that the warrant had been issued. Secondly, the noble and learned Lord said, "Well, in any event, there is Clause 2(2):

"The strict liability rule applies only to a publication which creates a risk that the course of justice… will be seriously impeded …".

If the press were to write an article today on Lord Lucan—and I take him merely as an example because his is a conspicuous and notorious case—and Lord Lucan happened to be arrested tomorrow, the warrant for arrest having been issued years ago and the press knowing that it had been issued years ago, is it really possible to say within the terms of Clause 2(2) as it stands that the publication did not create a risk—again not a substantial risk, but a risk—that the course of justice might be, or would be, seriously impeded or prejudiced? I would suggest that there is, in fact, no defence provided by that subsection in that situation. The matter is made worse at the moment by the Government's refusal to subject the whole matter to the Attorney-General's consent before proceedings are brought. The noble and learned Lord will perhaps not deal at this stage in this debate with those matters, but I hope that he will consider them before we reach the next stage.

In view of the invitation which the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, has just issued I shall not deal with these points in any detail. I have said really all that there is to be said about the question of a serious risk of serious prejudice. I still think that it is a drafting point of no substance. But I shall, as I said at the time, re-investigate the point in the light of what I said and what he said on Clause 2.

As regards Sir Robin Day's interesting suggestion, yes, we did consider it seriously. We decided that the definite point of time caused by setting down was the better point of time, although I would be the first to admit that, owing to the delays which litigants themselves impose on proceedings—and the noble Lord knows that after setting down they are probably more guilty than the courts—it can be quite a long period of time. I recognise that.

As regards the Lucan case, of course the situation would be transformed if he were arrested tomorrow. But I fancy that editors, who have their legal advisers, and sometimes a little intelligence, would realise that, after arrest, publications which might prejudice the trial seriously would be made at their peril. I described it as a red herring because I do not think that very much which might happen in the immediate future is likely to happen at all, but that is a personal opinion.

I would not encourage the BBC to produce a piece of fiction on the subject to indicate whether or not they thought he was innocent or guilty even now, but I do not think that that is likely to happen somehow. I regarded it as a red herring simply because I could not think of anything which could reasonably be said about Lord Lucan which would be held to be likely to prejudice proceedings which have not taken place, which nobody expects to take place and when nobody knows whether he is alive or dead or where he is. But I may be wrong about that. Everybody is entitled to their opinion. I can imagine things that people would be foolish to do, but I think that they are very unlikely to happen.