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

My Lords, the United Kingdom, along with most other Western countries, abstained on this resolution. The result of the vote in plenary was 128 votes in favour, with 17 abstentions.

My Lords, can the Minister say why the United Kingdom abstained, when he himself has said that the Government are in favour of the proposals for world disarmament? Does he appreciate that the object of a world disarmament campaign is multilateral disarmament, as proposed by the United Nations Special Assembly in 1978? Is it not logical and justifiable for the United Nations, which has endorsed those proposals, to seek to establish a campaign to advocate them?

My Lords, the proposal which was considered was of course a proposal for a study. It was not a proposal which of itself would necessarily have led to further effective steps of multilateral disarmament. However, I can say that the Secretary-General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Studies, from where the proposal came, was not indeed unanimous upon the value of it, although of course there is much public interest in disarmament and informed discussion is promoted by both Governments and non-governmental organisations, not least in the United Kingdom. We concluded eventually that an abstention was justified.

But, my Lords, surely the Minister will confirm, especially in view of the repeated attempts of the Swedish Government, for instance, through SIPRI and other organisations to instigate such a study—and, like the Minister, I emphasise the word "study"—that a vote in favour of a study would have had a very marked effect upon public opinion, and indeed on opinion in the United Nations?

My Lords, we concluded that the limited resources available to the United Nations, in terms not only of money, but of the facilities of the Secretariat and other things were not best deployed in the moving forward of the study. However, as I said in my earlier reply, despite our abstention, the study will in fact go forward.

My Lords, while recognising the service which the United Nations Centre for Disarmament provides, is there not now a case for the setting up of an expanded information department of the United Nations to distribute information such as, for example, that contained in its own report of experts, which says that there has now been made a bomb 4,000 times more destructive than the bomb which fell on Hiroshima, and that there exist enough explosives to fall on every man, woman and child on earth? Do not those facts need to be known?

My Lords, I am highly suspicious of Government organisations designed principally to disseminate information. I prefer the free press that we have, which can disseminate whatever information appears to it to be the most relevant. However, in that context I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Brockway—as I think he knows—that the Government distribute a document called the Arms Control Newsletter, and I believe that the noble Lord is on the mailing list.

My Lords, will my noble friend ensure that United Nations' papers are circulated in Afghanistan, Poland, and Helsinki?—in view of the ruins of the peace treaty which currently exists, and which are still being debated at Madrid.

My Lords, I am afraid that the distribution of United Nations' documents is not within my gift, but I certainly agree that a freer dissemination of information in some of the countries to which my noble friend has referred would be most advantageous.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, though, as your Lordships' House knows, I frequently oppose my noble friend Lord Brockway on the subject of defence in general, I see no objection whatever to the United Nations, which is presumably a peace-promoting organisation, undertaking an extensive study of world disarmament propaganda? There is no objection at all to that. There can be no harm in undertaking a project of that kind, and I cannot understand why there should be any opposition to it.

My Lords, we are not opposed in principle to the United Nations studying these matters. What we think is important, though, is that the United Nations should establish an order of priorities in these matters having regard to the fact that their resources and facilities are limited. We thought that on this occasion there were matters of greater importance to which it was more immediately necessary for the United Nations to turn its attention.

My Lords, would the noble Lord accept, first, that this is a matter of multilateral world disarmament; and, secondly, that this is a matter of the highest priority in any reasonable person's thinking, and that it requires some allocation of resources and funds on the part of the United Nations to study this problem, which is worrying the whole of mankind?

My Lords, the United Nations is of course well involved in the question of multilateral disarmament negotiations. There already are a number of fora in which such negotiations take place. As I have said on many previous occasions from this Box, it is sometimes disappointing that more progress has not been made. There is the conference at Geneva; there are the multilateral balanced force reduction negotiations, as they are called, which go on in Vienna; and there are various other meetings which take place from time to time in New York. We are not without fora; what we are so far without are concrete results.

My Lords, will the Minister pay particular attention to what my noble friend Lord Shinwell has said, with the very great experience and authority that there is behind it; namely, that, among other things, a study of this kind will smoke out those countries which make lavish disarmament proposals simply as a smoke screen for something else?

My Lords, if that were to be achieved I would be very much in favour of it, but I suspect that the best way to smoke out those who make lavish proposals which have no conviction behind them is by bringing them to the conference table in genuine negotiation.

My Lords, arising from the intervention of my noble friend Lord Shinwell, which I so much welcomed, is the noble Lord the Minister aware that many of us understand that it is quite logical to be asking for more defence while at the same time being in favour of multilateral world disarmament? And is not the latter now quite a practical proposal made by the United Nations Special Assembly, being discussed by the Geneva Committee, which is to make a report to the renewed United Nations Assembly in June next year? Is it not now a realistic proposal which the Government should support?

My Lords, I am not quite sure which proposal the noble Lord is referring to, but if he is referring to the proposal which is contained in his Question then, as I said earlier, the motion to carry that study forward was carried, and therefore presumably the study will in fact go forward. But on the noble Lord's earlier assertion that continued maintenance of military vigilance is not consistent with talks on multilateral disarmament, I must simply say that I disagree with the noble Lord.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that of all the lamentable statements from the Government Front Bench to which I have listened for 40 years, from all Governments—disastrous and appalling statements—I think the last two, in the last few minutes, are really the worst and the most disastrous? We are turning our back on freedom of speech, on freedom of information—

My Lords, I think that if the noble Lord would be kind enough to put his observations in the form of a question it would be more suitable.

Of course, my Lords, I accept the invitation. What I am saying is that in my view and, I believe, in the hearts of the majority of the Members of this House, this is a disastrous turnabout.

My Lords, it seems to swell—

My Lords, with respect to the noble Lord, he knows as well as any of us that it is customary to put one's observations in the form of a question. The noble Lord continues to make a statement, which is contrary to the practice of the House.

My Lords, as the noble Lord clearly understands what I am saying, will he answer it?

My Lords, the noble Lord began his observations by saying that what he had heard today was the worst statement he had ever heard from the Government Dispatch Box in 40 years. I have been at this Dispatch Box for a much less period of time than that, and I have heard a lot worse, too.

My Lords, I think with respect to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, he has put three supplementary questions and we have now gone on for 11 minutes; and the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, has the next Question, too. If he would agree, I think it might be suitable if we moved to the next Question.

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

No, my Lords. It has been the practice in the committee to make a distinction between plenary and informal or working group meetings. The aim is to permit a freer exchange of views in private sessions. The Government think that this is right.

My Lords, does the Minister not agree that the public are almost unaware of what is happening at the meetings of the Geneva Committee, appointed to implement the recommendations of the United Nations Assembly in 1978? Is it not the fact that they are now considering, first, an underground test ban treaty; second, international conventions on chemical and radiological weapons; and, third, a comprehensive disarmament treaty as proposed by the United Nations? Have not the people the right to know what is happening, and have not the nongovernmental organisations which participated in the 1978 Assembly the right to have documents upon these subjects?

My Lords, the Government accept the need for informed public debate on arms control and disarmament issues. To meet the demand for regular information the Government publish a quarterly disarmament newsletter, which describes developments in the international negotiations and is distributed free of charge to non-governmental organisations. Obviously, some selection needs to be made about what is published. It would be prohibitively expensive to publish everything that was said, even if this were thought desirable.

My Lords, as someone who, over 30 years ago, was for three years dealing with disarmament at the United Nations at New York, may I ask my noble friend whether he is aware that there are occasions when progress in negotiation with the Soviets is much more likely when it is carried out away from the glare of publicity?

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend and I agree with him.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, although speaking for myself and probably for many other Members of this House, I would not yield a single inch of opinion in the matter of national security and the need for creating an effective military organisation? Nevertheless, as one desiring to be well informed on the subject, I see no reason why, apart from certain matters involving security, we ought not to be better informed on this subject.

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord. The United Kingdom is in favour of maintaining the closed nature of working group sessions, not because we are in any way attempting to keep our views secret but because this is the most efficient way of negotiation. However, there are many other fora, including plenary meetings of the Committee of Disarmament, where national positions are publicly stated.

My Lords, while appreciating the difficulties and the possible disadvantages of making public from time to time the workings of technical sub-committees, would not the spirit of the Question of my noble friend Lord Brockway be implemented if Her Majesty's Government and like-minded Governments who are members of the Disarmament Commission in New York were to consider gathering together the results of all the meetings in Vienna and in Geneva and publishing them through the agency of the com- mission? I do not expect the noble Earl to make a definitive reply to that suggestion at the moment. I merely ask him to consider with his honourable and right honourable friends the possibility of using the commission in the sense that my noble friend Lord Shin well suggested.

My Lords, I appreciate the noble Lord's point and will make sure that it is considered. As to Lord Brockway's Question, which dealt with the ad hoc working groups of the United Nations Committee, as the noble Lord is well aware there is a great distinction between plenary discussions which are open and the informal or working group meetings which must be private.

My Lords, is it not the case whenever world disarmament is suggested that the Government insist on verification? Is it not the case that the Soviet Union has now accepted verification in principle? Furthermore, is not the need for greater information made necessary by the fact that agreement has been largely reached at Geneva on a proposal that if a complaint is made, then on-the-spot United Nations inspection shall take place and if a Government refuse it they will be assumed to have breached the convention? Is this not a way out of this great difficulty?

My Lords, I would enjoy a debate with the noble Lord on this subject but it is Question Time and we are at this moment a long way from the ad hoc working groups when we are talking about verification.

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

My Lords, the Government will continue to support the Botswanan authorities in the proposals which they are making to the European Communities for the resumption of exports of beef to member states, provided that adequate animal health safeguards are maintained.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the Botswana Government are taking the strictest precautions to prevent foot and mouth disease in their country, that this has been possible as a result of the ending of the UDI situation in neighbouring Zimbabwe, and that the export of beef from Botswana to other countries, particularly to the EEC, is of the greatest importance to the whole of the economy of that country?

I am aware of those facts, my Lords. It is for Botswana to negotiate with the EEC over this issue. I understand that, in the latest way in which their proposals have been made, they are likely to be adequate. But I can only assure my noble friend that this will be discussed after Easter by the Standing Veterinary Committee of the Commission.

My Lords, can we say how much the House appreciates the fact that Her Majesty's Government will do everything they can to support the Botswana Government, as this is a matter which is absolutely vital to them?

My Lords, I understand that and I am grateful to the noble Baroness for having made the point. I can say that the reason why there was a cancellation was an outbreak of foot and mouth disease, of a variety called SAT 1, not at the moment applicable in Europe; and it is appropriate that the most stringent regulations are applied in order to ensure that Europe does not get that variety as well as the others.

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

My Lords, the current regulations governing supplementary benefit came into force in November 1980. The Government have not yet been able to obtain firm evidence of the effect on school leaving patterns. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science has asked the CSE examining boards for returns relating to entry and attendance at the summer term examinations and expects that this will enable him to assess the effect of the regulations in the autumn.

My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that Answer, may I ask him whether he can explain why this change was made and whether Her Majesty's Government appreciate what unfair pressure is being brought on children, especially where their parents are unemployed, to leave at Easter so that they can immediately collect their social security; whereas if they stayed on and took their examinations in June they cannot get benefit until September? Will he undertake to monitor this carefully, if not to look again at the whole scheme, which I think is intolerable?

My Lords, as I am sure the noble Baroness knows, this new system was introduced as a result of Social Assistance which came out in 1978, during the time of the last Administration. The Supplementary Benefits Commission accepted the proposal and it was brought in after a very great deal of consultation. I think that 50,000 copies of Social Assistance were sent out, there has been a White Paper since then, in 1979, and the matter has been very fully discussed. I am not saying that everybody agreed with the proposal, although many did. To see whether it has been a good idea or a bad one will not be possible until we see the result of this year's examinations.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord to ask his right honourable friends and perhaps his right honourable friend in the Department of Education and Science whether they could do something about the fact that O-level candidates who leave at Easter can go back to school and take their exams in the summer, whereas those taking CSE examinations cannot? This seems to be grossly unfair and something which ought to be corrected quickly.

My Lords, that is a slightly different point; but I understand it is planned that the two examinations are to be brought together in a few years' time. We are going to move towards that situation but I doubt whether the single examination will come into being before 1986.

My Lords, it is said, even now, that the examinations will not merge until 1985; but it seems to me that there is a long time between now and then. Could the noble Lord get his right honourable friend to get things moving faster?

My Lords, the movement will be quite rapid, but it will take some time before it is effective.

My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord the Minister will give some indication of when Her Majesty's Government will recognise that the unemployment of young people leaving school is not transient but long term, and will give serious consideration to the education and training of young people aged from 16 to 19 in which we have lagged so badly behind every other European country?

My Lords, I shall certainly pass on the noble Lord's comments to my right honourable friend.

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

My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time. I believe that the Bill will be of particular interest to your Lordships' House since it is concerned with the reform and codification of an important part of our common law, and with the repeal of an offence which has been much criticised for its defects and for its effect on community relations.

The Bill is also of particular interest for another reason. It is the first to have been the subject of the new Special Standing Committee procedure in another place. As noble Lords who have followed closely the progress of this Bill will be aware, the evidence given in the committee's open sessions led the Government to propose a number of significant changes to the Bill.

But, as so often in these matters, I should like to acknowledge our debt to the Law Commission. Part I of the Bill, as the House will be aware, derives from the Law Commission's report, Attempt, and Impossibility in relation to Attempt, Conspiracy and Incitement. The report is characterised, if I may say so, by its scholarship and attention to detail, and I am sure that noble Lords will wish me to say that we are most grateful to the commissioners.

Turning to Part II of the Bill, I acknowledge also the part played in the repeal of the suspected person offence (known as "sus") by the Select Committee on Home Affairs in another place. The Select Committee produced a valuable report, which recommended in no uncertain terms that the offence should be repealed. Subject to the safeguards proposed in this Bill, the Government agree that repeal is now the right course, and Clause 8 of the Bill provides for this.

The Select Committee stated that the suspected person offence was objectionable in principle. They drew attention, in particular, to the danger that quite innocent actions might be interpreted as suspicious acts, and that criminal intent could then be inferred from those acts. The Government believe that there is considerable force in these criticisms. The Government have also had regard to the fact that the offence has given rise to suspicion and hostility among the ethnic minority communities, and not simply among the young. This is obviously an important factor which adds considerable weight to the case for repeal.

On the other hand, noble Lords will be aware that the police representative bodies have argued that the offence should be retained because it enables the police to intervene before crimes are actually committed. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has paid careful attention to the views of the police. But he has concluded that these arguments are not sufficiently persuasive. "Sus" has been useful. Not even those who have argued most fervently for its repeal can deny that it has enabled the police to nip many crimes in the bud. But one must see the usefulness of the offence in its wider perspective, and also consider whether, in the absence of sus, the police could not generally intervene in other ways which are less open to objection.

There will be instances in which, in the absence of sus, proceedings will not be able to be brought. This is implicit in the repeal of the offence and must be squarely faced. But this does not mean that the police will simply have to stand and watch as crimes are committed. In some instances it may be necessary for the police to continue discreet observation for a little longer; on other occasions it may be appropriate to make clear to the individual that he is being observed. Where the police have reasonable cause to suspect that an offence is about to be committed, they may arrest the individual concerned under Section 2 of the Criminal Law Act 1967. There are also other courses of action which may possibly be followed according to the circumstances.

However, the Government believe that the simple repeal of the suspected person offence would leave the public insufficiently protected in two important respects. The first—and the most important, in our view—is that sus is frequently used in cases of individuals seen tampering with parked cars. As many noble Lords know, perhaps to their cost, offences involving the theft of motor vehicles or their contents are all too common. A difficulty, to which the Select Committee in another place drew attention, is that at the point when the individual is seen tampering with the car door or window it is often unclear precisely what he is intending to do. Is he intending to steal the car? Is he intending to steal something out of the car? Is he intending simply to take the car away and drive it?

If the individual is to be charged with attempting to commit an offence, one must be clear what that offence is. Understandably, therefore, prosecutors have in some cases fallen back on sus in these circumstances. The Select Committee hoped that the difficulties which sometimes arise in charging an attempt in this situation would be remedied by the Law Commission's report. As noble Lords may be aware, the Law Commission did not make any recommendations which could materially ease the difficulties which had been encountered in this respect. In the Government's view, there would be an unacceptable gap in the criminal law if sus were repealed without any action to tackle this specific problem. The Government therefore propose the creation of a specific offence—the elements of which are set out in Clause 9 of the Bill—which would penalise interference with motor vehicles.

The offence took a somewhat different form on introduction in another place. The action constituting the offence has remained unaltered, but, as originally drafted, the prosecution was required to prove only that the defendant has acted with intent to gain entry to the vehicle. The absence of a requirement to prove criminal intent was widely criticised, however, and the Government responded by introducing what is now subsection (2) of Clause 9. This requires the prosecution to prove that the act of interference was carried out with intent to commit one of the following offences: theft of the vehicle, theft of its contents or load or taking and driving away. But your Lordships will note that it is unnecessary for the prosecution to prove which of the offences the defendant, or an accomplice, intended to commit, provided that it can satisfy the court that it was one or other of those three offences. This is, I am advised, probably a unique provision; but I would argue that it seems wholly suited to the circumstances. For, if the prosecution had to prove which of those three offences was in prospect, one would of course be back at square one, faced with the same difficulties that have been experienced in trying to bring any charges of an attempt. I hope that noble Lords will agree that, if this provision is indeed unique, it is none the less fully justified.

The second potential gap identified by the Select Committee in another place which I mentioned and which brings me to the direct link between the repeal of sus and the provisions on attempt, concerns the circumstances in which a pickpocket tries to steal from a pocket or handbag which turns out to be empty. Here, again, the Select Committee expressed the hope that the difficulties which had been encountered in charging the offence of attempt in such cases would be remedied by the Law Commission's report. They were not to be disappointed. Indeed, the proposal to make "impossible attempts" of this kind subject to the criminal law is probably the most important feature of the Law Commission's proposals to reform and codify the law of attempt, which forms Part I of the Bill.

Having thus arrived in a roundabout—but I hope not wholly confusing—fashion at the beginning of the Bill, I think it may be helpful to examine in greater detail what Part I of the Bill is designed to achieve. Clause 1 sets out the elements of the new statutory offence which will replace the common law of attempt which is abolished by the Bill. The mental element, in the words of the Law Commission's draft Bill, is expressed as an

"intent to commit an offence to which this section applies".

The Law Commission considered that this would be interpreted in the light of the decision of the Court of Appeal in R. v. Mohan and that it would not, accordingly, alter the present position regarding a person's intention to bring about the consequences of his acts. The conduct which constitutes an attempt is defined as

"an act which is more than merely preparatory to the commission of the offence".

This is not intended to make any change of substance in the position under the present common law. Noble Lords may have noticed, however, that this differs slightly from the wording of the Law Commission's draft Bill, which spoke of an act

"which goes so far towards the commission of an offence as to be more than a merely preparatory act".

I hasten to assure your Lordships that this change in drafting involves no point of substance and has the approval of the Law Commission. I have already touched on the question of impossible attempts—the subject of subsections (2) and (3) of Clause 1—in referring to the case of the would-be thief and the empty pocket. I hope your Lordships will not think that, as a non-lawyer, as my right honourable friend the Home Secretary put it in another place, I am attempting the impossible by adding just a few more words on this subject.

I must refer to the decision of this House, sitting in its judicial capacity, in the case of Haughton v. Smith. This concerned the handling of goods which the offender believed to be stolen but which, technically, had ceased to be so, because they had earlier been taken into police custody. The offender was charged with attempting to handle stolen goods. Hitherto it had not been clear whether an individual was guilty of an attempt in such circumstances, but noble and learned Lords on that occasion decided unanimously that he was not liable.

Their Lordships went on to consider whether liability should attach in other cases of impossible attempts, in particular what are commonly called "factually impossible" attempts. Here the impossibility generally lies in the fact that the object of the offence does not exist or is not present. An example to which I have already referred is that of the empty pocket. Before Haughton v. Smith it had been accepted for some 80 years that a charge of attempt did lie in these circumstances: it was no defence to a charge of attempted theft that the pocket or safe was empty. But in dicta, which were followed by the Divisional Court in subsequent cases, noble and learned Lords took the contrary view.

The Law Commission were in no doubt that "factually impossible" attempts, such as the attempt to steal from an empty pocket, should be within the scope of a statutory law of attempt. The Government wholeheartedly agree. There is, however, much greater room for disagreement about cases like Houghton v. Smith. In cases such as these the offender even if he carries his actions through, will not commit the full offence because some essential legal ingredient of that offence is lacking. Thus, in that instance the offence was handling stolen goods, but the goods were not, at the material time, stolen. The Law Commission considered that liability should attach in such cases. They argued that this result was right on merits, but they also considered—with justification, as it transpired—that it would be extremely difficult to draft provisions which would distinguish this species of impossible attempts from others. The Law Commission considered that it would be appropriate instead to rely on discretion in bringing prosecutions to ensure that proceedings did not take place in the more extreme cases.

To cut the story short, the Government tried in the Bill as introduced originally to draft the distinction which I have been attempting to describe and found that it could not be done. Or, to be more accurate, we concluded that there was no hope of drafting the distinction in a way which would be reasonably concise and which would be free of ambiguity. In another place the provisions as originally drafted were strongly criticised by eminent witnesses who gave evidence to the Special Standing Committee. In the light of these criticisms, the Government tabled amendments which had the effect of reverting to the Law Commission's recommendation of introducing liability for all impossible attempts. I cannot conceal from your Lordships that we have departed from our policy with some regrets. But we have accepted throughout that, whatever the arguments of principle, there was little difference in practice between the Law Commission's recommended policy and that which the Government initially sought to follow.

Before leaving the subject of impossible attempts, it remains only for me to say briefly how subsections (2) and (3) of Clause 1 implement the Law Commission's recommendation. Subsection (2) provides that a person may be guilty of an attempt even if the facts are such that he could not have committed the full offence. This subsection should be sufficient in most cases to bring impossible attempts within the scope of the Bill. But it may possibly be argued in a case such as Houghton v. Smith that a person lacks the intent specified in subsection (1) because his intention is to handle particular goods, which do not happen to be stolen. Subsection (3) precludes this argument by providing that, in such a case, the defendant's intent shall be determined by reference to the facts as he believed them to be.

Turning to subsection (4) of Clause 1, I should draw attention to one respect in which the Bill now differs from the Law Commission's recommendations. This concerns attempts to commit summary offences. It is generally thought that it is not an offence under the present common law to attempt to commit such an offence. The Law Commission recommended on balance that it should be, and the Bill as introduced gave effect to their recommendation. This provision met with criticism in Standing Committee in another place on the grounds that it extended the scope of the criminal law without any practical justification. The Government decided on reflection that since there seemed to be no evidence that the position under the common law was unsatisfactory, there was insufficient reason to extend the criminal law in the manner proposed. Accordingly, Clause 1 of the Bill now applies only to offences which are triable only on indictment and those triable either way.

I will not linger over the remaining clauses. Clause 2 is procedural. Clause 3 is consequential. Whereas it was originally intended that existing statutory offences of attempting to commit a summary offence were to be replaced by the offence in the Bill, it is now necessary for them to be preserved if the protection afforded by the law is not to be diminished. Clause 3, although it looks formidable, simply ensures that such offences, and any which may be created in future, will follow the provisions in Clause 1 of the Bill in regard to such matters as the mental element and impossibility.

Clause 4 is principally concerned with the mode of trial and penalties, in respect of which it makes no change in the position at common law, and perhaps we can come back to that later on. Clause 5 makes similar changes in respect of conspiracies to achieve the impossible as Clause 1 makes in respect of impossible attempts. Clause 6 abolishes the common law offence of attempt. It also abolishes any offence at common law of procuring materials for crime, for the existence of which the case of Gurmit Singh is an authority. I have already discussed the substance of Part II of the Bill and need therefore refer only briefly to the provisions concerned. Clause 8 repeals "sus" and Clause 9 creates the vehicle interference offence. The remaining clauses in Part III of the Bill, are concerned with formal and procedural matters.

I think it will be clear that the Bill, though brief, is concerned with weighty and with—what I confess to the layman are—some rather complex parts of our criminal law. The Government have demonstrated their willingness to listen carefully to, and if necessary to act upon, constructive criticism of the Bill's provisions. We shall of course, pay close attention to the views which are expressed now in your Lordships' House. I therefore hope that the House will this afternoon give a welcome in principle to the important reforms which this Bill seeks to make in our criminal law. My Lords, I beg to move.

My Lords, the House will, as always, be grateful to the noble Lord the Minister for the clear, lucid way in which he has dealt with a very technical Bill. There are, however, implications in this Bill which, I hope in fairly simple language, can be made abundantly clear to all Members of this House. If I myself understand what I am saying, I hope that your Lordships will equally find my words intelligible.

There is no doubt at all that, in general terms, the Opposition welcomes this Bill. There are certain reservations, but without any doubt at all we shall certainly not be opposing the Second Reading. The unequivocal welcome goes to the abolition of the suspected person offence in Section 4 of the Vagrancy Act 1824. That is the offence which is commonly known as "sus". One wishes that it were possible under this Bill to get rid of other antiquated offences under that Act, but, although an endeavour was made in the other place to do it, it was felt, quite understandably, that this Bill was not the appropriate vehicle to achieve that end.

As we are, as it were, interring Section 4, I think it is appropriate to accord some thanks to those who are responsible for, at long last, giving it a decent burial. The first people to thank, as the noble Lord said, are the Select Committee on Home Affairs. In May 1980, this committee recommended the immediate repeal of sus and then, with admirable prodding ability, issued a further report in August 1980 asking the Home Secretary why he had not yet implemented their first recommendations. Secondly, we ought to accord our appreciation to all those who have campaigned for the repeal of sus. If I may say so from this Box, not least to be counted are the very sober efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, whom we are glad to see in his seat, and who will, indeed, be echoing his sober thoughts later in this debate.

In praising those who have campaigned for the end of sus, I in no way associate my noble friends with any who have sought to cast racial aspersions on the police in general. On the suggestion of deliberate racial bias, the Select Committee said that it did not believe that it existed or that it exists—nor do we. That there are some black sheep, if that is not an inappropriate phrase to use, in any grouping, all your Lordships know. Indeed, except for those who are present in this House, it may even be conceded that there are black sheep in your Lordships' noble House. But, certainly, any question of general aspersion of racial bias in regard to the police is not admitted when, as I have said, we see the decent burial of sus.

For my own part, I could do no better, in recommending the worthiness of the end of that offence, than to quote the very words which the Home Secretary himself used in another place on the Second Reading of this Bill. I quote from Hansard of 19th January 1981, at column 22. He said:

"I believe that the offence has become so widely mistrusted that it is really now in everybody's interest that it should be repealed".

He also referred at column 21 to,

"the detrimental effect which the offence has undoubtedly had on relations between the police and the ethnic minorities".

Having done this, however, as your Lordships heard from the Minister, the Government feel that they must fill a gap left by the repeal of sus, and they have created a new offence in Clause 9 of interference with a motor vehicle. I wonder whether I may ask your Lordships to follow me in the argument which I now wish to advance in regard to Clause 9, by having a look at it, as I am sure your Lordships have done. As the noble Lord said, this is in a reformed state. It came before another place in a very much weaker form than it now is, and that I readily concede. But this is the new offence which is to be created. It reads:

"A person is guilty of the offence of vehicle interference if he interferes with a motor vehicle or trailer or with anything carried in or on a motor vehicle or trailer with the intention that an offence specified in subsection (2) … shall be committed by himself or some other person".

So subsection (2) deals with those offences of which an intention has been shown by the vehicle interference. Those are:

"(a) theft of the motor vehicle or trailer or part of it;

(b) theft of anything carried in or on the motor vehicle or trailer; and

(c) an offence under section 12(1) of the Theft Act 1968 (taking and driving away without consent);

and, if it is shown that a person accused of an offence under this section intended that one of those offences should be committed, it is immaterial that it cannot be shown which it was".

Then, in subsection (3) there is provision that the accused if convicted is,

"liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months or to a fine not exceeding £500 or to both".

Your Lordships will have noted that this is a summary offence, which means that the defendant—as was the case with sus—cannot elect for trial by jury. He will be dealt with in the magistrates' court. In nine cases out of 10, as your Lordships well know, it will be a youngster—white or black, it matters not. The only reason given by the Government, so far as I can ascertain, is, as the Minister said, that there is a gap left by sus in that there is a high proportion of car door handlers where there is not sufficient evidence—and I ask your Lordships to consider this very carefully—to support any other charge, including an attempt, because there is not sufficient evidence of a preparatory act to show which precise offence was going to be committed. It is absurd to introduce this new charge, which is supposed to do some good, if you consider the harm that it undoubtedly will do. Indeed, it is taking away much of the good, if not all of the good, done by the repeal of sus.

In another place the Home Secretary pointed out as one of the reasons for doing away with sus that in England and Wales during 1979 fewer than 3,000 cases were brought under sus. Only a proportion of those offences could be car offences. Therefore, however high that proportion is, it must be negligible. The Home Secretary, as I have said, used the argument about the small number of cases brought under sus as a very good reason why Section 4 should be repealed and sus abolished. But may I advance to your Lordships, because this is so important—your Lordships may feel, on this of all days, it is very important—that even with the improvement brought about in the original clause by the special Standing Committee we are doing something highly injurious.

I wonder whether your Lordships would allow me just a few quotations first from the report of the Select Committee:

"We do not consider that the public interest is best served by an offence which leaves a significant proportion of those convicted with a sense that their conviction was unjust".

That was said about sus. It would be equally true of this new offence. Secondly, may I repeat what the noble Lord the Minister said:

"This is not an offence which owes its origin to any recommendation of the Law Commission or the Select Committee".

May I now quote from paragraph 223 of the report of the Law Commission:

"For reasons we have given above we have, as a matter of policy, decided against the possibility of penalising criminal intent accompanied by merely preparatory acts".

This is precisely, by definition, Clause 9. Let me also quote from the evidence given before the Special Standing Committee on this Bill in February 1981, only a couple of months ago.

First, may I quote from the evidence given by the Inner London lay magistrates. I must be careful to distinguish them from the Magistrates' Association and say, in frankness to your Lordships, that the Magistrates' Association gave evidence which diverged from this. Mrs. Harvey, an important lay magistrate in Inner London, said:

"First, I welcome Clause 8. Personally, I do not see the necessity for Clause 9 which is presumably intended to fill a gap. I question it first on the ground of need: that is, is there, in fact, a gap? In my experience as a magistrate at Camberwell Green and Tower Bridge, the courts are not unduly bothered by cases involving motor cars. We have no figures about what proportion of our cases applies to motor cars. I have made inquiries amongst the clerks and the guess is that the figures involving motor cars could be one in 10, or it could be a third".

Lower down, Mrs. Harvey said:

"I suggest that the clause is superfluous. The magistrates courts have an armoury of measures at their disposal. Apart from that, the police have preventive measures".

Lower down still she said:

"Although I did not mention it in my previous evidence there is the power of arrest under the Criminal Law Act. In respect of the courts, a number of offences could apply to cases concerning vehicles".

Mrs. Harvey goes on to set them out and to detail them. Then Lady Mitchell, another important lay magistrate in Inner London, said in evidence:

"I simply believe that in court we shall be faced with the same situation we faced in 'sus'. That is, if you go into court, look at the list and see that there is a 'sus' case, one of interfering with a motor vehicle, you have a feeling of total misgiving and dread, knowing that the nature of the offence is one that is difficult to comprehend because it is a sort of pre-attempt, and the nature of the evidence will presumably also be as unsatisfactory as it is in 'sus'. I just do not see that there is any need to replace that part. I do not deal with attempt, of course, because that covers the whole of the criminal law, but to replace that part of 'sus' that dealt with auto crime is quite unnecessary and will simply lead to trouble in our courts".

I could give many more quotations but I do not wish to over-extend the usual patience of the House. I will merely say that the same sort of evidence was given by the National Association of Probation Officers and the National Council of Civil Liberties. However, your Lordships will possibly forgive me if I quote briefly from the Law Society's evidence. I am looking at col. 194 of the Official Report of the Special Standing Committee on this Bill. At col. 194 Mr. Girling of the Law Society said:

"I shall not go into the statistics which have been before the committee but the number of occasions when such provisions were used in relation to motor vehicles were in specific areas and not in great numbers. Whether it is therefore desirable to have a specific offence which could be used for that is not something which the Law Society would firmly hold as its view. I do not think that the Law Society would object to a provision which did not make a specific offence of interference. If it were tightened up in these ways I think that is how we would look at it. I do not think that we consider that it is necessary or essential".

As I have already intimated to your Lordships, I am looking at this in the light of events of which we heard with such dismay over the last weekend. I do not wish to anticipate any discussion that there may be on the Statement which is to be made later this afternoon. But is it not absolutely disastrous, in these days of growing unemployment among the youth of our country, black or white, and when there is evidence that, justifiably or not, there is tension between youth, black and white, and the police in certain areas that there should now be introduced a new offence, with all the wrong points about "sus" that made the Government decide to bury it by repeal in this Bill?

I am hoping very much that after due consideration the Government will decide that Clause 9 of the Bill should go. If they and this House decide otherwise, I can only hope that there will be an opportunity at a later stage to introduce the right of trial by jury, if we do not do away with it completely, or to take advantage of a suggestion which was made in another place by my honourable friend Mr. Cunningham, the Member for Islington North and Finsbury: that if this offence has to be put on to the statute book the Minister can introduce it by order at some future date; that he will decide (if he decides it at all) after seeing whether we are overrun with motor vehicle cases with which we cannot possibly otherwise deal.

Your Lordships will be delighted to know that I have only a couple of minutes to spare on the rest of the Bill. As the noble Lord the Minister said in his eloquent and lucid introduction, it is a very necessary follow-up of the Law Commission's recommendations in regard to clearing up the law of attempt and conspiracy. This Bill clarifies it. It codifies with amendments the common law of attempt and it amends the statutory offence of conspiracy. It is based, as your Lordships heard from the noble Lord the Minister, on the Law Commission's Report. It follows upon the decision in Houghton v. Smith in your Lordships' House and, in so far as the recommendations of the Law Commission were concerned, those recommendations were eventually followed in the Standing Committee by amendments that were made and I believe I am right in saying that, where there was a difference, there was a reversal in all cases back to the Law Commission's recommendations, with the exception of the matter of attempt and summary trial.

There is only one point that I wish to raise in this Second Reading debate, and it is this: The Minister was so right in expressing appreciation to the Law Commission and I am sure we all share in that expression of appreciation. But of course what was not mentioned was that this extraordinary situation arose when this Bill was being considered. This was brought out very clearly when the Law Commission gave their evidence. What was brought out was the fact that there had been no consultation whatsoever with the Law Commission on the drafting of this Bill and certainly not in regard to the matters where the Bill differed from the Law Commission.

One knows that the Government were endeavouring to move with some expedition, and nobody surely is going to suggest to your Lordships that there was not enough time for a copy of the draft Bill to be sent to the Law Commission and for consultation to take place with them on it. The result was that there was a great waste of time because, as the noble Lord the Minister frankly said, it was subsequently found that indeed the drafting was impossible and did not, and could not, carry out the intention of the Government because it was not possible to do it if one wanted to legislate with any clarity at all—and if one does not legislate with clarity on criminal law one does not know the meaning of clarity.

I shall quote quickly from col. 9 of the Official Report of the Special Standing Committee so that your Lordships may appreciate this point, and may I express the hope to the Government that this lack of courtesy does not happen again. I am quoting the Minister here, but obviously I must quote what was said to the Minister before he replied at col. 9:

"Mr. Cunningham: Let me see whether I have understood that correctly. There was some discussion between the Home Office and the Law Commission at a time when it was clear that the Home Office had severe doubts about the wisdom of the Law Commission's recommendations on the impossibility; but am I to gather that the words used in the Bill were not the subject of discussion with the Law Commission before the Bill was presented?

Mr. Mayhew, Minister of State at the Home Office: That is right".

There is only one happy, classic quotation that I am going to make to your Lordships before I sit down, upon precisely the same point and, if I may say so, I shall dine out on this very lovely reply that was given by Mr. Justice Skinner, who gave evidence before the committee on the wording of this Bill. This is what Mr. Mayhew, the Minister of State at the Home Office, said to the judge:

"I wish to take up the point you made a short time ago. I have accepted that there was confusion in the Bill; I ought to make clear that what I intended to convey was that if, on reflection, we consider that there is confusion here we shall remove it if we can. Naturally we take seriously the views that have been expressed, not least by you".

To which the learned Mr. Justice Skinner replied:

"The confusion is clear".

My Lords, it is upon that classic note that I have tried to make the confusion clear that exists in the minds of the Opposition in regard to Clause 9 and the various other points connected with it and I have taken the liberty of bringing the matter before your Lordships.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary.

The Statement is as follows:

"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a statement about the major disorders which have taken place in Brixton over the weekend. The House is well aware of the violent clashes which have occurred between the police and young people, mainly black. The most serious disorder took place in the afternoon and evening of Saturday. Shops were looted, vehicles destroyed and other property (including private homes) seriously damaged. Again yesterday there were outbreaks of lawlessness in the area, though on a lesser scale. Over the two days a total of 149 police officers were injured, along with 58 members of the public. Ten police officers and one member of the public remain in hospital; 224 people were arrested.

"We in Parliament, on behalf of the people of this country, have placed on the police the heavy burden of maintaining peace on the streets and of preserving order and the rule of law. Whatever questions may arise in people's minds about the reasons why this outbreak of violence occurred, there is no doubt in my mind, nor should there be in the mind of any Member of this House, that Metropolitan Police officers of all ranks carried out their duty with great bravery and professionalism. On our behalf I have asked the Commissioner to pass this message on to all members of his force. I would also wish to pay our tribute to the same courage and determination which were shown by the members of the London Fire Brigade.

"But despite the determined efforts of the police, they were faced with violence which was very serious in its type, scale and intensity. In addition to the personal injuries, the widespread damage to property, and consequent financial loss to wholly innocent people, has been enormous. Whatever grievances individuals or communities feel they suffer, such violence—from whatever quarter it comes—cannot and will not be condoned. The police will continue to do their duty to maintain the law on the streets of London, and in this they are entitled to the full support of Parliament and the nation.

"The events of this week-end call for the most thorough examination. I have therefore decided to appoint an inquiry under Section 32 of the Police Act 1964. I have invited Lord Scarman to undertake this inquiry and I am glad to say he has accepted. His terms of reference will be:

'To inquire urgently into the serious disorder in Brixton on 10 to 12 April and to report, with the power to make recommendations'.

"The inquiry will be held in public save where Lord Scarman decides that it is appropriate to be held in private".

My Lords, I should like to thank the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, for repeating the Statement. It is of course a most sombre one and there was indeed, as we have seen both from the Statement itself and from the reports over the weekend, a very serious breakdown in law and order in Brixton. I join in condemning the appalling violence and the looting and the other criminal acts, including the arson and the destruction that took place. Whatever the causes, whatever the tensions, whatever the frustrations, there can be no excuse whatsoever for action of that kind.

I would also join in commending the courage and efforts of the police and of the other essential services. It needs to be plainly stated—and I would ask the Minister if he would accept this—that no one must be allowed to force the police off the streets in this country. It is the police's duty to protect all law-abiding citizens and to bring to justice those who break the law. I think in the context of the disturbances it is reassuring, and, if I may say so, praiseworthy, that there was no withdrawal of police officers from the area over the weekend. Clearly lessons have been learned from last year's Bristol experiences. I would just mention one point in passing about the actual circumstances, and that is the question of the police shields which went up in flames; perhaps that matter has been receiving urgent attention already.

We welcome the decision to set up an inquiry, and particularly the fact that it, or part of it, as the noble Lord, Lord Scarman, directs, can be held in public, and that it has been set up so swiftly. We would also welcome the fact that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, has been invited to take the inquiry. I would ask the Minister whether there are limitations and, if so, what in the scope of the inquiry? Under Section 32 of the Police Act 1964 an inquiry of this kind is held to look into the policing of an area, and that is capable of quite a wide interpretation, one would hope. Obviously it will need to go into the causes, but including, one would hope, the underlying causes; whether, too, there is any evidence of people coming in from outside, whether the action taken was spontaneous or in any way planned, and indeed also whether there is any evidence that any police activity before the rioting took place was insensitive in any way. But, of course, it must also be clearly understood that the police presence anywhere must be what is needed to protect all citizens and to maintain law and order.

Also I would ask whether the scope of the inquiry would cover such causes, if they be causes, as unemployment and housing in the area, and indeed whether the inquiry can indicate, in the course of the report which has been mentioned by the Minister, measures to avoid similar difficulties in the future. We would, of course, offer sympathy to those who suffered injury and damage in the course of these disturbances. My only other question to the Minister is whether he can give any indication to people affected by damage about compensation questions.

My Lords, may we also thank the Minister for repeating the Statement and may we ask him to associate us with the expressions of sympathy voiced by the noble Lord, Lord Boston, for the police officers and members of the public who have been injured in these events, and particularly those who have had to be taken to hospital. May I also express on behalf of my party a very warm welcome for the inquiry which the noble Lord has announced, under the chairmanship of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, and say that no one is more fitted to undertake such an inquiry than the noble and learned Lord.

With regard to the terms of reference, Section 32, as we understand it, limits the scope of the inquiry. While we agree that it is a matter of considerable urgency that the events immediately surrounding the disorders should be explored and explanations found for them, would the noble Lord not agree that a more thorough and far-ranging inquiry is necessary to find out what are the origins of the fury and resentment which boiled up over the weekend, which were a repetition of the events which occurred about this time last year in Bristol?

Would not the noble Lord agree that, while a very thorough inquiry was undertaken by the chief officer of police into the events as they affected the police in Bristol, the underlying causes of those disorders were never revealed because they were not properly explored, and that some more far-reaching inquiry into the underlying causes of both Bristol and Brixton is now necessary, so that we do not have a third event, perhaps further events, of this kind happening in our major urban centres in future?

My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for their response to my right honourable friend's Statement, and for the expression of sympathy from both noble Lords for those who have been injured in the violence of the weekend. The noble Lord, Lord Boston, expressed the view that the police must protect all law-abiding citizens in this country and preserve the law wherever it has to be preserved. I confirm what has already been said in my right honourable friend's Statement: that during this very difficult weekend the Metropolitan Police discharged their duty very bravely indeed.

Both noble Lords have asked me in rather different ways about the scope of the inquiry. The noble Lord, Lord Boston, referred specifically to the effects of Section 32. I have already referred in my right honourable friend's Statement to the terms of reference which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, will have in the inquiry which he will conduct. It might be worth repeating them:

"To inquire urgently into the serious disorder in Brixton on 10 to 12 April and to report, with the power to make recommendations".

Speaking for my right honourable friend, I am just as concerned, and so I believe will be the inquiry, about the circumstances which precipitated these matters and how for the future disorder on this scale can best be prevented. But in saying that may I remind your Lordships that at the present time there are issues which are relevant to the Brixton disturbances which are under study already in different ways.

I would simply remind your Lordships that the Sub-Committee on Race Relations and Immigration of the Select Committee on Home Affairs in another place is undertaking a wide-ranging inquiry into the problems of racial disadvantage; and, as your Lordships will know, the Home Secretary has instituted a study of the incidence of racial attacks wherever they are to be found. It must be for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, to decide exactly on the lines of his inquiry, and this of course he will do within his terms of reference.

The noble Lord, Lord Boston, asked me about compensation. As the Statement says, the damage has been enormous. The vehicle for handling claims for compensation is the Riot Damages Act 1886. This provides that, subject to certain conditions, the police authority shall pay out of the police compensation fund, compensation to any person whose house, shop or building has been injured or destroyed, or the contents of which have been injured or destroyed or stolen by persons who riotously and tumultously assemble together. Claims must be made within 14 days. The consideration of claims in respect of the disturbances in Brixton is a matter for the Receiver of the Metropolitan Police district.

My Lords, when I moved recently from Newcastle to Southwark I knew that one of the major differences between the two areas would be in the degree and extent of racial tension in the inner city areas of my new diocese. I did not expect to be walking round scenes of destruction yesterday which reminded me of the early days of the last war. Being new, I cannot speak from much personal experience, but I have been in close touch with clergy and others who live and work in this area. Yesterday I spoke at length with the vicar of the parish and with the Methodist minister one of whose churches is actually in Railton Road, the so-called "front line", and with one of our senior clergy who exercises a ministry to the whole borough. I have studied private reports on church life in the area going back to 1976, and the more recent report of the working party into police and community relations.

As a result of this, I want to say two things to your Lordships today. I will try to weigh my words carefully, because this is a very fragile situation and it is easy to be misunderstood. First, I, like others of your Lordships, very much welcome a full-scale inquiry which may at least lay bare the roots, or some of the roots, of this tragedy and I am sure that I speak for all the Churches in the area when I say that. It is a tragedy because all the evidence suggests that the pressure has been inexorably building up despite the efforts of many people. The roots are long and complex, as one would expect. They are also intertwined with the national situation and the policies of central Government. After the inquiry there must be the will to act in ways which will undoubtedly require financial and other sacrifices from the rest of the community. One thing is certain, to my mind, and that is that Brixton—

My Lords, I hope that the right reverend Prelate will forgive me for intervening, but perhaps he would be so kind as to frame his remarks in the form of questions to the Minister. That is the form we adopt in this House. This is not the moment for a speech on the situation so much as perhaps to give, within the form of questions, the right reverend Prelate's own observations as to these sad events.

My Lords, I apologise; I shall do my best. I have not very much more to say. Is the Minister aware that the state of community and police relations in Brixton is something which has been giving cause for great concern over recent years? I should like to say in relation to that question that that is a question which I have been very reluctant to put and very sceptical about because I know very well what an intensely difficulty job the police have to do on our behalf, often acting in some degree as our scapegoats. I know at second hand from a friend in Uganda what it is like to live in a country where law and order has largely broken down. I know also that it is not easy to be constantly criticised, especially if that criticism shows a lack of understanding of the job one does and the majority are given a bad name because of the faults of a minority. It was only a few days ago that your Lordships had some very critical things to say about bishops and clergy in this very Chamber. But in recent years—

Speech!

My Lords, I shall leave it at that.

My Lords, I should like to reply to the right reverend Prelate, who was good enough to welcome this inquiry. The right reverend Prelate, of course speaking with his knowledge now of the diocese, also mentioned the need for sacrifices to be made for this particular area of London. No one, I think, would gainsay the needs of people living in the area of Brixton, but I believe that it is just worth putting on record in reply to the right reverend Prelate's observations that Lambeth received assistance of about £8 million in the last year under what are known as the "partnership arrangements for inner cities" and, without in any way prejudicing the findings of the inquiries of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, I would doubt whether financial matters are the whole story.

The right reverend Prelate was also good enough to say that the police have an intensely difficult job. I would only add again that in Parliament I think that we need to support the police in that job which they have to do.

My Lords, I should like to ask the Minister three questions. First, while welcoming the appointment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, as chairman, will the Government be very careful to appoint a membership of this inquiry which receives the confidence of those involved? Will they include a member of the racial community councils and of the ethnic organisations? Secondly, can the Minister say whether the apparently rather restricted terms of reference will include a discussion of the deeper reasons for the sense of frustration, particularly the unemployment among young workers, mainly blacks, but also including whites? Thirdly, will the inquiry pay special attention to what has been done in Handsworth, Birmingham—a very similar locality— where, by the action of the racial community councils, this situation has been avoided?

My Lords, perhaps I may answer those questions one at a time. The noble Lord, Lord Brockway, asked me about other appointments to this inquiry. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary much appreciates the swift reply of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, in agreeing to undertake this inquiry, and my right honourable friend has not indicated that he intends to make any other appointments to this inquiry. As regards the other two questions which the noble Lord asked, I think that they are both matters for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, when the inquiry begins.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the Americans have been through all this, and much worse, since the war, and that they have now managed to establish better racial relationships than those which exist in this country today? Will the noble Lord give us an assurance—I am sure that it is really unnecessary—that the Government will request the commission of inquiry to examine how they have done it in the United States, because there is no doubt at all that racial relations in the United States have vastly improved, despite massive unemployment, in the last 10 years?

My Lords, I am not sure, with respect, that I would agree with the premise on which the noble Lord's question is fixed. However, I should like to repeat the information which I have given—and I do so in the form of an assurance to the noble Lord, Lord Boothby—that, at the same time as this inquiry will be running, there are, of course, other inquiries which are going on at present in this country: one is the inquiry of a Select Committee of another place into racial disadvantage and another is a study promoted by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary into the incidence of racialist attacks in this country. We take very seriously the trend of the question which the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, has asked me, but I repeat that I do not agree with the premise on which the question was asked.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the devastating events of this past weekend were foreshadowed as recently as January this year in a very full report of an unofficial inquiry headed by Mr. David Turner-Samuels, Q.C., bringing to light case after case of intimidation and harassment of black people in Brixton by members of the police, leading to the most profound alienation and distrust? Quite apart from the setting up of the inquiry, which I welcome, I should like to ask the noble Lord: has any action been taken, and will any action be taken, to change the attitudes and the methods of work of the police, including the special patrol group, in the light of this valuable report?

My Lords, if I may say so, the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, overlooks the efforts, the very real efforts, which have been made by the Metropolitan Police to try to improve police/community relations within the boundaries of the metropolis, and not least in this area which has to face so many very real difficulties. So far as the report to which the noble Lord referred is concerned, that was a report which consisted of, or at least included, a number of anonymous allegations, and I do not think that it was a particularly helpful report at all.

My Lords, will the Minister accept from someone in your Lordships' House who was born in that area, who spent his youth there and who represented it on the London County Council and the Greater London Council for over 20 years, a sense of horror at what took place over the last weekend? Will the noble Lord the Minister also take it from someone who knows this area well that any preconceived judgment—which I am sure my noble friend Lord Gifford did not seek to make, but it might be inferred that he did—about the police being responsible, by harassment or otherwise, for troubles is not shared by many in your Lordships' House? Finally, will the Minister take it for granted that we shall await the recommendations, which I hope will be positive, with very great interest and with very great concern?

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, for the two questions he has asked. I agree with the noble Lord that, whatever the reasons for the violence which occurred over the weekend, nothing can condone it, because it has caused misery to so many people and such a threat to law in this country. I also agree with the noble Lord, and thank him for saying, that with an open mind we should now support the fact that the most thorough examination into the events of the weekend will be undertaken in the inquiry which will be headed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman.

My Lords, on that note I suggest that we might move on to the next business.

My Lords, after that very sombre 25 minutes, might I revert now to the not entirely disconnected topic of the Criminal Attempts Bill. It is not entirely disconnected because, of course, among other matters, the Bill deals with the abolition of the "sus" offence, and I think that there is no doubt that it was the misunderstanding of and the misrepresentations about that offence which have contributed, at least to some extent, to the lack of goodwill between the black community and the police in recent years.

I am sure that it would be entirely inappropriate for any Member of your Lordships' House to seek to criticise the procedures of another place. But I hope that it is in order if I venture to praise them to the extent of saying that their experiment on this occasion of having a Special Standing Committee appears to have worked most admirably and has produced a fascinating volume of evidence, cross-examination and reports leading eventually to a very productive Committee stage in the other place.

The Bill deals with a number of different matters. As a result of that Committee stage, I think that there is no doubt that the law about attempts in Part I of this Bill has been substantially improved, particularly where it deals with the whole fascinating academic issue of attempting to commit something which is impossible, and whether or not that should be a criminal offence. On balance, I am inclined to agree that the Bill is now better than it was when it was first presented, in that it has reverted to the Law Commission's recommendation instead of the original Government proposal.

But although a great deal of evidence was given in another place about this issue, I hope that perhaps in your Lordships' House we shall not concentrate too much upon it, because it is, in fact, very much an academic issue. The question to what extent an offence should be impossible to commit in order that there should be an offence of attempting to commit it, is one that does not very often arise in practice. Whatever view one takes—the Law Commission's view or the original Government view—one can very easily produce a hypothetical situation which is quite absurd. But, in fact, in practice it is not a matter that troubles the courts with any regularity or, I think, a matter that is worth any very careful attention in your Lordships' House.

That deals with Clause 1(2) and (3), where those matters are set out. I note in passing that in subsection (4) there appears to be a list of offences which it is not possible to attempt the commission of—if I may end a sentence in that rather appalling way. I am a little surprised to see that manslaughter is not included among the offences. I think that it is generally agreed that there is, in fact, no such offence as attempted manslaughter, and I think that it would give rise to difficulties if manslaughter was not included as one of the matters in subsection (4).

Perhaps the more important part of Clause 1 is the definition of an "attempt" as being—with, of course, the necessary intent—doing an act.

"which is more than merely preparatory to the commission of the offence".

The degree of proximity to the commission of the offence that is necessary to constitute an offence of attempt has always caused trouble, and I think that it is inevitable that in due course the present definition is also likely to cause trouble, although I can think of no more satisfactory way of putting it than is set out at the moment in Clause 1.

However, I want to raise one particular matter on Clause 1 and ask the noble Lord to reflect on this, because it will be referred to again in a moment or two when I deal with the second half of the Bill. If a person goes along trying shop doors with the necessary intent of stealing, the question would arise as to whether he was doing an act which was more than merely "preparatory to the commission of the offence", the offence being of attempting to enter with intent to steal. I should have thought that most judges would rule that that was, in fact, conduct which is more than merely "preparatory to the commission of the offence", and that, therefore, trying shop door handles in that way was capable of being an attempt to commit a criminal offence.

Apart from being a very common form of misbehaviour, I think that that has some relevance when we come to consider the second half of the Bill, which deals with the abolition of the offence of suspected persons and the proposed new offence in Clause 9. I welcome the abolition of the suspected persons offence in Clause 8 of the Bill. It is long overdue and its repeal has long been advocated by many of us on these Benches, and conspicuously my noble friend Lord Avebury, who will speak a little later in this debate.

In saying that, at the same time I want to make two other comments about the offence of being a suspected person under Section 4 of the Vagrancy Act. First, I do not believe that the evidence supports the myth that has been put around that that Act was being deliberately operated in a racially discriminatory way. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, said on that subject. Secondly, it seems to me that there has rarely been an Act of Parliament about which more gibberish has, in fact, been talked in past times. It has been widely put about that the fault with Section 4 of the Vagrancy Act was that it allowed police officers to arrest anybody simply because they suspected that an offence might be committed, which is quite wrong; it has also been widely put about that the intent to commit an offence, which is necessary under Section 4 of the Vagrancy Act, was in some way an unusual provision of the criminal law.

I think that it is worth remembering that, in fact, under Section 4 of the Vagrancy Act it was necessary to prove that the defendant had committed at least two specific acts; in fact, in the way in which the courts have operated, no prosecution has ever been brought unless at least three specific acts had been seen by a police officer to have been committed by a defendant. It was also, of course, the fact that once those acts had been proved it was then for the court to infer whether or not there was an intent to commit a criminal offence. There was nothing in the least unusual about that. It is a perfectly common feature of almost every criminal trial that intent, in one form or another, has to be proved. The whole myth that grew up about Section 4 of the Vagrancy Act was, I think, very largely due to its extremely unfortunate and rather archaic wording. I am, therefore, delighted to find that in Clause 8 that is to be repealed and that an attempt is to be made to put in its place some other provision which might be more accurate and more easily understood.

That leaves me to consider for one moment the provisions of Clause 9—the offence which is proposed of interference with a motor vehicle. I do not go along with the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, in his argument that some such provision may not be necessary. All of us in the criminal courts know that in fact much criminal misbehaviour takes place in relation to motor vehicles, and indeed also in relation to shopping bags on London Transport, where that type of offence is particularly prevalent, which is not caught under the existing law. I can well understand that there is a case for replacing Clause 8—that is, the repeal of the suspected persons law—by some new form of offence to deal with what is a widespread form of criminal misbehaviour, particularly in the London area.

The problem that arises is that one cannot in the ordinary way deal with motor vehicles in particular under the existing criminal law because of the fact that somebody who is interfering with a motor vehicle may, as the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, pointed out, be committing any one of three quite separate offences. Whether Clause 9 is an entirely happy resolution of this problem is a matter that I should like to raise at a later stage on Committee. I content myself with pointing out at the moment that as it stands anybody could be convicted under Clause 9 who had tampered with one motor-car door handle if it was shown that he had the necessary intent to commit one of the three offences set out in Clause 9(2), whereas of course under the existing law of suspected persons he would in fact have had to be shown to have tampered with no less than three motor-car door handles. There is, therefore, a sense in which the proposed new offence is rather more stringent in its terms than the existing offence of suspected person which it is in fact now proposed to repeal.

The other observation I want to make, which takes me back to where I began, is this. If I am right in saying that a person who tampers with shop door handles is committing the offence of attempting to enter with intent to steal, would it not fit more easily into the scope of this Bill if Clause 9 were redesigned so that it became an attempt to enter the motor-car with intent to commit one of the offences set out in Clause 9(2)? It seems to me that that would deal with the form of misbehaviour that it is desired to deal with without giving rise to the argument that all the Government are doing is to abolish "suspected persons" on the one hand and replace it by something more or less identical on the other hand. Those are limited aspects about a small number of the points that arise on this interesting and worthwhile Bill. We on these Benches will certainly support the Second Reading today, and hope to pursue these comparatively minor points when the Bill reaches its Committee stage.

My Lords, this Bill is short, but it is very important. I am grateful to my noble friend for explaining it so succinctly, but so adequately. Those of us who have had the privilege, though at times and often it is an onerous one, of judging cases before us in the magistrates' courts will welcome this Bill so long as when it is applied in the future it is proved to go far enough. I think that only time will tell. The problem of judging whether a defendant when seen to be loitering was waiting for the next bus or for his girlfriend, or was waiting for the opportunity to snatch a handbag, has always been a difficult one.

Likewise, if someone is seen going round motor vehicles in a cinema car park, it may be difficult to prove that he intended to steal a car when he says he is interested only to see the gearbox, or the numbers of miles on the mileometer. In so many cases it is so much better if witnesses could be called by the police and by the defence. It would help the magistrates' courts enormously to have third parties to give evidence. The police are thought in some quarters to possibly be conniving together to get a conviction.

Clause 9, as my noble friend has said, is important in that it goes a long way to protect the public and to reassure them that a police officer may arrest without warrant anyone whom he, with reasonable cause, suspects to be guilty of interfering with a motor vehicle, or theft of a vehicle, or theft of anything in the vehicle, or taking and driving away. Conduct of this kind will always continue, whatever the law. The theft of, or from, cars is, I know, considered to be petty crime, but the loss to the owner can be considerable and sometimes disastrous.

I query, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, did, whether it is only this particular Clause 9 which will be triable summarily, or whether it will be triable either way. I have a feeling that it is only to be tried summarily, and I wonder whether that is the Government's final word on this subject. This morning I spoke to the Magistrates' Association, and they told me that they support this Bill as amended. I hope it has a speedy passage through your Lordships' House.

My Lords, as one of the Members of your Lordships' House who in December 1978 tried to get Section 4 of the 1824 Act repealed on the basis of a Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, I want to welcome this Bill in so far as Clause 8 is concerned. I do not think that there is any need for anybody to dilate on the difficulties and dangers that existed in this particular section; this law which made it possible for people to be convicted and even go to prison without having committed any offence. That was the danger of "sus". In effect, it was possible under the law for somebody to be convicted and imprisoned without ever having actually committed an offence. Therefore, I am glad that that is to be out of the way.

I must confess that like my noble friend Lord Mishcon I am worried about Clause 9. The original Clause 9 was very bad. It was merely replacing sus by another section in terms only of the limited scope of the Bill. In fact, in some respects, as was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, it was worse because you only needed to touch one door handle and you were had. The amended Clause 9, the one before us, is better than the one the Government originally introduced. On the other hand, it is still not tight enough.

As there are sufficient legal brains in this House, what I should like to suggest is that if in fact your Lordships decide that we must have Clause 9—and I share Lord Mishcon's view that it is not necessary for us to have Clause 9—then we must try and see to what extent we can tighten it, so that you do not just get out of Clause 9 the problems that we used to get out of this suspected persons law. Therefore, I hope that the Government—and, also, all sections of your Lordships' House—will bend their minds towards tightening Clause 9, so that anybody convicted under it will be satisfied that they committed an offence and would take their punishment. The real problem with sus was that many people convicted of it felt they were unjustly dealt with. That was the most important undermining danger of the sus law. I still feel that Clause 9 as drafted will allow for a certain amount of that and I therefore hope your Lordships will try so to tighten the clause that that situation will not arise.

I also share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, that, if at the end of the day the clause remains, the question then will be whether the offence should be triable by jury, and that too we shall have to explore in Committee. The accused should not have the feeling of having been badly done by, and if he is convicted by 12 of his peers, that may overcome the problem. Therefore the question whether it should be a summary offence or one triable by jury will have to be considered carefully in Committee.

Part I of the Bill deals with an extension of the law of attempt. It was inevitable that once we had removed the sus law, the law of attempt would need to be carefully codified, and that is what Part I sets out to do. I do not feel competent to join in the arguments that have taken place about "impossible attempt"—I am not a lawyer, just an ordinary simple layman—and my worry is about the question of conspiracy. Having decided to extend attempt to attempting the impossible, we have proceeded to say that one can conspire to do the impossible.

There has been a general feeling that the law of conspiracy is abused in any case; people feel that if there is no other way of getting at them—at an individual or a few people—they are charged with conspiring. I think conspiracy must remain for most offences, but I am not altogether happy—I do not know the views of the rest of the House on this—that a person may be guilty of conspiracy to commit an offence,

"even though the facts are such that the commission of the offence is impossible".

I would find it difficult to support that and I hope that that provision will be looked at carefully in Committee. I must be honest and say that if all we can do is vote against the clause, I shall certainly vote against it. I am unhappy about an extension of the crime of conspiracy in the way that is proposed in the Bill. Having said that, I welcome the Bill, which is an important measure. I hope that in Committee your Lordships will tidy it up so that there are no mistaken consequences as a result of its passage.

My Lords, I find myself in the unusual but highly agreeable position of agreeing with most of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, and I share with him the welcome that has been given to the repeal of "sus" in particular, and I shall follow him by starting with a discussion of Clause 8, and go backwards through the Bill. In welcoming the abolition of sus, I suggest that it would have been sensible if your Lordships had taken the opportunity which was provided by the Suspected Persons (Abolition) Bill which I introduced in December 1978 of taking some action then, even though it would have left a gap in the law in that Part I of this measure, which deals with attempt, had to wait until the Law Commission had completed its work.

If we had gone ahead and abolished sus when we had the opportunity of doing so two years' ago, that might have speeded up the work of the Law Commission and of the deliberations of the Select Committee in another place, and certainly it would have concentrated the minds of the Home Office on producing legislation to deal with whatever gap existed in the criminal law if sus had been repealed and not replaced by anything else. In my view, it would not have been a serious gap. Certainly the effect of not having provisions for dealing with impossible attempts of certain kinds would not have been critical, as is proved by the fact that law enforcement was not gravely undermined by Houghton v. Smith, which I believe was decided well over seven years ago; it is referred to in a 1974 document, although I have not looked up the actual date of the case.

Looking at Clause I, one is bound to have doubts about the interpretation of the phrase "more than merely preparatory", and all we as non-lawyers can say about that is that the phrase was recommended by the Law Commission as having been carefully examined by the distinguished minds of the legal profession. On that I tend to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead—namely, that it is not for us as laymen to enter into such technical provisions of the Bill—and that we can only say that something of that kind is necessary and we hope the courts will be able to interpret the phrase as the lawyers tell us they will.

Looking at it from a commonsense point of view, if one takes the impossible offence which is immediately related to that of sus—where somebody reaches into some sort of receptacle (a handbag or shopping basket perhaps) and there is not in the receptacle any object which he would have liked to steal, but he does not know that—then obviously an act can be more than merely preparatory to the intention of taking something. He put his hand into the receptacle only because he thought the shopper had somethings in there of value which he wanted to take. If one looks at a simple case like that, one can see that it is fairly clear what would have been meant in those circumstances by "more than merely preparatory". But whether it would be equally easy to construe that phrase under other and more complicated examples is not for me to say. I only hope it will not be difficult for the courts.

As for the argument concerning factually impossible offences and the disagreement between the Law Commission and Home Office, I would not presume to enter that discussion. I agree with my noble friend Lord Wigoder in that it is a matter of great fascination, as he found it, looking through the proceedings in another place, in particular looking at the examples that were adduced by the Law Commission of the impossible offence. I particularly liked the story of the umbrella taker, of Mister (I suppose he was "Mister" and not a Member of your Lordships' House) Baron Bramwell, who took an umbrella from a stand intending to steal it, but it turned out to be his own umbrella. I am not sure whether Mr. Bramwell was convicted; that is not clear from the Law Commission's document. Then there was the example of the bigamist who went through a ceremony of marriage mistakenly believing that his first wife was still alive or in any event was still his wife. A series of examples of impossible offences is provided and, as I understand it, the Bill is saying that if a person intends to do any of those things, he is committing an offence. I do not know whether in fact there will be prosecutions arising from the difficulties that the Home Office have had in trying to distinguish between the absolutely impossible offence and those offences of another character. But it seems to me a little odd that while those acts if completed did not constitute a criminal offence, an attempt to commit them would result in proceedings.

That is the situation we have got into as the result of the Home Office's difficulty, as I understand it, of proceeding along the lines that it first intended. But perhaps that cannot be helped, and one must hope that discretion will be exercised by the DPP in not producing the absurd situation of prosecuting people for attempting to do something which if it were completed, would not in itself be an offence.

I rather agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, when he said that he wished that an opportunity had been taken, if it had been possible, for the other offences in the 1824 Act to be dealt with at the same time. I shall not pursue that point because I believe it is to be discussed by a later speaker, but it appears to me that it would be possible for your Lordships to incorporate provisions to deal with the other parts of the 1824 Act, if it were thought expedient to do so and we had information on which to base action.

Finally, I come to the vexed questions of a car door or window—the interference with a motor vehicle. The question here is: What is the person intending to do? We are creating a specific offence which requires the court to establish not only that interference with the motor vehicle took place, but that the person intended to do certain things. I agree with my noble friend that possibly we have made convictions easier to secure by requiring that only one attempt to interfere with a motor vehicle should be brought in evidence, and I am not very happy about that provision. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, that some of the magistrates who looked at it said that it was not necessary at all. The particular magistrate whom the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, quoted expressed the opinion that cases involving motor-cars might have amounted to between 10 per cent. and 30 per cent. of all the sus charges in England and Wales, making between 254 and 849 cases in total. As I said when we discussed sus on a previous occasion, many of those incidents could have been dealt with under other provisions of the law, such as going equipped for theft, which is sometimes an alternative charge to sus.

In order to be perfectly fair I would say that on the other side of the argument evidence was given to the special Standing Committee by Sir Philip Knights, the Chief Constable of the West Midlands, that in his area 61 out of a total of 82 offences of sus related to motor vehicles. So one is forced to agree with my noble friend Lord Wigoder that we need a provision in the law which deals with the problem of the interference with motor vehicles, even if it is not exactly in the form that the Bill has it. In conclusion, I would say that almost any price is worth paying to get rid of the offence of sus. I should certainly be happy to have Clause 9 as it stands if it means getting the Bill on to the statute book as soon as possible.

My Lords, I apologise for the fact that I was not able to be present for the start of the debate and to hear the introduction given by the noble Lord, Lord Belstead. Like the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, I wholeheartedly endorse and applaud the repeal of the "sus" law. But in considering the nature of the offences that are proposed to be put in its place I feel that we must be very clear about what was the reason for the widespread agitation over, and call for the repeal of, that law which has grown up over the last decade. I considered that the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, was absolutely correct in his analysis of the law. It is not true to say that people could be lawfully arrested under the sus law merely for behaving suspiciously. There had to be evidence of a number of guilty acts in order for a conviction to be obtained. The difficulty was, and the reason for the agitation was, that the law was being abused, that prosecutions were being brought by police officers on an alleged basis of true fact which turned out to be totally false. There is really overwhelming evidence that that was being done and, what is more, being done in a racially disciminatory way.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, and indeed to my noble friend Lord Mishcon, in answer to his intervention on the Statement on Brixton, that they must read about what is going on, because otherwise you legislate in a state of appalling ignorance—

My Lords, I intervene only because my name has been mentioned. I hope that, like my noble friend Lord Gifford, I not only read and study, but that I go into the courts; and I would not at all agree with his interpretaton of my remarks, unless he agrees that that interpretation is as the Select Committee found and as his honourable friends in another place have said: that the police have not generally been found to be guilty of racial bias; and I shall not from these Benches say that they have been.

My Lords, I know that when I make these assertions they are no doubt attacked because I am believed not to be reliable in my assessments or observations. That is why when this matter was debated in this House on the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, I took great pains to go to the sources on which I made that particular statement. I do not want to weary the House with a repetition—the matter is reported in Hansard of 14th December 1978—but I would say that the sources were organisations of the highest repute dealing with race relations: the Runnymede Trust, the Catholic Commission for Racial Justice, and a report put forward by a number of black community leaders of the highest responsibility—all to the same end. Therefore in considering what this Bill in fact does we must take account of the opportunities for abuse.

Obviously it is not the existence of a sus law which causes injustices of the kind that I have mentioned; it is the existence of prejudice that is the cause; and my attack on Clause 9, like that of other noble Lords, is that it is an invitation to abuse. The same evidence, or even less evidence, is required to form the basis of a case under Clause 9 of an act of interfering with a motor vehicle—less evidence than was needed for sus.

I do not stop at Clause 9. I am also seriously worried about the new definition of "attempt" in Clause 1. It seems to me that there could be put before a court the same evidence, or less evidence, than was necessary for sus in order to found a conviction for attempt. It would need only one officer to say, "I saw him reach towards the handbag", and that would be evidence of an attempt. It would not be necessary to produce the owner of the handbag, or any independent witness at all. The only improvement is that that offence—though not the offence under Clause 9—is triable by jury.

My Lords, will the noble Lord agree that the purpose of the words that I was trying to understand, more than being merely preparatory, does in fact exclude the person who reaches out towards a receptacle but does not put his hand into it?

My Lords, I hope so, and I look forward with interest to the answer to that question that will be given either today or at Committee stage when we come to consider this. But certainly the legal studies into this provision that I have been informed about give me cause for concern that one could have the need for the same campaign against the new attempt provisions as has been mounted against the "sus" law.

My own answer to the question, "Do you not need some offences such as are provided in Clause 1 and Clause 9 for attempts of this kind?", is: "No, they are not needed because a police officer should be able to watch and wait". If he sees someone trying a car door he can watch, and if in fact the person trying the car door breaks it and drives the car away, he can be arrested for taking and driving away. If he reaches in, having broken a window, and takes something from inside, he can be arrested for theft. These offences which rely on proof of only some very insignificant preparatory or initial act are very dangerous and open to abuse. We can come back to the details of these offences in Committee, and for the short remainder of my speech I wish to turn to something completely different.

The sus law is not the only provision of the Vagrancy Act 1824 which has attracted criticism and calls for repeal. There are other provisions, too, which ought to go. They are currently being considered by a Select Committee on Home Affairs in another place, and the reports that I have read in the press are that the considerations of that Select Committee will be complete in time for an amendment of this Bill to be considered in your Lordships' House.

The particular sections that I have in mind are three provisions of the Vagrancy Act. The first makes it an offence for a person to wander abroad and to beg or gather alms. Such a person shall be deemed "an idle and disorderly person". The second makes it an offence,

"to wander abroad and lodge in any barn or outhouse, or in any deserted or unoccupied building, or in the open air, or under a tent, or in any cart or waggon, and not give a good account of yourself".

Those people are deemed to be rogues and vagabonds; and, of course, are also liable to a prison sentence. The third provision makes it an offence,

"to be found in any dwelling-house or any enclosed yard, garden or area for any unlawful purpose",

and such people are also deemed to be "rogues and vagabonds". These offences are brought into use, not in all areas but in some areas, for dealing with homeless people, down-and-outs, and those who beg. The offences and the way of dealing with them smack of a pre-Victorian era. We really should not be putting into prison, as we do in many parts of the country, people whose offence is to sleep out in the open, or to beg, or to go into enclosed premises for an unlawful purpose—a definition which has all the same problems of the sus offence and has been criticised by, among others, the Bar Council for that very reason.

I hope that we can make a clean sweep before this Bill leaves your Lordships' House. There are plenty of offences in the criminal law to deal with the unsavoury aspects of begging, if there is a breach of the peace, or if there is pestering, or dishonesty or false pretences, and I hope that we can bring to an end these awful cases of people being sent to prison because they are down-and-out, because they have no roof over their head or no money. They really should go, and I hope that in his reply the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, can give us some indication that the timetable makes this possible having regard to the great speed and urgency with which the Select Committee in another place is considering this matter.

My Lords, I sometimes wonder when I listen to discussions on a Bill of this kind whether some of your Lordships live in the same world as I do. I certainly do not feel that they live in the same city as I do, or sit in courts of the same type as those in which I sit. I should first of all like to congratulate the Government on introducing a Bill which is among very few of its kind (a kind among which I always saw the much disliked, certainly on the part of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, "sus" Act)—that is, one of crime prevention. We have enough laws which deal with people who commit an offence, but we have very few laws which give the police powers to prevent a crime being committed. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, said, I think, that there were only 3,000 offences recorded of trying the door handles of cars.

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt, but it is only so that my noble friend can continue the argument factually correct. What I said was that the Home Secretary had said in another place that one of the reasons for getting rid of "sus" was that in 1979 less than 3,000 charges were brought in the United Kingdom under the sus law. I then went on to say that only a proportion of that number could be motor vehicle cases.

My Lords, I am much obliged to my noble friend. In a way, that strengthens my point, because if there were only 3,000 cases at one given time—and I know that the noble Baroness who sits opposite is also a magistrate—you get the feeling that half of those came up in your court. Anybody who sits in the magistrates' courts in central London has to deal with those who attempt to commit offences. I travel on the underground, and this sort of offence has become increasingly apparent. I have had at least five people, personal friends, who have had their handbags snatched by this same type of offender. They act in threes. They jostle persons moving along the tunnels between one platform and another; and they must loiter on the platform in the first place, before they in fact commit the offence. I know your Lordships will say that this is not covered by this Bill; but, equally, these people loiter outside Westminster Abbey when the tourists are there—not with the intention of going into the Abbey and saying a few prayers, but hopefully so that they can relieve a few people of their wallets or their bags while they are lining up to go in.

My Lords, I am not inventing this. This is actually happening every day of the week; and these cases come into the central London courts and are dealt with very clearly under this particular Act. So it would be quite disastrous if one were to remove from the statute book the possibility of dealing with these people. In other words, it is to prevent the crime being committed, which must be right. My noble friend Lord Mishcon I think deplored that these offences would not be triable by indictment if necessary. As a magistrate, I would say that we want more offences dealt with summarily, not less; because, surely, the higher courts have their time, money and energy taken up all too often with offences which could be dealt with adequately by three magistrates.

I was very glad that the noble Baroness on the opposite Bench said that the Magistrates' Association agreed with this Bill, because I thought it would be rather unfortunate if this very august body, which represents the major opinion of magistrates, was not to be mentioned in this connection. The Lay Magistracy, I must confess to my noble friend on the Front Bench, I have never actually heard of, but I imagine it would be a smaller body than the one of which I have the privilege to be a member.

The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, both made the suggestion that it was not possible to attempt to commit an impossible offence. I am wondering whether, if three people were to hang about in a bank long enough with the intention of trying to get through a bulletproof screen, which in the end proves to be impossible, they would not be lingering there with an intent to do the impossible. In other words, I do not think it is quite as unreal as certain of your Lordships have suggested. In court, when someone has been charged with taking a handbag, I have heard counsel plead, "He did not get anything from it". It is a common plea. In effect, because the victim was inconsiderate enough not to have anything in the handbag, it is suggested that the person who attempted to snatch it should be let off.

On one occasion I remember interrupting learned counsel. This is a dangerous operation for a lay magistrate. I pointed out that the bench considered any attempt on a person to be a very serious offence. The horror of someone lurching at you to snatch your handbag is something you do not easily forget. We are living in a very lawless city, I am sorry to say. Whereas some time ago, perhaps five years ago, one could read in the papers of what happened, one now hears from friends and relatives of handbags snatched, wallets snatched, cars stolen. How many noble Lords would leave any valuables visible in their cars when parked in central London? It is common knowledge that when one gets out of one's car one locks the valuables in the boot; otherwise they will not be there when one returns.

We are dealing with an offence constantly being committed. I am glad that the Government, in yielding in some degree to the kind of campaign which has gone on, have introduced a Bill which I hope will deal with what I should like to emphasise concerns crime prevention. That, surely, is what most of us want. We want crime to be prevented and not necessarily to have to deal with the offender after it has been committed.

My Lords, may I add a few words to associate myself with my noble friend Lord Gifford. I should have thought that the law of attempts was quite sufficient to deal with attempts to steal motor-cars, to steal property from motor-cars and to drive motor-cars away, just as much as it is available to deal with crimes of attempts to steal or to murder. For that reason, it seems to me that we are still picking out a particular class of action and a particular kind of object to which these provisions are to attach. This is quite unreasonable. We should allow it to be covered by the general law of attempt.

My Lords, I should express my gratitude to all noble Lords who have taken part in this Second Reading debate for providing not only a stimulating debate but also for giving me some guidance as to the lines of thought that your Lordships intend to pursue perhaps at later stages of the Bill on a subject which I realise is sensitive and has highly technical features. I assure your Lordships that I have listened with great interest to the speeches which have been made. I will not repeat the arguments for repealing the suspected person offence of the 1824 Act in this Bill. I think that every speech made on this Second Reading has said that noble Lords feel that it is right to do this. The only thing that I would say in passing is that I join with the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, in not agreeing with Lord Gifford's assessment that there was racial motivation in bringing charges under the "sus" offence. I should have thought that paragraph 33 of the report of the Select Committee of another place put the matter fairly and I would not want to depart from what the Select Committee said in that paragraph.

I was grateful also to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, for his recognition, no doubt with regret, that this Bill probably does not provide a proper opportunity to consider the future of other Vagrancy Act offences. I say that because the Select Committee on Home Affairs in another place has now decided to conduct an inquiry into such offences and indeed, officials of my right honourable friend's department are giving evidence to that committee this afternoon. I can give an assurance to the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, on this point that the Government will give careful consideration to the Select Committee's report; but we do not intend to add to the Bill in this respect before and when it may pass through this House.

Most noble Lords have made reference to Clause 9 of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, fairly made the point that in evidence before the Select Committee, the chief constable of the West Midlands had made the point that tampering with cars in one way or another is a considerable problem. May I follow that by saying that the number of offences—and these are recorded offences, not findings of guilt—recorded by the police in 1979 (which is the latest year for which I have figures) were: thefts from vehicles, 278,349 offences and thefts of vehicles (or taking and driving away) 309,245. We are talking about an area where the police are experiencing very great trouble as far as cars are concerned—quite apart from our personal experience with our own vehicles or of stories which we may hear from other people.

The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, suggested that the offence in Clause 9 is designed to deal with situations in which there is insufficient evidence to charge an attempt. But this is not its purpose. In some cases an individual may even have got as far as opening the door of a car or of getting inside the vehicle and such action would be sufficient to constitute an attempt provided that one is clear which offence is being attempted; but if one is not clear, then difficulties can and do arise in charging an attempt. It is in these circumstances that the new offence will be particularly useful.

My Lords, may I intervene if only so that the argument is quite clear? If this is the point the noble Lord takes, then, with respect, would he not also be prepared to consider (not necessarily this afternoon if I have perhaps caught him by surprise) the inclusion in the law of an attempt which, if proved in regard to something which could apply to any one of these three cases, would still be an offence committed under the law. In other words, in the same way as he has in this provision one of three cases which could relate to any one, once you have proved the act had been done, could this not equally be dealt with in regard to another provision in regard to attempt? Then one would get to the stage of an attempt in the law instead of the pre-stage which Clause 9 provides for.

My Lords, of course, I will look, with my advisers, closely at what the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has said. I do not think that I can go further than that this afternoon but probably—and I will be ready on a subsequent occasion to try to explain why—we find difficulties with this; and one of the difficulties is the one which I have rehearsed just now. The noble Baroness, Lady Wootton, said that, looking at Clause 9, she felt that there was no need for this specific offence. Rather than rehearse again the arguments to rebut what the noble Baroness has said, I would just say that the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, said (as I understood the noble Lord in his speech) that there are difficulties under the law as it stands at the moment in bringing a charge of attempt in a case of this kind. Therefore, may I go on and answer a point which was put by the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, in his speech. He said in essence that he would like to see what he called a tightening of Clause 9. I should like to respond to him by comparing Clause 9, as drafted, for a moment with "sus". I would suggest that one only has to glance at the definition of the respective offences to see that they differ profoundly. "Sus" talks of every suspected person or reputed thief frequenting or loitering about; and the specific offence in Clause 9 talks of interference with a motor vehicle or trailer in a public place. "Sus" is a general offence concerned with an indeterminate range of suspicious behaviour to which the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, expressed the objections which led to the proposal to repeal. The new offence, by contrast, is limited to acts of interference with motor vehicles or trailers. In the case of "sus", the suspicious acts need not be overt. They need be no more than, for example, two separate instances of loitering near shopping bags. The new offence, on the other hand, requires overt acts of interference. It would not be sufficient if a person were simply seen loitering near a vehicle, leaning against it of even peering through its windows. There has to be actual interference. For example, the individual has to try the car door handle or attempt to open the window. Moreover, the prosecution must prove that the act of interference was done with the intention of stealing the vehicle, any of its contents or taking the vehicle and driving it away without consent.

Although I am not entering the Committee stage with a closed mind to what the noble Lord may be saying then, none the less at this stage I believe that these differences are fundamental and that this new offence bears no relation at all to sus. It has been very considerably tightened from the way in which the law was framed under the former offence.

My Lords, I do not want to delay the House unduly. What I said was that there are certain features of this new law which will allow for the same feeling of not having been justly dealt with as existed on sus. This was my point.

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord is not right. For the reasons that I attempted to give just now, this is a specific offence. It requires overt acts and I would have thought that this was self-evidently fair, but this is a matter which we can come back to again in Committee.

My Lords, may I ask my noble friend one short question in the interests of clarity? If he cannot do it now will he at the Committee stage make quite clear not just the relation between "sus" and the new clause, but also between the stop, search and detain provisions in the Metropolitan Police Act and one or two other Acts in this country and the new clause? One does not want a grey area where police constables do not know what they are doing. They must have an absolutely clear picture, otherwise we shall have the same ill-will building up again.

My Lords, off the cuff, I do not think that the new offence in Clause 9 affects the other powers which my noble friend Lord Inglewood has mentioned. Certainly, I would be ready to come back with my noble friend to this matter in Committee. The noble Lords, Lord Mishcon and Lord Pitt, and my noble friend Lady Macleod suggested that consideration should be given to making the offences triable by jury. We do not consider that this is necessary. The offence is a relatively minor one, as indicated by the maximum penalties which it attracts. We believe that it would be appropriate for such cases to be determined by magistrates' courts and it is of course important to avoid burdening the crown court unnecessarily with cases which can be dealt with satisfactorily on a summary basis. If the offence were made triable either way the penalties would have to be increased to cater for conviction on indictment.

May I come back to Part I of the Bill? The noble Lord, Lord Pitt, expressed himself as being dissatisfied with Clause 5. The only point at this stage that I should like to make on Clause 5 is that of course it corresponds to a recommendation that was made by the Law Commission and it corresponds to a draft clause which was put into their draft Bill by the Law Commission. Again, I shall certainly look, with advice in the Home Office, at what the noble Lord has said at this stage. Perhaps the noble Lord, for his part, would care to glance again at the Law Commission's report before we reach the next stage of the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, suggested that manslaughter should be added to Clause 1(4) to prevent there being an offence of attempted manslaughter. I am advised that, under present law, there does not appear to be any offence of attempted manslaughter. The defences of provocation and diminished responsibility which apply to reduce murder to manslaughter do not apply to attempted murder. The other kind of manslaughter, killing by gross negligence, cannot be attempted.

So far as the more general point which the noble Lord made about the parallel between our vehicle interference offence in Clause 9 and burglary is concerned, I am afraid that the noble Lord rather left me and those who advised me behind in this considerable part of his speech. May I look in the Official Report at what the noble Lord said? I shall attempt to be ready to reply to the point when we reach the next stage of the Bill.

The Government were criticised by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, and one of his noble friends for lack of consultation with the Law Commission. Your Lordships will be aware that there have been complaints about the length of time that elapses before action is taken on reports—and not least reports by the Law Commission. On this occasion perhaps your Lordships will acquit the Government of having acted with any discourtesy because we have introduced legislation in record time after the Law Commission's report. The report was published only in June of last year and the Government introduced the Bill in another place in December. I understand that the Home Office arranged a meeting with the Commission on 16th September at which the main differences of policy were discussed. Principally because of the rapid pace of events, consultation thereafter was perhaps not as thorough as it should have been.

My Lords, the noble Lord, the Minister, has been very gracious in the last remarks that he made. My criticism, with respect, was not in regard to the consultations that took place on the differences. I acknowledge those and the necessity for speed. My surprise—expressed also in another place and in the evidence that was adduced before the Select Committee—was that the draft Bill was not even sent to the Law Commission so that they could have given their advice on it. The result of that was a complete waste of time, as it emerged, because the Law Commission, in the evidence that they gave before the Select Committee, were able to show that the draftsmanship was extremely bad—I do not mean that offensively—and did not and could not achieve the object that the Home Office sought. I merely ask for an assurance on a positive basis that in future at least the Law Commission, when they have made recommendations, will be consulted on a Bill which is supposed to deal with them.

My Lords, I certainly give an assurance that we will endeavour to consult in a more practical manner in the future. I should like to assure the noble Lord and your Lordships that no discourtesy to the Commissioners was intended. It is right for me to put on the record that when we found that the drafting of the offence (which the noble Lord referred to as being virtually impossible) raised great difficulties, the way in which the Government felt it was necessary to turn was towards the recommendations which had been made by the Law Commission. Of course almost the entire Bill which is before your Lordships' House today is based almost verbatim upon the recommendations of the Law Commission.

I realise that I speak not as a lawyer and I may be wrong but I was a little surprised to hear the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, referring to the provisions in Clause 1(1) regarding the doing of an act which is more than preparatory as being highly contentious. Indeed, the noble Lord was very trenchant in the words that he used. He said he thought it would be a matter for division for the future and a campaign. Maybe I am approaching this in too simple a manner. My understanding has always been—ever since I started reading the papers on this Bill—that there is no intention in Clause 1(1) to make any change of substance in the position under the present common law. Not only here do we—almost verbatim once again—follow the recommendations of the Law Commission, but I assure the noble Lord that we did not intend to do anything which was going to be violently contentious.

My Lords, I would accept that Clause 1(1) merely restates the existing law. But it is Clause 1(2) which introduces a new element. It was the dangers of that to which I was calling attention. That provision, and the implications of it, we will have to look at more in Committee.

My Lords, I do apologise to the noble Lord. I was under the impression that he was referring to Clause 1(1). Of course, exactly the same argument applies to Clause 1(2), in that the Bill is following exactly word for word the recommendations which have been made there also by the Law Commission. May I again thank your Lordships for the speeches made today. I realise we have differed on points, but, if I may say so, it has been extremely helpful for the Government to have an indication of the line noble Lords feel they should take on this Bill. From the Government's point of view, we have had a most useful debate, and I repeat the assurance that I gave in opening the debate; that we shall look very carefully at what your Lordships have said.

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill do now pass. I hope that in moving this Motion I may say a few words about the Bill. It contains only two effective clauses, but those clauses enjoy the support not only of the Law Commission but of the committee presided over with such distinction by the noble Lord, Lord Renton, which inquired into and reported on the preparation of legislation. The Bill, short as it is, does not go as far as the Law Commission recommended, but it does go as far as it could go, enjoying the consent of both the Renton Committee and the Law Commission. It is therefore an uncontroversial Bill and, if I may say so, I hope it will be so regarded if and when it reaches another place.

There was only one matter of controversy concerning the Bill. That was a point upon which the Law Commission, and indeed others, took a strong view. That view was not shared by the Law Society, the Bar Council or a number of my noble and learned colleagues in this House. Therefore, preferring the good and attainable to the best and unattainable, I yielded and it has gone. Now there is no controversy.

I present this Bill as one which, though short, could have a significant influence for the good of the development of English law. I say that for one simple reason. Increasingly, owing to the complexity of the society in which we live, English law is becoming more and more statute based. It is absolutely essential, if the enacted will of Parliament is to be fulfilled, that the judges should adopt the correct approach to Parliament's enactments.

This Bill, if passed, will improve communications between Parliament and the judges as to the intention of Parliament in those enactments which, under our Bill of Rights, our judges have to accept, interpret and apply. If the principles of this Bill be accepted and passed into law, then the task and duty of the judges is clear and the Bill does not add one whit to the power of the judges. The judges already stand between Parliament and the citizen: it is their interpretation and application of the statute law which bears upon the citizen. It is therefore very important that they should get it right. This Bill, my Lords, will help them, and I beg to move.

My Lords, not for the first time has the noble and learned Lord fulfilled a very useful public service and, as we have learned this afternoon, it will not be the last time he will be fulfilling a great public service. I imagine he heard the acclamation with which his name was greeted this afternoon when we heard of the important duty he is now to undertake. My Lords, this is a useful Bill and, as the noble and learned Lord said, it is a non-controversial one. We on these Benches hope that it will have a speedy voyage without anybody seeking to interfere with its course until it safely reaches port.

My Lords, perhaps I may be allowed to add my word of thanks and congratulations to my noble and learned friend on the Cross-Benches, and to say that when he was absent—I believe actually in Brixton this afternoon—the notice we received from my noble friend Lord Belstead of his acceptance of this onerous and, in the nature of things, painful task was very well received in all quarters of the House. My only regret is that we shall lose his comradeship in the Appellate Committee for a short time. I think it says a very great deal for my noble and learned friend's sense of public duty that he has accepted this task from my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, and I am sure that the whole House is grateful to him for having done so.

Hear, hear!

rose to move, That this House takes note of the Report of the European Communities Committee on regional policy (14th Report, H.L. 93).

My Lords, I am sure that the whole House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, for the interesting, helpful and constructive way in which he has introduced the debate this afternoon. I should like to express appreciation of the work done both by the noble Lord and by the members of his committee in producing the very comprehensive and yet succinct report to which we have our attention drawn this afternoon.

The committee last reported on this subject in 1977, four years ago, and we debated it on 31st March 1977. I remain as strong a believer in the aims of a Community regional policy as I was then. The final communiqué of the Paris Summit in 1972 which is quoted in the current report spoke of correcting the structural and regional imbalances which might affect the realisation of economic and monetary union. The guidelines for Community regional policy which were adopted by the Council of Ministers in 1979 state this:

"Regional policy is an integral part of the economic policies of the Community and member states. It forms part of the various elements which contribute to the attainment of a high degree of convergence of the economic policies of the member states".

As the noble Lord suggested, the convergence of economic policies seems as far off as ever, and economic monetary union, although brought slightly nearer by the welcome establishment of the European Monetary System, nevertheless still seems fairly remote. But as I said, my belief in the aims of the Community regional policy is as strong as ever. My confidence in the possibility of the member states ever taking the necessary steps to achieve those aims is somewhat less buoyant. The report indicates that the problems of the poorer regions of the European Community are more acute now than they have been at any time since the United Kingdom joined the EEC. Regional disparities within the Community are greater now than in 1975, when the European Regional Development Fund was launched. Reading the report one sees that the difficulties are the same as they were four years ago.

First, the report makes clear, despite the introduction of the regional impact assessment system, that there is still no properly co-ordinated Community regional policy. As the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, pointed out, the common agricultural policy takes 70 per cent. or more of the expenditure of the Community and it has a regional emphasis quite different from that of the Regional Fund, and to a considerable extent, the report says, it works in the opposite direction. The Regional Fund is really a fund for assisting national regional policies and is not itself based on any very clear Community policy.

Secondly, as the noble Lord, Lord Plowden has said, the Regional Fund is too small. It has grown since four years ago, but in 1980 it was only 2·57 per cent. of the total Community expenditure as against 70 per cent. on agriculture. So, compared with the amount spent on other EEC policies and compared with the amount spent on national regional policies, the Regional Fund is too small to achieve the aims of the Community regional policy or to make much impact. I am convinced that the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, is right when he says that the Regional Fund must be considerably larger, and that is particularly so when enlargement of the EEC is taken into account. If the problems of balance between the various expenditure programmes are to be solved—problems between the various EEC policies can be put right—the budget itself, of which the Regional Fund constitutes such a small part, must be larger. I think it is important to emphasise this at a time when the finances of the Community are due for overhaul as the Community's own resources on the present basis run out.

In 1977 the MacDougall Committee pointed out that the EEC lacked the mechanisms for redistributing income between members—mechanisms which already existed for redistributing it within the regions of existing nation states. About 40 per cent. of the gross disparities between regions within individual nation states is eliminated simply by collecting taxes on a progressive basis throughout the nation and spending them on national services. This has an automatic bias towards the poorer regions, and by transferring some expenditure from a national to a Community level a similar redistributive effect would be achieved between the member states.

The MacDougall Committee suggested that by raising the expenditure of the EEC from 0·7 per cent. of the Community's gross domestic product to 2·5 per cent. of the Community's gross domestic product, this aim could be achieved, and I am sure that a larger budget for the Community is the only way to deal with the dominance of the common agricultural policy. Certainly we want to seek to reform the common agricultural policy; certainly we want to reduce the surpluses and to reform the system by which they are created, but this year's farm price settlement suggests that there is not likely to be any drastic reduction in the total amount spent on agriculture. The increased budget, largely a transfer of expenditure and functions from national to Community level, would have a redistributive effect but it should contain a considerably increased Regional Fund which would not be a transfer but an addition designed to accentuate the redistributive effect in clearly defined directions.

That brings me to the thorny question of additionality, to which the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, referred. This we discussed four years ago. We deplored the lack of additionality then, and the report and what the noble Lord has said to us this afternoon indicate that the position has not changed. As he pointed out, so far as industrial projects are concerned it makes no difference to the firm carrying them out whether they are said to be helped or not. The Government keep the money to offset their own contribution. Noble Lords may recall a song in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Mikado which begins in this way:

"See how the Fates their gifts allot

For A is happy, B is not.

Yet B is worthy, I daresay,

Of more prosperity than A".

Yet no such problems arise under the workings of the Regional Fund. It does not matter that A is selected for help and B is not: their happiness is equal.

The Government say that they judge the total level of regional expenditure which they plan to make, taking into account what they expect to get from the Regional Fund, so that in effect the Regional Fund does enable the total amount spent to be increased; but, as the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, has said, this cannot be proved and there is certainly no incentive for firms to apply for help from the fund. So far as infrastructure payments are concerned, to local authorities and similar bodies there is an advantage—again described by the noble Lord, Lord Plowden—but no additional expenditure necessarily made.

When we debated this matter in 1977 the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for the Conservative Opposition declared of this process, as far as it affected both industrial projects and infrastructure projects, "This is not additionality". Those were his words, and he added:

"I believe additionality to be important, because it should result in more investment, positively directed to where it is most needed".

I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, if the party opposite still adhere to that point of view, and if they do, how they hope to see it made effective.

I welcome the introduction of the non-quota allocation, which was merely hinted at at the time when we had that last debate. The quota system and nationally determined criteria for assisted areas mean that some areas receiving aid—in Germany, for example—are better off than areas in Britain which do not qualify for aid. The non-quota allocation, over and above the quota allocation to national Governments is, at 5 per cent., very small but it is a beginning. I should like to see it expanded as the basis for a real Community regional policy. I should like to see more concentration on areas of real need, coupled with a recognition that there can be pockets of need within relatively prosperous areas and that means of assisting them also are necessary.

In our last debate I asked whether it would not be desirable that there should be direct access to the Community for such bodies as the Highlands and Islands Development Board and other regional agencies, so that they could have direct access while working within the national regional programme drawn up by the national Government. The committee, on balance—and the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, referred to this—reject this idea on the grounds of administrative complication. But I wonder whether they are right. If regional development programme applications, covering many projects which were explained by the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, tended to replace individual project applications—this is what the committee recommend—I wonder whether the administrative burden on the Commission would be quite as great as feared.

My Lords, to sum up, I would urge support for a very much larger Regional Fund as part of a larger Community budget, support for genuine additionality, support for a co-ordinated regional policy including a much increased proportion of the Regional Fund distributed on a non-quota basis, and support for more direct formal access to the Commission for regional authorities and agencies, or at least a further consideration of the possibility of that. I hope that when the Select Committee produce the next of their excellent reports on this subject, in 1985 or whenever it is, they will be able to report progress in these directions.

My Lords, the whole House, though not the whole country, is aware of the factors which make a debate of this nature timely and significant, and we therefore owe gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, and the committee which produced this report. The European Commission are charged with producing a new design for the financing of the Community, a restructuring of the budget, to produce it soon after 1st June, the month in which the United Kingdom takes over the presidency of the Council of Ministers. I hope that restructuring here means as much as it promises by implication, and I hope that the date of the report will not slip much further than 1st June. It is the first recognition that a deep, injurious problem exists and that a solution must be found.

Sad to relate, speeches on the subject of Europe during this epoch tend to be either defensive or antagonistic; few are openly optimistic. That is unnatural, given the balance of facts and a balanced outlook. The debate in another place last Wednesday was opened by the statement that Britain's relationships with her European partners had deteriorated since Christmas last. It would be difficult to contradict that statement. It would require some fairly strenuous wishful thinking to deny it. But one thing I can and do affirm; to whatever extent the trend may exist, it is unnecessary, it is deplorable and it is reversible. Some of us have been saying for many years, before the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, that Britain's best hope of serving humanity and herself to the full was through membership of the European Economic Community. Perhaps those of us who have fought in wars and have a sense of the history of a war-torn Europe have been saying it with greater vehemence and conviction than others. Great men have said it with a wisdom eclipsing any effect that I can hope to have. Yet today in this very climate of doubt and publicised disappointment I make a point of saying so again.

This debate today does not deal with the basic concept of European harmony, but it does deal with one of the keys to Britain's viability within the present Community, and it describes the urge to mutual support replacing the old urge to mutual destruction. There is a tendency within our land, ugly and unreal, to blame every ill we suffer upon our membership of this Community. It is hard to judge whether the ugliness or the unreality is the more harmful aspect of this false diagnosis. There are even those who obtain satisfaction from noting signs of disharmony with our partners. They celebrate such signs of disharmony. I will mention one of them by name in a minute or two. I consider it a sick satisfaction.

Such signs should cause dismay to all, and, my Lords, because I feel so strongly upon this matter I am ready to make a challenging assertion. I believe that a cardinal explanation of our present partial failure is that we are not always regarded, even not often regarded, as "good Europeans", and sometimes, not always, we draw this charge upon ourselves. We loudly lament the injustice of paying a high contribution widely at variance with our gross national product. There is injustice, at least inequity; but in my view we often set about describing it and curing it in the wrong way.

Our complaint has been made and heard, and regional aid is one of the means which is being applied to satisfy it, in addition to the revised financial mechanism. The present new level of regional aid has to be seen as related to our gross contribution, or people will not appreciate the intention behind its provision. All noble Lords attending this debate will be aware that the gross contribution is the result of the method of collecting the resources propres, a method agreed and incorporated into the treaty which we signed. This method, established by Article 131 of the Treaty of Accession, has in fact had a punitive effect on our economy, but in a very real sense its effect and scale are determined by our own commercial habits, our own commercial behaviour, traditional to our ways and still operated by our own choice.

The major portion of each partner nation's contribution to the Community comes from the collection at its borders of duties and levies on goods from the world outside the Community. Customs officers of each nation are acting as agents for the Community. It happens that citizens and firms in this country choose to buy a great volume of goods outside the Community, as is their undoubted right; the duties and levies on those goods are passed to Brussels as agreed. I am among those responsible, in driving a Japanese car and operating a Japanese video-recorder. My little bit of tax goes on to Brussels, and it would not have been collected if I had bought a British or French car or a Belgian recorder. There is nothing sinful or un-European in such behaviour. The Community was not set up as an inward-looking rich man's club, as some more ignorant or mischievous propagandists were wont to claim. One of the declared principles was to liberalise and expand world trade, and so it remains. Some of the imports which pay levies are worthier perhaps than cars and recorders. New Zealand butter and lamb, and the crops from the sugar-producing countries which were British dependencies, are brought in to keep faith with those countries, to honour a promise. They all pay levies to Brussels and so inflate our gross contribution, to make it inordinately large.

Regional aid is one of the means of lightening our net contribution, and I hope that noble Lords will explain in the country the neighbourly goodwill which is demonstrated by our partners in seeking to do this. It would be appropriate but unwise to introduce into this debate a technical passage on the quota and non-quota allocations of regional aid directed to Britain, and even to identify what my own territory of Yorkshire and Humberside has received or will receive. The noble Lord, Lord Plowden, with his immense specialised knowledge, has touched on this. No doubt there will be other opportunities for me to do so. My emphasis must be on what happens when regional aid resumes its normal pattern, or takes a new pattern, and what can be done to make us less reliant on favoured treatment.

Of course I should like to see the regional fund enlarged. It should be larger. The noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Monifieth, whom I shall always regard as my noble friend wherever we may sit in this House, opted in 1973 for the commissionership of regional affairs because he thought that it would provide the scope he deserved. It did not. That fund and the Social Fund have been starved of means from their inception—and again the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, made this point. There is a culprit in this and that culprit is also distorting Britain's net contribution. For that reason I beg the House to indulge me for a moment or two if I speak on matters not evidently or directly related to the title of this debate, but matters inextricably related to Britain's present need for refunds—refunds largely in the form of regional aid.

Those refunds, designed for Britain, directed to Britain, are specific to our present difficulties and the special levels have a limited life. The ultimate correction of our imbalance has to be sought in other ways, and let us not deceive ourselves. Our problem is created not so much by the gross contribution as by the net contribution, as everyone present evidently knows. We do not recover as usefully or as substantially as we should from the money pooled. The culprit is—and this has already been mentioned today—the common agricultural policy. That is what consumes three-quarters of the Community's, resources propres, the financial lifeblood of its existence.

From the very beginning we, the pro-Europeans, have made it plain that it was our intention to change and improve and refine that policy. In a parliamentary context Peter Kirk, in Strasbourg on 16th January 1973, said so in a famous introductory speech for the British delegation, of which I was a member. Geoffrey Rippon who succeeded him as leader of the Conservative group after Peter Kirk's tragic death, reiterated it consistently. Both did so with great force, and it is my contention that their expression of our dissent was as correct and convincing, as that of some others, including some Ministers, has not always been correct and convincing. They did not say, "It is wrong because it does not suit Britain". They said, "It is wrong because it is a waste, a misapplication of European resources. It is wasteful of what we all share". That was and remains a positive and persuasive approach, but in a way it has been frustrated by clumsier attacks from other quarters.

While I am on this theme I must also be critical of the vocabulary employed by some of our spokesmen. In the matter of our gross contribution, the method and purpose of collection is known to them, and it is therefore wrong, inexact and misleading to speak of it as "our money". When levies and duties are collected in Rotterdam, Marseilles or Bremen they are not claimed to be "Dutch money" or "French money" or "German money". This unhappy and repetitive slip—more than a semantic slip—on our part gives the impression of Britain trying to change the rules to suit Britain, and that provokes suspicion and it hampers understanding. It is prejudicial to our own best negotiating interests. It enables, for instance, my friend Mr. Enoch Powell to gloat at me, as he did the other day, when he quoted a speech he had made on the Continent after Parliamentary approval had been obtained for Britain's entry by a majority of 112 in another place and a majority of seven to one in your Lordships' House. What he said in that speech, made as it happens in Vaduz in Liechtenstein, but addressed to all continental dwellers, was, "Don't count on Britain. Don't suppose that those parliamentary votes mean anything. We shall rat on them—you will all see that we shall rat on them". Those are not the exact words that he used or which are printed in the speech, but they are not so much a reinterpretation as a condensation.

Enoch Powell has remained a personal friend despite the deep cleft between us over Europe and other matters. Three weeks ago in the shadow of recent events he quoted and he gloated amiably, but with open glee, at causing me intended discomfort. He is certain that he is right. I am certain that he is wrong, but so long as some people entrusted with our voice—the voice of our country—either in Government or in Opposition parties, appear to corroborate his warning, we are in trouble. We are creating trouble for ourselves which we do not deserve. We are disturbing our friends and satisfying our opponents. We are to be trusted: I wish we could always make that clear by communication.

I have done, but I should like to leave a final thought with your Lordships. This is a time when other equally old and splendid nations—one in particular—at the other end of Europe—are showing that they cannot be forced into unity by an imposed discipline. We can show that the nations of Western Europe are capable of combining by our own individual wisdom and will. That must, it appears to me, effectively hearten them. We are all part of the great creative Continent of Europe. Those of us who are free have the opportunity to prove that freedom not only enables us to combine, but persuades us to do so, to draw together by our own will and wisdom. If those peoples see this as the shining prize to be won in the end, it may lift their spirits. I hope that the example of our success may do so.

My Lords, it gives me especial pleasure to follow the noble Lord, who is very welcome back to the House with this contribution. The fact that I happen to be in almost complete and categorical agreement with every sentiment that he has expressed I do not think is alone due to the value which I place upon his contribution, which I find to be very relevant to the subject which we are discussing. Of course, we are all very grateful indeed to the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, for his usual lucidity and the persuasive understatement with which he brought in his report and recommendations. I think that few of us will be disinclined to disagree with him. But I, who may be pardoned if I do not stay within those limits of valuable responsibility for a few moments, shall comment rather generally on some points.

First, it seems to me that there are two problems here which are being confused and perhaps deliberately confused. One is the question of regional aid from the Community's point of view and the other is the inter-country regional aid. The central problem from the Community point of view is not specific concern with the disparities within the country, though they may have very healthy and creative views about that. Their central concern and responsibility must be to affect the disparities between the country members of the Community so that we can achieve a greater convergence in economic policies than has so far been possible. I think that it is important to stress this because that is the Community's central purpose and that should be the Community's central role.

I do not have to repeat my own passionate belief in the central importance of the European Community to European co-operation and to world co-operation. But it is very important that we should not, when suffused with this general sense of collective Community co-operation, lead ourselves down paths of centralisation where centralisation is inappropriate. The role of the Community is absolutely relevant in deciding the apportionment of the Regional Fund as between different countries. In my opinion, the role of the Community must necessarily be a small one, or a negligible one, in deciding how, within each country, regional development is given preference.

Therefore, it follows that I do not altogether support the notion that it is self-evident that the absence of this ugly word "additionality"—which probably appears in no reputable dictionary—is to be deplored. In fact, the absence of the word would certainly not be deplored by me! The reason for that is that if in fact the Community were deciding to alter the structure of the aid given to the regions of, for example, our own country, it would be unnecessarily and irrelevantly interfering in decisions which ought to be made from a more decentralised and knowledgeable basis.

It is not hard to say that our regional policies are inadequate and ought to be stepped up. That is a matter for the people and the Government of this country. But I believe that the role of the Community is not especially significant—at best it is marginally significant—in encouraging convergence. We must be very careful about accepting the self-evident desirability of additional benefit from the regional aid of the Community, because we shall follow it up with what I believe will be very unrewarding, mechanical achievements. It means that we enlarge detailed supervision by people in Brussels of individual projects about which they do not have adequate experience, and cannot have adequate experience; they certainly do not have an experience comparable with that of the local departments, which have a universal enthusiasm, but which, even with their considerable local advantages, do not perform this task to the undiluted satisfaction of all those concerned.

Therefore, to allocate this task to Brussels—which will deal not only with this country's detailed regional problems but will presume to pronounce upon individual projects on this principle throughout the enlarged Community—would be a great error, would result in a useless extension of bureaucracy and would be precisely the wrong use of the Community in encouraging centralisation, whereas we all ought to be encouraging decentralisation and local knowledge. If we are not very careful and go into other schemes of enlarging the quota—or removing the quota—for Britain and depending wholly on ex-quota contributions made with this detailed supervision and judgment of individual projects in Britain, we shall end up with the Community fund being a vast beehive of bureaucratic activity—a beehive with no honey to be seen.

My Lords, I am not quite sure whether I have understood the noble Lord, but is he implying that the committee recommended that there should be direct access to Brussels and to Brussels' bureaucracy?—because that was exactly what the committee did not recommend, as it would create an enormous bureaucracy which could not possibly work.

My Lords, I am sorry if I did not make it absolutely clear; I thought that I had made it clear that I agreed with everything that the noble Lord said and with the conclusions that lie reached that the logic of those who are passionate for additionality must lead to the concept of the enlargement of the non-quota contribution. I do not want to press this in detail, and I could hardly describe the conclusions which the noble Lord reached as a passionate enthusiasm for demonstrative additionality in the impact internally.

Of course, we all want a bigger Regional Fund, which is a different matter, but it is in order to deal with disparities between countries. I did not understand the committee's great passion for increased surveillance of detailed projects from Brussels. If the noble Lord is saying that the conclusions imply that our own Government ought to be pressed to make those funds assuredly additional to the funds which would otherwise be engaged, he is merely asking—and I would support him—for increased regional aid to be given within our own country.

However, it seems to me that that is not precisely the same as demanding that the Regional Fund, as between countries, is not intended to correct the inadequacy of the national disposable resources in dealing with regional problems. The logic must be that if you are to insist that these projects should be additional, it is almost inevitable—though I accept the noble Lord's assurance that he would not support it—that this would mean greater detailed surveillance from Europe.

At the present time the overwhelming effect of the operation of the Regional Fund is to make a modest correction towards the disparities which exist between countries. It does so under the guise of adding to—but fails to add to, to any significant extent, except the trifling extent of infrastructure interests—the internal policy of regional aid. The reason for this ought to be considered, It is that its central purpose—which I insist must be to correct divergence between countries—is being evaded by all the members of the Community, including this country. That is why the tendency is to move away from convergence, and not towards convergence, of the broad outlines of our economic policy.

Here we have a regional policy which makes a small contribution to inter-country convergence in order to counter the very massive contributions to inter-country divergence which the failure of the leading countries of Europe to co-operate adequately has brought about in recent years. Let me take one issue, such as parity. Failure of Britain to understand the need to co-operate adequately on international monetary matters is one thousand times more important in promoting divergence between the performance of countries than can be any marginal, regionally dressed-up, contribution made by the Community. We are a Community that is still insufficiently co-operative. If it is not a misuse of language, our country is one of the leaders in failing to bring about the enhanced co-operation which is absolutely vital if we are to have the significant achievement for Community purposes that those in favour of the Community have in mind.

I welcomed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Saint Oswald, because those who believe this are largely silent. The massively chauvinist unilateralists—alas! well-represented in both parties, but more heavily, influentially and contemptibly represented in my own party—tend to take the floor to play upon the naive, popular publicity available to them; whereas some of us recognise—as does the noble Lord, Lord Saint Oswald, and as do I—that this massive increase in co-operation is what is required rather than a foolish, unilateralist regression.

I raised the point about parity. Why are we not in the European Monetary Fund? Why are we not co-operating in that sense? I cannot go into this subject without trespassing too far on your Lordships' indulgence, but I must make the bold assertion that it is because the present Government and the previous Government—encouraged in their errors by the Treasury of our country in particular, and not sufficiently discouraged by the more enlightened areas of foreign policy—have stayed out for what they believe to be national advantage. We welcome the principle, but we refuse to participate in the practice.

I shall only say briefly that it was a very unrewarding exercise in unilateralism because staying out of this central Community purpose for our own short-term gain was motivated by a desire to see our currency parity rather lower than higher. The reward we got for our chauvinistic unilateralism is to be left in our present position with a ruinously high parity and without the means of co-operatively, in alliance with our European partners, dealing with a problem of that kind. Until the spirit of co-operation is greater among all the leaders of the Community, and until this country above all starts to make a positive contribution of a co-operative character, we shall be frolicking on the margin of the problem of convergence that is national and inter-country convergence.

Therefore, while welcoming the report and its constructive character, I have to emphasise that until we, as a member of the Community, show a heightened willingness to recognise that we are missing a great opportunity of an entry point into the outlying world economic financial strategies which can alone avoid the cataclysmic dangers which are threatening the world, and unless we in this country take a very different standpoint from that evidenced by our Governments so far, we shall get no progress made, and not only get no progress made in general but in the detail of matters like reform of the Community itself. You cannot expect the French to accept the kind of agonised reappraisal in terms of the co-operation required of them to accept serious modifications in the common agricultural programme unless you show that that is part of a general determination by us all to make the kind of sacrifices involved in constructive co-operation.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, has set out clearly the main conclusions of this report. I thought it might be of interest to your Lordships on this occasion to recall briefly the previous report on this subject that was made by this committee at the end of 1976, to which the noble Lord, Lord Banks, referred. It might be of interest to consider to what extent regional policy has developed in the intervening four years. It may also be useful to draw attention to some of the criticisms and suggestions which were put forward in the earlier report and see to what extent they have been met.

First, may I recall, though it is perhaps not absolutely connected with the subject we are discussing, that the earlier report arose from concurrent sittings of subcommittees of both Houses of Parliament. It was one of the few occasions when this concurrent procedure has been adopted. I am aware of the complications involved in that procedure, but I should like to repeat, as I had the privilege of chairing those joint sessions, what I said on the subject in introducing the debate on 31st March 1977:

"If I may express a personal view, though I believe that it is generally shared by my colleagues, the experiment of the two sub-committees sitting concurrently has been very rewarding. It saves the time of witnesses and parliamentary staff; it avoids a great deal of duplication; and we have found the somewhat different approach very helpful. The terms of reference and the practice of the two sub-committees differ and the reports made by the two Select Committees need not be identical, the practice of this House being to go in more depth into detail and recommendations. The fact that the two reports are, on this occasion, not identical, though they are in no way contradictory, does not, in my view, invalidate the usefulness of the 'concurrent' exercise".—[col. 1054.]

The final conclusion, in paragraph 52 of the earlier report of 1976, read as follows:

"The committee conclude that it was wise on both economic and political grounds to establish the Regional Fund, and that the fund has great potential for encouraging Community cohesion. The difficulties facing the future development of a coherent and viable regional policy in Europe are long term ones. Initially effort should, therefore, be concentrated in the Council of Ministers on a limited number of the more important problems, which would include additionality, the improvement of communication between all those concerned, the future size of the fund, and improvement of co-ordination of all aspects of Community policies which affect regional development".

The present report deals with each of these points. As the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, has pointed out, although there has been some increase in the size of the fund since 1976, it remains quite inadequate to have any great impact by itself, a situation which is liable to be made much more difficult by the inclusion of new member states with heavy regional problems. This report lays great emphasis on the need for coordination with other funds and other policies of the Commission, referring in particular to the regional effects of the common agricultural policy.

The earlier committee had the advantage of evidence from Lord Thomson shortly after his retirement as commissioner, when he described this co-ordination with other Community funds as "the most obvious need". Further co-operation with the European Investment Bank is advocated in both reports. The problem of additionality remains much where it was four years ago, and no evidence to the committee shows convincingly that the size of each member state's regional aid programme is bigger as a result of setting up the Regional Fund. I shall not go into the argument between the noble Lords on the subject of additionality. It is a complicated subject. I found myself in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, and not with the noble Lord, Lord Lever.

My Lords, I thought so myself too, and I shall explore the supposed difference, but elsewhere.

My Lords, the present report goes more deeply into the improvement of communication between all concerned and makes a number of recommendations. Both the earlier report and, more specifically, the present report stress the value of development programmes. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, that this is an extremely important point. The report also welcomes the introduction of the non-quota section.

In general it seems fair to say that in the last four years a little progress has been made on a number of the points emphasised in the earlier report, except on additionality. But the fund remains far too small to have any real impact on the growing regional disparities in the EEC; and the problems which will result from enlargement of the Community remain to be dealt with. Though there has been some improvement in co-ordination within the Community and between the various funds, there is still a very long way to go. Some evidence to the committee suggested that the Regional Fund in its present form caused little to happen that would not have happened anyway, and that there could be some doubt whether the administrative time and effort involved could be justified.

Nevertheless, the bulk of evidence given to the committee indicated a widespread desire to see some Community involvement in regional matters, and also to see local authorities in the member states playing at any rate a more active role. The committee feel that much could be done to improve the existing practical framework and to encourage more substantial longer-term developments. It will need concentrated effort by the Community authorities. The committee hope that their recommendations may prove helpful.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, has the happy gift of being able to extract clarity out of the confusion of some witnesses by a very courteous and penetrating examination, and he has shown that quality today. Indeed, I found his speech so clear that I thought I could throw away most of the notes for my speech, because he had dealt with the subject clearly, however not sufficiently clearly for the noble Lord, Lord Lever. However, I felt something was wrong in that one thing I thought he was not doing was creating any beehives of activity without honey and we were trying to reduce the number of honeyless beehives.

I will briefly look at the position historically and what it is now. I recall on 26th October 1971 in another place—this was before accession—arguing the question of regional policy, and the Minister said:

"I am one who believes that entry into the Community would provide the regions of Britain with a unique opportunity of breaking through into better times".

He said that at the time when a book was written by Kevin Allen and M. C. McLennan on the whole question of regional policy, and I quote from their conclusion:

"The disparities between the richer and poorer regions within the EEC"—

the EEC as it then was—

"are quite startling. Income per head in the richer regions is six and a half times as great as that in the poorest: the higher regional unemployment percentages are 70 times greater than the lowest".

They went on to give a warning:

"A most disturbing point is that there is no public evidence that the regional implications of entry have been investigated in any depth by the authorities".

When we took evidence before the recent report was written we got the views of the CBI, who said (paragraph 98 of our report):

"Income per head in the richer regions is six and a half times as great as in the poorest regions".

In other words, no progress had been made in those 10 years. The fund report for 1979, published in August of last year, confirmed that the gap between the richer and poorer regions widened in the '70s, and in our 14th Report we make the same point:

"Regional disparities within the Community are greater now than in 1975".

I differ from the noble Lord, Lord Lever of Manchester, on the question of disparities. My picture—what I want to get right in relation to the Regional Fund—is one which removes disparities within countries, not merely between countries, and that to my way of thinking is the whole purpose. But as we see, the disparities are growing wider each year, and they will continue to grow wider unless something is done.

As I see it, there are three main reasons for that. The first—this point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, among others—is the insignificant contribution the Regional Fund makes to the problem of regional disparities For 1979, the year about which we took evidence, we received in infrastructure and industrial grants £107 million from the Community. Our total expenditure in that year on infrastructure and industrial grants was £1,326 million, so the proportion was only about 8 per cent.

Secondly, the point has been made by many that in 1979 the Regional Development Fund represented some 3 per cent. of Community expenditure, while the common agricultural policy represented 75 per cent. The CAP is in fact pulling in the opposite direction to the regional development fund, and therefore we have a tug-of-war, and that is the main reason for the regional disparities.

But thirdly—and this is probably the most potent argument of all—the Commission had made a study of the regional impact of the common agricultural policy and have concluded:

"Many of the farmers in the richer states are not working full-time in farming. In Hessen, Bavaria, Rhineland, Baden-Wurttemberg, Saarland, Alsace Lorraine, Rhone Alpes, Languedoc-Roussillon and Provence, 50 to 70 per cent. are part-time farmers".

In Italy, the proportion goes up to between 70 and 90 per cent. That means that the guarantee and guidance funds are being used to bolster up the incomes of small part-time farmers in regions which are in general richer than most, are non-agricultural and prosperous. In many cases, part-time farmers receiving those sums have other sources of income. Further, when the Community imposes co-responsibility levies, those small part-time farmers are excused payment of the levies, which then have to be paid by the other members.

Probably the best way to illustrate the anti-regional effect of the funds is to look at table 7 in the 1979 report on the guarantee and guidance funds. There one finds that the chief beneficiaries of those two funds are the three richest countries in the Community—Germany, France and the Netherlands—and the United Kingdom, except for Luxembourg, comes at the bottom of the list. I should have said that British farming was as efficient as any in the Community, yet next to Luxembourg we come bottom in the list.

If, next, one examines the figures in the development fund report for 1979 and adds those to the guarantee and guidance funds, one finds that—adding the regional aid we get to the guarantee and guidance funds—France and Germany receive three times as much in European units of account as the United Kingdom (I am quoting the figures for 1979, taking the tables from the two reports for that year) that the Netherlands and Italy each receive twice as much, and that only Ireland and Luxembourg receive less. That means that, in accordance with the way in which the Community is being run at the moment, the poorer countries are receiving far less than the richer ones.

That is worrying; but still more worrying is what will happen when we get enlargement. Then we shall have disparities of not 6½ to 1, as we had in 1971 and as, according to the CBI, we have today, but disparities, bearing in mind the new entrants, of 12 to 1 or more. If the same system of the guarantee and guidance funds, as well as the Regional Fund, continues without amendment, quite clearly there will be no regional improvement, and probably in the end it will be necessary to bankrupt the fund, unless it is increased beyond the 1 per cent. VAT.

Therefore, there is an urgent need to get it right. Incidentally, in the guidance fund there can be found a very good illustration of what is going wrong. This is contained in the study that I mentioned earlier relating to the regional impact of the common agricultural policy. It is pointed out how in the guidance fund very little money is spent. However it varies, it says, from 20 per cent. for some projects in Ireland and Italy, to 70 per cent. for projects in Germany and the Netherlands. Quite clearly the guidance fund is being far more anti-regional even than the other fund.

How are we to get this right? I think that we must look to see why it is necessary to have an arrangement under which aid to rural communities is paid under one system out of the CAP, whereas the Regional Fund is paid under another system based on a quota and with the rules of additionality—whatever may be required. I should have thought that the time has come to draw together. In fact in our report a few years ago we recommended that the rural and urban systems of regional aid be put on the same basis. I should have thought that in the case of a rich country, such as the Saar or the Rhineland, if aid is being given to that country it should be given by the nation state rather than by using the guarantee and guidance funds.

Again, I would suggest that the money should be disbursed by the Community under the same system of national quotas. Having sat on many of the subcommittee's examinations, it strikes me that we are failing to make a success of the Community. Now after accession, whatever have been our former attitudes, we should be trying to make a success of it. We are finding that the Commission is trying to harmonise everything from the noise made by lawnmowers, to banking, insurance, and company law. But it is failing to harmonise what is essential—that is, the rules of regional aid, in order to correct regional disparities both urban and rural. I fear that until we do that regional disparities will increase.

My Lords, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Tranmire, has said about the great clarity with which the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, introduced the valuable report of the Select Committee. Indeed, my reaction has been very similar to that of the noble Lord, Lord Tranmire—I have considerably reduced what I wish to say this evening. The noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, made a quite important point when he referred to the concept of the European Fund as something which would improve the European spirit. I am sure that originally the Regional Fund and the Social Fund were both seen as part of a bringing together of Europe, of which the CAP was another manifestation. But we in this country have tended to concentrate most of the time on the use of the Regional Fund as a means of offsetting the known costs of the common agricultural policy. This is important because a fund seen as a means of improving the European spirit must have in it a degree of additionality, so that the regions can be seen to be benefiting from the European Fund. In terms of an offset to the balance of payments and resource costs of the CAP additionality must be at a minimum—and I shall come to that point in a moment. The fund was also seen as a way of reducing what now seems rather ironical in retrospect—the attraction of industry and jobs to the prosperous golden triangle of South-East England, which in those days certainly was seen to embrace the Midlands.

The quantitative expectations of those who saw the fund as a very important contribution to the offset of the CAP when making arithmetical assessment of the pros and cons of Common Market membership were bound to be disappointed. The fund has always been too small, and even though we have had quite a substantial share, the quota system has had unsatisfactory results. There was a time when it would certainly have been in our interest to criticise the quota arrangements of the fund on the grounds that—and I quote from the report:

"all the ERDF aid to Germany is going to areas which are wealthier than any part of the United Kingdom".

The accession of Greece, and the impending accession of Spain and Portugal, too, may make the retention of the quota system as the key to the distribution of ERDF monies appear in a more favourable light to us. I am not as convinced as were the committee that a formula based on the average will be entirely beneficial to this country. I agree with their view that larger funds must be put up now that we have enlargement, but larger funds have to be put up by somebody. It could be that ending the quota system will make some of the countries that would have contributed more unwilling to contribute. Moreover, one must stress the point—it comes back a little to additionality—that if we have to put up a lot more money ourselves, we shall need to get a lot back before we have really gained very much.

The committee, I think rightly, attached importance in their report to the two features which I think probably account for much of the disappointment about the Regional Fund. I have already mentioned the matter of additionality. The second problem has been the insistence of all member Governments that all assisted projects must be submitted through national Governments. That has to be done to reduce bureaucracy, but the fact that the programmes have to be part of central governmental programmes has certainly increased the degree of central control and I think has reduced the interest and attraction of regions in a European Fund as such.

As I have already said, the desire to use the Regional Fund to offset the balance of payments and resource costs of the common agricultural policy certainly makes all the finance Ministries and treasurers insist that as far as possible the funds are used to pay for expenditure which otherwise central Government would pay for and should not represent additional expenditure. Of course that is contrary to the spirit of the fund, and therefore one has to go along as far as possible without much resource commitment to making it appear that our policies are in line with the rules. But given that there has been little additionality—so long as we insist on the offset for CAP there will be little additionality—there is obviously a substantial reduction in the attraction to regions of the ERDF monies because they do not receive any very obvious benefit from them.

One suspects also that the insistence of Governments in having all the applications controlled by them is not merely in the interests of reducing bureaucracy at the centre, but is also an indication of a reluctance to give up any element of national sovereignty. I think that the economic logic of these factors is impeccable, but I doubt whether the interest in the country in the European Fund as such has benefited very much by the fact that it is so much controlled by Government and appears to be mainly an outdoor relief for Government rather than extra relief for the regions.

I referred to the initial arithmetic of our entry. I had no great expectations that membership of the EEC would quickly produce a large economic benefit for this country. I had no great expectations that the regions would be transformed by a European Regional Development Fund. But I am sure that we could have secured a better result from our membership had we devoted more effort during the period we have been a member to getting a larger fund and administering it in a way which provided more obvious incentive for the assisted regions to relate to it—and I use that word that I do not like very much, "relate" to it, because I think that one needs to get more of a feeling in this country that Europe is not something that is entirely hard economics; there are social and political elements in it, and by concentrating too much on balance of payments offset we neglect those.

I believe that the proposals which the Select Committee have made in their report as to the size of the fund and the modification of its procedures are very important. I think that I would like to stress particularly the desirability that local bodies should be involved more directly in the fund and be placed in a position where they bear more direct responsibility for the success of an application for aid. That does not contradict the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lever of Manchester, about bureaucracy. Greater involvement and bearing more responsibility can, I think, be achieved quite compatibly with the present basic framework of arrangements.

Our continued and effective membership of the Community is now essential; it is quite idle to think otherwise. But our poorer regions will not see it that way unless both our national and community regional policies are far more effective in securing a better regional balance than they have been in the recent past.

My Lords, I greatly welcome the timely, concise and astringent report that we are speaking to today, and particularly the lucid delivery of it this evening by the noble Lord, Lord Plowden. He started, quite properly, with a reference to the noble aspirations which lie behind the Regional Fund and his conversations in Paris with M. Monnet and others some 30 years ago. The report records the worthy political gesture of 1972, later endorsed in 1979, by which the ERDF is looked to as one instrument among several designed to obtain greater convergence between the economies of the member states of the EEC.

Those noble aspirations and political gestures, and that very worthy symbol, are all, I think, still widely endorsed, though perhaps not widely enough. But the report makes it quite clear (though the noble Lord is too polite to put it in such crude words) that what we in fact have is a complicated and time-consuming sham. If your Lordships think that is too strong language, you have only to compare paragraph 9 with paragraph 1 of the report's introduction to see that, alas! it is true. You have only to look at the size of the fund in relation to its task—at the comparison between this fund and the CAP, which is such that a by-product of the common agricultural policy is more than sufficient to reverse the whole effect of the regional fund in quite a number of rural areas in quite a number of countries. You have only to see that the EEC funding in relation to the United Kingdom funding is such that the effect of it is barely perceptible—and I will give your Lordships a few illustrations before I have finished of how true that is.

In addition to that—and this is a point on which the Association of District Councils feels fairly strongly—there is no mechanism by which the regional fund as it is operated in this country can reach black-spots which are far worse off, by all indicators, than a number of other areas in other countries which are being supported by the fund. Nor are there any means whereby, at present, any small projects (which we are all now so keen on, following the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Lever) can be supported by the fund.

Personally I find that, having occasion to debate the common agricultural policy last Thursday and the regional fund today, one's loyalty and enthusiasm for the European ideal is being rather sorely tested. I am afraid I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, when he says that the fund symbolises something worth while; it does no great harm and it is probably still doing some good. My impression—and it is only an impression; it is not based upon hard evidence—is that as one local authority after another comes face to face with the hard facts of the situation, the disillusionment and the frustration they feel is positively harmful to their general attitude towards the European ideal. The sooner this system in the form into which it has degenerated is changed, the better all round.

Speaking now as president of the Association of District Councils, who have a very direct interest in the better working of this, I am grateful to the noble Lord for having recognised and recorded in his report the very considerable enthusiasm that nevertheless still persists for first of all wanting to see this system improved and then wanting to participate more actively and constructively in operating the improved system.

Fortunately, all local government—not just the district councils but the metropolitan authorities and the county councils—are in a good position to respond to the idea of development programmes, because in response to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Department of the Environment, in an initiative which he took last May to do with better relations between local authorities and local business interests, all the associations have conducted a survey of the initiatives which were being taken by our members in respect of their support of local businesses and of their development. The survey we sent out led to a better response than we have had to any survey we have ever done. We now have a great compendium of detailed notes on all the investments they were making in land, the servicing that they were undertaking on their land, the construction of factories—advance factories—the promotion of industry, the giving of advice, the holding of exhibitions, et cetera—all the constituent elements which, I take it, will go into the preparation of a development programme.

This raw material was supplied to the Secretary of State and mulled over by what has become known as the Burns Committee. Sir Wilfred Burns reported to the Secretary of State at the end of July, and so far we have heard nothing further. My question to my noble friend—I think the first question he has had to deal with—is to ask him why there has been no progress so far, when we can expect progress and what form progress will take when we see it. It is highly relevant to this debate today, because what is involved in focusing all the separate and disparate initiatives of the various local authorities—the metropolitan authorities, the county authorities and the county council authorities—is the same thing as is involved in making those initiatives up into a development programme which can be aided by the fund.

There are a number of other points of which the ADC has criticisms and troubles in connection with the ERDF, but my noble friend Lord Irving of Dartford, who is a vice-president of the association, will I think be dealing with a number of those in his speech, and so I do not have to deal with them now. So I conclude by welcoming the progress that has been made—it is not very great, but there has been some—in the Commission towards the idea of development programmes. I enormously welcome the extent to which our own committee has identified this as the way forward.

By way of conclusion, I should like to illustrate such progress as there has been and such progress as there needs to be by reference to a couple of our member authorities. Consett is one of our districts. It is an area in which virtually the sole employer has collapsed, has closed. It is a steel closure town. It is in a special development area and therefore the most qualified of any area to receive help from this fund. It will be eligible, when it is operating, for the particular form of integrated assistance from the Commission that is recorded in paragraph 33 of the report. But in the latest set of grants allocated under the Regional Fund—and dated 16th February—Consett, with all its problems, with well over 20 per cent. of unemployment, benefits to this extent: Consett, Watling Street Industrial Estate, construction of an additional access road; Phase II, Consett, Tanfield Lea Industrial Estate, construction of access road, foul and surface water sewers and water and electricity supply. That is all. For the highest priority area, which I think we have, with the highest unemployment, that is not a particularly significant contribution. I think your Lordships can see from that how much more valuable will be development programmes to embrace everything that Consett is doing—and I have three pages of material on what Consett is doing—all of which should be strongly supported.

Turning by way of illustration to something that seems to be more satisfactory, to Corby, also one of the top-priority assisted areas in this country, we have progressed this far. Eight separate projects, all to do with infrastructure, (pumping stations, sewers, roads, industrial estates) have been lumped together and are being aided under what is called a global application. That is still only dealing with infrastructure. It could be dealing with the umpteen other things Corby is up to to alleviate their situation; but it is not yet (although it is eligible) for the integrated support from non-quota section set out in paragraph 33.

I believe that we are making more progress on the rural front. Your Lordships will remember that when the Select Committee did a study on the enlargement of the Community they were appalled at the prospects for the rural areas under the impact of the unreformed CAP and I was asked to do a study of EEC policies for rural areas. During this time the EEC made their own proposals for three pilot programmes in integrated development of rural areas. Among the three they chose, one was the Western Isles, which comes under the good offices of the Highland and Islands Development Board. This programme, I trust, has now been agreed and is beginning to operate. Our own report on rural policy was accepted and has been taken on board by the Commission to the extent that they have now commissioned further research into the general idea of an integrated approach to rural areas; and I am glad to say that the Rural Planning Research Trust and two members of my association, the Radnor district of Mid Wales and the Eden District of Cumbria have been entrusted with one of the seven or eight research projects allocated across the community. We are making progress. I think it is pitifully slow and I am delighted that our committee has now made such a practical series of proposals. I hope they will be taken up and advocated powerfully by our own Government at the next appropriate meeting in Brussels.

My Lords, we have had some serious criticisms of the modus operandi of this scheme, both in the report itself and today in speeches by noble Lords. I think that these criticisms are justified but I myself do not wish the whole thing to be dismissed as of no consequence as a result of that. If properly administered, this fund could be and should be of great use. There are a lot of differences between this and other forms of aid agencies. For instance, the European Investment Bank makes loans, the European Coal and Steel Community makes loans. But what we are talking about today are grants that need no repayment. Therefore, for certain depressed areas where development is absolutely essential, this money could probably produce a good scheme whereas, if loan finance were needed, the repayments and interest would make the burden intolerable.

I think that the real importance of this report is the concentration that has been placed on changes which must take place; and I shall confine my remarks to that. Most people who have had any experience of distributing development aid or even funds from a large charitable foundation know that if they are spread too thinly they are quite useless almost anywhere. They must be concentrated to do any good; and particularly with the smaller amounts. This is where additionality comes in, because it shows that it is not being used as it was originally intended and that it is being spread around with no effect. We have had a lot of evidence from local authorities who are getting frustrated and who would like to have direct contact with Brussels. I do not think that that is possible. In this country alone there are 330-odd district councils with planning powers, and another 100 unitary or second-tier authorities; and there is no question of over 400 bodies having direct contact with Brussels.

On the other hand, if the proposal is that we should move from project finance to programme finance, the situation seems to be different. First, the amount of work that would have to take place in Brussels would be minimal compared with what it is now. That means that it would be possible for more people to be in direct contact with Brussels than is the case now. I suggest, therefore, that we look to see whether we cannot move at least one tier from the chain of operations. There are only seven development regions in this country and it seems to me possible, therefore, that seven regions could deal direct with Brussels. This means that the obvious tier to eliminate is Whitehall. I see no reason why Whitehall should come into the picture at all so far as the development fund is concerned. It would enable the regions to have the money paid to them direct and the local authorities would see the money coming into their hands in a form which would be welcome as a grant which was not going to cost them anything.

This seems the obvious solution and the one which in business one would use. One would get rid of a tier—and the nearer the top it is removed the better.

We have had a certain amount of complaint that the minimum of the project is too low. It is 50,000 EMU (£27,500 or thereabouts). I do not agree with that because the administrative costs of just putting it on the books would swallow up most of the money before one started. If we move to the programme system, this becomes irrelevant, These things can be slotted in as and when the local authority likes and in the form it likes. In order to get the development fund efficient and effective, the first thing is to move, as the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, has stressed quite strongly, from the project approach to the programme approach, and that we should then also be able to deal direct from Brussels with the development regions themselves.

My Lords, I want first of all to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, and the committee on their report, and on the enormous amount of work that has gone into it. I can do that with a good conscience because I am now a member of the committee, but my first meeting was on the day that they approved the report so I am not congratulating myself. I give my wholehearted support and congratulations to the committee on their report. It is a valuable addition to the considerable number of reports—now more than 300—which the committee have produced since our entry into the Community and which have become so influential in helping the development of European legislation and policy. It will also be a very valuable contribution in the review that the Commission have to make of the European Regional Fund which is due to be deposited some time this year.

The report makes it clear that the overriding problem is the smallness of the monies available to the fund. The United Kingdom received £136 million in 1980. However, this year, because of the accession of Greece, our share of the total will fall from 27.03 per cent. to 23.8 per cent., and the share of the three poorest nations—the United Kingdom, Italy and Ireland—will come down from 72.9 per cent. to 65.2 per cent. The committee says in one of the most significant paragraphs of the report:

"The problems of the poorer regions of the European Community are more acute now than at any time since the United Kingdom joined the EEC. The Community's Regional Fund has grown since the establishment in 1975, but it is still comparatively small, and the problems have not disappeared. In fact, regional disparities within the Community are greater now than in 1975".

It is not surprising that in the evidence that the committee received it detected a disenchantment with the fund, and in general the view was that it was too small to make any significant contribution to the objectives that it was set up to achieve. These, as the noble Lord, Lord Banks, indicated, were set out at the Paris Summit of 1972 as correcting,

"the structural and regional imbalances"

between member states. As the report points out, the guidelines for Community regional policy adopted by the Council of Ministers in 1979, stated:

"Regional policy is an integral part of the economic policies of the Community and member states. It forms part of the various elements which contribute to the attainment of a high degree of convergence of the economic policies of the member states".

This is an important role which it cannot carry out as long as the amounts available are so small. We welcome these amounts; but in terms of the total need they really are only scraping at the surface of the problem.

I listened to my noble friend Lord Lever with the care and respect I give to everything that he says; but I find it difficult to go along with him. I entirely agree that more co-operation is necessary and I want to see that speed up and be successful. But to assume that we must back-pedal on everything else until that co-operation is achieved seems to ignore the size of this problem. The budget of the fund represented only 2.57 per cent. of the total Community expenditure in 1981. I believe that the amounts have to be trebled to be even significant.

My Lords, my noble friend must not accuse me of urging back-pedalling on anything else. I was merely seeking to point out that as long as there is a tug-of-war in Community policies, with some tugging in the direction against convergence and the Community fund in favour, and as long as you have a number of giants on one end of the rope and a shivering pygmy on the other, you will not get the major advance that you want to convergence by merely giving a tonic now and again or a pick-me-up to the pygmy.

My Lords, I certainly accept the difficulties of the problems that we are facing, but I hope that now we have the support of my noble friend in seeking to extend by whatever degree the amount of monies available to the Regional Fund. It is important that this should be done because the CAP—which many noble Lords have said absorbs three-quarters of the total Community budget—has, as suggested in the report, the opposite effect to that of the Regional Fund in that it transfers income to areas which already have high agricultural incomes, such as North Germany and the Paris basin.

I would, however, guard against the view that we can, simply be reforming the CAP—and reform is necessary—switch resources from the CAP to the Regional Fund, because I believe that difficult as the CAP problem is, it still constitutes only 1½ per cent. of the total gross national product of member states, which is about the same as Japan, about the same as America, and a lot less than Russia, which is not surprising. What I am really pleading for is that we need new funds but we also need a new commitment.

One of the other problems that the report indicates is that there are no Community-wide criteria in determining allocations, which creates the totally anomalous situation where the aid from the Regional Fund to Germany is going to areas which are wealthier than any part of the United Kingdom. In my view aid should go to those parts of the Community that really need it.

As the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, indicated, I am vice-president of the Association of District Councils. I want to put the point that they have very cogently made to me. This is on the question of additionality. This is very important. The principle is that any money received from the Regional Fund must be in addition to money available from National or local reserves. If there is not a respect for this principle it calls into question the whole of the Regional Fund, in my view. The noble Lord, Lord Plowden, indicated that of course it is very difficult indeed to determine whether the money is additional or not.

The Government now take the view that because of the need to restrict public expenditure, the availability of assistance from the fund should not enable authorities to undertake any additional projects. Money from the fund is to be passed to the authorities responsible for the projects for use in reducing the amounts that would otherwise have to be borrowed to finance the projects, but are not additional to the capital allocations that they would otherwise receive. Indeed, under the new capital expenditure control system operative as from 1st April 1981, any capital grants from the Regional Fund must be deducted from the annual expenditure allocation to each local authority.

We have a clear indication of policy, as I understand it; but whereas previous Governments have never admitted that they were not operating additionality, here we have almost institutionalised the fact that it will not be allowed to happen from 1st April onwards. I should be very grateful if the noble Lord the Minister would comment on that. The ADC maintains that the money which is available should be additional to national and local reserves; anything else destroys the value and idea of the fund and is out of harmony with its spirit.

I should also like to talk about assisted areas. The ADC agrees in principle with the conclusion of the Select Committee report (paragraphs 43, 55, 75 and 76) that the Regional Fund should be concentrated on smaller areas in the most needy regions which meet certain minimum criteria of need, such as measures of income per head and unemployment levels. It also firmly supports the view that concentration of the fund's resources should not prevent national Governments from designating limited "black spots" outside the assisted areas as eligible for Regional Fund assistance.

The ADC believes strongly that the greater the concentration in national priority areas, as defined by the individual national Governments, the more important it is to ensure that the pockets of need outside those areas are not rigidly excluded from eligibility for Community aid. The definition of "priority area" is at best arbitrary, and the use of regional and county area unemployment figures often masks the reality of individual pockets of unemployment. The latest available unemployment figures as at 12th February this year show clearly that there are high unemployment rates in many black spots outside assisted areas. For example, although the average rate of unemployment in the non-assisted South-East is 7 per cent., there are many pockets of much higher unemployment. Clacton has 14.4 per cent., Margate, 15.9 per cent., Milton Keynes, 12 per cent., Sheerness, 15.2 per cent., Chatham, 11.2 per cent., and Ramsgate, 12.1 per cent. Also, if you take East Anglia, the average unemployment rate is 8.4 per cent., but it masks Cromer with 14.9 per cent., Great Yarmouth with 12.3 per cent., Hunstanton with 19 per cent., Leiston with 14.2 per cent., and Wisbech with 13.5 per cent.

The same applies to tourism—and I ought to declare an interest, as a director of a travel company. In many areas tourism makes a significant contribution to the local economy and to employment. While the existing financial aid to assisted areas for tourism projects is welcome, the need for tourism is not confined to the assisted areas. There are many parts of the country—for instance, East Anglia and the South-East—which do not qualify for aid, and yet the increasing volume of tourism from Community countries arriving at coastal ports and visiting tourist centres and attractions makes heavy demands on transport and facilities such as parking, toilets, information centres, accommodation, caravan and camping sites. In small towns the facilities cannot be funded from local resources, which are inevitably very limited. Therefore there is a very strong case for the special needs of tourism being recognised in the allocation of Community resources, regardless of whether or not a town or district is within an assisted area.

I should like to talk briefly about development programmes. I welcome the committee's proposal that individual applications for industrial projects should be abandoned in favour of a system of broader development programmes. I believe this could save a great deal of administrative work. I am particularly anxious as a member of a local authority to say nothing of being a vice-president of the ADC that the maximum consultation should take place with the local authorities in the development of these programmes, both in the United Kingdom regional development programme and in local programmes. In the larger towns and cities, district councils have developed corporate policy statements and development plans as a basis for consultations with other public bodies as well as with commerce and industry. This framework could be readily adapted, in my view, to drawing up development programmes for regional aid.

As to the criteria for eligibility, I certainly welcome the broadening from 1979 of the criteria for assistance to infrastructure projects. However, the Regional Fund requires a minimum investment of 50,000 European units of account, or something like £20,000, on projects. That means that the smallest projects, which are often quite significant in a local context, are excluded, so that a number of schemes which could contribute to the creation of jobs cannot be considered. The threshold for the small project, I believe, is set too high to help in establishing small industries; and local development programmes should have a lower minimum, which would enable such schemes to be assisted.

Finally, there is one way in which I perhaps differ from the committee, and that is regarding the question of subsidised interest rates. I have always been attracted to the use of a larger proportion of Regional Fund moneys in this way. The proportion—anyone in local government knows this very well—of total costs attributable to interest in any project is exorbitant. I believe it could be avoided while at the same time enabling the fund to help many more authorities.

The committee points out that the obligations stemmed in part from the fact that the grants are paid in mixed currencies and the cost and risk of dealing with the foreign exchange problems eliminates almost all the advantages of paying a lower interest rate. However, I think that the subsidy, in present-day terms, is too small anyway to be significant. Nevertheless, I should like to see a great deal more work put in on this aspect of the problem than I believe has been given in the past. I believe that here I am in very good company because Jean Monnet was one of the most important advocates of the use of subsidised interest rates in projects of this and other kinds. I wish to congratulate the noble Lord and the committee on a splendid job of work, and I hope that most of its recommendations will at one stage or other be accepted.

My Lords, it is late. I shall be very brief and I hope that what I say you will not consider to be frivolous. The message which comes to me from this characteristically lucid report is two-fold. It is, first, that the fund is not achieving its objectives and, secondly, there is very little chance of significantly improving the position. This, I fear, is the message which today all too frequently comes when the workings of the Community are examined by subcommittees of this House. Shortcomings are identified, but for political reasons it is virtually impossible to rectify them, and this situation will surely become even more difficult after the enlargement of the Community. Dissatisfaction with the present situation is not peculiar to this country, to the British, but is felt by many members of the Community who share it with us. Even the Germans have come recently to express some of their misgivings.

What can be done about this? First, we could decide to leave the Community. It is not the course I would favour, but there is a case to be argued and a case to answer. Secondly, we can stumble along in the face of growing hostility in public opinion, hoping against hope that it will come right in the end, and on the way, as the report has done, we can suggest sensible reforms which we hope will be taken up and successfully incorporated.

If we pursue that second course we have to face the fact that progress is going to be extremely slow; maybe there is no other way. But there is one other way which can be briefly mentioned, I think. One is tempted to think impatiently that the best course would be to try for a wholesale revision of the Treaty of Rome—not just a renegotiation of the British terms of entry but a fundamental look at the whole treaty. No treaty is Holy Writ for all time; many years have passed since the negotiations and the shape of Europe has very much altered, and very much altered economically.

I am sure that many of your Lordships will say that this is utterly impossible and that it would probably be very unwise to attempt it. I am reminded that some years ago the noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham, who was then Foreign Secretary, suggested to Mr. Gromyko that the United Nations Charter should be revised. Mr. Gromyko replied, rather wearily I thought, that if the noble Lord had known how difficult it had been to negotiate the charter he would not make such a suggestion. I daresay that those who took part in the negotiations on the Treaty of Rome would feel exactly the same way. But in spite of all this, I do not think that the idea of a fundamental revision of the Treaty should be entirely dismissed, and the time may well come shortly after some of the future enlargements have taken place.

My Lords, the House has already expressed its appreciation of the quality of the Report on Regional Policy that has been produced by the Select Committee. I, too, should like to commend the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, for the lucidity of his speech which, in support of the report itself, gave one of the best factual analyses of the working of the European Regional Development Fund that the House has had before it for some time.

I was a little sorry that I could not agree altogether with the conclusions that he derived from the Committee's factual analysis. Your Lordships will recall that the question became reduced by the noble Lord to whether it was worth retaining the European Regional Development Fund as a symbol of European unity within the EEC. It will be my respectful submission to your Lordships that it is far better to face the facts as they are, to assess the prospects as to how the factual situation is to develop, rather than to retain a mere symbol which, on all reasonable expectation and projection of the facts, is likely to remain only a symbol and may tend to people looking at symbols of distant vistas, of dreams rather than of facts.

Many of your Lordships have drawn the attention of the House to the fact, which is outlined in the report itself in paragraph 9, that the regional policy was designed to correct,

"the structural and regional imbalances which might affect the realisation of Economic and Monetary Union."

It may well be, as my noble friend Lord Lever has hinted, that that was probably a wrong objective for the Regional Fund, anyway; that convergence of the European economies could be achieved by a combination of other means. Be that as it may—and I do not want to be drawn into arguments outside the Regional Fund—the purpose of the Regional Fund was certainly to correct regional imbalances.

As the noble Lord, Lord Banks, has pointed out from the Liberal Benches, shortly after accession a study group was formed under the chairmanship of Sir Donald MacDougall of the FBI, in order to consider the whole question of how convergence could be established to a point where economic and monetary union became a feasibility. This was the whole purpose of the conduct of the study which, characteristically enough, was never laid by the Commission before the European Parliament where it could properly be debated; it was only referred to.

The study revealed that it would need about 10,000 million units of account, or roughly £5,500 million at the current rate of exchange between the ECU and the pound, in order that 10 per cent. of the existing per capita differentials between member states could be removed. Indeed, four times that amount would be required to remove the 40 per cent. differentials, which, at that time, was conceived to be the only feasible basis upon which economic and monetary union could be achieved.

Nothing at all like that has happened and, as noble Lord after noble Lord has pointed out, far from there having been the achievement of a greater convergence between the various economies, despite the operation of the Regional Fund, the position has become very much worse, partially due, as noble Lords have pointed out, to the operation of the CAP. That is the position.

What has gone wrong, on the assumption that the whole concept of the Regional Fund at the beginning was the correct one? Of course, the first reason, as many noble Lords have pointed out, is that the funds allocated to the Regional Fund have been so derisory that the effects on individual economies have been absolutely marginal. The total payment appropriations out of the Regional Fund amounted to £331 million in 1979, £352 million in 1980 and, in 1981, they are estimated to be £340 million.

On a percentage basis, £91 million went to the United Kingdom in 1979, £68 million in 1980 and £80 million in 1981. Those figures are based on percentages which are set out clearly in the report. On the basis that Britain makes a contribution to the fund of about 20 per cent., that gives a net disbursement into the United Kingdom of £25 million-odd in 1979. £17·71 million in 1980 and £12·92 million in 1981. I am talking in net terms; the money we pay in and the money we get back.

Be that as it may, what we now have to consider, not merely on the basis of the small net amount that we get back—incidentally, in sheer money terms, it is about the only profitable aspect of the entire Community budget that we get apart from a slight benefit from the Social Fund in certain years—is the measurement of the total Regional Fund figure of around £350 million to which I have referred. That is less than the amount payable out of the United Kingdom Exchequer to the local authorities in Northern Ireland. The Regional Fund is also less than Titles 1 and 2 of the budget that deal with the Commission's expenditure on its own administration. Titles 1 and 2 together are in excess of the total amount paid into the Regional Fund. Of course the effects are marginal.

What are the prospects for an increase? The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, and my noble friend have referred to the ambitious plans which have been drawn up by local authorities. What prospect is there of these plans materialising except as part of the refund in kind or in cash that is coming as part of the refund of Britain's net contribution to the European budget? As has already been said, the regional policy amounted to only 3·63 per cent. of the entire Community budget in 1979, 2·62 per cent. in 1980 and 2·64 per cent. in 1981. The agricultural fund, the common agricultural policy, was 20 times greater than the Regional Fund in 1979 and 28 times greater than the Regional Fund in 1980. On the basis of estimates, it will be 25 times greater than the Regional Fund in 1981.

What are the prospects of the Regional Fund increasing to a point where it can make even the remotest statistical impact or even the remotest material impact, net, on any part of the regions of the Community? Noble Lords know perfectly well that under the Treaty of Rome, the "own resources" is limited to some 1 per cent. of the VAT base. What other prospects of any more money being available are there?

As the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, will confirm, we are already pressing, after the recent price review of the common agricultural policy, against the 1 per cent. VAT limit. The noble Lord may perhaps correct me after consulting his right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture, but it may well be that the price increases which were granted in the recent price review, on the basis of a very good harvest in Europe (which there might well be) will send the Community over the top of the 1 per cent. VAT limit. In the event of that happening, what is going to give? The answer is that payments to the Regional Fund, the Social Fund and to the other funds are going to give. As your Lordships know, agricultural expenditure is what is called compulsory expenditure, which means that it originates in the regulations themselves. As past agricultural Ministers have admitted and as agricultural Commissioners have also admitted, expenditure of that kind under the agricultural regulations is largely out of control.

What are the prospects for the Regional Fund? Surely the fund can only increase, even marginally, if either the common agricultural policy is changed to a point where it takes less of the Community budget or the VAT base itself is changed. But the right honourable lady the Prime Minister pronounced her verdict on this on 3rd December 1979 at col. 40 of Hansard:

"I have made it perfectly clear"

said the right honourable Lady, and everybody knows how she makes things perfectly clear,

"that I believe that the limit on the budget of 1 per cent. contributions on value added tax should not be exceeded".

We know that the lady is not for turning, so I would rate very low the prospect of going beyond the 1 per cent. limit.

Let us take the other alternative. What is the prospect for a fundamental change in the common agricultural policy, upon which I will not expatiate at length except to point out the wastage not only of the levies, to which the noble Lord, Lord Saint Oswald, referred, but also of the vast sums paid for the storage of "mountains" which are quite surplus to anybody's requirements and which are continually being enlarged. What are the prospects for changing the CAP? Initially, early in 1979, Mr. Peter Walker gave a very good prospect. On 14th June 1979 he said:

"The reform of the CAP is an aim which I shall be pursuing in forthcoming negotiations ….—[Official Report, Commons; 14/6/79; col. 606]

Those were the fine days of confidence. A little later, the noble Lord will recall that his right honourable friend the Prime Minister referred to the madness of the common agricultural policy. But now it is all receding because, as noble Lords who were present at the debate last week will recall, the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, said that his right honourable friend had made it plain that he has an interest in persuading the Council to adopt a long-term approach. He then said that a comprehensive five-year plan for the whole food and agricultural sector might be pretty ambitious and he doubted whether it would be achievable. This was the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, speaking last week on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture. In those circumstances, do we really have to consider the whole of the European Regional Development Fund as anything other than a symbol?

A further point which arises is exactly what happens and how the fund is administered. Let us consider the trouble, the time and the expense that is now incurred in ensuring this recycling of money from one member state up to the Commission and back again to its own country. Industrial projects for consideration by the European Regional Development Fund are sponsored by the Department of Industry. This is made quite clear in the report produced by Lord Plowden's committee. So far as the infrastructure is concerned, local authorities make their applications to the Department of the Environment. Therefore all the applications for regional aid in one form or another go through one of two Ministeries. And three times a year, as the noble Lord has correctly pointed out in his report, a commission is formed which groups the applications and takes them up to Brussels for consideration.

Who comprise the people who consider the whole question at the Commission end? There are two committees. There is a regional policy committee and there is a fund management committee. Each of these committees contains representatives of the Government of each member state. Therefore what happens is that when the applications go, for example, from the United Kingdom up to the Commission for consideration they are sent to these committees upon which already sit representatives of their own Government. This happens in both committees, so it is all channelled upwards. These applications are considered by Governments who support them, and they are considered again by Governments sitting on these two forms of management committee.

Moreover, there is no question ultimately of judging them on their merits. The report makes quite clear that the project particulars that are sent up are not of a frightfully satisfactory quality. But it is not as though even after that the projects are dealt with on their merits. They are dealt with according to quotas. Every member state has its certain quota. Bearing in mind the triviality of the sums involved, I should not have thought that it was worth while going to all this trouble of gathering the projects together, having them considered by Ministers or by ministerial departments, having them sent to the Commission with another costly and time-consuming translation review, having them considered again before any decision can be made and then seeking the final decision of the various committees which consist of representatives of member states who are required to distribute, in terms of the totality of the money involved, exactly in accordance with a pre-arranged format. That does not seem to be a very good way of conducting the business.

It may well be that there are other ways of achieving a greater convergence within the EEC countries. I devoutly hope that there are, but I do not think that this country ought to be deceived by symbols. I do not think they should have prospects held out to them in respect of the marvellous things that the Regional Fund is capable of doing when, first, it does very little other than append its label to projects that in the main come back to the country which supplied the money. It should not do that and it should not hold out prospects for the future which are not based on logical expectations and all reasonable suppositions based upon the facts.

I am well aware that in so saying it may be said that I am taking the traditional anti-European posture. I am not. I do not regard the EEC as being synonymous with Europe. Europe operates within a wider context and within more countries than the EEC does and indeed, in President Jenkins' own assessment shortly before he left, he said he had come to the reluctant conclusion that the EEC itself was mainly the common agricultural policy with the other activities as a periphery.

I do not think that we should assess our affairs on that basis. I think that so far as we can we should be factual. I do not think that we should retain symbols and, unless the EEC is prepared greatly to reduce its common agricultural policy doubt, we ourselves should be quite bold and say that we do not want anything to do with symbols and it would be far better and far saner and make for a far better understanding of public affairs if such artificial concepts were abandoned.

My Lords, I have heard it said that the reports of your Lordships' European Communities Select Committee are read with the closest attention, particularly in the Commission itself. I hope and believe that that will be so in the case of the report that we are considering tonight because it is of the same high standard that we have come to expect from our European Community's scrutiny committee and its sub-committees. Indeed, following the timely Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, this evening the Hansard of tonight's debate should, I believe, be appended to the report when the Community officials study it, as I hope and believe they will.

As your Lordships will recall, the Regional Fund was established when we joined the Community, in order to provide a means by which the Community could help us by contributing towards the convergence of the less prosperous regions of the Community, which include in particular Northern Ireland and the assisted areas of Great Britain.

Although the fund has been increased in size each year since it was formed, its total resources—as the committee point out at the beginning of their report—are limited. They are a very small part of Community expenditure—the allocations for commitment in the 1981 budget were only about £832 million at the current exchange rate. These commitments represent about 7·3 per cent. of the total Community budget, while the appropriations for payments against commitments were even smaller—about £335 million. Similarly ERDF expenditure is far less than national spending on regional policy. Thus in 1980, for example, the United Kingdom received new commitments of about £153 million, and payments of about £136 million for both industry and infrastructure projects, while central Government aid for industry in 1979–80 was over £500 million and expenditure on infrastructure in the assisted areas was of the order of two or three billion pounds.

While the fund's resources are thus limited, they are not negligible. Since the inception of the fund to the present day, we have received commitments of some £647 million, and payments, against these commitments, of £377 million. We have been able to take up our full quota each year with a wide range of projects. For example, last year, the Commission made commitments of £2 million towards the Ely link road at Cardiff; £3·2 million towards the Monkland motorway at Glasgow; a further £4 million making £27 million in all towards the Kielder Reservoir; and some £3 million towards port and harbour improvement schemes in Northern Ireland. The fund contributions to these and other infrastructure projects bring a real and attractive benefit to local and public authorities in the form of reduced interest charges over several years.

Turning to the future, in addition to the part which the fund may play in the community budget restructuring exercise, the regulation governing the operation of the fund is due to be re-examined by the Council before the end of 1981 following a proposal from the Commission. Thus, the arrangements and conditions governing the operation of the fund will be thoroughly scrutinised by ourselves and other member states during the next few months.

One question which is often raised is that of the size of the fund; and while, as I have already said, it has increased in size each year, there have been proposals from the Commission, the European Parliament, and others, for even further increases. While I have some sympathy with these suggestions, it is necessary to take into account the overall budgetary effect, and the consequences of the further enlargement of the Community. We cannot come to a decision on this matter until the Commission have presented their proposals and we have studied them.

I would now like to consider some of the more detailed suggestions put forward in the report. First of all, there is the very interesting idea that local authorities or regional development agencies, should prepare development programmes which would include industrial and infrastructure projects. The programmes might also include service and consultancy projects and groups of small industrial projects which are below the existing minima. The concept of submitting a comprehensive programme which will be aided by the Community is at first sight very attractive, not least to the Commission itself. Indeed, the procedures adopted for the non-quota section of the fund are based on programmes. However, there are considerable practical difficulties to be borne in mind. Some of these stem from accounting and auditing requirements.

When we apply for fund aid for an individual project, the application gives a great deal of information about the justification for the project, and the cost and time scale involved. In preparing a programme for a range of activities, it is likely to be necessary to provide a similar amount of detailed information about the justification for the activities which will be aided, and the way in which the activities to be aided fit into the overall regional policy for the area concerned.

The Commission will require such information in order to enable them to commit Community funds, and even if they were prepared to look sympathetically at programmes which gave less precise data it is likely the programmes would have to be considered by the fund's management committee or some other committee of member states where such detailed information is likely to be a prerequisite of approval.

There is the further point that a wide range of consultation would be needed if programmes were adopted as the basis for fund aid. I am sure that the local authorities and agencies could prepare programmes to cover their own activities, but in order to be comprehensive, and to forestall possible criticism in Brussels, any such programme would need to refer to investments by other public authorities—water boards, gas and electricity authorities, British Telecom et cetera—and to comment on the use made of other Community funds. I believe that the Government departments concerned are better placed to provide this overall view, and to hold the balance for allocatng ERDF monies between local and other public authorities. This is not to say that local authorities do not have a large part to play in the administration of the fund. They do; and their co-operation is essential and much appreciated. I hope that it will continue.

I would also emphasise that I am certainly not ruling out the use of programmes as a basis for fund aid, but I am uttering a word of caution; they are not a panacea to the problems which can arise when fund aid is based on individual projects. The committee also suggested that the geographical area covered by the fund should be reduced in order to increase its impact, but that the fund should also cover some individual black spots outside the normal aided areas. I would accept the first of those suggestions, which is well in line with the Government's policy of reducing the size of the assisted areas in order to concentrate our own regional aid in areas where it is most needed.

However, the suggestion that it should cover some black spots outside the assisted areas does present difficulties. Such black spots would by definition not be eligible for the normal kinds of regional aid under the Industry Acts. The fund regulation imposes a clear link between eligibility for national regional aid and eligibility for ERDF aid, and the Government would not support the idea of breaking this link; it is difficult to see the justification for providing Community regional aid to areas which the Government of the member state concerned considered did not justify national regional aid. Indeed, I would expect considerable opposition from other member states to breaking this link for this very reason. Such an extension of the fund would be extremely difficult to make, unless the black spots in question were in receipt of some other regionally differentiated system of aid to industry. Nevertheless, I would not wish to give the impression that the Governments mind is closed in this matter.

On a point of detail, I would support the suggestion that the arrangements for making interest rebates on EIB loans should be amended to make them more attractive. As the committee point out, these rebates have been unpopular, simply because a 3 per cent. rebate spread over many years is less attractive than an immediate block grant.

The committee also proposed that consideration should be given to broadening the scope of ERDF aid to cover operating subsidies. The Government would not support such a step. Our policy on assistance to industry is firmly based on providing assistance only to new investment and to companies with good prospects of long-term viability. Using funds to provide operating subsidies could encourage inefficiency and a misuse of resources. Such assistance would also be contrary to the Community's normal competition policy.

I think I should now mention one of the most frequently voiced criticism of the fund, namely, that the fund payments should be additional to national regional aids and should be passed on to the sponsors of the projects concerned. This is a matter which has I think been raised by almost every noble Lord who has spoken this evening. Perhaps I can touch on this in some detail as I think the implications are frequently misunderstood. Let me consider first fund aid to industry projects.

Under the present fund regulation, aid can only be given to new industry projects which are already receiving national regional aids. This implies that a decision has already been made to grant national regional aids, and that the project will already be proceeding, so that any decision to grant fund aid—whether or not it is passed on to the company—cannot provide an incentive to the company to carry out the project. Our quota is not sufficient to enable us to obtain fund aid for every eligible project, and if fund contributions were passed on to some companies, it would simply be a windfall, which would be unfair to those other firms who would have received national regional aid but not fund aid. Moreover, there is the very real difficulty that passing on fund aid would, in some cases, breach the Community ceilings on the total amount of regional aid that may be given to any particular project.

While the present regulation imposes the condition that the only industry projects which are eligible for fund assistance are those receiving national regional aids, this requirement could in principle be removed if all other member states agreed to do so. Such agreement is unlikely, as member states—and I think the Commission—would not wish to spend Community money in aiding a project which was not being given national regional aid. Similarly, we ourselves would support the principle that Governments are in the best position to determine the thrust of regional assistance, and we would not welcome ERDF assistance—or indeed other Community money—going to projects which we did not think should be supported.

Before leaving this question of the fund contributions towards industrial projects, I should like to take the opportunity to thank all the companies who have voluntarily co-operated with the Government by allowing their projects to be used for applications to the fund even though, as I have explained, the benefits of fund aid do not go directly to them. The applications do involve some requests to the companies for additional information—which we keep to a minimum—as well as occasional visits by the Commission or the European Court of Auditors. This extra burden falls on local managers to whom we are particularly indebted.

The position with infrastructure projects is different, in that the fund contributions are passed on to local or other public authorities concerned, although without any corresponding increase in their ceilings on capital expenditure. Given that all such authorities plan their investment programmes several years ahead, removal of this limitation would not enable entirely new projects to be introduced. The most that Fund aid would be likely to achieve in these circumstances would be an earlier date for implementing projects which were already in mind, and this could be of some help to a region. However, given the need to contain the total of public expenditure, I think that the present arrangement, which gives authorities a very signficant saving in loan charges, is a good compromise.

There is no doubt that the concept of additionality is a difficult one; it involves an assessment of what would have happened if the fund aid had not been available. Nevertheless, it is true to say that the Government does take account of receipts from the ERDF in determining its public expenditure plans; if these receipts were not forthcoming some cuts would be required if the totality of public expenditure was to be contained. In this sense, ERDF receipts are fully additional.

May I deal with a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Irving of Dartford, about additionality in the context of the new capital expenditure control system for local authorities. There is no change of principle imported with the new system of capital expenditure control. The new rule recognises that ERDF grants are a source of finance for capital expenditure. Control of capital expenditure nationally requires that the grants should not be used to increase expenditure which has been set at levels that already take into account expected ERDF receipts.

The report also referred to complaints about difficulties in dealing with some particular kinds of projects—advance factories, tourism developments and service and industry projects. It is true that some other member states are taking a narrower interpretation of the fund regulation than we do, and they have therefore objected in the fund management committee to some of our applications for advance factories and tourist projects. We are continuing to argue that such projects make a valuable contribution to regional development and fully deserve fund support.

We are, however, concerned at the suggestion that some applicants find it difficult to discover what has happened to their application. While a project which is non-eligible because it does not meet the criteria of the regulation, can be ruled out quickly—and the applicant authority informed—decisions as to which eligible infrastructure projects will be submitted to the Commission cannot be taken until all the possible candidates for submission at the same time have been received. This must cause some delay for early applications. We do our best to keep the authorities concerned informed. Nevertheless, departments have taken note of the criticism and I hope that this particular problem will not recur.

My noble friend Lord Sandford raised the matter of the alleged delay in taking action on the Burns Report, which refers to local authority powers of assistance to industry and commerce and which I think was mentioned in paragraphs 7 and 8 of the Association of District Councils' Memorandum. The Government recognise the important contribution which district councils can make in providing the right environment for economic regeneration, and we are urgently considering the issues raised in the Burns Report. I am sorry if that is rather cryptic, but my noble friend will appreciate the difficulty that I find myself in when I am asked to anticipate the outcome of ministerial consideration on matters such as this. I might also say, in fact, that with regard to the delay to which my noble friend referred some local authority interests invited to comment on the report have been rather slow in coming forward with their views.

My noble friend also referred to a number of specific cases including in particular the case of Consett. I can say that any further applications for infrastructure grant received from the Consett authorities will be considered for the next batch of submissions to Brussels, which is due in June or July.

My Lords, before my noble friend leaves that point, may I say that his remarks are not at all cryptic: they are just contradictory. It is a fairly simple committee making a fairly simple report and to have taken nine months to fail to arrive at any conclusion at all is just too much of a delay.

My Lords, I am sorry that my noble friend feels like that. I shall certainly convey my noble friend's views to my other noble friends and right honourable friends who are responsible for reaching these decisions, and I am sure that his anxiety will spur them on to even greater efforts.

The noble Lord, Lord Plowden, in opening this debate referred to the suggestion that areas eligible for fund aid might be determined on the basis of common Community criteria of need. Such fixed criteria might well exclude some of the areas in more prosperous member states, such as Germany or France, where fund aid is now available in areas which are below their national average but which are better off than most parts of the less prosperous members. However, such fixed criteria would necessarily have to be agreed on a Community basis and they might well be set at a level which would exclude parts of our own assisted areas which we ourselves would wish to receive fund aid. While I have some sympathy with this concept, I am not sure that it would necessarily be in our long-term interests, and I think that some other member states might likewise see difficulties in transferring the decision as to which parts of the country should receive ERDF aid from capitals to Brussels.

The noble Lord, Lord Plowden, also referred to the use of programmes, as did at least one other noble Lord, as the basis for payments under the supplementary measures regulation. This was a special short-term measure and it is not necessarily a sound precedent for programmes in other areas. A political will existed to approve these programmes which would not necessarily exist for ERDF programmes.

The noble Lord, Lord Banks, asked if we still supported the principle that most aid should go to areas in greatest need. Indeed we do—most fund aid is paid in respect of projects in development and special development areas. Indeed, some 58 per cent. goes to SDAs and to Northern Ireland.

The noble Lord, Lord Greenhill of Harrow, raised a very fundamental issue. I hope that he will forgive me if I do not attempt to answer him tonight, but perhaps I may consider what he has said and if there is anything new to report on that matter I shall write to the noble Lord.

I had better come to the end of my remarks. It is expected that the Commission will be sending their formal proposals for amendments to the regulation to the Council within the next two or three months, and we shall then carefully consider them. While I have had to sound a note of caution on some of the conclusions of the Select Committee, I can assure your Lordships that we shall keep this very helpful report fully in mind when we are looking at the Commission's proposals, together, of course, with the views that your Lordships have expressed tonight.

My Lords, we have had a long and most interesting debate on this subject and the number of noble Lords who have taken part is an indication of the interest in regional policy generally. Most speakers have expressed dissatisfaction with the working of the ERDF. However, all appear to wish to improve its working and various suggestions have been made to that end and not to abolish it, with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, who in his usual inimitable and forceful way appeared to be discussing a report other than the one that we are discussing this evening, because he appeared to suggest that we were setting out to deceive the country by advocating symbols and that moreover there was no possibility whatever of the Regional Fund offsetting the amounts that have to be paid to the common agricultural policy. I think that in almost the last words of my speech I said, "Do not let us be deceived into believing that any reform or increase that is possible in the Regional Fund can in any way be a substitute for reformation of the common agricultural policy".

The noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, suggested, contrary I think to almost every other speaker, that a region should have direct access to the Community in Brussels. As a former bureacrat I would deplore that. I cannot imagine what kind of organisation would be necessary to consider applications from the Highlands and Islands and from the Mezzogiorno, from Portugal and various parts of Spain and the Greek Islands. Tempting as it might be, I do not believe that it would be practicable.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, for his replies. On additionality, his views were as I expected. On the question of programmes, I was disappointed that he received it with really faint consideration. I am reminded of a remark that the late Lord Bridges once made to me when I was in the Treasury that I should not say things like that as it savours of the official grimace. I felt that the comment was very luke-warm. I believe that there is more to be said for programmes than perhaps the noble Lord is willing to accept. However, this has been a most useful debate and I welcome Lord Trefgarne's statement that the Government will take into account our report in negotiating in Brussels.

rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are satisfied that the provisions of the Police Act 1964 dealing with the functions, duties and accountability of police authorities and chief officers of police are working as Parliament intended.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Allen, for putting down this Question. It is very appropriate. I intervene because I was a member of the Lord Edmund-Davies police inquiry and have followed closely many of the recommendations that that committee made. Of course accountability and complaints are bound together. The noble Lord, Lord Allen, said that the issue of complaints had not been solved even by the latest working party. I find it somewhat strange that the working party had 12 members and, reading the report, seven of them were opposed to its recommendations.

In a free society, bureaucracy has to expect that it will be attacked from time to time. The difficult task of enforcing law and order falls on the police. It is a tendency of anyone subject to discipline against his wishes to complain against those people who are enforcing law and order. Many complaints against the police are fictitious and highly coloured, and that is why most are not proceeded with.

In the current issue of the Police Magazine the editor said:

"there is no reason at all why the [Complaints] Board should not seek to discover why so many complaints, anything between a third and a half of the total, are withdrawn. The explanation, in a great majority of cases, will simply be that tempers have cooled and explanations have been accepted. Some complainants are appalled at the forces they have unleashed. They have rushed to a police station to get their opinions off their chests, not realising that they were setting in motion a long and painstaking procedure to probe the rights and wrongs of a trivial incident. All this stems from the requirement to record and investigate every complaint and although everyone agrees that trivial complaints should not have to go through the full treatment, no one has succeeded in defining what is trivial".

The police are the only group of workers I know who can be fined by their senior officers anything up to £500. The chief constable and the deputy chief constable investigate internal complaints with great thoroughness and demotion and fines of a considerable amount are not unknown. In fact, one of the complaints of the police at the moment is that the very success of the Edmund-Davies committee in putting right their pay has meant more vicious fines by some chief constables.

Very few policemen are deliberately going to encounter disciplinary procedures. Errors of judgment of course take place. They do among Governments, too, but they are not demoted or fined. There is an appeals procedure on fines and other actions, but men who pound the pavements seem to have little confidence in this appeals system. The Home Office and the Police Advisory Board should re-examine the fines procedure.

The number of justified complaints is small, but the time taken to investigate them is very great. The police on the beat feel the administration leans over backwards to protect the citizen, and that is as it should be. I hope no one will be charged for excessive force or dereliction of duty over last week-end in Brixton. I agree with the views of the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Superintendents' Association and the Police Federation in the Working Party report to which the noble Lord, Lord Allen, referred. The Association of Chief Police Officers have a standing committee and close liaison with the complaints board. I believe that should be tightened. I also believe that investigations take too long. It may be they are being done very thoroughly, but the longer they go on the more difficulty occurs.

On the question of training, the police college, now under the control of Sir Kenneth Newman, who was at one time in Northern Ireland where he did outstanding work, is doing extraordinarily good work in training people to take the highest posts in the police service. One of the questions the noble Lord, Lord Allen asked, was whether able people were being attracted to the police service and, once attracted, were they being retained. I am in no doubt, having probed this question in some depth, that the reasonable pay offered since Edmund-Davies reported is not only attracting but keeping able people, and university entrants are being put on the express train for advancement, as is the case in the Civil Service.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Allen, that everything should be done to attract the best brains to fill the top posts in the police service. There is a training council on which the staff associations have membership. It is an ongoing thing and I believe the Home Office is doing everything possible to expedite the training of the brightest prospects in the police service for holding top posts in the future.

The Edmund-Davies Committee made some outstanding proposals in Part III of their report which is now in the process of implementation, and I would call the attention of noble Lords to a few of them because they affect some of the points mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Allen. One recommendation was that there should be a joint negotiating and consultative committee on which the three police staff associations would serve. Being chaired by the chief constable, it would deal with consultative problems. The report said that consultative problems are forced policy—not negotiable items but consultative issues which are force policy. Therefore, for the first time, force policy—which really means everything which hitherto has been in the sole control of the chief constable—can now be shared with the three staff associations and the chief constable, hammering out the best approach to some of the issues which hitherto have been considered only in the giving of the chief constable. The minutes of the JNCC are to be monitored by Her Majesty's Inspectors of Constabulary. The report went on to say that if there was disagreement shown in the minutes, it was the job of HM Inspectors to try to resolve the disagreement between the two sides. The Home Office therefore will know what is being discussed in a consultative capacity on the JNCC, will know the areas of disagreement and in my view that will take industrial relations within the police force a great step forward.

Another recommendation was that the police authority could be attended by staff association representatives. Up to the time of Edmund-Davies, staff association representatives could attend only as members of the public and had to leave the police authority when the open agenda had concluded. Most, if not all, police authorities have now accepted that staff association representatives—and they are small in number—can be present in both parts of the agenda, the open and confidential agenda, though there may be a super confidential part when they must leave. They can attend as a matter of right in duty time; previously they could attend only the public part in their own time.

The more important point in relation to the police authority is that the three staff associations will meet privately with the clerk of the authority, the chairman of the police authority and members of the authority jointly to discuss items of interest, the policing of the area and some of the issues which the noble Lord, Lord Allen, mentioned. The associations will be able to let the police authority membership know of their aspirations and objectives, and that will be very useful in relation to some of the problems highlighted by Lord Allen.

The Edmund-Davies Committee also recommended that there should be regional meetings of forces. At present, the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Superintendents' Association may have regional meetings in duty time, probably several forces meeting, but the Police Federation does not have that opportunity, except for its women members who meet on a regional basis to elect their representatives to go to their conference. It is strange to me, coming from the trade union movement, that I find that 60 per cent. of the forces allow regional meetings in duty time while 40 per cent. do not. I find it incredible that at the same regional meeting more than half will be there in duty time and the remainder in their own time.

I was greatly impressed when I heard Sir Philip Knights of the West Midlands Constabulary talking about violence and law and order, and he was tracing the question of law and order from medieval times to the present day; the influence of the Church, the squire, voluntary bodies, the police and of course the sad influence of television. He said that in the West Midlands they had opened six houses where surgeries would be held by constables in their patches to receive constituents and talk to them about problems affecting their everyday lives and the policing of the area. I am told that in the West Midlands there will eventually be 200 of these surgeries, when money is available. I was told by one constable who is operating surgeries on his patch that he has had no callers and all that his parishioners" have done is let down the tyres on his car. That is a sad commentary, and such a situation must be looked at, because here the police are trying to help the community, trying to bring in a community spirit; yet somehow they cannot get through. What is to be done? How can we further help the police?—not by continually attacking them. They need our support, and I know that this House has given them full support.

Those are some of the problems that I feel have to be raised. There is nothing conclusive about them, but I am quite certain that the Edmund-Davies Report is now giving the police associations a better opportunity to put their points of view to the chief constable and to the police authority, and indeed through the Police Advisory Board, to the Home Secretary—which has never happened before. I believe that in 12 months' time there will be a different outlook and indeed a better police service.

My Lords, I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Allen, has raised this subject, because it is very timely. I should have liked to take up some of the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Plant. I agree with some of what he said, though not all of it, but I think that at this time of the evening I ought to stick to the notes that I have prepared and speak about accountability, which is one of the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Allen. Accountability has for long been a grey area, a great uncertainty, and I hope that the Home Office will take the point and act where possible to clear up uncertainties.

I do not want to seem overcritical this evening. I am very proud of my police associations and of those who have helped me here and abroad. They have infected me with a large part of their irresistible loyalty, but I have never been attracted by the police party line. I am far too independent; I have an independent mind. I admire their strong points—and they have very many. I agree with the noble Lord who opened the debate that there is no other police force with which I should like to exchange ours. I admire their strong points, but I am not blind to their weaker ones.

First, I should like to speak, briefly, about the accountability of police authorities, and then I wish to say something about the accountability of chief constables. So far as I can see, police authorities are in a very awkward position because among other things they are responsible for something which is very important—efficiency. This responsibility is written into the 1964 Act, but no one has yet defined what is efficiency in this sense and what the relevant subsection of the Act really means. I have spoken to members of different authorities in various parts of the country and one thing that they have in common is that they all seem to be unhappy because they are used to such a large extent as rubber stamps They do not know where their power and responsibility begin or end, and, as like as not, today chief constables pay as much—or more—attention to the federation as they do to the police authorities. Really they are different kinds of animals; neither should take the place of the other. The police authority has a very important role laid down in the statute and I submit that it is not always allowed to carry it out.

I wonder how many members of police authorities thought of looking at the living conditions in the police station cells for which they are responsible during the unhappy weeks of the prison officers' strike; I should think that very few did. An efficient county police force depends on a partnership between the authority and the police, and I submit that mostly that partnership is not as close as it ought to be. The key to this is the quality of the chairman of the authority. Top-class councillors and magistrates will want to serve on police authorities only if they have a real job and a real share of responsibility. They do not want to take over someone else's job, but they want the job which Parliament intended that they should have. The chairman should be chosen by the authority itself, not by the party caucus of the county council outside, which nominates someone on the authority, and then lobbies the authority to elect that person. I consider that that is very wrong, but the state has been reached where 19 out of 20 chairmen of authorities are nominated by the caucus of the majority party of the county council.

I now wish to turn briefly to the question of chief officers, and here I am referring to ACPO members in general, not just to chief constables. Chief constables and ACPO members are not all equal, any more than are men forming any other group, or as was said earlier today, than we, the Members of this House. There are some in ACPO whom all of us must admire unreservedly, and there are some few under whom would not care to serve—I shall not say any more. Generally speaking, they are over-sensitive about their position and their "kingdom". They are paranoid about whom they call politicians—it is really humorous—and so they discourage many good friends, which is a tragedy. They fail to see the wide difference between close co-operation and understanding and attempts at interference. They still dream dreams about watch committee interference over promotions and other smaller points. But that is all of the past, and none of us, I am sure, wants to see it brought back.

Mr. Anderton, the chief constable of Greater Manchester, the other day wrote an article in one of the police magazines, and it was reprinted in some of the others. It was a terrific outpouring. He really went to town on the question of accountability and freedom from political interference—and he is very muddled about it. It is a pity. He is not the only chief officer who misses few opportunities of criticising those whom he calls politicians, and so I do not think that they can complain when we lob back a little of it, because they started it.

It is obviously very desirable for individuals with police powers to be clearly accountable to the law, but it is not so simple to achieve that in practice. What happens if a chief constable's conduct brings his headquarters into disrepute, and yet he breaks no law? I think that something must have been in the mind of the Home Office when, in December 1978, it produced a memorandum, as a basis for discussion, of the procedures for dealing with allegations about the conduct of chief officers of police. The memorandum was circulated rather over two years ago, and I believe I am right in saying that absolutely nothing has happened since, except that every attempt to make progress has been blocked by one so-called consultation or another. Perhaps the Minister could tell us something about that when he replies.

As an example of what I have in mind, take heavy drinking. It is not a crime to drink heavily in this country, and yet we all know that in all classes there are some men who do; and whether you are the chairman of a company, a chief constable or the head of any other organisation, it brings that organisation into disrepute. That is the sort of thing, I imagine, that was in the mind of the Home Office when they produced this memorandum. In this field, HMIs appear to me to be quite powerless. There are no regular confidential reports on senior officers, who serve until they are 65. That is worth noticing: it is five years longer than senior civil servants or ambassadors, and 10 years longer than major-generals. It is also believed by those down the line and more junior that it blocks promotion, and that it would be a happier service if this age was brought more in line with the retiring age of other comparable servants of the Crown.

I am not the only person who has been gravely worried over recent years by the lack of interest, I could almost say neglect, shown by chief constables in special constables, whose numbers have fallen steadily over the years. I would have expected them to fall over the years immediately after the war, but that fall has continued. They even fell after the first working party reported and was thought to be giving the special constabulary a new start. They are still falling, to the best of my belief, and this during the time when the second working party is sitting. The number is falling at the rate of about 1,000 a year, and I think we could say that if this continued, then in two years or so the special constabulary would no longer be any significant national force.

One could hardly imagine a time when it would be more urgently needed than it is at present or when special constabulary could perform a more valuable service, not just in terms of civil defence in the case of major disasters but even in policing parts of London over this past weekend. I wonder very much what steps have been taken to mobilise special constables over these days, when regulars have been drawn from their normal divisions and concentrated in Brixton, but I do not want to pursue that now. The numbers are still falling; and one has to admit that this is something to be expected when so little encouragement has been shown by so many regulars. This is an ill service to the community in the difficult times in which we live.

My reading of the Act is that if any chief constable decided overnight to have no more special constables, he could dismiss them there and then—the whole lot. That power is found in Section 16 of the 1964 Act. If all chief constables thought the same, we might wake up tomorrow and find that the entire special constabulary had been dismissed—all within the perfectly proper exercise of powers which we have given to chief constables in the 1964 Act. I have mentioned that in this House before. The last time I mentioned it, the Minister did not refer to it in his reply, so I am hoping tonight to be a little more fortunate. This is not really so far-fetched, because, after the report of the first working party on special constables, when an effort was made to bring their ages more into line with those of the regular service, which I think is not necessarily a good idea, one chief constable in this country, in a night of the long knives, sacked 133 there and then. Needless to say, he gave the morale of that force a blow from which it has not yet recovered. The HMI whom I asked about this thought it was all right, when I would have thought it was all wrong.

My Lords, for this decline in the special constabulary—and this neglect, if I can use a stronger word—the greater part of the blame must be borne by chief constables, and I cannot think of a single one who has spoken up for them in public. Chief constables speak often enough in ordinary conversation about how useful special constables are, but I cannot think of one who has come out into the open and spoken boldly in support of special constabulary and followed up his words with action. The police authorities are to blame, too, although I would say in smaller measure; and so is the Home Office, who must have known about these falling figures over the years and have never, I think, made any national appeal. They are all accountable to a greater or lesser extent.

In conclusion, may I repeat that I am sure it is right, and we all agree that it is right, to defend the independence of the police from political interference. But we also want to make them accountable to the law. Today there are gaps, which have to be examined. It may be that these gaps should be filled by amendments to the disciplinary code. In any event, we do not want to see too much secrecy about these things. The tradition in Britain is to be over-secretive about the police. Compared with one country whose police I know fairly well, Germany, this country is far more secretive, and I cannot see why.

Equally, in this country we do not want imperium in imperi. The police, as the noble Lord has said, are civilians doing a special job for their fellow men. Much of their work is exacting, much of it is confidential, but a great deal of it need not be surrounded with secrecy in the way that much of it is today. All power tends to corrupt. We must not forget that. There was a delicate balance built into the 1964 Act, a truly British device, which needs readjustment. I hope that the Home Office will not fail us but will take the necessary lead.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, has raised an important subject tonight and I am sure that we are grateful to him for that. As a former Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, he speaks with great authority on these matters. In the course of his remarks, he raised a number of particularly important matters within this whole subject: the extent to which chief constables pay attention to police authorities, accountability (to which the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, has also addressed his remarks) and the system of prosecutions. All are matters on which we could have major debates. I should like to follow him as far as all those particular parts of this subject are concerned, but I shall resist the temptation in view of the hour.

The point on which I should like to follow him is his other major point, the question of complaints against the police, to which my noble friend Lord Plant also referred. I should like to say first of all that we have been immensely fortunate in the chairmanship of the Police Complaints Board. We have had, in its first year, a most distinguished and widely respected chairman in the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, and now, in Sir Cyril Philips, we have as his successor another highly respected and knowledgeable figure. One of their most important attributes, especially in the context of this work, is the board's independence and independent-mindedness.

It needs also to be acknowledged at the outset that the police are in a peculiarly influential and powerful position for many of them are specially well placed to know the circumstances surrounding the subject matter of complaints against them. They are also the best placed and most experienced body of people when it comes to carrying out investigations of various kinds, not just into complaints; and they are also experienced in assembling evidence. But it also needs to be emphasised that the police are peculiarly vulnerable to all kinds of wholly unmeritorious, trivial, fabricated complaints from, for example, cranks or vindictive defendants disgruntled at being found out and found guilty. It cannot be passed without notice that many complaints come from people who are hardly the most reliable sources of fact and truth. That vulnerability must be taken into account in any system for investigating complaints that is devised, so as to ensure that that vulnerability is not allowed to place them at a disadvantage. They need to be no better but also no worse placed than the rest of us. At the same time—and, I believe that this is for the benefit of the police as well as for everyone else—there needs to be as great an independent element in investigating complaints as possible, consistent with recognising those principles that I have referred to, for this will help safeguard the credibility of that system.

The Police Complaints Board, in the triennial review report published on 15th July 1980, to which the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, referred, looked thoroughly into the system and came up with a series of suggested improvements to which he has also made reference in his remarks. It is fair to say that the report was generally reassuring about the way that the system as a whole was working. The most important of those recommendations for improvement was the proposal in Chapter 5 of the report to which the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, referred that complaints of serious injury should be investigated by a specialist body of investigating officers answerable to an independent lawyer, and preferably one who has exercised judicial office. The board said that before a final decision was taken a number of important issues needed further consideration; namely, practical matters concerning the relationships between the proposed investigating body, the Director of Public Prosecutions, chief officers of police and the complaints board itself. The board's report also contained a number of other useful recommendations which I do not intend to go into now.

The Home Secretary immediately announced that he was setting up the working party to which the noble Lord, Lord Allen, and my noble friend Lord Plant referred, to consider the implementation of the board's main recommendation. That working party, as we know, reported last month and Lord Belstead's right honourable friend the Home Secretary at once invited comments upon it.

Although the working party's report contains some valuable further thoughts and suggestions, especially to widen somewhat the nature of the serious cases to be subjected to a new form of investigation—corruption cases were mentioned, for example—it is disappointing that the working party's report does not endorse the principal point in the board's proposal for greater independence in the procedure for investigating complaints: the recommendations for an independent supervisor and for a specialist team of investigating officers.

It is worth noting that the terms of reference given to the working party by the Home Secretary were:

"To consider in detail how it might be possible to implement the recommendation"—

not whether it might be possible but how it might be possible to implement the recommendation. We have no means, outside the words of the working party's report, of knowing whether—and, if so, to what extent—there was disagreement between members of the working party in the course of their discussions. What we do know is that they did not feel able to put forward detailed proposals stating how it might be possible to implement the board's actual recommendation.

We also know that the working party came up with a unanimous report. I know that there were reservations expressed in the body of the report on certain matters: nevertheless, so far as the conclusions and recommendations were concerned, it was a unanimous report. That is a considerable tribute to the skilled chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Plowden. We know, too, that while rejecting on various grounds—and because of certain specified problems—the board's idea for a specialist team of investigating officers, the working party's report noted at paragraph 19:

"These problems, though difficult, are not necessarily insuperable".

We know that, while rejecting on certain grounds—including financial and administrative ones—the board's proposal for an independent person with judicial experience, the working party's report noted at paragraph 36 that:

"a completely new appointment would not be impracticable".

Again, I suspect that we can probably detect in the terms in which the report is drawn—though I must say immediately that I have not discussed any of these matters with anyone connected with either the working party or the board—the painstaking and experienced chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Plowden.

I hope that the Minister and his right honourable friend the Home Secretary will bear very much in mind the view that, although there are difficulties—there usually are difficulties in matters which require investigation, otherwise they would not be subjected to it—they are difficulties which can be overcome. Also I hope that the Ministers will keep firmly in mind the board's original proposals put forward in the triennial review after much thought.

Finally, I turn briefly to another matter which was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale: this was the report in The Times last week about the unpublished Home Office research department's report on studies by the department of investigations by the police of complaints against officers of assault. I am not going to repeat any of the contents of the report in The Times because I do not see that any special purpose is served by repeating any of the claims said to be made in the research reports without having seen the full report itself. I am concerned, I confess, about certain aspects of the matter.

First, I hope very much—and here I join strongly with what the noble Lord, Lord Allen, has said that the report will be published. I believe that it should be open to examination—and if it is not complete yet then it should be open as soon as possible after it is.

Next, at a time when we are considering all possible changes in the complaints procedure, it is surely additionally important for us to see any relevant material. Again, I do feel that it is a pity that all the members of the Home Office working party whose report we have been discussing tonight were not at least told of the existence or preparation of the research report, including Mr. James Jardine, the chairman of the Police Federation. In these circumstances I can well understand the reaction of the police to the reported contents of the research report. Certainly my own direct experience of the investigation by the police of complaints against officers is that those investigations are carried out with great thoroughness and, if there is any evidence of shortcomings within the police service on the part of officers, those shortcomings are most rigorously rooted out.

One of the reasons why I feel sure that the report of the research department should be published and made available to the police, among others, is that, if indeed it does reveal any shortcomings on the part of the police service, the police themselves would wish to take action to correct them, as it would indeed be their duty to do. In any event, while the Minister may not be able to say now that the report will be published, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, will be able to say that it will be made available to the Police Complaints Board now or as soon as it is complete.

Finally, I would join with the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, and with other noble Lords in the tribute they have paid to the police service. I believe it is the finest police service, and when something unfortunate does occasionally happen I do not believe we should forget the splendid routine and often dangerous work the police do; nor should we forget their part in happenings such as the Iranian Embassy siege—not so very long ago, after all—and their other anti-terrorist activities. These are actions which I believe deserve our full and strong support.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for giving us the opportunity to hold this important short debate today. It is an important debate, for the noble Lord reminded us, in a brief story he told, of the tradition which we have in this country of identifying with the police force of the area in which each of us lives; and of course the events of this weekend remind us forcibly of the disastrous course people embark upon if they turn their backs on this tradition.

The system of policing in this country—I think it is fair to claim—is not the product of statute. Rather, the legislation is the expression of what has evolved historically. I believe, as I know that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary also believes, that the process of historical development has provided us with a constitutional framework which is basically sound and which can meet the many demands made upon it.

The Police Act 1964 gave effect to the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Police, which sat from 1960 to 1962. The Royal Commission identified two salient features of the structure of policing which were needed, as they thought, for each community. The first of those salient features was that chief officers of police had complete discretion in directing and deploying their forces. The Royal Commission accepted that must be so if the criminal law was to be enforced impartially.

The second feature was that the structure of forces was based on the local community. The Royal Commission noted that the local body responsible for administering the service—the police authority—could give advice and guidance to a chief constable on local problems, without detracting from his operational independence. And the Royal Commission considered that the lack of control which this relationship implied could be offset by increasing a chief constable's accountability for his actions. It was this delicate balance of interests which the Royal Commission sought to preserve in making its recommendations. Its conclusions were generally accepted by the Government of the day and, as the noble Lord reminded us, were enshrined by Parliament in the Police Act 1964.

That Act recognises the three elements which need to combine to provide effective policing arrangements—professional expertise, the interest of the local community and the national interest. These are reflected in the responsibilities and powers given by the Act to the chief constable, the police authority and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. There have been many changes in our society since 1964, but these essential elements remain. I should just like to comment briefly on a few aspects which are of particular significance in trying to answer the questions which have been put in this short debate.

The Royal Commission acknowledged the need for chief constables to be operationally independent. Neither the Home Secretary nor the police authority may instruct them to institute proceedings in a particular case, or direct them in the deployment of their forces. This is one of the key elements in our policing arrangements. There can be no room for political interference from either central or local government. The operational independence of chief officers is essential to the confidence of Parliament and people in the police in discharging their duty. But this does not mean that the chief constable is not accountable. He is first, after all, accountable to the law and is answerable, ultimately, for his actions in the courts. The chief constable is responsible to his police authority for the general efficiency of his force and is required to submit an annual report to the authority on the policing of his area. Under Section 12 of the 1964 Act, he may also be required to report to his authority on any matter connected with the policing of the area.

In listening to the speech of my noble friend Lord Inglewood, I reflected that this is quite a packet of powers. I think that a police authority which is fully aware, as I am sure authorities are, of those powers, has only to decide that the authority ought to use them, for the authority to feel that it has quite a considerable influence—a proper influence—so far as the policing of its local area is concerned; putting that always, of course, in the context of the operational independence of the chief constable. Incidentally, of course, the Home Secretary also has power to call for reports and Her Majesty's inspectors are appointed to report to my right honourable friend on the efficiency of each force.

A further element in the accountability of the police was added by the arrangements for dealing with complaints, through the establishment of the Police Complaints Board in 1976. I was very interested in the speech which the noble Lord, Lord Boston, made and, if I may, I should just like to add this. The working of the police complaints system is under review, as we all know, in the light of the board's triennial report review. The report of the working party, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, was published on 18th March.

It is, of course, true, as the noble Lords, Lord Allen and Lord Boston, said, that the local authorities were not part of that working party. But this was because, since the working party was concerned with the practicability, rather than the desirability, of the original recommendation which had been made in the triennial report for an independent element in police complaints, it seemed right to limit membership of the working party to those most directly concerned with the actual process of investigating complaints. The matter will be considered in July by the Police Advisory Board upon which the police authorities are represented.

Having said that, I would emphasise that police authorities continue, under Section 50 of the 1964 Act, to have a general duty to keep themselves informed about the manner in which complaints from the public against members of the force are dealt with. I think that this is an important function of authorities. But the primary responsibility of a police authority is to provide an efficient police force for its area. The authority must ensure that the force is properly housed and equipped. The Royal Commission attached importance to the principle that the ratepayer, through his elected representatives, should have a voice in the scale and cost of the policing of the community in which he lives.

But not in London.

No, my Lords, not in London because, so far as London is concerned, it is the one case where people living in the metropolis have the good fortune, if I may put it that way, to have their police authority directly responsible to Parliament, in that the police authority is my right honourable friend the Home Secretary. I believe that that is absolutely the right system for the metropolis.

If I may talk about the housekeeping to which the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, referred, since the Edmund-Davies Report recommendations on police pay were implemented in full—implementation was going to take place but it was brought forward somewhat by my right honourable friend and was implemented in full in May 1979—there has been an increase in England and Wales of over 6,300 in police strength. However, we recognise that the service cannot be wholly exempt from the general search for economies which are necessary.

The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, asked whether the need for financial stringency had given rise to any friction at local level. In reply to that question I can say that in this respect there is, I know, a constructive sense of realism. I know that my right honourable friend welcomes the initiative of many chief constables in exploring how to use their resources more efficiently. The use of resources everywhere must be subjected to scrutiny so as to ensure maximum cost effectiveness at the present time. In all this, Her Majesty's Inspectors of Constabulary have a key role to play. They call on the resources of the Home Office for advice upon technical matters (a point which was mentioned also by the noble Lord) such as communications or computers.

My noble friend Lord Inglewood mentioned that there are no standards for the efficiency of police forces in this country. Of course that is true, but we rely upon the inspectorate. In general we are satisfied that the terms of the 1964 Act have ensured that efficient forces are maintained. The Home Office has not had to withhold a specific grant under the 1964 Act, nor has a police authority needed to call upon a chief constable to retire on grounds of inefficiency. But I have no doubt that the existence of these powers is wise and that they should remain upon the Statute Book.

My noble friend mentioned the metropolitan police. It is true, of course, that for historical reasons the metropolitan police, for which my right honourable friend is the police authority, is not inspected by Her Majesty's Inspectors of Constabulary. Let us recognise, however, that the present commissioner set up in 1979 a greatly strengthened internal inspectorate under a deputy assistant commissioner. This inspectorate has made encouraging progress and has close links with Her Majesty's Inspectorate.

The responsibility of the inspectorates to conduct annual inspections of forces and to advise my right honourable friend on police efficiency is evidence that the police service cannot be run on precisely the same basis as are other local services. It is the police authority's responsibility to administer the force budget, which it naturally does in liaison with the chief constable. In doing this, the police authorities are obviously in close contact with their local authorities. In each area, the county council's allocation of resources to the police has to take account of both national priorities and local needs, while fulfilling the obligation to maintain an efficient force. Once the authority has concluded, with the police authority, how much can be made available for the police force, it is then the responsibility of the police authority and the chief constable to consider how best to allocate the resources and to make any savings which may be necessary.

The police authority also has a special role as a link between the police and the local community. In terms of the Police Act, this is expressed through the duty of chief constables to submit annual reports, when the authority asks, on any matter connected with the policing of the area. Of course, one cannot create good working relationships by legislation. Within the statutory framework there will always be room for development and improvement. Police authorities have a vital role to play as the link between the police and the people's elected representatives. But, if this is to develop usefully, they must respect the chief constables' independence in enforcing the law and deploying their officers.

The noble Lord, Lord Allen, asked me a general question at the very beginning of his speech, which was whether since 1964 police authorities have been able to exercise influence on policing responsibilities. I should like to answer that question by quoting some words which were spoken by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary a few months ago. In a speech my right honourable friend said:

"it has become increasingly desirable that police authorities should see themselves not just as providers of resources but as a means whereby the chief constable can give account of his policing policy to the democratically elected representatives of the community and, in turn, they can express to him the views of the community on those policies".

That is the way in which my right honourable friend wishes to see the responsibilities of police authorities continuing to develop.

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, and in fact I am familiar with that quotation; but is that an expression of what ought to happen or is it an account of what does actually happen?

My Lords, the whole burden of my speech has been trying to underpin the case that this is an expression of what is happening and that, so far as in any parts of the country it may not be happening, it is the desire of my right honourable friend, with his general overall responsibility, to draw to the attention of authorities that this should be the situation and this is the way he would wish to see it develop.

Finally, at national level the local authority associations play their part on the police advisory board and in the work which it initiates: for example, the current working parties on police cadets and upon the special constabulary, which my noble friend Lord Inglewood mentioned, and the report on the special constabulary I hope will be concluded very shortly. Similarly the local authorities are fully involved in the work of the Police Training Council.

May I turn aside just for a moment before I finish in order to answer four specific questions which were put to me. The noble Lord, Lord Boston, and the noble Lord, Lord Allen, mentioned the articles which appeared a few days ago in The Times and which referred to an uncompleted research study begun in 1978 on the way in which the Metropolitan Police deal with complaints from both black and white people. The research study is intended to compare two years—1973 and 1978—before and after the establishment of the Police Complaints Board. On completion it will be the subject of discussion with the Commissioner, and the timing, about which the noble Lord, Lord Boston, asked, and the form of publication will be considered at that stage.

My noble friend Lord Inglewood mentioned the review which was carried out in 1978 by the Home Office on possible changes in existing disciplinary arrangements for senior police officers. It is true, as my noble friend recorded, that a memorandum was sent out by the Home Office at that time proposing in essence that the Secretary of State should be given a responsibility to oversee the exercise of functions by police authorities in this respect. My right honourable friend has asked the local authority associations to put forward their views on this matter. Comments have been received at the end of last year and these are now under consideration.

Both the noble Lord, Lord Allen, and the noble Lord, Lord Plant, referred to police training at Bramshill, and the noble Lord, Lord Allen, asked whether police training at the college is identifying and training leaders of the police service for the future. I happened to be at the police college at the end of last week and I was able to hear at first hand about changes which are being introduced at the college from January 1982 which follow recommendations by a working party of the Police Training Council. On all courses there will be emphasis on practical policing issues, with an increasing range of specialist options, such as manpower deployment and good financial management. From January 1982 all command courses are going to prepare experienced senior police officers before promotion for the responsibilities of their next higher rank. The junior, intermediate and senior command courses will respectively prepare officers for their duties as superintendent, chief superintendent and chief officer level. Consequent reductions in the number of places on command courses will enable the college to develop, however, a programme of short specialist courses, and in addition there will be a programme of seminars and conferences for senior officers on broad professional and policy matters. I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Plant, for the recognition in his speech of the work which is being done at Bramshill by the commandant, Sir Kenneth Newman. I am sure much is being done to draw on the most able officers for higher training.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Plant, asked me about what, in shorthand, I would call Edmund-Davies Part 3. The Police Advisory Board has considered the recommendations of the Edmund-Davies Report on the structure and role of the police staff associations. The board consider the recommendations dealing with consultation and negotiating procedures at force level to be particularly important. The board accepted the recommendations as a basic framework while emphasising that the exact nature of the procedure should be decided at local level, and indeed some of these negotiating procedures recommended by Edmund-Davies have been in operation in some forces for some time. My right honourable friend has accepted the board's advice on these matters and has commended these recommendations for immediate implementation.

My Lords, the Government believe that the Police Act 1964 continues to provide the right framework for policing in this country. By its very nature the constitutional balance of responsibilities is a delicate one. The precise way in which it is achieved can be adjusted, as it has been in the past, to suit changing circumstances as well as local needs. But we are convinced that within the basic structure provided by the Act the role of the three elements which compose it and the relationship between them can develop in a constructive way which enables each police force to discharge its duty.