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

My Lords, the Civil Aviation Authority wrote on 19th December to representatives of the British civil air transport industry and its users asking for their views by 31st January on the implications of privatisation for competition and the sound development of the industry. This is clearly a complex matter which will take some time, and I cannot forecast precisely when the review will be completed.

My Lords, would the Minister agree that, in view of the emphasis now being placed by British Airways, British Caledonian and other airlines on the routes transfer issue, this must be one of the key matters and probably the most important of all in any review now taking place?

My Lords, certainly the matters to which the noble Baroness refers are among the very important issues that the CAA will be considering, but there are other issues as well.

My Lords, can the Minister tell us if, after privatisation, British Airways is to be known as the national flag carrier? Further, if there is to be a reallocation of routes, do the Government contemplate a renegotiation of the governmental bilateral air agreements?

My Lords, I could not anticipate the outcome of the review which the CAA is presently undertaking, but doubtless the sort of matters to which the noble Earl refers will emerge from it.

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord will have read the British Airways response. Did he note that in the response they made it quite clear that the question of privatisation is completely irrelevant to the question of competition and the development of the airline industry? In the light of this, will the Government reconsider their plans?

My Lords, the British Airways contribution to the Civil Aviation Authority on this matter is one of no fewer than 67 submissions, but it will be studied carefully like all the rest. The view to which the noble Lord refers is, I know, the view of British Airways, but there are other views as well.

My Lords, may I anticipate the report just a little and ask the Minister whether the Government are still committed to the principle of competition as a means of achieving efficiency in this as in other industries?

Yes, of course, my Lords.

My Lords, while appreciating that the Minister cannot say when this review will be completed, may I ask him this question. Would he agree that it is vital for the state of the civil aviation industry that it is made as soon as possible and, pending its completion, does it mean that there is no question of any routes being transferred to any other airlines in this country?

My Lords, the question of the transfer of routes is one that I have no doubt will be considered by the CAA in the course of its study. There are certainly no plans for the sort of steps that the noble Baroness has in mind.

My Lords, when the Minister said that the Government would have to give a lot of consideration to this, is it not rather a pity that they did not give a lot of consideration to these matters before promising wholesale denationalisation?

My Lords, I did not say that. It is the Civil Aviation Authority that is giving consideration to this matter. They will make their views known to my right honourable friend in due course.

My Lords, would not the noble Lord agree that a great deal has been achieved in British Airways under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord King of Wartnaby? Furthermore, and following a previous supplementary, would he not agree that this demonstrates that the question of ownership is largely irrelevant to the success or failure of an enterprise?

My Lords, I certainly agree that under my noble friend's chairmanship British Airways has made a remarkable turnround.

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

My Lords, expenditure on mobility allowance has risen by 259 per cent., in real terms, since 1978–79.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for that encouraging figure. May I ask whether he has the figure for the number of people in fact drawing mobility allowance?

Yes, my Lords. There are currently about 305,000 people in receipt of mobility allowance. The estimated annual cost of the benefit is approaching £300 million. This Government brought the 61 to 64 age group into mobility allowance in 1979, earlier than had been planned previously, helping 30,000 more people.

My Lords, can the noble Lord tell the House when we might hear the Government's response to the Oglesby Report, which dealt, inter alia, with the question of mobility allowances? Secondly, can he tell us whether there has been any improvement by way of reduction in the delay between an application for a mobility allowance and the granting of it, which has caused great concern?

My Lords, the report has been received and has been circulated to interested organisations for comment. The recommendations made in the report will be considered in the light of the comments which we receive. As far as delays are concerned, it might appear that there have been delays but that has been due to the fact that there have been many more claimants, rather than because any claim has been held up for other reasons.

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

My Lords, a three decibel reduction in the permitted noise from new lorries—that is, from 91 decibels to 88—was implemented last year, and a further reduction of around two decibels will result from the implementation in 1985 of a more onerous noise test procedure. The European Commission have made proposals to reduce lorry noise by an additional four decibels from 1989, and these proposals are being discussed in the Community.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. Can he tell the House what measures the police are taking, and with what success, to enforce the limits? Can he say, further, whether the Government are taking any other steps to reduce the noise from these vehicles?

My Lords, I can tell my noble friend Lord Belhaven and Stenton that vehicles are checked at the roadside and also in HGV testing stations. Vehicles with faulty exhaust systems are prevented from being used until the fault is corrected. The police have brought about 11,000 successful prosecutions a year involving vehicles of all types emitting excessive noise.

In so far as concerns the steps which the Government are taking to help in the reduction of noise, I can say that the Government announced in December the launch of a collaborative programme costing £10 million, shared equally between Government and industry, to produce a number of quiet lorries. This is called the QHV(90) scheme. Research is continuing to develop effective in-use noise tests, and both the Transport and Road Research Laboratory and the Motor Industry Research Association are engaged in these researches.

My Lords, the Minister referred to roadside tests. Can he say whether any arrangements are being made for the compulsory annual testing of heavy goods lorries to include the testing of noise from engines and exhausts?

My Lords, we do not have a practicable method of doing this in the confines of a heavy goods vehicle station. The noise-testing procedure is quite complex, requiring a great deal of space and a lot of very sophisticated machinery. However, while the annual HGV test does not include a specific test for noise, it does include inspection of the exhaust system. We are satisfied that that is adequate at this time.

My Lords, is there perhaps a rather simpler method of reducing the noise of heavy lorries, and one with certain spin-off advantages—that is, to drive them rather slower?

No, my Lords, that is not a factor. Lorry noise emanates from a number of sources: road noise, engine noise, combustion noise, fan noise, intake noise, exhaust noise, wind noise, transmission noise and many other noises.

My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that the majority of the noise from heavy lorries is not exhaust noise but purely mechanical noise from the engine?

No, my Lords, I could not agree. It is a combination of a number of factors, the subject matters of which I have tried to describe to your Lordships in my last answer.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that many of the residents who live along the side of the narrow and winding South Circular Road suffer great disruption from heavy lorries? Would he give an assurance that when responsibility for this road is passed from the GLC to the transport department heavy lorries will be banned on this road and will be diverted on to the now M.25?

My Lords, I cannot give my noble friend that assurance. I do not have to hand details of that piece of road construction. If he cares to put down a Question, I shall be delighted to answer it.

My Lords, could the noble Lord the Minister enlighten the House as to what the QHV(90) scheme may be? May not at least a partial solution of the decibel-producing, heavy-lorry nuisance be elminated by requiring these vehicles to keep away from the centres of our cities and towns?

My Lords, the QHV(90) scheme is the Quiet Heavy Vehicle (90) scheme. So far as removing vehicles from our city centres is concerned, the noble and learned Lord will appreciate that it is these lorries which probably take his meat and vegetables to the market place where he may buy them and it is essential that they go there. Removing the noise from the perception of the pedestrian or others is not just a question of imposing a screen between the lorry and that person.

My Lords, would the noble Lord the Minister care to do something about the appalling noise of two-stroke motor-cycles, which are worse than heavy lorries?

My Lords, that is quite a different Question.

My Lords, will the noble Lord the Minister bear in mind, in making these statements regarding decibel intensity, that 60 decibels is the intensity of normal speech and that when one talks about reducing sound by two or four decibels one is not really talking about any significant figure?

My Lords, I regret that I am not able to agree with my noble friend. Although these reductions of two or four in numbers of decibels to which I have referred sound rather small, the explanation is technical. The decibel scale is based on a physical measurement of sound pressure. Low numbers on the scale, from 0 to 10, are at the threshold of hearing; the highest numbers, from 130 to 140, correspond to noise so loud that it will cause pain and damage to the ear. Tests have shown that a 10-decibel reduction in the conditions which I have described corresponds broadly to what people perceive as halving the noise.

My Lords, when answering the noble Lord, Lord Paget, the Minister read out a list of bits of a lorry which make a noise as it goes along. Can he tell the House which of those bits make less noise at a moderate speed than at a high speed?

No, my Lords, I cannot do so without detaining your Lordships for the best part of the afternoon. I said that it is a combination. If I isolated one from another it would put a different accent upon the other.

My Lords, in reply to my earlier supplementary question the Minister said that because of the complicated nature of the machinery it was not practicable to have the annual testing in the testing stations include the testing of lorry noise. How is that complicated, heavy machinery random tested along the kerbside? If that is impracticable does it mean that there is no proper testing and enforcement in regard to heavy lorry noise?

My Lords, I did not say "heavy". I said complex and complicated machinery. There is, we believe, an adequate roadside check and an adequate annual testing check on exhaust condition. I said earlier that the noise from heavy lorries is a combination of a number of factors, exhaust being only one. One can normally visually examine the exhaust system which will indicate excessive noise from that area of the lorry.

My Lords, will the noble Minister bear in mind that 120 decibels is the threshold of pain at any level?

My Lords, I am much obliged to my noble friend for reminding me of that.

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

My Lords, as I have made clear to your Lordships on many occasions, it is the policy of all members of the NATO Alliance, including the USA, to prevent war through the strategy of deterrence. In October 1983 NATO Ministers endorsed a programme to reduce the number of the alliance's nuclear warheads in Europe to the lowest level for 20 years. And at the START talks the United States made a proposal for substantial reductions in warheads on strategic ballistic missiles.

My Lords, would not the noble Minister agree that, while both sides have made specific proposals for reducing certain categories, as the discussions have been going on the totality of weaponry has increased and that, since I put down the Question on the Order Paper, the latest averages which I have calculated from the various international organisations suggest that the totality of nuclear weapons in the world now exceeds 50,000 warheads? In these circumstances, while the discussions have been going on the weaponry has been increasing, and is it not the case that there is no purpose in this increase because either side can eliminate the other with less than half of its existing weaponry? Will the noble Lord therefore not suggest to the United States that they are engaged in a fruitless exercise and should they not make some gesture, which I believe would bring a response from the other side, whereby it would be possible to make a start on bringing the weapons down instead of increasing them—increasing them all the time?

My Lords, I, too, would like to see a reduction in the number of warheads. That is why I hope that the Soviet Union will return to the negotiating table.

My Lords, as the House is aware, the resumed meeting of the United Nations Disarmament Conference met yesterday in New York. Disregarding the rhetoric which emanated from there on the first day, could the noble Lord say what initiatives Her Majesty's Government have got to make so that some progress may be made in disarmament? Secondly, could he say whether there is any prospect of the START meetings being reconvened, since, as he recalls, there was some thought in Stockholm that the START Conference could be reconvened fairly quickly? Is this likely?

My Lords, as I recall having mentioned to the noble Lord before, we hope that the Soviet Union will return to the START negotiating table, but they have not yet agreed a date.

My Lords, I wonder if the noble Lord will deal with my question about the resumed United Nations Disarmament Conference in New York, which reopened yesterday. I asked him what initiatives, if any, Her Majesty's Government are likely to take. I think this is an important point. Secondly, on the START talks, there was a clear indication in Stockholm that these talks would be reconvened. Could the noble Lord be a little more positive on that?

My Lords, the initiative to resume the START talks now rests with the Soviet Union. It is they who are considering the date upon which they can return. As for the other talks to which the noble Lord refers us, the noble Lord will understand that the main protagonists in this area are the main superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. But the United Kingdom, of course, stands ready to make whatever contribution we can.

My Lords, would my noble friend agree that there is a distinction here between warheads and weapons? Is it not the case that where warheads are concerned the Soviets are well ahead of the West?

My Lords, the precise number of warheads possessed by either side is not a matter which is readily ascertainable, but my noble friend may well be right.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that it is possible to agree entirely with the need for a nuclear deterrent and yet to say that there is now extensive nuclear overkill on both sides? Do not the Government accept that this is so?

My Lords, I certainly agree that there is scope for mutual and balanced reductions by both sides, and that is why, as I said in answer to the first supplementary question this afternoon, we hope that the Soviet Union will come back to the negotiating table so that that may happen.

My Lords, is it not naïve to think that just because we throw something away the Russians will follow suit? Surely the perfect example has been chemical and biological weapons, which are outlawed by treaty and which the West does not have, and this has not stopped the Soviet Union building them up. If one could think that one could trust them, all right, let us do it; but we cannot trust them. This has been shown time after time and Her Majesty's Government are absolutely right to try to negotiate disarmament from strength rather than weakness.

My Lords, I think that my noble friend is suggesting that verification ought to be an important feature of any new agreement, and I quite agree.

My Lords, would the Government consider throwing their weight behind amalgamating the START and the INF talks on the principle that if two groups of people are negotiating about what to have for dinner, there is not much point in negotiating about the first course in one room and about the main course quite separately in another?

My Lords, that is certainly one of the possibilities that has been canvassed. But it is perhaps worth saying that difficulties have arisen in both of the separate talks that have been proceeding so far, and it is not immediately clear that those difficulties would automatically disappear if the talks were merged.

My Lords, would the Minister accept that the reduction in the weapons to which he referred is really a reduction in numbers of weapons which are less effective and their replacement by much more lethal weapons than ever? Will he accept that if the Government continue to go towards parity in some ways this is leading to escalation, and the only hope is to pursue the policies which my noble friend Lord Cledwyn has just referred to in the negotiations?

My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord has forgotten that the replacement of a few SS.4s and SS.5s by SS.20s has been just the process he has described.

My Lords, at a convenient moment after—

My Lords, before the noble Lord intervenes, may I ask the noble Lord to correct his noble friend behind him by pointing out to him that in warheads, as well as everything else, the West has a substantial lead?

My Lords, I do not think it falls to me to correct my noble friend.

My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon, my noble friend Lord Lyell will, with the leave of the House, repeat in the form of a Statement an Answer to a Private Notice Question in another place on Scott Lithgow. This will be followed by my noble friend Lord Belstead who will, again with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement on the Council of Agriculture Ministers 6th to 7th February 1984.

It may be for the convenience of the House if I announce that dinner will be available at the usual time this evening. The Committee stage of the Telecommunications Bill will be adjourned at approximately 7 p.m. for a short period. During this adjournment the Fishing Vessels (Financial Assistance) Scheme 1983 will be taken.

My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to provide for parishioners of any parish to require certain forms of service to be used in the parish church. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.

My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make it an offence in England and Wales in certain circumstances to enter as a trespasser any building in which a person has his home or other living accommodation, or any part of such a building. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.

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

moved Amendment No. 1:

I rise to support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran. In the Second Reading debate I said that the difficulty about this Bill is that it seeks to impose a private enterprise pattern on a natural monopoly. What emerges is a private monopoly, and a private monopoly, like a public monopoly, creates certain anxieties and apprehension. I know of no other measure on which I have been so professionally lobbied as I have been on this Bill because of the proper anxieties of the parties who are affected by it.

First, the trade unions are apprehensive about their position in the new private enterprise set-up. Secondly, the consumers and the consumer protection body are naturally apprehensive about an organisation whose main purpose will be to secure profits for investors in the new enterprise. The groups who are concerned with social responsibilities—the people who are concerned about the disabled, the groups which are concerned about other groups in the community, such as the poor people who do not have a telephone in their home and who are dependent upon public telephone kiosks, and so on, all of which will be a cost on the new company—and, not least, the manufacturers who are suppliers to this industry, have great anxieties because it is within the power of the director general and the Secretary of State, under the procedures laid down in the Bill, to affect all of them quite dramatically. Consequently, we feel that there ought to be some authority, council or body which provides some degree of accountability or, at least, public awareness of what is going on.

On reading this Bill your Lordships will see that the powers of the Secretary of State and of the director are immense. So I believe, and my friends on these Benches believe, that the establishment of an authority of this kind would, at least, give the whole set-up some degree of credibility and perhaps even a little accountability.

I am attracted to think about this in relation to other private monopolies. I was thinking this morning about the role of the IBA. The IBA issues licences to private enterprise companies, which provide our private enterprise television network, under certain conditions that are laid down in the statute. But there is no question of these companies not being accountable to the IBA. In fact, the IBA, as a separate body, makes sure of the conditions of the licence and ensures that the parties affected and the public have some kind of oversight. The suggestion in this amendment is that this new authority might perform a somewhat similar function. In the case of the IBA, the system works and the public believe in the IBA. They feel that there is a degree of oversight and accountability.

Under this Bill there is an immense concentration of power in the hands of the Secretary of State and the new director general, whoever he may be, but he will be a somewhat remote figure from the 6 million or 8 million people who use a telephone. I believe that there should be some accountability, or some degree of responsibility, to all the groups that I have mentioned—the consumers, the manufacturers and the trade unions—who want to feel that under the constitution there is some body to which they could make some reference and over which they believe that they could have some kind of influence, rather than feel that a remote civil servant and a Minister are the people who will be responsible for discharging this immense public duty. Consequently, I support the amendment.

I, too, wish to support this amendment for a reason that has not yet been mentioned, and I should also like to support the submissions made by both the noble Lords who have spoken. It seems to me that, if there is anything that the Government ought to do, it is to accept this amendment. They are talking about privatisation and, as I understand it, there are departments of big organisations to look after specific interests. They do not just leave it to the chairman or the managing director. There is a plexus, a hierarchy, which seems to work, and I assume that the Government approve of that system. That being the case, then, to be logical, they will have to approve the amendment moved by the noble Lord, particularly in view of the poignant submission that has been made by both noble Lords with regard to the 8 million or 9 million people who are hard of hearing, blind or disabled.

This is something which is not yet in the licence—I hope to speak on that later—and which ought to be put in immediately. I understand that in another place a promise has already been given to put this in the licence, so I should have thought that the representatives of the Government in the other place and the representatives of the Government in this place would stop some of their bickering, quarrelling and fighting which has been going on over the last few weeks, as we have all read in the newspapers, and come together on a special issue like this.

We are not arguing on behalf of one party or another. It seems to me that the submissions of both noble Lords in introducing the amendment were primarily made on behalf of those of our fellow citizens who are deprived in one way or another—because they have no sight, or are purblind, or because they are hard of hearing or deaf, or because they are disabled in some way. I should have thought that it would be a magnificent gesture by the Government not to leave this solely to the hit or miss vagaries of the market place where, as we all know, men gather together to cheat each other. I hope that they will show genuine concern and understanding for these people. I do not believe that the blind, the disabled and the hard of hearing want sympathy and compassion all the time; but what they do want all the time is understanding. That could be provided if an authority were created which included one member who was given special responsibility for the disabled.

Finally, may I ask the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, to pay some attention to the fact that during the past 15 years we have seen enormous advances in telecommunications. Almost miracles have been performed in this technological industry. Many of the technical and technological advances which have been made can assist the disabled, as will the results of the research which will be carried out if the Bill becomes law. The licence ought to contain a condition that somebody will have responsibility, under the director general, for making sure that all aspects of technological advance which have not yet been thought of will be used to assist the disabled. The disabled should be given special consideration. If we start along that road with the submission made by the movers of the amendment and carry it forward into the future, we shall do good for those who are the disabled now and for those who we know for certain will be disabled in the future.

I have a certain amount of sympathy for the mover of the amendment and for the way in which he moved it. I shall listen carefully to what my noble friend has to say, but my worry is how to get this off the ground and functioning. One knows that if one tries to achieve the type of body which I believe he wants to set up, consisting of six, seven, nine or more very distinguished people whom the Minister has to consult only when he wants to do so and to whose advice he does not have to pay any attention, it may well be that after 18 months or so they will all resign because they find the occupation not very well worth while. Having thought about the amendment, my only consolation is that these people will have the power to publish at fairly regular intervals the advice they have given and whether or not the Minister has accepted it. As soon as one does that, it seems to me to be a little naive to say that the Minister does not have to pay any attention to it.

I should like to support the noble Lord who has just spoken. I have sympathy for the amendment. However, having for many years been concerned with bodies which have been set up by governments, it seems to me that it is virtually impossible for them, in the end, to be independent of government. I was on the National Consumer Council. Perhaps it is not in the same distinguished category as this authority. Nevertheless, this body was set up by government. It was noticeable that at each change of government those who were sympathetic towards the Government were immediately put on to this body, while the others were displaced. The Secretary of State will appoint the authority. What certainty shall we have that the authority will be so impartial and so august that it will not be influenced by any change of government? One of the unknown rules in the art of government is, "When we're in we put our friends in, and when they're in they put their friends in". How we are going to change this I shall be very interested to hear. I do not believe that the amendment carries sufficient weight to achieve that end.

In rising to support the amendment so ably moved by my noble friend Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran I should like to suggest that the Government ought to be very pleased by this proposition. The Bill contemplates the unique transfer of a massive concentration of industrial and technological might from the public to the private sector. It is a totally new venture, and in carrying it out we need to exercise extreme caution. The appointment of a single official, with his very large and wide-ranging powers, to try to regulate this operation virtually on his own, with the Secretary of State coming in behind him as a supervisor, does not seem to me to provide the reassurance which the public will be looking for. Therefore we need to devote some attention to the kind of body which should be set up. Whether it be precisely in the terms proposed by my noble friend or in some other way could be debated, but that there ought to be some body of people who are skilled in the various aspects of these matters and who could have a supervisory role over the whole operation seems to me to be highly desirable. That body must clearly be separate and distinct from government. It should be a body in which the public can feel that regular supervision is being exercised and that there is not an undue concentration of power in the hands of one man in this unique transfer of industrial power from the public to the private sector.

I rise to support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran. Nothing has yet been said about the tremendous complexity of the telecommunications industry. It covers almost every single aspect of our lives and it will take a superman to be able to cope with it all. This man will need somebody whom he can use as a sounding block, if not as a statutory adviser. If he were on his own I should not give him long before he had a nervous breakdown.

A great deal has been said about the disadvantaged. There are plenty of them. However, we must not forget that there are hundreds of thousands of ordinary domestic telephone subscribers who will also suffer under the Bill and who will need somebody to whom they can turn. They need to be reassured that it is not a question of just one man, who can wield his power in whichever way he likes and whenever he likes to do so. Therefore I support the amendment.

We wish in general terms to support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, for very much the same reasons as he put forward. It is quite clear that the job to be done by the Director General of Telecommunications will be complicated. By the way, I wish that the noble Countess, Lady Mar, would not refer all the time to this person as "him"—or, as I hope that it might be, her. The complication of the task to be undertaken by the director general is clearly very great. It is not just a matter of monitoring the activities of British Telecom and other operators. The range of interests to be covered includes not only the operators but the manufacturers and in particular the consumers, to whom other noble Lords have already referred. It is impossible to expect the ability to cover all these diverse interests to be subsumed in the shape of one person.

The Department of Industry, in a statement issued in July of last year, referred to the task of the Office of Telecommunications as being to see fair play being done in telecommunications. What better way is there of achieving that than to have a body of people forming an authority, a council, or whatever it may turn out to be, who can represent the diverse interests involved and who can more readily approach the task of seeing that there is fair play than could a single person?

I will not make any adverse reference to particular appointments but if one takes it from the point of view of the Secretary of State himself, the risk of a political appointment to a position of this kind is very great; the risk of having somebody whose qualifications are those of a party loyalist rather than those of someone having a real understanding of the industry is very great. Nothing can do away with that risk. Nothing can do away with the responsibility of the Secretary of State supported, as we will propose in future amendments, by Parliament to make such an appointment. But the way in which that appointment is made and the way in which the powers are executed can be made more democratic by the support of an authority.

In general terms, then, we support the amendment. The only qualification we would have—but it will not stop us from supporting the noble Lords who moved this amendment as far as they want to go—would be on the degree of parliamentary control. Later amendments in our own names ask for greater parliamentary control and so go against Amendment No. 2, to which the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, has referred already. That qualification is not enough to detract from our support for the principle of some authority or body coming between the Secretary of State and the director general.

Arising out of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, I am concerned that he will be "his-ing" and "her-ing" all the way through the Committee stage of this Bill. The noble Lord knows as well as I do that even in law "male" embraces 'female".

We might as well start off right.

Before deciding what we should do with this amendment, we need to be clear exactly what it is that the amendment is saying. Is the amendment proposing an "Authority" with a capital "A" to whom the director general will be responsible—which is what the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, seemed to be talking about; or is the amendment proposing an advisory committee which will not be executive at all, except that it will have one enormously important executive act to perform—the appointment of the director general? The latter is what the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, was suggesting. We have heard two completely different suggestions from the noble Lords proposing this amendment and a variety of proposals from noble Lords backing them. We need to be clear what it is that has been suggested.

I agree with the principle of the amendment because I believe that this job is too big for one man to assume. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, alluded to the Independent Broadcasting Authority, of which I was a member for five years. He was absolutely correct, as far as I know, in saying that many other organisations were appointed when the local radio stations, for instance, came into being. They were completely separate, but there was still the authority—which was appointed by the Secretary of State. Nevertheless, the independent radio stations were very independent and I doubt very much whether the Secretary of State had much to do with the running of the Independent Broadcasting Authority.

Having said that I approve of the principle of this amendment, I humbly suggest that the number of persons comprising the authority may be varied from the seven proposed in the amendment, either one way or the other. Also, the proposal that an appointee shall not be eligible for reappointment after five years seems to me to be a mistake. One must have continuity; otherwise, one may not get fluid reasoning behind all the work that is done by the authority. I disagree with that provision, but I certainly agree with the principle of the amendment to establish an authority.

May I first congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, for being first in to bat on the Committee stage of this most important Bill. I only wish that it could have been possible for me in due course to congratulate him on knocking the first ball to the boundary—but I fear that will not be so. I hope that in due course I will be able to say that the noble Lord has been caught and bowled.

Like the noble Lord, I propose addressing my remarks to this group of amendments because they do stand together. I appreciate the spirit in which the noble Lord has moved this amendment because I am sure his intention is to facilitate the smooth and effective working of the Bill. But I must say, frankly, that I do not believe it would have that effect. It is not a proposal that would sit at all happily with the structure for the regulatory system which is included in the Bill itself.

The amendment, as my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour pointed out, is very limited in its scope. The noble Lords, Lord Ezra and Lord Taylor of Gryfe, seemed to suggest that it might be rather wider in its scope than it is. Certainly I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, would like to see its scope wider than it is. But I propose taking the amendment as it stands on the Marshalled List.

The body proposed in the amendment would not in fact exercise the executive functions which the Bill itself confers on the director general. It would not do that at all. It would be quite unlike a body such as the Civil Aviation Authority, if I may quote that as an example. In fact, it would have two functions. The first would be to appoint the director general. The second would be to advise the director general. Let me take those two functions. Under the terms of the Bill, the director general is appointed by the Secretary of State. That follows the practice which is pretty universally adopted in this field. The nearest parallel is the Director General of Fair Trading, who is also appointed by the Secretary of State, but there are numerous other examples which may be quoted.

There is a very good reason for that procedure. It is that the Secretary of State is answerable to Parliament, and what he does can be called into question in Parliament. At later stages in our discussions, noble Lords will no doubt be pressing for there to be greater parliamentary involvement. One of the principal reasons that the Bill provides for the Secretary of State to appoint the director general is to achieve that chain of parliamentary responsibility.

I will turn now to the advisory function. There is provision in Clause 52 for advisory bodies to be set up. That is mandatory in the case of advisory bodies for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. There are amendments on the Marshalled List which would provide for the creation of other advisory bodies. Quite apart from that, the real point is that the Bill very clearly defines what the functions and duties of the director general and the Secretary of State are to be. In the last resort, the director general can be challenged in the courts by somebody who is aggrieved by a decision he has taken. It would sit very ill with a chain of responsibility of that sort to attempt to interpose an advisory body—particularly if one bears in mind the fact that the body would only advise if the director general asked that body to do so. The intention, I quite accept, is that the body should act as a guide, a comforter and a support for the director general. But it just does not fit in with the pattern of the Bill, which is one of establishing legal duties and, therefore, legal rights.

There is also the point that I might make that the director general is obliged to produce a report every year, and that report could be debated in Parliament under the normal rules, so there is supervision exercised by Parliament in that direction. The Secretary of State, of course, is also subject to examination and challenge in Parliament. Provision is also made in the Bill in certain circumstances, where there is a disagreement between the director general and a licensee over the terms of a licence, for the director general to go to the Monopolies Commission. So in that broad area there is a channel for a second opinion to be obtained.

The simple position, quite frankly, is that the Bill makes ample provision for the exercise of the powers given to the director general—and they are very great powers; I do not in any way dispute that. There is ample provision for the supervision of the exercise of those powers by Parliament, and ample provision for people to challenge his decisions in courts of law. While, therefore, I entirely appreciate the sentiments underlying the amendment, I frankly could not advise your Lordships to accept it, because it would not be consistent with the general pattern of the Bill and it would not in fact add any protection which does not exist at present. Nor would it make it possible for Parliament to exercise any greater control than it can exercise already through the Secretary of State.

I am sorry the noble Lord finds himself unable to agree with this very moderate and well-argued amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran. The noble Lord waxed almost ecstatic over the virtues of parliamentary control. Perhaps it might occur to him that the general powers conferred on the Secretary of State under Section 6 of the Telecommunications Act 1981 are working very well, thank you, and that there is adequate parliamentary responsibility there.

It rather seems to me that this is a Bill that is cast over a very wide field and in very wide detail. What is now happening is that there is being given to a specific individual, the Director General of Telecommunications and Oftel, detailed powers that would seem to cut right across the noble Lord's ideological concept of freedom for private enterprise to go about its own work without detailed interference by the state. The argument seems to be contrary.

This Bill differs from most other Bills of its type in that it deals essentially with the privatisation of a very well known and very well respected public service. Here it breaks new ground, and there is widespread anxiety, which the noble Lord must know, all over the country, not confined to any one party, as to the steps being taken. There is a degree of nervousness, and the noble Lord must take account of it, that very wide powers should be concentrated at this moment in the hands of the Secretary of State, who certainly cannot be described as a political neutral in the party struggle. He is a well-known, respected and partisan politician. There is perhaps a feeling, of which the noble Lord ought to take account, that there has to be a little check here.

If one takes the analogy of what goes on in private industry, the noble Lord is well aware that there are such things as non-executive directors on the boards of companies, and they mainly serve the purpose of acting as a sounding board for the managing director to express his views. They offer their own free and independent views to him, although they do not take an active part in the management of the company. I do not want to put words into the mouth of the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, but I think that is the kind of non-executive function he has in mind for this particular authority. I think that wise, and I think the country may think it wise, in an important appointment of this kind covering a very wide field, embracing not only the fortunes of manufacturers, the fates of those who provide the service and the whole nature of the machinery of plant and service techniques involved, but also the fate of the individual customer. Remember that over 80 per cent. of British homes have telephones at this time. It ought not to be left to the sole determination of the Secretary of State to make this very important appointment. We shall refer to other characteristics of the appointee, as we see him, later in the debate.

I think the terms of the amendment are very moderate. I think that perhaps at a later stage, if the amendment were fortunately carried, some work would have to be done before the Report stage in order to carry the full implications into the Bill. But it is a provision which I think would command very wide respect throughout the Committee, and I sincerely hope your Lordships will support it.

In his very reasoned reply to the amendment the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, referred to Clause 52, which makes provision for the establishment of certain advisory bodies. The weakness in Clause 52, I submit, is that those advisory bodies would be appointed by the director himself; he would appoint them if he wished, and he would nominate their members. It seems to me that this is a very weak alternative to the independent advisory body my noble friend has proposed.

Would the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, perhaps agree that the strongest argument against this amendment is that it makes no material difference to what is basically a rather unsatisfactory Bill?

I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, would be prepared to consider the arguments that have been submitted. I did not think that his arguments were moderately put, but I thought we had a faint ray of hope that the Government might like to consider some aspects of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, and later by Lord Ezra.

When the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, says that the director general has all these powers and is answerable to the Secretary of State, it seems to me that this runs quite contrary to any normal business function of any big company or any big organisation. There always seems to be a team with special responsibilities, and that is what we are asking for. What we do not want, whether or not advisory, is extra people appointed with responsibility. I believe that in this country we have always set our face against the principle of authoritarian dictatorship. That is what seems to be written into the Bill, and that is what we are asking the Minister to change.

My final point is this. Every member of this Committee knows full well that the Secretary of State has a massive band of support behind him. He has massive Civil Service support, and some of the civil servants are very eminent people in particular fields who have special responsibilities. We all know that in the Foreign Office there are many eminent people, eminent scholars with special knowledge of certain parts of the world, and so on. All that we are asking is that the director general should also be equipped with a team which has special responsibility because it is such a large organisation, similar to a small department of state or a large private enterprise undertaking. In so far as this aspect seems congruous I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, will at least say he will take the amendment and consider it.

I hope that the noble Lord will pay attention to what my noble friend Lord Ezra said. The reason I favour this amendment is that this is the first place in the Bill where the consumer can get any attention at all, and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Weinstock, that the position is in many ways entirely unsatisfactory. We have amendments tabled on Clause 52; but as my noble friend Lord Ezra pointed out, the committees with which we should have to fiddle about to get some proper consumer representation would be appointed by the director general, which is quite clearly not the right way to appoint consumer representation.

I ask the noble Lord not just to refuse this amendment but to look at it again and see how it can be brought in so that the things that the whole Committee, without a single exception, has said are desirable but which may not be in quite the right form, can be considered and perhaps brought back by the Government later.

The noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, said that consumers would have recourse to the courts. At present, if consumers have a complaint against British Telecom they can write to the Council of Post Office Unions, to their MPs, to the general manager of the telephone area concerned, or to the director of the region concerned and in every case when such a letter is received it is marked as a flag case and dealt with very promptly. Although consumers might not get financial reimbursement, the cases are dealt with very sympathetically and rapidly. I wonder whether the noble Lord realises that "grannie in the glen", as the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, always describes her, is probably terrified of the courts and probably cannot afford to use them. What recourse has she?

I wonder whether the movers of this amendment would accept that my noble friend's answer in relation to the appointment of the director general by the Secretary of State really is unarguable. If the Secretary of State is to be responsible to Parliament for the activities of this vitally important area, he must have the usual right to appoint the director general. Perhaps the movers of the amendment would like to consider whether the advisory functions, which are in the other part of the amendment, should be strengthened in a different form of amendment. That would seem to me to be a subject well worth further discussion.

We have had a long and interesting debate on this important matter and I am grateful to all who have spoken, if I may presume to say so. I was very grateful to the noble Lord the Minister because he came a long way towards me, at least in so far as my sentiments are concerned. I felt that the theme, as it were, behind my amendment touched him and he was kind enough to say a few words about me personally.

The noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, referred to a point that is worrying her and touched on the kernel of the matter. I could not call the authority an advisory body because its first function is to appoint the director general. Therefore, in that aspect it is taking a positive action which is not an advisory matter. Subsequently, its whole career, if that is the right way to put it, would be advisory where the director general could use its talents as he so wished. Of course, if the authority found that the director general did not accept its advice, its members could resign. But what of that? Many a body has advised a Secretary of State and the advice has been rejected. But the sanction behind the authority is that it can regularly publish the reasons why the director general did or did not accept the advice.

May I presume for a moment to analyse the real objections by the Government to my proposals. The noble Lord said—and I hope I have noted his words correctly—that in the Bill there is ample provision for the exercise of powers by the director general. I agree with him. But I am not in my amendment affecting in any way the executive position of the director general or any of his duties. Therefore, the first point made against my amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, falls to the ground. He said that the amendment was not consistent with the pattern of the Bill. Those seem to me to be only words. What is the pattern of this complex Bill? The first thing is that the Secretary of State is to appoint the director general. That is the pattern of the Bill and my amendment is directed towards that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, was worried about whom should be appointed and that it might be political, with the chap changing from one government to another. May I assure her, as she well knows, that there is no justice in this world Surely it is better that an authority, a group of men and women, should appoint this man rather than the one politician—the Secretary of State. I see that as the noble Baroness is nodding her head in agreement she has accepted my argument that there is no problem in this matter as outlined by her.

The Minister referred to the fact that anyone in dispute with the director general could go to the Monopolies Commission or the Office of Fair Trading. That would inevitably lead to a delay of about two years; and, as the noble Countess, Lady Mar, said, it is an expensive matter to go to the courts.

My final point is that here is an amendment for which, if I may presume to say so—because many members of the Committee have said this—there is general sympathy. There are perhaps certain general procedural matters that can be sorted out later; but there is general sympathy for it. Because of the immense power behind the director general, the great importance of the Bill and the great anxiety there is on this matter, why not alter the practice of the past? Therefore, I wish to press my amendment.

I beg to move that the House do now resume.

With the leave of your Lordships, I shall now repeat a Statement which has been made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in another place in reply to a Private Notice Question. The Statement is as follows:

"Yesterday the Government were informed that British Shipbuilders and Trafalgar House had reached a conditional agreement on the acquisition of Scott Lithgow. Negotiations are still under way. Final agreement requires Government approval. In the meantime it is still open to other parties which have expressed interest also to pursue the matter with British Shipbuilders. The Government have, of course, been kept fully informed of the terms of the conditional arrangement between British Shipbuilders and Trafalgar House and we are currently examining these."

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

My Lords, we on this side of the House should like to thank the noble Lord for having made that Statement. We of course have very little information about what is going on behind the scenes and have to rely very largely on reports that appear in the press—notably in the Financial Times. We are therefore relieved that the Government are keeping an open mind on the question, and that other firms are to be permitted to tender. But that deals with only one aspect of the matter.

The noble Lord will recall that on 20th December last his noble friend Lord Cockfield made a Statement about the Britoil contract with Scott Lithgow and said that there would be a six-week delay while negotiations took place between the parties to see whether some satisfactory arrangement could be made to resolve the differences that arose between Scott Lithgow and Britoil. Can the noble Lord say whether there is any connection between the negotiations that have taken place with Britoil and the apparent sudden spate of offers, to which the Government have given no discouragement, from a number of outside firms for the acquisition of a company which, according to the noble Lord's noble friend the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, was involved in rather considerable litigation? Can the noble Lord throw some light on that aspect of the matter? Will he bear in mind that there is some anxiety lest the action by Britoil against British Shipbuilders has to some extent been overshadowed by what appears to be a connected bid from outside firms—as it were back-door privatisation of the company? Perhaps the noble Lord can make some comment on that.

My Lords, we, too, on these Benches should like to thank the noble Lord for repeating the brief but hopeful Statement regarding the outcome of the negotiations at Port Glasgow and Greenock. The House will be relieved by the prospect of the 4,000 redundancies announced some time ago perhaps being offset a little by the possibility of Trafalgar House taking over the yard and employing at least a large proportion of the people who a few weeks ago seemed to have no hope of further employment in the yard.

We have been told that at the moment the details of the terms of the take-over cannot be given, and I should like to ask the Minister whether, when the terms are agreed and spelled out, he will return to the House and tell us a little more about the detail of this interesting transaction. I assume, and I gather from the Statement, that the workforce is to be fully involved in the negotiations on the take-over. Without the workforce's full co-operation the whole take-over could be frustrated.

We should also welcome at the end of the day some comment on the new responsibilities of Trafalgar House in regard to the Britoil contract. It is somewhat surprising that a private company can come in and negotiate a contract to take over this particular liability when it did not seem to be within the powers of British Shipbuilders so to do, and perhaps at some stage we may be given an explanation of the new situation which has arisen which makes that possible.

However, with what might be termed as those qualifications, we very much welcome the Statement that has been made, and we sincerely hope that it will relieve the gloom just a little at the tail of the bank of the Clyde.

My Lords——

My Lords, I look forward to hearing the noble Lord, Lord Galpern, in a few moments, but first I should like to reply to the two other noble Lords. I wish to thank the noble Lords, Lord Bruce of Donington and Lord Taylor of' Gryfe, for their welcome of the Statement which I have repeated this afternoon. I should also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, for the publicity for the Financial Times, that admirable organ that helps to inform me, too, and I think a great many other Members of your Lordships' House. The noble Lord wondered whether there was any connection with the comments made by my noble friend Lord Cockfield on 20th December last year. I would not be able to give the noble Lord very detailed information on any connection between anything that my noble friend said on that date and the news that I have been able to give your Lordships today.

I stress to the noble Lords, Lord Bruce and Lord Taylor, that the details of the agreement which we hope will be reached between Trafalgar House and British Shipbuilders have yet to be settled, and I am sure that your Lordships will agree that for commercial reasons they must remain confidential. However, I assure your Lordships that the Government will be examining the details in depth to ensure that the deal is a sound one in the best interests of the taxpayer.

The noble Lord, Lord Bruce, referred to what he called back-door privatisation. I certainly refute that suggestion. The noble Lord also asked about legal action. If any satisfactory arrangement is reached, then clearly the current legal disputes between Britoil and British Shipbuilders will be settled. I stress to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, that we believe that a new start for the yard, under new ownership, offers a real chance—the best chance—of long-term survival for the yard and for everybody who has an interest in it.

I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, for his kind words in describing the Statement as "hopeful". I appreciate his local connection and note the way in which he used the attractive term "the tail of the bank"—which I seem not to have heard since 20 years ago when I was working in Glasgow—which showed the noble Lord's local connection. I cannot promise to give the noble Lord, nor your Lordships, the terms of the particular deal, but I hope that subject to the confidentiality aspect in a commercial sense, we shall be able to give as much information as we possibly can on that score.

The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, asked two other questions. First, I stress to the noble Lord that full agreement on what was mentioned in the Statement will of course depend on Britoil being satisfied on both commercial and technical grounds that the new operator can successfully complete its rig as well as on the full co-operation of the workforce. I understand that discussions between British Shipbuilders, Trafalgar House, and Britoil, and in a parallel way between Trafalgar House and the representatives of the workforce, are in hand at this moment.

My Lords, only a few weeks ago the workforce in the shipyard decided to carry on despite the fact that the contract with Britoil had been lost. Today the workforce has come out on strike and left the factory as a protest against the method of handling the transfer of the effects of the shipyard to Trafalgar House. Bearing that in mind, will the noble Lord ensure that British Shipbuilders will be instructed to invite tenders for the transfer of the Scott Lithgow shipyard and that the period of time for lodging tenders will not be unreasonable? I particularly ask about that because already in Scotland in the instances of the transfer of the technical college at Hamilton and the sale of the Robroyston Hospital great bargains were offered, and in one case that was due to the fact that tenders were not even invited. Therefore will the noble Lord see to it that a reasonable opportunity will be given to anyone who is interested in submitting a tender?

My Lords, will not the noble Lord agree that rather than carp at the details of the proposed transaction we should warmly welcome the only possible solution to keeping open this famous shipyard and maintaining some employment in shipbuilding on the Lower Clyde, as well as the hope that possibly it will restore the yard to the high state of efficiency which it enjoyed prior to nationalisation?

My Lords, first I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Galpern, for his interest in the Statement. Of course we would expect his interest, since he is a firm supporter of everything that goes on in and around Glasgow. I am afraid that I could not follow the noble Lord down the line regarding Hamilton and Robroyston, and while I accept the principle of what he says, I could not necessarily accept it in relation to this particular operation so far as Scott Lithgow is concerned.

I stress to the noble Lord, Lord Galpern, and to your Lordships, that a number of other companies besides Trafalgar House have expressed interest. One of the other companies is Bechtel, and only yesterday Howard Doris expressed an interest in tendering for the completion of the Britoil contract. I hope that this little snippet of information will be of some comfort and value to the noble Lord, Lord Galpern, and to your Lordships.

I am immensely grateful for the sturdy support of my noble friend Lord Polwarth and, indeed, his support for what we hope will be the ability to complete this contract. My noble friend has considerable experience, both from this position and outside, of these operations. We are all the more grateful to my noble friend for his forthright support.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The Statement is as follows:

"I represented the United Kingdom Government at the Council of Agriculture Ministers, together with my honourable friend the Minister of State. The council had a first discussion of the commission's proposals on agricultural prices for 1984. These were presented by the commission with the earlier proposals for changes in the common agricultural policy. The council had a detailed exchange of views but no decisions were taken. Officials will be carrying forward the work between now and the next council at the end of the month.

"The council reached agreement on an import quota for 1984 of 50,000 tonnes of beef and veal for the processing industry. This is an important source of raw material for the processing industry. Given the opposition of some member states to these imports, it was a very satisfactory outcome to have reached this agreement so early in the year.

"Because of the continued opposition of some member states, there was no progress on new long-term arrangements for imports of New Zealand butter.

"In a discussion of the commission's new structure proposals, it was evident that a great deal more work is needed before decisions can be taken. No agreement was possible on the terms for a rollover of the existing directives.

"My agriculture colleagues and I recognise that producers cannot be left in a continuing state of uncertainty about claims and applications under the schemes concerned. I am, therefore, delighted to be able to inform the House that payments of the 1984 hill livestock compensatory allowances will begin immediately; and that we shall also begin approvals of outstanding and new applications under the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Scheme, the Farm and Horticulture Development Scheme, the Agriculture and Horticulture Co-operation Scheme for forage groups and the Farm Structure (Payment to Outgoers) Scheme".

That concludes my right honourable friend's Statement.

My Lords, in thanking the Minister for repeating the Statement I think I should offer my condolences to him for having to read such a disappointing one. Frankly, as a politician and as a farmer—I must declare my interest—the Statement is very disappointing indeed, although the last paragraph, which announces that payment of compensatory allowances for livestock schemes is to start at last, will be welcome news to hill farmers in all three countries who have been awaiting the money for a considerable time.

Can the noble Lord say what the Statement means when it says:

"We shall also begin approvals of the outstanding and new applications."?

Does this mean payments, or only approvals? Will the low ground men have to wait for their payments? I should be glad if the Minister can clear up this matter. The import quota for 1984 of 50,000 tonnes of beef will certainly please the processors. Is there any distribution of this quota to various countries, or is it a case of devil take the hindmost? What is to happen?

On the New Zealand butter arrangements, I had thought that under the 1972–73 negotiations we would continue to import butter with steady reductions until finished, with no new negotiations to take place. I wonder whether the Minister can clear up that point.

On the whole, there is little information in the Statement. In fact, one almost has to go to the Financial Times for information. I have been chided in the past for quoting the Financial Times too much. Its account is even more depressing than the Statement. The headline yesterday was:

"EEC farm ministers fail to bridge gap on reforms and prices".

It is worse today. The headline reads:

"Brussels fears farm row will wreck summit".

I do not know whether the Minister agrees. It is rather alarming to read the remarks of M. Rocard, the French Minister. The report states:

"M. Rocard said after this week's two-day meeting of Farm Ministers that the summit may well have to break their impasse. The Commission believes that this risks dooming it to failure under the weight of technical detail and disagreements which sank the Athens summit in December.".

That, as we know, is exactly what happened.

One recalls all the complications in the regulations, prices and so on. Believe me, as a member of your Lordships' sub-committee on EC agriculture I know only too well the detail that is involved. If this issue is to go to the summit, will we have to wait until after the end of March when we have been repeatedly promised that a settlement will be made? It makes life difficult for farmers when negotiations continue, in some cases, right up to December before the issue is decided.

I appreciate the attitude of the Germans when they see that their incomes may drop by 15 per cent. I have before me the annual review of agriculture in this country, issued yesterday, from which I see that farm incomes are likely to drop by nearly 18 per cent. I can see Ministers' difficulties from a political point of view if figures of this sort are to be realised in all 10 countries. I feel that it is a very disappointing Statement. The Minister must be very disappointed, as well as everyone else. Let us hope that the slight optimism in the Statement will come to pass.

My Lords, in the regrettable absence of my noble friend Lord Mackie of Benshie it falls to me to thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. It is, admittedly, a very disappointing Statement. Not being very conversant with many of the details of the matters discussed by the agriculture Ministers. I simply take note of the apparent fact that no decision was taken by them in respect of the obviously necessary reform of the common agricultural policy. I inquire whether there is any prospect of agreement on this very difficult and important subject being forthcoming at the next meeting of Ministers, which is to take place, I understand, at the end of the month. If not, does the Minister agree that everything will depend on the next summit meeting, which will, I believe, take place at the beginning of March?

In the absence of detailed compromises worked out by experts, as regards which there appears to have been little or no progress—I would ask the Minister to confirm that this is so—are we really to suppose that the heads of state and government will, by themselves, in a few days, be able to reach the agreement that is now essential for the very continuance in being of the European Economic Community? In the meantime, we can be thankful for small mercies; namely, the payment of 1984 hill livestock compensatory allowances, which are to begin immediately, and a few other matters mentioned in the Statement.

My Lords, both the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, and the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, are correct in saying that it is the Government's prime objective, or one of their prime objectives, that the growth in agricultural guarantee spending should be markedly less than that of own resources. It is on that vital point that agreement was not reached at this last agricultural Ministers meeting. When the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, asks, "What are the next steps?", the answer is that negotiations on CAP reform are now proceeding in the context of the commission's proposal for agricultural prices for 1984–1985. We shall have to come to these matters again in the agricultural council and see if we can make better progress.

Indeed, so far as progress is concerned, because of the Government's decision to take action—the decision of my right honourable friend together with his right honourable friends the Secretaries of State for Scotland, for Northern Ireland and for Wales—my right honourable friend's payments of the hill livestock compensatory allowances and, indeed, other remaining grant schemes at least now sort out the fact that grants will be paid to those who are awaiting payment. The noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, asked whether it was only to be for those who are in the hills and whether it would leave those who are not in the hills out in the cold. The answer is, No; immediate arrangements are being made for first payments under all the schemes that I mentioned and that means that those schemes will now be going ahead.

The noble Lord also asked me about how the distribution of the import quota for beef and veal works out. It works out by individual applications made by this country to the pool of 50,000 tonnes of beef and veal for the processing industry which has now been agreed. It means, if I may slightly change the noble Lord's expression, that it is first come, first served.

The noble Lord asked me about the very important question of New Zealand butter. The present state of play is that for January and February the Community is continuing to take in butter from New Zealand, based on a notional quota for this year of 83,000 tonnes. I repeat that this is for the months of January and February, pending agreement. That is another reason why it was so necessary to get agreement. The Commission has proposed a long-term arrangement which would run over a period of five years with degressivity from year to year of 2,000 tonnes each year, starting from 83,000 tonnes. I would simply say on behalf of the Government that it looks as though there could be a basis for some agreement there. But it is the view of Her Majesty's Government that any agreement ought to start from 87,000 tonnes, and that is certainly the basis upon which we shall be negotiating. I think that I have answered the individual points which noble Lords put to me on my right honourable friend's Statement.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the approval of the meat imports for processing will be much welcomed by the food processors in this country? I only hope that they will get their fair share in the first come, first served race, and that they will note quickly the need for that.

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Mottistone. All I would add is that, as I understand it, the procedures for applications will be exactly the same as they have been previously.

moved Amendment No. 3:

I fully share the feelings of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, in favour of very full use of the Select Committee system in another place, and indeed of bringing not only the chairmen of nationalised industries but other persons holding high office in the public sector before these Select Committees. I could hardly do otherwise, having myself been chairman of the most ancient, and perhaps the most powerful, of all Select Committees: the Public Accounts Committee of another place. But I do not think that that feeling which I fully share with the noble Lord concludes this matter.

It is a somewhat delicate operation for this House to seek to impose upon a Select Committee of another place an additional duty. This may have some bearing on that curious, sensitive and very interesting subject, the relationship between the two Houses. But that, no doubt, could be overcome by consultation.

What I find unattractive about this proposal is the blurring of responsibility which it involves. As I understand the amendment, and what the noble Lord said in most lucidly explaining it, the "candidate"—a curious word to use in this context, but I take it that it means the person whom the Secretary of State is contemplating appointing—should be examined by the Select Committee on Trade and Industry. As he admitted this has a curious transatlantic whiff about it, although the basic difference between this procedure which the noble Lord suggests and that adopted by the select committees of Congress and the Senate is that they examine the candidate and they also decide whether to approve him or not. The noble Lord's amendment does not propose that. It leaves the appointment with the Secretary of State.

Let us think for a moment about how that would work. Suppose the "candidate", as he is described in the amendment, has a bad time in front of the Select Committee, as many witnesses and many people appearing before Commons Select Committees, as your Lordships, may have had——

Hear, hear!

I hope my noble friend is not drawing on a personal reminiscence! But let us suppose the candidate has a bad time. What is the Secretary of State to do? Is he to say, "I personally think he's a perfectly good chap, but he has had a rough time in front of the Select Committee and I had better not appoint him", That means that the Select Committee has taken upon itself quite a large degree of the responsibility for making or not making the appointment. Or the Secretary of State may say—though no Secretary of State would use this language—"In my view, to hell with them, I am going to appoint him!" Then the unfortunate chap starts on his, we all agree, very important appointment with the great handicap of having been knocked about and damaged before a Select Committee of the House of Commons. As your Lordships know, these Select Committees generally sit in public. It would be a very great handicap to start with his moral authority battered as a result of a rough handling before the Select Committee.

Therefore, I hope your Lordships will feel as I do that what is proposed in this amendment is neither one thing nor the other. I am not saying that it is right or that I would support it but it is not taking the comprehensible line of saying, "Let us adopt the American procedure in full and make this a parliamentary appointment". There is an argument for that. There is an argument for doing what the Bill says and making the Secretary of State responsible, with no excuses, for the appointment that he makes. This is neither one thing nor the other. Either the Secretary of State will be pushed, as a result of the bad treatment of his candidate before the Select Committee, into not making an appointment which he himself ex lypothesi thinks right or he will make the appointment in circumstances of the utmost disadvantage for the candidate because for reasons I have already mentioned—I will not weary the House by repeating them—he has been subjected to adverse publicity and harsh treatment before a parliamentary committee.

I cannot think of a more unsatisfactory way of making a public appointment. I speak with some experience because I have held offices in my time which involve the very difficult task—as any of your Lordships who have had the same experience know, the extraordinarily difficult task—of assessing people whom one is to appoint to a public appointment of this kind. Therefore, though I fully share the noble Lord's wish to assert parliamentary control as much as possible, I am quite sure that this is the wrong way to do it.

Let the Secretary of State make the appointment. If he makes a bad one give him no excuses. Do not put him in the position of being able to say, "Oh well, the Trade and Industry Committee liked the man"; and do not give him the excuse, if something goes wrong, of saying that the Trade and Industry Committee damaged the man. Let the Secretary of State stand with clear-cut responsibility for appointing the right man.

After the appointment has been made, by all means let the Trade and Industry Committee, the Public Accounts Committee or any committee of this House—if it be your Lordships' wish—examine him on the conduct of his office, but do not let us muddle up the responsibility for the making of quite an important appointment.

Before the noble Lord sits down, having regard to his great experience in these matters, can I ask him this: if the potential candidate gets so badly knocked about before a Select Committee of the House of Commons and really cannot manage that committee, is it not obvious that he is an unsuitable candidate to be a director general?

With respect to the noble Lord, I think that question reveals a certain confusion of thought on his part. First, this job and other jobs of this kind are not necessarily ones for which parliamentary abilities—including the ability to handle a Select Committee of the House of Commons or this place—are required. I have known persons of immense practical ability who have been thoroughly bad in the House of Commons (dare I say it, even in this House) and different qualities are not always to be found in the same man.

Secondly, a Select Committee itself is quite a difficult thing to handle. Those of us who have been Ministers of the Crown in another place have all had rough handling from the House of Commons itself on occasion. We have never felt that that was a conclusive argument that we were unfit for our jobs. On the contrary, we have thought that the capacity to survive, however battered in those circumstances, was a good thing. I am afraid I disagree entirely with the noble Lord. The qualities required are not always in the same man. They may be totally different. It would be a superficial judgment to throw out a first-class administrator merely because he had been knocked about by a number of Members of another place.

I am bound to say that I do not follow the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter. He makes the case that there is a blurring of responsibility in this amendment. But I should have thought that the Bill were an exercise in the blurring of responsibility. The whole thing is a mishmash of responsibilities. We have heard talk about the duties of the director general. He has to be a wide-ranging character with immense, almost judicial powers. We have heard about the necessity of the Secretary of State to have unblurred responsibilities in his appointing. We have heard also about the need for parliamentary responsibility; the chain of responsibilities, said the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, must be unbroken.

At the back of my mind I seem to think that there is a gentleman who will be the chairman of British Telecom. I wonder where he is going to come in. He is going to have the responsibility of running an immense organisation and yet he is liable to come up against this director general on quite important matters so far as his responsibilities are concerned.

I read in the newspapers that the chairman of British Telecom is not wholly adverse to this Bill. I can understand his reasoning. I think that if anybody has to run a large organisation, the thought that he might have the Secretary of State ring him up to tell him that he should do this or do that is not always conducive to initiative and to sound administration. But if that is the basis of the present chairman's disposition towards this Bill then I think he will be disappointed. I think that he is going to find things very different. I think that there is going to be much more prospective frustration as a result of this set-up than there is at the present time.

And all of' this leads me to think that the appointment of the director general is going to be a very important appointment. The noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, said that you might have someone who is a good administrator and yet he will not be a good performer in front of a Select Committee. I can understand that perfectly; but here, in the person of this director general, you have got to have more than just a good administrator. As my noble friend said a little earlier, you have got to have a Solomon. Whether the Select Committee can weed out the Solomons, I do not know. But I am inclined to think that it may be that their judgment in these matters will be as useful as that of the quite unqualified decision of the Secretary of State.

It is going to be a most important appointment. I can see in this whole field a whole set of confusions and frustrations and counter-interests developing. It is most important that we have in the person of this director general—if we cannot have the sort of authority that was talked about earlier to advise him—a person of political judgment (if you like) because a lot of the matters which are going to come up before him will involve a political element. I suggest to the Committee that there is more merit in this amendment than the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, suggested.

I think that this amendment is an extremely dangerous amendment for three very simple reasons. Two of them are reasons spoken to by my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter; but I believe that there is another one. The whole purpose of this Bill is to ensure that control of the environment for healthy growth in this industry lies with government and not with one or a series of companies in the public or the private sector. It is critically important, as the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart said, that this man be a man of immense ability, in no way deterred by the thought of a third degree in another place.

We have all the figures in the world, through the American experience, of those men and women who have been appointed to high public office in the United States of America; of how well they have done before the committee, and of how well they have done in holding down their particular jobs. What we do not know of are the hundreds and thousands of men and women who are very seriously deterred even from contemplating a position when they saw no reason why they should go through an extremely severe public examination. It is critically important that the right may be found. I think that it will make the life of the Government extremely difficult if we go through with this suggestion. Of course, I agree entirely with my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter in saying that it is certainly not the business of this House to suggest to the other place what it should or should not do.

This House lost by a very narrow majority—by four votes,—an attempt to introduce more influence of Parliament to this appointment and to this whole Bill. I have enjoyed disagreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, for many years very much and I am embrarrassed to find it very difficult to disagree with him in what he says. The truth is that the proposed Select Committee is in the first place, a political appointment. There will be a majority of the party in power on the Select Committee; so it is not non- political and it will not be a non-political examination. Secondly, it is put forward as if all the candidates were before the committee as for an appointment; whereas, in fact, it is an examination of something that has already been done.

I think that it is a muddled approach and a wrong approach fundamentally and in the end. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, who is to answer for the Government, with great politeness rejected by a very narrow majority our first attempt to introduce parliamentary responsibility, I do not feel that I can do anything but support the second attempt, however little I think it will lead to a satisfactory solution. I think that the right thing for the noble Lord to do this time is what he did not do last time—which is to take the thing away and say, "I see what you are trying to do. It does not quite work out but I shall put up an alternative suggestion".

The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, ranged very widely in moving this amendment. He started by referring to the results of the previous Division as a close-run thing. I am sorry to have to remind him of the implications of that phrase. The words were used by his Grace, the Duke of Wellington, when referring to his victory at the Battle of Waterloo over the defeated Emperor Napoleon—and I am somewhat surprised to find the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, casting himself in the role of the Emperor Napoleon. He then proceeded to quote in his support procedures in the United States. Of course, the most important thing in the United States is that telecommunications are in the private sector and not the public sector. Whether the noble Lord's reliance upon United States precedents means that he has now seen the light of day, I do not know. But at any rate it would be a most helpful conversion.

He then refers also to proceedings in another place. I am always somewhat reluctant to pray in aid proceedings in another place in support of what we want to do in your Lordships' House. But I feel bound to remind him that, while this precise amendment was not moved in another place, another amendment providing for very widespreaad consultation was moved, was debated for five hours and was defeated on a Division. So that, as far as the proceedings in another place are concerned, they really do not help the noble Lord.

My noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter speaks with immense knowledge and wisdom on these matters. What he says ought to influence your Lordships very greatly. I was delighted that his experience was so vigorously supported by the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson: it was only that I was somewhat disappointed in the lack of nexus between his argument and his conclusion. I agree entirely with my noble friend Lord Morris that what we must have is a man of immense ability. He needs to be independent because this is the role in which the Bill casts him. This means that the process of selecting him must be undertaken with very great care.

The proposal in the present amendment is an entirely novel one, and it is out of line with procedures which are normally adopted in this country in relation to appointments in the private as well as in the public sector. Quite frankly, candidates attach great importance to confidentiality, and the need to consider a wide range of suitable candidates, the need to allow for flexibility in discussions and the need to ensure discretion in approaching individuals who are already in employment all argue against a procedure of the kind envisaged in this amendment.

As the amendment is drafted the results of the examination of a candidate would not bind the Secretary of State. Nevertheless, he would find it difficult to appoint a person who had failed to win the support of the Select Committee, even if that failure to win support had nothing to do with the competence of the individual to meet the requirements of the post. Equally, as my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter has said, if despite the view of the Select Committee the Secretary of State decided to appoint the candidate, that in turn would lead to considerable difficulties of its own.

Given the conventions which govern public appointments in this country, I have no doubt that many potential candidates would be put off seeking the job at all if they thought that there would be a public, or semi-public, consideration of their appointment. At best it would delay the appointment of the director general; at worst it would ensure that the kind of first-class individual the Government are seeking simply would not come forward.

The fact that a process of examination by Select Committee is not required in relation to other similar appointments only serves to make the amendment more unacceptable. If there were a case to be made for the proposal—and, frankly, I do not think there is—it would be a case that would have to be made generally and not in relation to this particular post. There is no Select Committee involvement in, for example, the appointment of the Director General of Fair Trading or, if I may be forgiven for quoting the example, the chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority, and I have not heard any arguments to suggest that the Director General of Telecommunications should set a precedent in this respect.

We have given assurances that we are looking for somebody of the very highest calibre to appoint as director general. That is absolutely essential. Quite frankly, this amendment would hamper us in that task. On that basis, I would ask your Lordships to reject it.

I am sorry that the noble Lord has taken what I can only term a rather narrow attitude towards this important and reasonable proposal. I must take exception—well, not take exception, but I must take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, concerning his observations on the functions of Select Committees. I myself was also a member of the Select Committee on Public Accounts in another place for a couple of years or so. In my experience the only people who had to bother overmuch about appearing before the Select Committee were people who did not know what they were talking about and who had a confused idea of the brief that may or may not have been handed to them by their civil servants.

So far as my experience is concerned—it may have differed from that of the noble Lord—it is not a question of appearing before a Select Committee to "handle" it. You are not in front of a Select Committee to "handle" the committee. The committee's members normally ask reasonable, but sometimes unreasonable, questions, as the case may be. But a competent, self-possessed person who knows exactly what he is talking about does not seek to bluff the committee into assuming that he knows something that he does not know. If he knows his own limitations he has nothing to fear from any Select Committee at all. The idea that it should be a qualification to "handle" a committee is quite wide of the mark.

The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, seemed to think at one time that this proposal came into operation after the appointment. Of course, in terms of the amendment the appointment is made following an examination of the candidate by the House of Commons Select Committee. The Minister is able to see just how this person measures up to the sometimes skilled, sometimes unskilled, sometimes technical, sometimes overtly political—whatever it may be—questions that are asked of him.

I repeat that no person of the competence, breadth of mind, powers of leadership, personality, endurance and enthusiasm which are certainly required of the person who is going to become the Director General of Telecommunications would bother overmuch about a Select Committee. He might even have read some of the observations by very senior ex-civil servants on the general competence of Ministers in their offices. In fact, he might be tempted, if he were very unwise, to be rather more indulgent of the Select Committee than afraid of it.

Certainly there is no reason why the Minister, when he makes this appointment, should not have the advantage of seeing and noting the response of the candidate to a wide variety of questions put to him, and assimilate the general impressions of the Select Committee itself. As the noble Lord said, the Minister need not be bound by the impressions he gets of the impressions derived by the Select Committee. He need not be bound; but he can take them into account. There is no reason why he should not take them into account. It may well be that the questioning of certain members of a Select Committee rather indicate that they disapprove of the candidate. The Minister, if he is a good Minister, knows exactly how to deal with that. A Minister is quite capable of assimilating the abilities of a Select Committee, or should be.

In regard to Lord Boyd-Carpenter's observations about the position of another place, of course from time to time your Lordships' House ventures to give an instruction to another place when it refers back amendments to Bills that have come from there. It does it in that way. But there is no suggestion here of this place trying to dictate to another place at all. This Bill has come before your Lordships. We are entitled, if we so wish, and if the majority so decide, to return it to another place for their consideration. There is certainly no constitutional principle involved in that.

The importance of the appointment cannot be overestimated. Nor, I might say in sympathetic reply to the noble Lord. Lord Cockfield, do I underestimate the difficulties that the Secretary of State is going to have in obtaining a person of the qualities obviously required by the responsibilities laid upon him, and upon the Secretary of State, by the Bill.

The noble Lord will remember that when the Government were seeking a chairman of British Steel—to use the immortal words of Sir Keith Joseph—they scoured the boardrooms of England. They eventually hired headhunters in order that they could obtain a person whose qualities, although very considerable, were certainly not as far-reaching as the qualifications required here. Finally, as your Lordships know, the headhunters found Mr. MacGregor already lurking on the board of a nationalised industry, British Leyland. But that is entirely beside the point.

The fact of the matter is that the Secretary of State will have difficulty, and I should have thought it was far better for the Secretary of State to be able to assess the abilities of candidates on the basis not only of his own personal assessment, which in the final analysis is the most important and determinate, but of having in front of him a person who has already been before a Select Committee of the other place.

Above all, we do not want—I am sure your Lordships will agree—in an important matter of this kind affecting the entire conduct of a very important public service, which is already being successfully conducted, any taint of political appointment. I say that because there are one or two recent experiences that give some colour that party politics are not always out of these matters. I refer to the recent appointments of the Governor of the Bank of England, the Director of the Property Services Agency and some of the regional health authorities. We do not want that kind of thing here and I am quite sure that nobody on either side of your Lordships' House would want there to be any taint of political patronage in this appointment.

The appearance before a Select Committee of another place is one guarantee of that, even though the Select Committee in its composition is bound to be dominated by the party of Government—it always is. But as the noble Lord well knows, Select Committees have a perverse inclination—for example, as their reports on unemployment and monetary control have indicated—for scrutinising their own Government or the majority on it. This is a very sensible arrangement. I cannot for the life of me see why the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, cannot adopt it, put it in his own armoury and even claim credit for it.

The amendment puts forward an extremely attractive idea which the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, has demonstrated to be quite impracticable. But even if it were not so, there is another reason why I suggest that your Lordships should not accept this amendment. Anybody who can be thought of as applying for this appointment is almost certainly unfit to discharge it. I cannot imagine a situation in which a queue of applicants was forthcoming who would be suitable and who could be put before a Select Committee in the way suggested. Furthermore, it would give a further disincentive to a suitable person, if such exists—which I rather doubt—if he was required, prior to his appointment by the Secretary of State, to appear before a Select Committee in another place.

I have no wish to rehearse arguments already made, but I wish to express my gratitide for the comforting reassurance by the Minister that he adheres to the venerable principle that nothing should be done for the first time. He told us that the proposal here was entirely novel, and indeed it is, and he said that if it were to be adopted then it would have to be applied to, for example, the office of the Director General of Fair Trading, and no doubt to other offices as well.

Indeed, if the proposal of an examination before a Select Committee of another place were to be adopted and were to be successful, it would be for consideration whether the same procedure should be adopted for other offices, such as the Director General of Fair Trading. But unless we try we shall not know, and unless we try something for the first time on some occasions we shall never make any progress whatsoever. I think that your Lordships have generally misunderstood the nature of the appointment and why it would be appropriate for this appointment, but certainly not appropriate for other appointments.

We are in the presence of at least three distinguished ex-chairmen of nationalised industries and my knowledge of your Lordships' House is so short that there may be others. Those gentlemen and their former colleagues were appointed for managerial abilities and I would not suggest for a moment—and I do not think my noble friend Lord Stoddart would suggest for a moment—that one can assess managerial ability before a Select Committee of another place.

But we are talking here about a quite different kind of appointment—in the Government's own words, which I have already expressed, somebody responsible for fair play. If somebody responsible for fair play cannot stand up to being examined in public by a Select Committee, then he will not be a very effective advocate of fair play when he comes to exercise his functions. That is the reason why in this case, but not necessarily in other cases, it is an appropriate move—it is, at least, a gesture—towards a more open form of government and that is why I support my noble friend's amendment.

I shall not detain your Lordships for more than a few minutes. There is very little that I can add to the words of wisdom uttered by the noble Lord, Lord Weinstock. I listened with great fascination to the description given by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, of the qualities that would be required by a candidate appearing before the Select Committee. The person who would best meet those qualifications is a distinguished lawyer, a politician or a television personality, and it does not seem to me that any of those three would be outstanding candidates for this post.

So far as the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, are concerned, they seemed to me largely to destroy the very reasonable case that had been put forward by his noble friend Lord Stoddart, because the effect of his arguments would be to politicise a wide range of appointments in this country. That is one of the reasons why I was very dubious—I do not want to pursue this too far—about accepting the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, about American precedents. One of the troubles in the United States is that so many of their appointments are political appointments, with people going in and out of office with changes of government, and that is not the sort of thing that we want in this present case.

I approach this question on the very simple basis of asking whether the amendment would help or hinder us in selecting an outstanding candidate for this most difficult appointment. My own opinion is that the amendment would hamper us and it is on that basis that I would advise your Lordships against it.

May I ask the noble Lord one question? On two occasions on two different amendments the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, has gone out of his way in his most emphatic manner to express his admiration for the wisdom of the noble Lord, Lord Weinstock. I wonder whether he could go a little further and say that he accepts the wisdom of the noble Lord, Lord Weinstock, so far as the Bill itself is concerned.

If I may reply—and I shall certainly do so very briefly, because many points that I would have made in reply have already been made by my noble friends—the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, said that we had to decide whether this amendment would help or hinder us. The fact of the matter is that it would help him. One of the problems with the Bill is that it has undermined public confidence. Therefore to have the candidate for the director general interviewed by a select committee of parliament would assist in rebuilding public confidence, which has already been shattered by the publication of the Bill. If therefore the noble Lord were to accept the amendment, he would help the Bill in its passage through the Committee. That may be against me. Nevertheless, I happen to think that it would help the noble Lord to reassure public opinion about the bad effects of the Bill.

There are two other points that I want to make. First, the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, was rightly concerned about the position of the candidate when he appeared before a select committee: He might be a rather shy man, or he might be an administrator. But he might also have other weaknesses which it would be as well for the public to know about before he was appointed. Our major duty as parliamentarians is not to protect an individual, who may have been selected by the peculiar procedures which governments use for selecting chairmen, but to protect the public—in this case the public and the consumer.

Finally, I accept Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge's concern that there could be a political majority in the select committee which would detract from good consideration of the candidate, but may I say to him that my quite long experience of select committees is that they do not work in that way. They are excellent bodies. All sides, of whatever political party, work together for the good of the select committee and, indeed, for the good of the departmental subjects that they are covering.

moved Amendment No. 4:

It will come as no surprise to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, that I look at this particular problem in a totally different way. Given the correct man with the wit, the will and the skill to learn, his ignorance of the particular subject becomes an extremely important qualification. The reason I say that is because this point reminds me of a comment made by an extremely distinguished surgeon—namely, Sir Ralph Marnham—when a Member of your Lordships' House suggested to him a particular way of carrying out a certain surgical procedure. Although Sir Ralph was a little upset by this, he took the point on board, suggesting at the same time that experience is nothing other than entrenched prejudice. If a person has training in a particular field of endeavour there is no question about it they have very fixed and rigid ideas on this that or other subjects.

I would have thought that to restrict by law the Government's appointment of a man in this critical, important position is a very dangerous thing to do. I am not trying to plead the cause of the enthusiastic amateur. I am no lawyer myself, but any lawyer who has cross-examined the soi disant expert witness in the box will almost certainly agree in saying, "Lord deliver me from an expert".

I wonder whether the noble Lord's story does not rebound against his own argument. What he is describing is advice given by a Member of your Lordships' House to a surgeon, in other words, he is describing a position comparable to the advisers of the director general or as it would have been if the first amendment had been passed the authority. The director is in the position of the surgeon. Is the noble Lord suggesting that he would be happy to have been operated on by the distinguished Member of your Lordships' House?

The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, has just broken one of the cardinal rules of cross-examination: never ask a question to which you do not know the answer. The person who gave the advice to Sir Ralph Marnham had been an extremely distinguished surgeon himself.

This is the age-old argument, very briefly, of the specialist against the administrator. There are hundreds of specialists; there are a handful of administrators. What is needed is a good administrator. It is a question of status. I oppose this amendment.

I of course understand the concern that has been expressed both in this debate and earlier this afternoon that the director general should be a person who has the kind of knowledge and experience that will fit him to do what will be a job of outstanding importance and indeed of difficulty. We intend to appoint as director someone both with relevant experience and with authority who will measure up to the most exacting standards. I entirely agree with what my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway said, that this is another illustration of the old argument about the merits of specialists and generalists. But of course the amendment goes very much further than that. Contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, said when he described the amendment as one which set down parameters of a very general kind, the fact of the matter is that the amendment creates a statutory straitjacket, and this is the kind of thing which is wrong.

Obviously, knowledge of the telecommunications industry and of the requirements and needs of consumers is very relevant and important: but it is not the only qualification which would suit a person for appointment to this post. For example, we know that the accounting systems of British Telecommunications leave very much to be desired and that considerable development in this field is needed. An outstanding and distinguished accountant—and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, will forgive me introducing this example—might very well be a good candidate for this post. All I am saying is that we ought to look at the full field and that we ought not to start by limiting our field of choice. Recognising that we must select the best candidate who is available, we must look for a whole range of qualities and experience and we must balance the strengths and weaknesses of potential candidates in forming a judgment about the right individual for the job.

This amendment would in fact hamper us in that task, because it would restrict the field of candidates and could well exclude some who were nevertheless ideally suited for the job. I think it has been valuable to air these problems and difficulties; but the arguments point, I submit, quite decisively against the amendment.

Having heard the statement of the Minister, which was a fair job description of the man sought for this important post, having at the same time accepted the concern expressed by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, I hope that having been given the assurance of the kind of man the Government have in mind the noble Lord will consider not pressing this amendment to a Division.

I am grateful to the noble Lord for having taken on board the burden of the argument that I adduced in favour of this amendment. The amendment does not of course seek to restrict the qualifications of the appointee merely to have this knowledge. Quite clearly he or she must have many other qualities. This amendment was put down to ensure that this was included as a vital quality among those others to which the noble Lord referred.

I am very sorry indeed that the noble Lord cannot take it on board, but I sincerely hope that sufficient has been said on both sides of the Committee today to make it quite clear to Her Majesty's Government that this is not a case where a political appointee would in any way be suitable. I gathered from reading within the context of what the noble Lord has said that the Government have no such intention; that they do have the intention of searching as widely as they can, with or without the aid of head hunters, as in the case of Mr. MacGregor; that they do intend to take very great care about it indeed and that they do intend to treat this exceptional appointment as one that merits the services of quite an exceptional individual. On the basis of what the noble Lord and other noble Lords have said in the course of the debate, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

moved Amendment No. 5:

With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Spens, at whose invitation I have decided to intervene, and to the members of the group, may I come straight to the merits of this amendment. It could be truly said that this amendment might induce the very obscurity which it was designed to remove. The words "relevant functions" as drafted in the amendment could induce much argument as to whether the Secretary of State, in assigning such functions, was or was not acting ultra vires. The drafting of the clause is wholly clear and could be rendered specific by the traditional method of reference to the body of the statute. It is in traditional form and, with the utmost respect to the noble Lord, I think the amendment might serve to confuse rather than clarify.

As a member of the liberalisation committee may I take the opportunity of congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Spens, for the objective way in which he conducted the proceedings. He said that the group was sponsoring all these amendments, but this is one amendment which I was reluctant to sponsor for the very reason given by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway. I was also worried about the words "relevant functions". They would be difficult to define. As the noble Lord, Lord Spens, indicated, this is a probing amendment but if it were moved to a Division I could not support it.

I think my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway was a little hard on the noble Lord, Lord Spens, because the noble Lord did say that it was a probing amendment and the technicalities of the law are not really a matter to be exposed under those circumstances. The point of this amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Spens, as our excellent leader—I am privileged in being included in his group—is that it is terribly important that there should be scope for future expansion of the duties of the director general as the telecommunications industry works on. I hope that my noble friend will be able to tell us that this is very much in the Government's mind.

I make only one other comment. So far as I am concerned, the amendments I have tabled are my amendments. The fact that we may have had advice from some people is, at this stage of the game, totally irrelevant.

Before my noble friend sits down, may I explain that far from seeking to be hard on the noble Lord, Lord Spens, and far from seeking to rely on words or to pick on words, my reference to words was only intended to illustrate the problems and the principle at stake.

As honorary secretary of the group perhaps I could intervene very briefly.

Late on parade.

Yes, I was late on parade, but having heard three Labour Front Bench spokesmen on the previous amendment I imagined that that would be repeated for the rest of the amendments. I was wrong, and am delighted that I was wrong.

As this is my first speech perhaps I should declare no further interest than I declared on Second Reading. I am, in fact, a non-executive director of a public relations company. I have had no contact with any of the company's 40 or 50 clients. What I say and do in this place is in no way connected with my position as a non-executive director or with any of the clients.

I feel that it is difficult on this Bill, which was heavily filibustered in another place, for the Committee to make a proper consideration of a very complicated and long measure. It is a very important measure, wherever we may sit. My noble friend did well to bring us together from all parts of the Committee because it would be grossly unfair if various people who wanted to make representations—namely, the trade associations—whose future is at stake, had to apply to individuals all over the place; to little groups here and little groups there.

We did a service in having the opportunity of, as we did, taking evidence from six trade associations all of them very closely connected with this industry. We saw the user group. We saw the Telecommunication Managers' Association, which contains some of the natural clients of Mercury. We saw the Telecommunication Users' Association and we saw the Mobile Radio Users' Association. That is three user trade associations. Of course, we have also taken note of what POUNC, and others, had to say and also the Consumers Association. On the manufacturing side we asked three manufacturing trade associations to give evidence to us. That was BETA (the Business Equipment Trade Association) and TEMA (the Telecommunications Engineering and Manufacturers' Association). Incidentally, its members have £1·2 billion annual turnover and 50,000 employees, so they are not small people. The other organisation was the Electronic Engineering Association whose members have £2·2 billion annual turnover and employ 100,000 people. I was president and chairman of that association in 1970 so I know it fairly well.

What I wanted to say on this amendment is that, because it is a complicated measure we have come together but we are not carbon copies of each others' thoughts. We sit in different parts of the Committee and have differences of opinion, which is only natural. Incidentally, that is something which this place demonstrates superbly well and cannot be duplicated in another place. I want to quote the need for flexibility. In his admirable opening speech on Second Reading my noble friend said:

"We believe in allowing market forces to operate to the fullest extent possible".

Many of us on this side believe in that but it has not been possible, for various reasons, for market forces to operate very widely or very thoroughly. My noble friend continued, referring to the Office of Telecommunications:

"The director's function therefore is both to protect the consumer and to ensure fair competition".—[Official Report, 16/1/84; col. 843.]

Our amendments—and there is a whole series on Clause 3—will seek to make fair competition. The only person we can see who can possibly judge that the competition is fair is the director and Oftel. In their individual capacities, our amendments seek to get justice, not necessarily and always for British Telecom, which will get justice anyhow. It will dominate the market, with its 97 per cent. No one has to look after British Telecom's interests very much; it has the advantage. But we want to see justice for the smaller people and an element of competition. A series of amendments will come which deals with the strengthening of Oftel's functions. We do not think that it is a perfect solution, but there is no other in sight. Politics is the art of the possible. That is why we seek to improve the Bill in these respects.

Endorsing what my noble friend Lord Mottistone said, I think the important thing is the flexibility. None of us can be wise enough to see what the future holds, and no other area of technology and science is expanding more rapidly than information technology. Therefore, I particularly commend to noble Lords, wherever they may sit, this small amendment which adds that flexibility which I think will improve the Bill.