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

The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the total number of unemployed; how many are men, how many women, and how many of each sex are part-time; whether they regard this situation as acceptable; and, if not, what proposals they have to reduce unemployment.

My Lords, on 10th December 1987, the number of unemployed claimants in the United Kingdom was 2,695,800. Of these, 1,878,700 were men and 817,100 were women. In the third quarter of 1987 there were 1,059,000 men and 4,548,000 women in Great Britain in part-time employment.

While the level of unemployment is still too high, adult unemployment has fallen by a record 600,000 since June 1986 and continues on a downward trend. The Government will continue to pursue the sound economic and financial policies which have brought seven years of sustained economic growth and helped to create nearly 1·5 million additional jobs since March 1983.

My Lords, is the Secretary of State aware that a figure of 2·6 million people unemployed is a disgrace in a modern society? Is he further aware that the worst feature of unemployment figures is the number of long-term unemployed and that within the past two years two independent reports have shown a distinct link between long-term unemployment and ill health? In view of the fact that the Government have been in power for nine years, what does the Secretary of State think has been the reason for the failure to reduce unemployment to a reasonable level?

My Lords, I venture to suggest that no one in your Lordships' House is more aware than I of the plight of those who have been out of work for more than a year. I have spent many years dealing with that problem.

We went through a period of considerable industrial restructuring, as a result of which many who had been employed for most of their adult lives in one occupation were forced to find another. Of course long-term unemployment is too high but it has come down faster in the past year than in almost any other industrialised country. I used to stand before your Lordships' House and explain the level of unemployment which at that time was higher than that of most of our partners in the Community. Today I am proud to say that, while our level of unemployment is still far too high, it is lower than that in the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Spain and Ireland and, most importantly, it is coming down here while it is, alas, rising elsewhere. It is a problem and it is being shown that there is only one way to deal with it: sound economic policies produce jobs for people.

My Lords, is it not the case that the sound economic policies of which the noble Lord speaks have increased the unemployment numbers in this country by at least 1½ million and more probably by 2½ million? Is it not also the case that the reduction in the figures given for unemployed people is almost entirely due, first, to part-time working at low rates for women; secondly, to dead-end jobs in which there is no incentive to use a constructive interest in the work; and, thirdly, to the use of youth training schemes, community schemes, and so on, which are in fact used for the unemployed even if they are not counted as such?

My Lords, for once I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, that economic policies were responsible for the considerable increase in unemployment in the early '80s. They were the economic policies we followed in the mid-'70s, which are shown to have had a direct result in our economy not being able to adjust to the sharp change which happened when the oil price rise came and when this country found it had to be competitive in a world in which we had to earn our way or suffer the consequences.

In regard to the other matters, of all the large industrialised nations in Europe we give more jobs to women and 4½ million women work in part-time employment. Many of those women are married, and perhaps the noble Lord should ask them whether or not they value their jobs.

My Lords, is the Secretary of State aware that service industry employment is on the increase, that manufacturing employment has decreased and that the production of the wealth of our nation based on manufacturing industry is in the North of England, which is exacerbating the North-South divide? What does the Minister intend to do to rectify that imbalance?

My Lords, I am aware that manufacturing employment has been falling at the rate of 10,000 jobs a month on average, month in and month out, since the middle of 1966. I suspect it will continue to fall in that way as manufacturing industries adjust to modern technology. There has been a similar trend in the United States of America, France, Germany and all industrialised nations with the exception of Japan; and Japan now has lost substantial manufacturing jobs in the past year or two. It is the almost inescapable effect of the change in employment due to modern technology.

I am glad to be able to report to your Lordships' House that in the recent substantial fall in unemployment the way has been led by the North-East, the North-West, the West Midlands and Wales. I ask your Lordships to visit again places like Consett and many places in the North-East and the North-West to see new industries arising. Not all are in manufacturing industry. However, what is important is not the balance between the manufacturing and the service sector but the balance between wealth creation and wealth consumption.

My Lords, is my noble friend concerned about the effect on the unemployment figures of the recent sharp rise in wage levels and the strike action by which those have been obtained?

My Lords, I think all in your Lordships' House should be concerned about increases in wages that are not earned. Where wage increases are accompanied by productivity increases and unit labour costs are under control, we should all welcome that because the ambition of this Government is to have a high wage society, not a low one. However, where industrial action takes place for wage increases for their own sake, without accompanying productivity increases, I fear for the future of jobs.

My Lords, I am rather puzzled by one aspect of the noble Lord's Answer. Is he saying that the recent strike in connection with a rise in wages is unconnected with the claimed rise in productivity? I go on to ask him whether his claim about unemployment falling last year will carry on into the coming year. In other words, will unemployment go on falling at the same annual rate?

My Lords, I resisted all temptation to forecast the future of unemployment when it was rising and I shall equally resist that temptation when it is falling. I hope that my Answer made clear that I was concerned with strikes about wage increases which were not accompanied by productivity increases. That will affect the future of jobs.

My Lords, is it not a fact that much part-time employment is very low paid, and is it not also true that there is very little statutory employment protection for part-time workers? Should not something be done to remedy that unsatisfactory situation?

My Lords, whether or not part-time work is low paid often depends on the willingness of people to take those particular jobs. We have agreed that there is a correlation between protection of employment and the number of jobs that actually come about. I suspect that if we were to give statutory rights to those in part-time employment we would not be helping those in part-time jobs but would be sharply reducing the number of opportunities.

My Lords, is the Secretary of State aware that if unemployment continues to decrease at the rate which he has just given to the House, it will take at least 10 years and probably 15 years, assuming that the decrease continues as my noble friend says, to return to the level which this Government inherited in 1979? Is that anything to be proud of?

My Lords, I am not saying that employment will continue at this rate because I am not making any forecast. However, if I were to take arithmetical proportions, it will fall beneath the 1979 level in about three or four years' time. However, that is hardly the point. We have a vastly increased working population. We have an economy that is the envy of the industrialised world; whereas in 1979, as I hardly need remind any one of your Lordships, we were the sick man of Europe and an object of ridicule by other industrialised nations.

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

The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will seek to amend Section 29(5) of the Taxes Management Act 1970 by inserting after "person assessed", the words "save where to the knowledge of the inspector issuing the notice the person assessed has a professional adviser or agent to deal with tax matters, in which case service on such agent will constitute a sufficient compliance with this section".

My Lords, no. Assessments need to be sent direct to taxpayers, even where an agent is acting, because the tax due is the personal liability of the individual, and taxpayers are informed of their right of appeal against the assessment.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for the courtesy of his reply. However, does he appreciate that I cannot greet its content with unqualified rapture? Is it not illogical to insist on personal service on the taxpayer when the inspector knows that he can act only as a courier or post office? Would it not be more logical to amend the law so that these matters can be dealt with directly and ab initio by persons versed in the esoteric mysteries of taxation matters? This would have the additional advantage of leaving more time for the taxpayer to earn the money required for the taxation.

My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend is more than interested to know what current demands are being made upon him by the tax man. Where authorised, the Inland Revenue will send copies of assessments to the professional adviser of the taxpayer. It seems to me that it would be dangerous if we had a system whereby at all times the taxpayer could be unaware of the demands upon him. After all, tax due is the liability of the taxpayer; the professional adviser is there to advise.

My Lords, are there not some cases, of which the Minister is aware, where especially old people or those suffering from some illness are very upset at receiving demands which are very often in excess of what they should be? In those cases would it not be meritorious for the assessment to be sent to the professional representative, so that the taxpayer is not worried?

My Lords, I cannot claim to be of an advanced age, but I must claim to be rather upset when I receive an assessment from the tax man. I would rather that it be sent direct to my adviser. However, I believe that in the end I should know about it. Of course, there are difficult circumstances, but perhaps I may suggest that those concerned should, first, authorise the tax man to send the assessment to their professional advisers and, secondly, send the envelope on to them unopened.

My Lords, what complaints has the Minister received from professional bodies against a system which has been carried on hitherto quite satisfactorily, as far as my professional memory carries?

My Lords, Sperhaps I may tell the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, that to my knowledge no complaints have been received, but I shall certainly inquire.

My Lords, I should like to ask the Minister whether it can be arranged that copies of the demand notes are sent not only to the taxpayer but also to his or her professional adviser.

My Lords, normally that is done, but it is a requirement that the taxpayer should authorise the inspector to send those demands.

My Lords, will my noble friend undertake to ensure that, if a request is made to the inspector, as suggested in his answer to the supplementary question from the noble Lord opposite, the inspector will not reply that he is inhibited from so doing by the statutory obligation placed on him by the income tax Act 1970?

My Lords, my information is that the inspector is not so inhibited. I am concerned to think that he might be but I am told that, in fact, he can send a copy to the adviser provided he sends it to the taxpayer as well.

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

The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to increase the number of nurses trained in paediatric intensive care.

My Lords, the Government are aware that some authorities in England do have difficulty in recruiting sufficient suitably qualified staff in particular locations and specialties, including paediatric intensive care. The department is having discussions with regional nursing officers and regional general managers about these difficulties and how they can be overcome.

In addition to the present course at Great Ormond Street Hospital, work is in hand to establish three further post-basic paediatric intensive care nursing courses in Birmingham, Manchester and London.

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Earl for giving that information. Is he aware that consultants have been warning the Department of Health and Social Security for a very long time—in the case of Manchester, for five years—that there would be an acute shortage of paediatric intensive care nurses? Is he further aware that the Birmingham paediatric training scheme is not due to produce nurses until 1991? Can the noble Earl say what will happen when children are likely to die or be severely disabled because of delayed operations due to a lack of staff?

My Lords, in answer to the first question asked by the noble Countess, the primary responsibility for the recruitment of nursing staff must rest with health authorities. Only they can decide on the appropriate levels of staffing in the light of local needs, priorities and the resources which can be allocated to meeting those needs.

As regards Birmingham, the first intake in training is expected to commence at the beginning of 1989. It is hoped that the first nurses qualifying in paediatric intensive care at the Birmingham Children's Hospital will be available for service in the latter half of 1989.

My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that in some parts of the country there is a practice whereby general nurses are being crash-trained to serve in the paediatric intensive care wards? The result has been simply that one service has been denuded of nurses and the other not properly equipped. Can the noble Earl look at the position?

My Lords, I can only take note of the noble Lord's comments.

My Lords, are we not now facing a real and long-foreseen crisis with what the Royal College of Nursing today calls an horrendous shortage of paediatric nurses and a drastic closure of intensive care cots at specialised children's hospitals all over the country, including Great Ormond Street, Guys, Brompton, the Alderhey hospital in Liverpool and many others? With only one course at present operative, is it not absolutely essential, in order to prevent deaths as the noble Countess said, to have a special allocation of money to deal with this crisis situation?

My Lords, the total number of nursing staff employed in paediatric intensive care units in England at 30th September 1986 was 360, an increase of 7·8 per cent. over the figure at September 1985. As I have said, the intention is considerably to increase that over the years.

My Lords, can the noble Earl confirm the extraordinary position at Birmingham, where the central Birmingham district has been given a grant enabling the post of a nursing tutor to be established but it cannot get nurses to attend those classes because Birmingham does not have the funds to staff the wards if they were to do so?

My Lords, I understand that that is not the case. A tutor has already been engaged and he is already starting to teach nurses.

My Lords, have the Government any confidence in the management of the health service in the West Midlands in the light of what the Minister himself has said?

I am extremely sorry but I did not hear all of the noble Lord's question.

My Lords, have the Government every confidence in the management in the West Midlands in the light of what the Minister himself said about the importance of management in planning to meet the kind of staffing problem with which it is faced?

My Lords, I think that is somewhat wide of the Question on the Order Paper.

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

The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether some of the £9 million resulting from an error in the retail price index, which they now intend should be used for charitable purposes, will be directed to increasing the age allowances in the pensions of elderly war widows.

My Lords, no. The intention is to allocate this money to charities broadly helping those who will not receive special payments to compensate them for the error in the retail prices index. War widows will receive special payments. The money will, moreover, be a one-off sum which could not provide for the recurring costs of improvements in any benefits or pensions.

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his reply but I hope that the Government have not yet made up their minds. As the number of these widows is limited and is, of course, dwindling, can my noble friend think of any more deserving cause when consideration is being given to the distribution of this windfall?

My Lords, I think it would be of interest if I informed the House that the standard war widow's pension is £51·35 a week, increasing to £53·50 in April That is free of tax. is 30 per cent. higher than the taxable National Insurance widow's pension. On top of that, age allowances are payable of £5·50 at 65, increasing to £11 at 70 and £13·85 at 80. The age allowances will be increased in April to £5·75, £11·50 and £14·45 respectively;

Some 85 per cent. of war widows are aged 65 and over. In addition, a war widow may receive a retirement pension if she has worked and paid the necessary contributions.

My Lords, while I find my noble friend's reply very discouraging, nevertheless perhaps I may take this opportunity, through him, of thanking the Government for the very sympathetic way in which they have listened to representations made to them by the British Legion, the War Widows of Great Britain and the Officers' Pensions Society.

Is my noble friend aware that the only really satisfactory answer which would please everyone is an across-the-board uprating of all war widows' pensions? Meanwhile, can the Government endeavour to get rid of the gross anomaly to which my noble friend has drawn attention? At the same time, can he deal with a further anomaly concerning elderly war widows who are still on the one-third pension rate, which seems to me impossible to justify?

My Lords, no one in this House can or ever will forget the immense debt of gratitude that we owe to those who fought and laid down their lives in defence of their country. With particular regard to their widows and that which they receive, the Government have to temper that which they consider reasonable with the funds available. As regards the age entitlement to war widows, there is no justification for linking the age allowance to the normal retirement age for women. It is essentially intended to recognise the additional needs of elderly war widows as they grow older.

My Lords, has the attention of the noble Earl, or that of his ministerial colleagues, been drawn to the anomaly arising from the repayment of some of this money, whereby a person receiving benefits on two books has received two amounts of £8—that is, £16—whereas a person receiving the same benefit on one book has received only £8? If the noble Earl is aware of that anomaly will he kindly do something about it?

My Lords, those who have a retirement pension from their own insurance, a widow's benefit or who receive invalidity benefit combined with a higher rate of attendance allowance.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that despite the mitigations of the rule to which he has referred, there are many people who find it very difficult to understand how it is possible to justify paying a lower pension to the war widow pre-1973 than to those widowed after that date? Surely it is the older war widow whose need is the greatest.

; My Lords, the level of the war widow's pension is the same regardless of when or where the serviceman died. The disparity in total pension provision is due to improvements made in 1973 by the Ministry of Defence in its occupational pension scheme for servicemen. War widows whose husbands served after 1973 receive an attributable widow's pension under that scheme as well as a war widow's pension. The improvements were not made retrospective because of the enormous additional cost (£200 million a year for war widows), and because of the repercussions for public service pensions as a whole.

My Lords, having gratefully received my old lady's £8 from Her Majesty's Government, perhaps I may ask what organisations are being chosen to distribute the £9 million? Are any instructions or guidance being given to these organisations or are they totally to use their own discretion?

My Lords, as regards the charities, this matter is being considered. Advice is being taken from the Charities Aid Foundation, and a public announcement will made in due course

My Lords, I am so sorry to press the noble Earl but I believe that he may have read out the wrong answer to my question. Perhaps I may remind the noble Earl of what I actually asked—why was it that a person receiving certain benefits on two books received £16, whereas another person receiving precisely the same benefits on one book received only £8?

My Lords, the answer is that I believe I can satisfy the noble Lord on that point. Having two benefits in one book does not automatically mean that the claimant has suffered twice from the RPI error. The special compensation payments fully compensate the great majority of people including those who have combined order books. Fewer than 10 per cent. of people with combined order books would be under-compensated for the error because of the method of payment.

My Lords, after the end of the short debate on the secret services and before the opening of that on pseudo-religious cults, my noble friend Lord Glenarthur will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on the Hong Kong White Paper.

I should like to say a word about the arrangements for the short debates standing in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, and my noble friend Lord Rodney. On the principle that the mover is allowed 15 minutes and that the Minister should rise to reply not less than 20 minutes before the scheduled end of the debate, in the case of the short debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, this means that all other speeches should be limited to 14 minutes and in that of my noble friend Lord Rodney to 11 minutes. If any noble Lord were to speak at greater length, it would be at the expense of subsequent speakers in that debate. I should remind the House that when the figures 14 and 11 respectively appear on the clock the speech is already too long.

rose to call attention to the case for bringing the secret services under a greater degree of control and accountability; and to move for Papers.

Hear, hear!

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, will not object to my saying that he did not agree with the Master of the Rolls. Indeed he has expressed that view pretty cogently (as is his custom) not only in his report on the subject, but more recently in the Independent newspaper.

Unhappily, the professor of public law at the London School of Economics told us in the Independent last week that the Royal prerogative is regularly used to excuse such breaches of the law and to provide reason for not prosecuting when they are discovered. Everything that has happened—or has not happened—since I last raised this matter must serve to increase disquiet. Nothing has been done; something must be done.

My next text comes from Mr. Peter Wright's book, Spycatcher. That is a book, which, at enormous expense, the Government have publicised so effectively as to bring Mr. Wright almost into the Jeffrey Archer class in terms of financial reward for his efforts—that is if he gets it, of course. Presumably this may do something to compensate a very mixed-up man for what he regards as an inadequate pension. What other reason can there be for the Government's incredible stupidity in this matter, unless it is that there is someone in charge who is both very determined and very unwise?

Mr. Wright says, at page 54—and the quotation is short so I shall read it from my notes rather than from the book:

"For five years we bugged and burgled our way across London"

Mr. Wright thought that it was all great fun but Miss Joan Miller and Miss Cathy Massiter, who were employed in similar ways, found that the game turned their more moral stomachs. Spying on the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was a typically absurd secret service effort, like sending the night into the day to discover by what mischief all that light is being created. The campaign is a public body. It would have welcomed television into its deliberations without all the havering and fuss they have been making across the way. As one who was both bugged and burgled at our flat in Putney during the time when I chaired the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, I can tell your Lordshps that it is no fun to be at the receiving end, to watch the embarrassment of the local police as they examine your home, your proverbial castle, which has been turned upside down with papers spread all over the place but nothing taken. It is a very eerie and strange experience to realise that you are outside the protection of the law.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, says in his report and in his letter to the Independent that, if they break the law, officers of MI5 can be brought before the courts and punished. Theoretically, perhaps, but not in practice, for the police can never find them. They do not exist. Although they break the law as a matter of course—and it is now generally known that they do—they have never been brought before the courts. To put it mildly, it is an unsatisfactory state of affairs.

I am less bothered about bugging. When as chairman of CND I spoke on the telephone to Dr. Cox, a vice-chairman whose telephone, it has since been officially admitted, was tapped, I used to wait for the clicks and then say, "Are you listening comfortably? Then we'll begin". But I fear that the line that Members of Parliament are not bugged may be just another case of a Minister, innocently or otherwise, retailing the usual secret service automatic denial of the truth—unless the policy has changed. We do not know.

My final text comes from my own book The Culture Gap, if I may be forgiven. On pages 13 and 14 I summarise the strange experience of how, having been seconded from the Royal Air Force to broadcasting duties in Burma, I applied on demobilisation to join the BBC and was twice accepted. After completion of the formal application papers the acceptance was twice cancelled. It became all too clear what the cause of the trouble was but, as I say in the book,

"the suspect cannot be told why he is under suspicion".

And of course there can be no appeal, for, as the secret services do not exist, they cannot be admitted to have intervened.

This is not the occasion to detail how in my own case the error was subsequently and tacitly admitted. However, by this time I had decided to be a trade union official, which led me into politics and eventually into your Lordships' House. But for the intervention of the secret services in my affairs I should by now almost certainly be a long-retired disc jockey.

My Lords, there may be those among you who will, perhaps for the first time, perceive that there may be something to be said for bringing the secret services under more effective control. I must get on. Those who are interested to know more about this extraordinary episode must either read my book, which is in the Library, or perhaps get the BBC to let them have a cassette of my radio play "Lost Tune From Rangoon", which was broadcast last August.

Secrecy both attracts and breeds eccentricity. The secret services of the world are full of double agents, potential and actual. They batten on each other. The most valued defectors are spies, though no one can be quite sure whether they have really changed sides as the primary loyalty of those people who are in the secret services of the opposing side, as it were, often seems to be to their wretched trade, which Mr. Chapman Pincher has named treachery.

There are those who think that all secret services should be abolished, and in an ideal world that would be so. But I believe, with the late Lord Butler, that politics is the art of the possible. In the real world the best we can do is to follow the example of some other countries and bring our secret services under more effective supervision answerable ultimately to Parliament. If we fail to do that we shall find that democracy itself has been undermined.

This is no time to detail the way in which we might combine essential secrecy with equally essential accountability to an open Parliament. As I have said, like my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition on another occasion, I would settle for a committee of Privy Counsellors which would report annually to Parliament. As the Labour Party has said, after that what we need is not attempts to treat the sickness of secrecy but the removal of the cause by a freedom of information Act. The present position in which, for example, American congressional committees know more about British intelligence activities than any British Member of Parliament outside the Cabinet, and probably more than most of them inside it, is intolerable.

I do not go along with Mr. Neal Ascherson of the Observer in believing that the answer to the problem is that we must become a republic. He has only to look across the Atlantic to be cured of that illusion. But we must certainly not bring the word "Royal" into disrepute by pretending that when they break the law the secret services are exercising the Royal prerogative at several removes and without specific authority. That is intolerable and indefensible and must be stopped.

The Master of the Rolls has performed no public service by giving such a reprehensible idea the cloak of his office. What the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, says is the case must be given the substance of reality. Secret service officers do break the law. The noble and learned Lord should be given the assurance that what ought to happen actually takes place. It does not, and he must know that it does not. Now the Master of the Rolls says that, short of murder, the secret services are allowed to break the law, and there are those who think that even murder has taken place.

Sir John Donaldson seems to have overlooked the fact that if you remove the penalties of the law from the offender you also remove its protection from the victim. I do not know which is worse. Perhaps your Lordships will judge the question. Is it better to pretend that everyone is under the law knowing that some are not, or is it better to admit the existence of privileged wrongdoers and give them the cover of the Royal prerogative? Your Lordships will know the answer.

It is of course that neither of these things is compatible with a healthy society and that all of us without exception must be equal before the law and answerable to the law. We cannot hold up our heads in the world until this becomes the case, is known to be the case and seen to be the case. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

My Lords, I am sure that I speak on behalf of the whole House when I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, for choosing this important subject, having won a ballot. He won a ballot in 1986 and we had a debate on 17th December in which his Motion was almost the same; it was about the accountability of these services. It gives the House a chance to review the situation and also to hear the Government's latest views upon the subject.

The noble Lord referred to secret services in the plural. As in the last debate, I should like to refer first to the security services, sometimes known as MI5, and to the other intelligence services, secondly, as "British Intelligence".

The Motion speaks of,

"a greater degree of control and accountability".

In the previous debate the concern was merely accountability. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, accepts that there is accountability now through the Home Secretary for the security service, and through the Foreign Secretary for British Intelligence. Of course, the Prime Minister is responsible overall. Those Ministers are accountable to Parliament. I am conscious that I am speaking in the presence of three former Prime Ministers. They are not down to speak in the debate but they have special knowledge of the subject.

Since the previous debate, as I understand it, there has been progress (we look forward to hearing about that from my noble friend Lord Ferrers when he replies) on internal procedures, whereby matters raised, whether they be complaints or anxieties, by members of the security service or British Intelligence can be dealt with by new procedures or by some internal ombudsman.

In general, I am in favour of less secrecy in government. I am in favour of replacing Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act, as I am sure are most of your Lordships. I spoke in the only debate on the Bill, which took place on Second Reading in your Lordships' House in 1979, when the Government were trying to replace Section 2. That Bill was then dropped. I applaud the fact that the Government now propose to introduce another Bill and to have another shot at the difficult task of replacing Section 2.

That section has little to do with the subject with which we are dealing today. There is little application to the security service and British Intelligence of opening up the Official Secrets Act. Those two organisations must operate in secret if they are to do their jobs. Almost everything connected with their work must be secret if they are to be effective. To try to expose publicly their functions and organisation is a disservice to our country and diminishes to some extent the safety of all its inhabitants.

As I see it, the main issue raised today is whether the present accountability by designated Ministers to Parliament is enough. On the principle "the fewer who know, the better", it must be said that at present a small number of officials in the Foreign Office and the Home Office are informed of what are considered to be relevant activities. Ministers are brought in when it seems appropriate. Therefore one must conclude that it is the directors-general and the few officials concerned who decide whether a Minister should be informed or consulted. Those must be delicate and difficult decisions. Ministers are transient. They occupy a position for three or perhaps four years. Doubtless they will give the right political consideration to a secret matter which is put to them, but they may never have had previous experience of the subjects, which would be completely new to them. Ministers are also extremely busy men, with their responsibilities to Parliament, and thus have little time to deal with such matters.

Should there be some new body to take part in the process to help the Ministers with their responsibilities? In the previous debate it was suggested that something like the Security Commission, which already exists, might be established. I agree with the Government's view, which was given on that occasion by my noble friend Lord Caithness, that any new body should not detract from Ministers' responsibility to Parliament; and that the services will suffer and be less efficient if there are two separate authorities attempting to supervise them.

A committee of Privy Counsellors has been suggested. My view is that a conference of Privy Counsellors, as has been convened on a number of occasions, can be usefully set up to act for a particular purpose and with a limited duration. That is the way that such conferences have been used in the past. Some of your Lordships may know that I was involved in the establishment of the first of these Privy Counsellors' committees in 1955. It was called a Conference of Privy Counsellors. I was then, as a Foreign Office official, the private secretary to the Secretary of the Cabinet, who later became Lord Normanbrook.

If there is to be a new body with a role to play with the security service and British Intelligence, I believe that it should have a wider membership than Privy Counsellors who have occupied ministerial positions and served in Parliament. For example, it could contain a former senior official, or a judge or other eminent lawyer, and other people whose knowledge and wisdom of the world would enable them to contribute. The body would not be large, but I believe that the appointment should be something like four years at a time so that it would be normal for a member to serve for about eight years, or perhaps more.

It would be a comforting assurance to Parliament and the public that there was a body in existence available to consider the roles of the security service and British Intelligence. It would be consulted and would be able to give advice to Ministers and the directors-general. It would not be an executive body and would not replace Ministers as responsible to Parliament. Therefore it would meet the objections which were raised in the previous debate.

Is it worth creating such a body, given the necessary limitations? I believe that it may now be worth while, as much has happened over the past few years to produce an apparent conflict between secrecy and what the public and taxpayers should be entitled to expect to be done in their interests.

I have not mentioned the Peter Wright book and such matters, which were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins. I do not believe that we need discuss that subject today. Your Lordships will have noticed that I also have a Motion on the Order Paper, down for ballot, which concerns the recruitment process to the security service and British Intelligence and the case for a legally enforceable contract of silence to be entered into at the time of recruitment. However, I suggest that is a subject for another day, if one of us is fortunate enough in another ballot.

My intention has been to speak constructively on accountability and to suggest, if something needs to be done, the way in which I believe progress can be made.

My Lords, I should also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, for giving us an opportunity to discuss the security services. I also have great pleasure in following the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, with whose conclusions I find myself in general agreement. I think the subject is an interesting and important one because it strikes at the very heart of democratic politics. It raises in an acute form the doctrine of accountability, as has already been said, and it also raises in an acute form the rule of law.

Unless servants of the Crown are accountable and unless we know to whom they are accountable, we cannot tell when things go wrong (and you can be sure that with the absolute regularity of a metronome things will go wrong) and to whom responsibility should be assigned. The security services by definition fit extremely uneasily within the structure of democratic politics. Indeed, in the early days of the United States of America, the idea of having a secret service was a sign of original sin from which they were going to escape. But the fact of the matter is that as nation states live in a state of nature, as it used to be called, and engage in espionage, and because, as we know today, terrorism is widespread, in these circumstances counter-measures are essential and secrecy is unavoidable. Hence, disagreeable though it may be, in the world we know security services are essential and secrecy is essential to their operations.

This confronts democratic societies with the rather uncomfortable dilemma as to how you reconcile that kind of secrecy and those kinds of operations with accountability. This dilemma has become over the last few years a matter of controversy because of the series of incidents, allegations and revelations which have made people ask themselves whether the security services are properly controlled and properly accountable and if so, to whom. I need hardly list the incidents with which people are very familiar: the long running Hollis saga; the extraordinary story of the recruitment and continued employment of Bettaney; the revelations, true or false, of Wright; and, finally, more recently, the Stalker story. This succession of events has inevitably caused concern and has rightly worried people. They have asked themselves: who are the people employed in MI5 and MI6? To whom are they really accountable in practice? Do they regularly break the law? Are they politically motivated?

The answer given to some of these questions, in particular to the last question, the allegations that there were attempts to destabilise the Government when the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx was Prime Minister, was given in your Lordships' House on 6th May 1987. The noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw repeated a Statement made by the Prime Minister in another place. We were informed that a full inquiry into the allegations of an attempt to destabilise the Government when the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, was Prime Minister had been undertaken by the director general of the security services, who had found that there was no truth in the allegations; that the stories retailed were false; that all the security officers denied being involved in plans to undermine the Government. We were refused any fuller inquiry, despite the request made by the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition and my noble friend Lord Diamond.

At the same time we were asked to have the fullest confidence in the security services. My Lords, how could we? The air was full of smoke. How could we have full confidence in services which employed people like Mr. Bettaney, on the one hand and Mr. Peter Wright on the other hand? How could we believe that an inquiry into the activities of those services had been rigorous when the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, who was a victim or appeared to be a victim of dirty tricks, had never been involved nor questioned nor even approached? I may add that Mr. Cavendish's recent book confirms or supports both the destabilisation stories and the allegation that the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, was a victim of dirty tricks. So much, therefore, for the anxieties which people naturally felt in the light of these events and the extent to which they raised the question of accountability.

I now turn to the rule of law to which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, has referred. It has been alleged that the secret services had breached this on a number of occasions. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, has recently written:

"In English law, members of the security or secret services are as much subject to the laws of homicide, assault, perjury, conspiracy or even trespass as any other of Her Majesty's subjects."

That is a comforting and categorical statement. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, agrees with it.

On the other hand, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, has said, the Master of the Rolls, in a series of extraordinary interjections in a recent case, has put a totally contradictory opinion. He has said that the secret services were not obliged to follow the letter of the law and indeed it was inevitable that they would not; that in those circumstances it was all right to use the prerogative of power not to prosecute intelligence officers. Most extraordinary of all, he said that if there were a plan to assassinate the head of a friendly power, it would be against the public interest for this to be revealed. It makes one worry about the judiciary, let alone the secret services.

This leads one to the Stalker case. Who was responsible for stopping the Stalker inquiry? Was it the RUC or MI5 or somebody else? Who was responsible for charging him with offences of which he was subsequently cleared and which would, in a cruder form, be called framing him? Was it the RUC or MI5, or was it authorised by a Minister of the Crown? It seems to me that these are legitimate questions to which one should reasonably expect an answer. It was grossly unjust to accuse a man, if the motive for accusing him was just to stop an inquiry into unlawful behaviour. These worries cause disquiet; they call into question whether the democratic doctrines of accountability and the supremacy of the rule of law are being followed.

Hence we must ask why Her Majesty's Government have continued to refuse proposals made on 3rd December 1986 in another place for a committee of Privy Counsellors on the lines supported just now by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, from both Houses to oversee in some way or another. The noble Lord suggested some of the ways in which it might be done, and my noble friend Lord Jenkins of Hillhead elaborated rather further on this matter in another place. This proposal has had support from all parties, from Ministers, from people with experience of office. Of course, there are precedents in this country for committees of this sort and there are analogues in the United States, Canada and Germany for a committee performing precisely this function.

I wholly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, that this country has too many secrets and is obsessed with secrecy. This Government's passion for secrecy seems to be disproportionate. Their pursuit of Mr. Wright has made this country a laughingstock all over the world. A government keen on economy have spent over £2 million on this wild-goose chase, this self-defeating exercise. A government keen on law and order have stopped or have appeared to stop an inquiry into unlawful behaviour.

Inevitably, one must ask in these circumstances: quis custodiet custodes? The committee which has been proposed in another place, supported today by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, would provide some reassurance to those of us who are worried that the security services which are created to preserve democracy may be exceeding their role.

I should like to end by quoting from Rebecca West in her book The Meaning of Treason, in which she raises the dilemma with which we are concerned:

"If we do not keep before us the necessity for uniting care for security with determination to preserve our liberties we may lose our cause because we have fought too hard. Our task is equivalent to walking on a tightrope over an abyss".

My Lords, I feel that this is a subject where angels fear to tread; but in my 38 years as a diplomat I learned a lot about what goes on and I know a certain amount about the matter. There is a very awkward but fundamental reason why the secret services are more important now than they used to be. There are many more guerrilla organisations and terrorists than formerly which are far more sophisticated both in their internal structure (which is hard to penetrate) and in their extremely modern equipment. They also have unprecedented access to funds from abroad.

The army and the police by themselves cannot cope with the terrorist situation. I believe that without the secret intelligence services our whole liberal and democratic civilisation would be at risk. Not long ago the Prime Minister and the Government were nearly blown up in Brighton, and some Ministers suffered terribly. It is not good enough to bring the culprits to trial, although it is sufficiently remarkable that that was done. It is necessary to know in advance what is going to happen and to take preventive measures. That can be done only by superior intelligence involving many clever people and much money.

Whether we are talking about the IRA, the INLA, or Colonel Gaddafi's merry boys, all sorts of people are involved who are in touch with one another across the international spectrum. The people in Italy and Germany are often in close touch. I believe the Action Directe is also in touch with them. This is not something that the army and the police can deal with by themselves.

It is interesting to reflect that Mr. Begin and his guerrillas got us out of Palestine really by defeating us there. Subsequently, it is very strange that Mr. Begin, as Prime Minister, made the mistake of sending the Israeli Army into Lebanon where it came up against Arab guerrillas who knew just about as much as the Israelis did. When Mr. Begin discovered what he had done, he had a nervous breakdown and disappeared from public life, and the army ultimately had to be withdrawn. After our postwar defeat in Palestine it was not by chance that we sent our leading intelligence general, General Templer, to deal with the situation in Malaysia.

In Poland, where I served after the war, it was not the Soviet or Polish armies which destroyed the well-armed guerrillas who controlled the forests and large parts of Poland under the control of the Polish Government in London. It was the Polish secret police under the control and training of the Soviet secret police. They did a most effective and rather brutal job, which was a horrifying affair.

Let us look to see how it is today. The IRA, funded from America and Libya, are really as big a menace to Ireland as they are to this country. Some years ago the Basque movement, Eta, blew up the Spanish Prime Minister. In France the Action Directe is a real menace to the French body politic. In Germany and in Italy it is the same story. In Sweden Mr. Olof Palme, a real democrat for whom I had a great personal regard, was killed by an allegedly Kurdish organisation. He was without his bodyguard, which was very unwise. I do not know what degree of intelligence back-up the Swedish police had, but they never discovered who did it.

I maintain that our liberal and democratic civilisation, for which I have the deepest and most passionate regard, will be in real danger if it is not recognised that to face the modern threat of highly sophisticated terrorist guerrillas effective secret services are a vital adjunct to the police and armed services, and to the effective application of the law. I should particularly like to underline the latter point because the law is the foundation of the civilisation in which we are lucky to live. The secret services are also very important adjuncts to the other departments of government; but I shall not go further into that today.

That brings me to my next point. We have allowed our very essential secret services to be undermined by the media of all sorts and by the lure of financial gain from writing books. Spycatcher has been referred to today. The author was under an obligation not to reveal what he did, and it is really scandalous that he should have been able to do it. Unfortunately, the Government have not got away with stopping the book, and sooner or later we shall all have copies of it, just as my noble friend has. I do not know why previous books about the secret services escaped equal condemnation, apart from the fact that they were not written by former members of the secret services.

As the Middle East censorship authorities discovered during the war, there was not in Britain then and has never been any means of preventing the publication of a book as such, even if it is contrary to the national interest. But the more recent revelations by the media, especially by television, with names, pictures of institutions, persons and buildings, and details of incidents in the secret services have really been much more serious. This has been an inexcusable lapse of national discipline. The secret services must be secret if they are to be an effective protection for our liberal and democratic system, starting with our own democratically-elected Government. There must be better discipline effectively enforced. I am extremely glad that the Home Secretary, (once a member of the diplomatic service himself), is taking so seriously the need to reform the Official Secrets Acts. They are in desperate need of reform. We must have Acts which are sufficiently supported by the courts and by juries to be made effective.

On this background, what conclusion should one draw about the control of the secret services? I have several points to make. First, the need for real secrecy is the primary requirement. Otherwise, the IRA and others will discover what we are trying to do and will be much better able to conceal their own nefarious intentions. That means that only those who really need to know ought to be told. A slip of the tongue in those matters can easily cost the life of one of our agents. I say that to your Lordships quite seriously.

Secondly, whoever controls the secret services at the highest levels must be a person of real wisdom and impeccable common sense, with an unquestionable devotion to our libeal democracy and with real experience of public affairs. Thirdly, I think this clearly points to the tough and experienced characters who rise through Parliament—a splendid training ground if ever there was one—to be Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary. They should clearly consult the Prime Minister and keep him or her informed. Obviously the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland must be kept informed, as must the Secretary of the Cabinet.

However, if we want the system to be watertight —and it must be that—then only those who must know should be currently in the picture. I know how awkward that can be. However, we must be aware of even distinguished gentlemen who confide in one another in the bar. Many very sophisticated listening and recording devices that only the secret services used to use are now on sale in London. They are even beginning to get into the commercial community.

I cannot go as far as my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy, for whose wisdom I have a great and long-standing admiration. I do not believe that an extra advisory body would be sufficiently reliable and secure. It is not that I distrust the reliability of the people. However, the media is so frightfully clever at questioning one person after another and setting off what is innocently said by one against what is innocently said by another. Almost any secret can be winkled out in that manner.

To sum up, if Parliament really does not trust the Government to run the system properly in that way, then it should get a new and better government. I believe that our present Government are eminently suitable and trustworthy to handle the secret services. However, a new official secrets Act is urgently needed. It should be rigidly enforced in the courts.

My Lords, tension between the executive and the legislature is an essential part of the history of democratic advance. However, we are living in a new age in which the authority of the executive itself is under threat. Two former Prime Ministers—my noble friend Lord Wilson and the right honourable Mr. Heath—have testified to that fact. Furthermore, a former Lord Chancellor, my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner, stated that he:

"thought it more likely than not that MI5 was bugging the telephones in my office."

He further stated that when he had confidential discussions with the Attorney-General, they went out in his car, where his chauffeur had made sure that they could not be bugged.

That is a threat to the authority of the executive and the legislature, as well as to the authority of our democratic system. It suggests that there is the danger of a Fifth Estate being established in this country—the estate of the secret services. That is a national rather than a party issue, although I must say that libertarianism has usually been supported by those on the left of the political spectrum and authoritarianism supported by those on the right. That is still the case.

It is our task as a Parliament—a task which has now become urgent, as my noble friend Lord Jenkins has aptly and amply demonstrated in his speech —that we must define by consensus where the line is to be drawn. The line must be clear between national security and the freedom of information which is essential to a democratic society. That freedom must be based on the accountability of every institution in the state.

There has been an increasing tendency towards what my noble friend Lord Jenkins mentioned in his opening speech. He said:

"the intelligence community has acquired the status of an unmentionable taboo exempt from any process of rational public or parliamentary debate".

It was as recently as 1963 that Mr. Macmillan, as he then was, stated to the Commons after the defection of Philby:

"It is dangerous and bad for our general national interest to discuss these matters."

That taboo, which dates from the 1920s when Austen Chamberlain was Foreign Secretary, is still with us. It has been evident time after time during the lifetime of the present Government.

It has been only two or three weeks since the issue was raised in another place. It was raised by a Conservative Member of Parliament, the honourable Richard Shepherd. Cross-party concern over the issue was shown by the fact that when the Bill was debated in the Commons, around 100 Conservative Members either abstained or voted for the Bill, despite the fact that the Government had imposed a three-line Whip. A government which imposes a three-line Whip on an issue of that kind apparently does not believe in consensus.

When we note that in that debate a former Prime Minister—the right honourable Edward Heath—and a number of former or present Cabinet Ministers—the right honourable Members Sir Ian Gilmour, Merlyn Rees, David Owen and Roy Hattersley—all supported the Bill, we have a very clear sign that the Government are opposed to any attack on the secrecy which has disturbed large sections of our nation.

Following the debate on the Bill, Mr. Shepherd and his supporters wrote to the Prime Minister. They stated:

"We therefore request that before publishing proposals in the form of a White Paper"—

which had been promised during the debate—

"the Home Secretary should engage in discussions with representatives of other parties in an endeavour to arrive at agreed structures to replace Section 2 so that these discussions might proceed with the declared support and goodwill of government and opposition".

That proposal was rejected. Why? Do we not want and need a consensus over a matter of such grave national importance and concern?

Mr. Justice Scott said in a recent verdict:

"we can never enjoin anybody to a life-long duty of confidentiality … we are asking them, when confronted with something that goes to the very heart of our democratic processes, which talks to us about the form of our democracy, that they should in no circumstances reveal such information. I hold that to be a dangerous proposition".

So do I, my Lords. One has only to think of the Tisdall case, the Ponting trial and the Wright and Cavendish books to see that that legal judgment has a clear political repercussion.

In the Franks Report it was stated:

that too often the Official Secrets Act was used to protect not the interests of the State or the country but to protect the political interests of the Government of the day".

Again I refer back to the Ponting case, and to the Tisdall case.

There are certain practical consequences of this deep, profound and widespread tendency towards secrecy in government and the protection of those who are acting in secret. I shall give three instances. Firstly, we have all criticised the secrecy of the Soviet Union over the Chernobyl disaster, but let us not forget that there was also secrecy over the Windscale disaster of 30 years ago and that that secrecy was exposed only after the 30-year rule had expired. That is the kind of practical consequence of the application of secrecy in government.

My second example is the recent leak of the government document which described as "dangerous" the proposals on flammable foam-filled furniture. That affects the daily life of our people. It was partly because of the leak of that report that the Government were forced to announce a ban on the highly flammable foams which they had intended to leave on the market. The leaked document, which was a memorandum from the Crown Suppliers, criticised the plans of the Minister, Mr. Maude, to phase out a highly flammable foam over a three-year period, replacing it with a foam which was almost as dangerous.

That was a leak; it was a breach of confidentiality. If it had not happened the lives of many people would have been in danger. If it had happened in Australia, Canada, New Zealand or in the United States, where there is freedom of information legislation, the document involved would have been available to the public. It should be available in this country. I am glad that there are public servants who put their moral responsibilities before their political allegiance.

My third example relates to the dangers that accumulated before the war, when government security was neglected and the intelligence services run down. The threat was to national security as a whole because those intelligence services were quite deliberately withholding information on many of the aspects of the threat posed by Nazi Germany to this country and the whole of Western Europe. We know now that during that period there was a very deep-seated conspiracy to persuade the people of this country that Nazi Germany was not as bad as it appeared to be, was really a friend of the West and should be supported against the Soviet Union

I suggest that that is a danger which is present today in the new international atmosphere. It is a danger to the prospects of peace and understanding between East and West which we have all welcomed but which can be sabotaged by the same forces which were working before the war to sabotage those of us who were opposed to Nazism.

I am glad to know that the public is now beginning actively to take note of those dangers and that a campaign for freedom of information has already been established to mobilise a coalition of organisations and of individuals to oppose any restrictive secrecy legislation that it is proposed should be introduced later this year. It is not enough for the Government to say, as they did in the Shepherd debate, "wait and see; give us a blank sheet to draw anything on". After all those revelations the Government have a responsibility to Parliament and to the people of this country to reveal what considerations they are discussing in preparation for the White Paper to be issued in the summer and for probable future legislation. That is a matter which concerns the whole of the country; it is a matter which both Parliament and people have a right to engage in now. I hope that the noble Earl who will wind up this debate will be able to say something more specific than did his friend in another place at the end of the Shepherd debate.

My Lords, I think that we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, for raising this subject today. A year ago he was disappointed by an apparent inflexibility of response. Who knows? He may find himself less disappointed on this occasion.

I propose to take up not more than a few moments of your Lordships' time this afternoon to make just one point. It is really a question. In this groundswell of disclosure, who is it who actually benefits? Who would benefit by the creation of an extra mechanism of accountability?

When I saw that this debate had come up for an airing a year after the noble Lord had first raised the subject in this House—with wording which is virtually unchanged—I was curious to know what new arguments we should hear. In the year that has elapsed a lot of column inches have been devoted to the idea of accountability. The Government's emissaries have looked less than magisterial as they have been reported bolting empty stables all over the place. The voices calling for an oversight body have now become almost a clamour.

In my view, nothing has changed from a year ago. Politicians in opposition use accountability as a fine word to goad their opponents. They say that a society's freedom is measured by the openness of its machines of state. They say: "Look at the Americans; look at the Senate Intelligence Committee". Well, we have looked and so have the Americans, and openness does not work. In passing, I should mention that the most consistent feature of Left-wing political systems is a consuming passion for secrecy.

That is what I thought and said a year ago. I pointed out that the oath of secrecy is not some negotiable condition in an employment contract. It is willingly taken, binding and permanent. I remarked that discretion had become mixed up in people's minds with conspiracy. I said then that nowhere did we find an able and cogent case for a permanent programme of accountability. It is not found in the American example, not in the Franks' remodelling of the JIC, not in the Canadian nor the French model, and not in any of our NATO partners. In the past year we have had numerous suggestions for an oversight body consisting perhaps of Privy Councillors from all parties and both Houses; or it might be a panel of judges, (which I favour); or even a committee of three or four individuals drawn from outside Parliament and the law. As it is, we shall have the appointment of a security services ombudsman and that has been broadly welcomed.

Returning to the core issue of accountability, surely there is a break in the logic. As I understand it—and my understanding is strictly that of an outsider in these matters—the purpose of the intelligence forces is to gather information using covert means. They have no purpose if it is not that. In order to function, an organisation having such a horizon would need to operate on two timescales, so to speak: that of its ongoing broad objective, and that of the short-term enclosed operation. Which of those would an accountability machine be in a position to monitor?

The ongoing strategy is established by allowing the existence at all of the services, voting them a budget and allowing them access to the Royal Prerogative. I suggest that the short-term operations could hardly be cleared by a committee. As it is, the reporting structure for prior approval is absolutely clear and has been mentioned in the House this afternoon. It entails the Home Secretary, the Foreign Secretary, the appropriate Permanent Under-Secretaries in person and the Prime Minister.

To return to my main point, if not my only one: who benefits from creating a new body of accountability? I suggest that it would do real harm to the people who are serving today in the intelligence community. I am sure that the threat that sometime in the future, perhaps immediately, an operation would have to be scrutinised by people other than professionals would be deeply damaging to effectiveness, morale and recruitment. Our security professionals face the same threat as do we all; namely, a Soviet state apparatus of great age and great sophistication. However brisk and refreshing are the changes at the top—and we welcome them—subversion and secret dealing are built into the constitutional fabric of communist political ideology. Each step away from tyranny is an inch toward an ethical framework with which we in the West can identify. But let nobody be in any doubt about the deepest drives embedded in that ideology: they are conquest.

Our intelligence services and the men and women who work in them are there to gather and assess information. Their mission is to predict intention and present their findings to their political masters. Their mission is not to decide policy, and I submit that it never has been. I hope that it never will be. They must be left alone to do their work. There is accountability enough.

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins. Even though I do not follow him in all his surmises, I think that he has performed a real service in opening out this question. I am bound to say to him that I do not believe that Mr. Wright's book, Spycatcher, is a very good source for the truth. Of course it was not written by Mr. Wright but by a Mr. Greengrass, who embroidered a manuscript of Mr. Wright and did so for one purpose only, which was to obtain the maximum sales. It was not written in order to tell the truth and is a fine line in fiction.

Leaving that matter on one side, I should like to mention just one or two points that were raised by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney. The reason why there must be further surveillance, he said, was that at one time the security services had contemplated the assassination of a head of state. According to the best reports, it was the Prime Minister of the day who asked whether that could not be done and in fact it was the secret intelligence service which declined to do so. Indeed, the succeeding head of the secret intelligence service laid it down as a maxim that assassination was not part of the duties of any officer in the service. I am sure that your Lordships will think he was right, though I am bound to say that I personally regret that it prevented a certain just fate overtaking Philby, who sent so many British agents to their death.

I turn next to the noble Lord's reference to Wright "bugging and burgling his way across London". One of the points that was made by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, was that there should be a specific authority for any action of that kind. Am I not right in thinking that if MI5 wants to bug a telephone it has to obtain the express permission of the Home Secretary? Is it not the case that every so often a list of those people whose telephone conversations are being intercepted is laid before the Home Secretary?

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, mentioned destabilisation of a government. That is a story that even Mr. Wright did not believe was true, although he mentioned it as a rumour. Can one really believe that 30 officers of MI5 were engaged in such a plot and that it was unknown in Whitehall, unknown to the Permanent Secretary and even unknown to the Director General of MI5? Really! Credulity can go no further.

I do not think that there is widespread concern in the general public about the security services but there is some concern in what are usually called "informed circles". I should like to suggest two improvements. First of all, I ask the Government whether we cannot move from the age of John Buchan into the age of John Le Carré. Those who read John Buchan will remember that the head of the secret service was an enigmatic, patrician figure, who was known only to a few members of the inner circle who ruled the country. He was known as "C". He signed all documents in green ink. That prototype of the chief of the secret intelligence service has vanished today. As Mr. Le Carŕe tells us, the names of heads of the security and intelligence services are known to the KGB and the CIA; they are also now known to a large number of informed people in this country and have even begun to be mentioned in the press. I suggest that it would be of value if the heads of the services were publicly named.

I think that there would be certain advantages, the first being that the Secretary of the Cabinet would not have to be sent to Australia to give evidence about matters of which he could not have had first-hand knowledge and could not be put in the position of having to decline to admit that he even knew of the existence of a body such as MI6. Another advantage would be that the heads of the services could if necessary speak for any of their members who were attacked in public. One of the most odious spectacles in the Spycatcher case was the sight of as distinguished and patriotic a Member as any in your Lordships' House being slandered and traduced by a Member of another place who made the allegation that the noble Lord was a Soviet spy.

It is all very well for the Home Secretary to say on radio that confidentiality by and about members of the security services should extend to the grave. No member of the services should feel that his reputation cannot be defended by his chief and the head of the service. To give this responsibility to the heads of the services is only to fall in line with the normal responsibility that the executive arm of the Government always possesses.

Secondly, like the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, I have come to the conclusion that it would be of service to the nation if a body of some kind were to be set up. I have an open mind as to whether it should consist of three privy counsellors or whether it should contain a member of the judiciary, but I think that it should be a very small body appointed by the Prime Minister and from nominations made by the heads of the political parties. I think that it would be of service if there were such a body to question the three services from time to time about their activities.

It may be objected of course that we already have the Security Commission, but I think I am right in believing that the commission meets only if some scandal has occurred. A body of the kind that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, mentioned exists in the United States, although there it is much larger and it can be very time-consuming if busybodies get on to the committee. But a body of three or four people would be very different. It would have the effect of legitimising the services more clearly in the public mind and if there were any wild men operating indiscreetly a little gentle probing by such a body would reveal what they were up to.

I realise that any such suggestion will be opposed probably by the Government and certainly by the Civil Service, who will follow the line—I accept that it is an extremely powerful line—put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Birdwood, that we already have ministries, civil servants and the Home Secretary for MI5 and the Prime Minister for the secret intelligence services. They are the Ministers responsible and they and no one else can exercise surveillance. The trouble is that Ministers and civil servants have many pressing day-to-day matters on their hands. I wonder whether anyone really believes that the Prime Minister exerts a strict surveillance of the affairs of the secret intelligence service or that the Home Secretary can spare a great deal of time for what is actually being done by MI5.

I am not one of those who want the services to be what is called "more open". What on earth is the point of a secret service if it is not secret? The admirable speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, put more clearly than anyone in the Chamber has put so far the reasons why the services have to be secret. I sometimes wonder whether those who attack the services and declare that they are out of control have got in mind the activities of some of the Middle Eastern intelligence services operating in this country. Their agents assassinate their own citizens here in London. Would these critics not be the first to complain if there were no surveillance of the agents of those countries?

Although I do not think that his speech had much to do with the surveillance of the security services, the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, suggested that the security services were part of some anti-Soviet conspiracy. Soviet agents naturally come under surveillance in this country, but it is not they who are at the moment threatening the stability of this country. Our greatest difficulties come from the guerrilla organisations such as the IRA to which the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, referred.

I have no sympathy at all with journalists like Mr. Duncan Campbell, who regard it as good fun to try to circumvent the very proper security that surrounds the activities of these services. There is this point to bear in mind. We rely more and more on the press for uncovering irregularities in our institutions. If the security services are, as I believe they should be, an area in which the press cannot operate as it normally does, then there is a case for a quasi-public body to conduct the surveillance of the services, and that case seems to me to be strong.

My Lords, I apologise for putting my name down too late: I had to put it on the list of speakers after the printing had been done. I shall take only a few minutes of your Lordships' time.

When I was Shadow Defence Minister in the other place many years ago, my opposite number, whose name was Godber, was a very nice man and we became good friends. I remember talking to him once and saying when we were having lunch, "If you were captured by the Russians and given a truth drug that took your will away so that you had no alternative but to answer anything that you were asked, can you think of anything that you could tell the Russians that would be any good to them?". He thought for a minute and said, "Yes, I can think of one thing that might save their research department anything up to a fortnight." It was the level of secrets. I am sure that the Secretary of State for War would have agreed that security consists of two things, defending our secrets and finding out the other chap's.

Do we really have any secrets that matter? I very much doubt it. I heard the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, express anxiety about having his telephone bugged. Anybody may bug mine—I should not care in the least. Perhaps it is just a badge of senility, but it is a very long time since I have had a secret from anybody. I feel that this is a highly priggish point of view, but that the Government's innocence assures most of us that there are not any guilty secrets, certainly none which require protection at the level of expense that is being given.

That is the defensive side. There is the aggressive side. That, in a terrorist and criminal world is highly important. We want to improve our capacity to find out the other chap's secrets. A chap who is going to rob a bank has a secret that Her Majesty's Government want to know and have every business to know. The most valuable members of our secret service are probably the dishonourable company of the grasses and the narks. You want to infiltrate the criminals and you want equally to infiltrate the terrorists. One cannot pretend that those who have many guilty secrets pointed at us are friends.

I was a little alarmed to hear that we would give an assurance that our agents would never kill. There are circumstances in whch they ought to kill. You cannot live in the same world as Libya and say that only our side shall be killed. I hope that the noble Earl when he replies will deal with that attitude. We are in a very tough, terrorist world at present and the job of our secret services is to fight back.

My Lords, I rise to make one point only. Forty years ago when I was a very junior officer in one of the secret services and, for the first time, the names of the heads of those services, their addresses and telephone numbers and so on began to be published, I suggested that it might be a good idea if each service was divided into two parts, one which was visible to the public consisting of two or three people with good manners and a nice bottle of sherry in the front office who were accessible only on confidential terms; the rest being the operational side which remained totally unknown to everybody. It seemed to me that that was the safest way to save the bacon of those services from undue publicity at that time. The proposal was turned down for the very interesting reason that the senior officers did not think that they could find anybody to undertake the very boring job of being in the front office with the sherry!

Later in life I hoped that perhaps something like that was happening, but it is now pitifully clear that it never did and the amount of press floodlight and publications floodlight that is thrown on all the operations is quite paradoxical and negates the whole purpose of the services' existence, as the noble Lord, Lord Birdwood, has been saying in other words.

Those who call for greater public knowledge of the secret services are asking for a nonsense. They have only to look at the CIA, most of whose operations are known within a week or two and all of them, I think it is true to say, are known within four to five years now and to consider whether the CIA is really an asset to the national policy of the United States or, on the other hand, a burden round its neck.

I fear that the dilemma will continue as long as the existence of nation states in the condition of total independence and total sovereignty is held to require the existence of secret services of one kind or another. I do not honestly see that a small group of Privy Counsellors, which is an idea put forward by many wiser persons than me, has great merit. What is the difference between a Privy Counsellor and the rest of us? A Privy Counsellor is very experienced in politics, but many other people of course are experienced in other walks of life which would be just as relevant to the job in question.

A Privy Counsellor has taken a great oath which the rest of us have not taken, but the Privy Counsellor's oath contains nothing about secrecy. It is in no way comparable in that respect to the Official Secrets Act declaration that one takes. A Privy Counsellor is special in that he is an experienced person who has never done anything wrong, as far as is known. There is another paradox there, because if the heads of MI5 and MI6 are not also experienced persons who have never done anything wrong, then they ought to be. Merely to make the comparison is to suggest an unspoken criticism of those Ministers, the troika—the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary—who have been responsible for making these appointments over the years.

I do not believe that there is a way forward except an increasing secrecy surrounding the work of these services, which I believe would be a help everywhere, and possibly some internal reform in the mechanisms by which the troika of Ministers exert their control. I do not know enough about that to know what that should be, but one can think of any number of different plans.

Lastly, I also urge that whatever is set up should not simply be a body which sits there like the Security Commission and waits for something to go wrong or for somebody to bring it a complaint from whichever side of the interface—from inside the secret services, or from Parliament or public—but should be a strengthening of the flow of information between the three Ministers whose job it is and the secret services themselves. There are quite a number of structural devices that one could think of to achieve that which would not involve any formal change in the structure.

My Lords, a year ago I had the privilege to wind up for the official Opposition in the debate that was then initiated by my noble friend Lord Jenkins of Putney on the self same issue of secret services and their accountability. I thanked him then for bringing a matter of national importance before your Lordships' House and I thank him once again for doing so.

It was an interesting debate. There was one participant, as your Lordships may remember, Lord Dacre who spoke with the unusual experience of having served both in MI5 and MI6. His speech, which I remember was couched in the most beautiful literary English, contained a phrase that one would not have anticipated from his own experience in MI5 and MI6, as a faithful and useful member of those services. This is what he said, referring to the damage that had been done to the security services at that time:

"The root cause of the damage is, I believe, a lack of control, both external and internal, a lack of consistent policy and excessive secrecy.",

After a sentence which is not relevant he went on to say:

"The services need control not only to ensure discipline, but also for their own protection—protection especially from themselves". —[Official Report, 17/12/1986: col. 178.]

One starts off with at least one experienced Member of your Lordships' House who has served in MI5 and MI6, who felt that greater accountability, greater control and greater discipline were necessary. I hope that your Lordships are merely concerned with that issue and that issue alone this afternoon and how we can best deal with accountability and responsibility. I say that for a very definite reason. It is my belief—which I understand is shared by my noble friends and I hope by many in all parts of the House—that in matters of security and national defence we ought to have as much of a bipartisan policy as we possibly can. About that I do not have the slightest doubt.

When matters of principle occur which come between opinions which are honestly held, obviously one adheres to the principles. My party believes that we should have a freedom of information Act. When such a Bill comes before Parliament when my party takes power (as I hope it will in the near future) it will be debated in Parliament. I have an idea that there will be considerable consensus of opinion in regard to what should be freedom of information. But there is bound to be an area where we all ought to agree that the security of our country depends upon the adequacy of a proper security service and a proper intelligence service. We are dealing with the matters, as I assume, that would come outside any freedom of information legislation.

At present, as we very well know, we have covered one aspect—the aspect of complaints within the service, which could not properly be voiced. We were told only a few months ago that an internal ombudsman had been appointed to deal with those complaints. That was a very serious issue because there did not appear to be a way in which, unless somebody went to the media, that person was able properly to explain a material point of view that something was going wrong inside the service.

I ask the noble Earl when he replies to this very useful debate—although I appreciate that the ombudsman has been appointed only since the autumn of last year—whether there have been any complaints? How many have there been? One obviously does not expect to know their nature. Has it been made abundantly clear to the members of both services that the procedure for going to the internal ombudsman is an easy process that does not inflict any sort of penalty upon the member of the security staff involved? I believe that your Lordships will probably be interested in hearing the reply to those questions.

What is it that affects the public? I believe that the noble Lord who said that at the moment the public are not particularly perturbed about all apsects of the security service was absolutely right. My own impression is that in the main the public are concerned about two issues. The first concern is that people should be allowed to earn a great deal of money from breaching the confidentiality of the promise which they made when they became servants of the security services. It is not the breach of confidentiality which causes concern—that is bad enough. It is seeing people gather in fortunes, helped by government legislation which, more than anything else, seems to publicise the product of the author's literary efforts. There is deep concern that people should be allowed to make money from that kind of thing.

Secondly, in the past there appeared to be breaches within the confidentiality of the services which appeared to be very worrying. Gratefully, we have not recently heard about such circumstances. In addition, there were among the membership of the security services people who were playing a most treacherous game. We have heard nothing about that aspect recently, and it is a good thing.

As has been mentioned in the debate, I believe that there will be concern about the pronouncement of the Master of the Rolls. I do not like the idea of castigating a new Member of your Lordships' House in his absence. I merely register the fact, which I put in respectful language, that I believe that what he has said needs a great deal of explanation, amplification and possible debate as to whether our law is in such a state that there are people who are permitted to commit crimes and who are outside the law. That does not appear to be right, especially if they happen to be in governmental employ.

I turn to what I believe to be of interest to your Lordships in the debate. Is there lack of control and supervision, as the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, thought when he contributed to your Lordships' debate a year ago? If there is a lack of control and accountability, is there a way of improving it? It was said a year ago, and it was said in this debate, that in regard to MI5 the Home Secretary is in charge, in regard to MI6 the Foreign Secretary is in charge; and over all there is the Prime Minister if needed.

On the last occasion a statement that seemed to make an impression on your Lordships—I believe that it has been repeated in this debate—was that the burdens upon the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary are such that it cannot be pretended that they personally would be properly able to supervise the security services in the way that we have in mind? It was also said that however one may wish to think in terms of a degree of permanency, one knows very well that those holding political positions can change jobs in a short space of time. Given that, is there the continuity of supervision that there should be on a policy level?

At that time the suggestion of Privy Counsellors was put forward to your Lordships. It has been put Toward again today. The objection to Privy Counsellors—not heard this afternoon but mentioned on a previous occasion—is that Privy Counsellors, sitting as they do and as they ought (as we see this afternoon), in privileged places both in your Lordships' House and in another place are not at the time Ministers of the Crown. It was thought to be somewhat unacceptable to have a committee consisting of Members of Parliament other than Ministers dictating to ministers their responsibility as a result of their supervision of the security services. I proffer no opinion. My parliamentary experience does not entitle me to express any opinion in the presence of Members of your Lordships' House who have grown old in the country's service in both Houses of Parliament.

I should like to repeat what I said on the last occasion. It would appear to me that there is some merit in taking hold of an existing organisation which has the respect of the nation; that is the Security Commission. I believe it was said by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, during the last debate that the answer given from the Government Benches to that suggestion was that the Security Commission was outside Parliament. And being outside Parliament, it was not an acceptable body for this purpose. I ask the noble Lord most deferentially to look at the answer given on that occasion to my suggestion by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. It was a different one——

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. We have a little time to spare due to the restraint of earlier speakers. I should like to avoid any misunderstanding and point out that it was not I who said what the noble Lord has quoted. In my speech today I recommended a body similar to the Security Commission. It might contain two or three Privy Counsellors but it would also have other people. I was secretary of the first Privy Counsellors' Committee in 1955. It has always been used for specific subjects, for a limited time and for a limited purpose. I believe that to be its place. However, I agree that a body similar to the Security Commission, but not necessarily that, is appropriate.

My Lords, I am grateful. If I misunderstood the noble Lord, I apologise. I thought that he was quoting an objection from the Government, not necessarily his own, but it may have been that of another noble Lord. The answer to the suggestion made on the last occasion was on a different line. It was that this was an ad hoc body; it was meant to deal with specific matters; and it was not the kind of continuing body necessary for this purpose. I see no reason why it should not be made a continuing body. It contains some distinguished people. I imagine that when their turn comes to cease membership of the Security Commission, equally distinguished people in public life will be appointed in their place. As the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, has said, to add to that body would make it one which would be competent to deal with matters that we have in mind in this debate.

I should like to conclude by saying, first, that nothing—and I repeat "nothing"—should be said which would in any way interfere with the morale, the dignity, or the nation's appreciation of members of the security service. They carry out an extremely brave job for the nation. As in all walks of life, the fact that some do not do credit to the majority is in no way a matter which entitles anybody to cast a slur upon those services. I do not do so at all from these Benches.

I should like to say, based on all the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, that security services need supervision in the public interest and in their own interest. Somehow the Government must find an appropriate way of dealing with the matter. What takes place at the moment is not sufficient. I believe that all noble Lords will listen with interest to the reply of the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers.

My Lords, I should like to start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, for tabling this subject for debate today. Having said that, I turn to almost the last thing that was said by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, when he said that he felt that nothing should be said which would interfere with the dignity, morale and stature of the security services which we all admire and respect so much. I wholeheartedly endorse that and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, is absolutely right.

This has been an opportunity to have a discussion about the security services, the way in which they are controlled and so forth. It is interesting that throughout your Lordships' views there has been the desire to have more openness, which is a perfectly natural desire, and yet there exists a dilemma as to how far that should go.

The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, said in his opening speech that the Government are obsessed with secrets and secrecy. I think that that view was also reflected by the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter. I believe that one must start from the premise that there are secrets, that there are bound to be secrets and that some matters will always have to remain secret. I do not believe that any reasonable person would dispute that. The question is where one draws the curtain. What must remain secret and what can be divulged? New techniques and new technologies are sophisticated to such a degree that they confuse the whole area and make the problem of secrecy and non-secrecy even more complicated and diffuse.

The starting point for any discussion must be to acknowledge the vital task that the security and intelligence services perform, on behalf of all of us, in defence of national security. The security and intelligence services play a vital part in protecting the state against external and internal dangers. The threat of espionage from the Soviet bloc is undiminished. Noble Lords and the public have in the past expressed great concern—quite rightly—when our defences have been penetrated by hostile intelligence services. It is a vital function of the security service to build and to maintain our defences against this threat.

There is always a threat to departments of state and our parliamentary democracy from subversion from the far left and the far right. Of particular concern to everyone in this country has been the threat from terrorists who have brought death and misery to our streets. For reasons with which your Lordships are all too familiar, I do not propose to go into details of the work of the security service in these areas.

I hope that noble Lords who are critical of the present arrangements will pause to join me in recognising the crucial part which these services play in defending the nation. Their staff undertake difficult and often highly dangerous work at no small risk to their own safety. When politicians criticise them, these people are unable to answer back. That was a point which the noble Lord, Lord Annan, drew to our attention. He said that he felt people ought to be more known so that they could answer back on behalf of those who are junior to them. It has always been the policy of successive governments that the names of people who run the service should not be known because that compromises the difficulties down the line and in fact creates more problems than it solves. I hope your Lordships' will agree that we should condemn those who decry the work of these services, which can benefit only those who seek to undermine and destroy our society.

It forms no part of the Government's case to suggest that the security and intelligence services should be free from control and should be unaccountable. However, it is axiomatic that their operations, their work and their personnel, along with other matters, must remain secret if they are to be effective. It is idle to suggest otherwise. Indeed, I would go further and say that because it is so obvious, it needs to be re-stated.

It is impossible to conduct any effective counterespionage operation, if the veil of secrecy is lifted. Details, which can appear harmless to those who are well-intentioned, can be—and are—valuable to our enemies, be they hostile intelligence services or terrorist groups. Open government is fine but divulging secrets even inadvertently, is not. The noble Lord, Lord Hankey, referred to this. The noble Lord, Lord Annan, also stressed the need for secrecy and the importance of it. One cannot get away from the fact that even small items of information in themselves may be innocuous but when put together by the professional can open up a whole series of possibilities about which the person who had divulged the original secret would not know.

The work of the security services is like a jigsaw: a piece of information about it can appear meaningless when taken in isolation, but for individuals or groups, who are specialists and can put the information together, it can be invaluable. This is why, like successive governments, we believe that the details of the security and intelligence services, which are known to current or former members of those services must be kept confidential. This is the principle which we have been seeking to protect in the courts.

Like all other people who previously occupied this position, your Lordships would not expect me to divulge any of these particular questions which have been so much at the forefront of our minds. However, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, tried to lampoon the Government over the Spycatcher book, as did the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, that Mr. Wright, like all present and former members of the security service, owes a lifelong duty of confidentiality to the Crown, without which there could be no effective security service. I am aware that there have been judgments given in the Court of Appeal today to which your Lordships would not expect me to refer.

The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, referred to Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act, as did my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy and the noble Lord, Lord Hankey. The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, was not quite so lightfooted in his remarks about Mr. Shepherd's Bill which went through in another place. He went in with all burners firing. He said that the Government did not believe in consensus and was openly opposed to attack on secrecy. What the noble Lord said is not really accurate. The Government recognise that the Official Secrets Act needs to be updated, and secrecy is at the heart of government. When a Bill is produced, amendments are bound to be made and put forward in the course of its parliamentary passage, and the Government are obliged to respond. How can the Government respond constructively when their views are not yet clear? The Government are considering all the issues in this very complex, highly sensitive and extremely important area. We have always recognised that the Official Secrets Act needs to be updated but my right honourable friend the Home Secretary said that when the Government's thoughts are clearer, a White Paper will be introduced which will then be open for public debate.

No doubt it will be debated in the Houses of Parliament, though that is a question for the usual channels.

As a result of this discourse about the White Paper, when a Bill is produced it will go through parliament and it will be subjected to parliamentary approval, amendment and discussion. I fail to see how anyone with even a limited desire to be fair could say that it is the explicit intention of the Government to be opposed to an attack on secrecy. We intend to reform the Official Secrets Act, but that is the reason why we have acted in the way that we have. When your Lordships consider that, you will see that it is a perfectly reasonable attitude to take.

My Lords, my point was that because this is a national non-party issue surely it would be far better, while the Government are considering their own views and before the White Paper is produced, for them to consider the views right across the political spectrum and outside the political spectrum so that the White Paper can at least approach consensus. That is what the noble Earl's honourable friend in another place asked for after his debate and it was refused.

My Lords, I do not want to go too far down that particular line of thought. I have explained at some length why the Government took the action that they did. The reason is because the Government intend to produce a White Paper when their own views are known which can then have the full panoply of discussion which the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, is so anxious to see.

None of this will affect the central point for the purposes of today's debate, which is that secrecy is crucial if security service work is to be organised and is to be effectual. The need for secrecy blurs the arguments over accountability; but the need for secrecy does not imply nor invite a lack of control over the security and intelligence services. The question as we see it is over what are the best mechanisms for control and accountability which are compatible with effective security.

I make no apology for setting out in some detail the present arrangements for the accountability of the security services. As some of your Lordships will know, the security service operates within a framework laid down by Ministers. They are of long standing and have been applied under successive governments. Your Lordships will be aware of the directive issued to the Director General of the service in 1952 by the then Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, and which was published in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Denning, on the Profumo affair in 1963.

The directive gave the security service a clear remit and made it crystal clear that the Director General is not to regard himself or the service as beyond control. The directive, which still applies today, makes the Director General personally responsible to the Home Secretary for the proper and efficient implementation of the tasks which are given to the service. At the same time the Director General is entitled to have access directly to the Prime Minister on appropriate occasions.

The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, suggested, as did the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter (and the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, referred to it) that some members of the security service may have immunity from the operation of the criminal law because they could be said to be working in pursuance of the Royal prerogative powers. The point of concern was that the noble and learned Lord the Master of the Rolls had made some observations. At no time have the Government asserted that any of the alleged actions concerning security operations could lawfully be done under the prerogative when they would otherwise he criminal offences.

The noble Lord, Lord Paget, said that he would like to see the Government being tougher with terrorists. I entirely agree that we ought to be tough with terrorists; but it is the job of the police to catch them and for the courts to sentence them. The security service is there to collect intelligence and not to take that action.

My Lords, will the noble Earl permit me? What is the position when we catch them abroad? When terrorists are operating abroad we have to go and find them.

My Lords, that is an operational matter and I do not propose to be drawn down the line of what we do and how we operate the security services of the country.

I return to the subject of real accountability and control of the security services. It may be helpful if I explain how this process, which is described in the directive, works. When issues arise—for example, about the priorities of the security service—the Director General looks to the Home Secretary for guidance. That does not mean that the Home Secretary is drawn into the particular operations. The rule is that the security service should be kept absolutely free from any political bias or influence.

I want to make it quite clear that the security service is not engaged in collecting information for the party political purposes of the government of the day, whatever that government may be, but in order to protect the country against dangers, both external and internal. Therefore, it is no business of the Home Secretary to become involved in particular operational matters. Those are rightly for the Director General; though the Secretary of State does play a part, by long tradition, in the authorisation of interception of communications.

Putting the operational details aside, on key issues which affect the setting of objectives and the performance of the security service, the service is in practice accountable to the Home Secretary and, through him, to the Prime Minister. In line with those arrangements, perhaps I may assure your Lordships that the Home Secretary is well-informed about the work of the service, its priorities, how it is deploying its resources, and about the overall effectiveness and efficiency of its operations. The Home Secretary receives reports, he asks questions and from time to time he visits the service and meets the Director General for wide-ranging discussions about the direction in which the service is going. Your Lordships will understand that the Prime Minister, too, plays an important personal part in the arrangements for control and accountability.

Therefore, I suggest that the question which arises is not whether there should be control and accountability of the security service but whether the present arrangements are proper and adequate, and whether they could be or should be improved upon. This debate has shown, again, that some of your Lordships feel that the arrangements can and should be modified by the creation of new institutions; but I think it would be wrong to consider this an easy nut to crack. I do not think that it is. There is an underlying dilemma and the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, put his finger absolutely on that dilemma, as did the noble Lord, Lord Kennet.

On the one hand, any arrangements which are devised must preserve the secrecy of the security service's work. That must be a cardinal principle which cannot be compromised. Most noble Lords and most members of the public will agree that we would be paying too high a price for public accountability if, as a result, the security of the security service was imperilled. On the other hand, there would be no purpose in making any change unless an enhanced confidence in Parliament and among the public in the work of the service would result.

Frankly therefore how can these two aims be reconciled? Among the difficulties is this. If a new review body is to be put on the inside, in a position where it can genuinely probe and monitor the internal workings of the security service, the question then arises on how it could be allowed to communicate its findings conclusively to the public while preserving the necessary confidentiality. However, if a new body was to be put in the position merely as an onlooker to the system without internal access, how could it satisfy itself that the service was acting properly and effectively? It would not have access to the sensitive material which would be necessary, as many would see it, for its findings to have any credibility.

Then one comes to the problem of who the members of this review body would be. How would any new system avoid undue interference with the Director General's responsibilities? How would any new arrangements fit in with the Home Secretary's key role in the accountability of the services? These are not simple matters to resolve, but they have to be faced if the well-established arrangements are to be modified.

My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy referred to the possibility of a Committee of Privy Counsellors being used for the purpose of the security service. He thought that its membership should be rather wider than Privy Counsellors. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, thought that there ought to be a Committee of Privy Counsellors as well.

My Lords, just to correct the record, the purpose of my intervention was to say that I thought probably that there ought not to be.

My Lords, I evidently misheard the important word "not". I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, for correcting me over that and I apologise for having put words into his mouth which were precisely the reverse of those he used.

My noble friend Lord Birdwood favoured a judicial body. It is not apparent from what your Lordships have said today how any of these ideas would overcome the problem which I have described of having to put any new body either inside or outside the veil of secrecy. If it is inside, the body which is chosen may still not be acceptable to the wider audience because it would be prevented from disclosing the sensitive material on which its judgments were based. However, if it is on the outside and dependent on more general reports and impressions of the security service, what sort of real monitoring could it hope to achieve? That is the problem.

With regard to the Security Commission, this is a body which has done invaluable work in its investigations into individual cases when there has been a breach of security. Much has stemmed, for example, from the Security Commission's report in 1985 on the Bettaney case. Management and personnel improvements have been made, and a new office, that of staff counsellor, has been created.

At the end of the day, the Security Commission is not a permanent watchdog body, and it is not engaged in the continuous monitoring of the security service. To see it as the answer to the question of accountability is, I believe, to argue not for a modification in the Security Commission's role but for a complete change in the function of the commission and its structure and membership. Our position is not an obdurate, unthinking one. We have taken a constructive attitude throughout the discussion on matters relating to the security services and we have taken initiatives.

My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy wondered about those and the staff counsellor. The appointment of a staff counsellor for the security and intelligence services is one example of what we have done. He will deal with issues of conscience of individual members of the service. The establishment of this post provides Ministers, Parliament and the public with an assurance that legitimate anxieties of members of the security and intelligence services about their work will not be overlooked or overridden. I hope that your Lordships will welcome the creation of this new post and the fact that Sir Philip Woodfield has accepted the appointment as the first staff counsellor.

The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, asked how many complaints had been made to the staff counsellor. The counsellor deals with inquiries in confidence and he would not normally report to the government that he had received a complaint. However, he will report annually to my right honourable friend.

I hope the noble Earl will forgive me but I did ask another question. If the noble Earl is unable to deal with it I shall well understand because I gave him no notice. The question was whether it had been made abundantly clear to the security staff that they would suffer no harm whatever should they register complaints and that the procedure was a perfectly easy one.

My Lords, if I may I shall take up the noble Lord on his offer. It is a question of detail and I shall find out the exact facts and write to him about them.

Another initiative the Government have taken was the introduction two years ago of the Interception of Communications Act. This created an offence of unauthorised interception of communication and it provided safeguards and remedies. It showed our willingness to act decisively and radically in a peculiarly delicate area when such action is justified and where it can produce a real improvement in the present arrangements.

Under Section 1 of the 1985 Act, interception of a telephone call on the public telecommunications network is a criminal offence unless the interception has been authorised personally by the Secretary of State. This is the exception to the rule, to which I referred earlier, under which the Home Secretary plays no part in operational matters which are essentially and wholly for the Director General of the security service.

The 1985 Act provides for a Tribunal which has full powers to investigate whether an interception has been authorised, where there has been a complaint, and, if so, whether the authorisation met the requirements of the Act. The Act also provides for a commissioner to keep the whole system of interception under review. In introducing this legislation, the Government showed a willingness to have an open and not a closed mind on security issues, and to improve upon the existing arrangements where a clear case had been established that there would be advantage in so doing.

There is in place, at present, a system for controlling the security service and for continuing and ensuring its accountability to the government of the day, which is effective and efficient. I hope your Lordships realise that this is a difficult message to get across to some people because it is a system which is based on Ministerial accountability. But there are some issues which have to have Ministerial accountability and where the buck has to stop with Ministers. These are matters of quite legitimate debate and your Lordships have debated them this afternoon. We shall certainly take account of all that has been said.

My Lords, we have used up our time and therefore I cannot reply to the points which have been made. Perhaps I may confine myself to a single point.

First, I should like to congratulate the noble Earl on his return to office. It may be a little belated but he has mastered the art—and it is a valuable one —of replying comprehensively, courteously and affirmatively without committing the Government to anything. This is a Ministerial art which is not always in ready supply, and he has preserved it this evening.

My Lords, perhaps I may interrupt the noble Lord because I should not like him to be under a misapprehension. I am enjoying his speech so much that I should not like him to confine his remarks to only one point because he has a quarter of an hour of the debate left.

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Earl but I shall not take full advantage of the quarter of an hour available. Other people might wish to be getting on.

I shall take advantage of what he has said to this extent. This debate, good though it has been, has failed to lock its horns. There has been one debate going along here and one along there and it has failed to come into contact. I believe the problem is this. Parliament is supposed to be a watchdog of the executive. It cannot fulfil its function at present in this capacity. It is bound to take what the executive says on this issue. What we are seeking to do is to create a line between the executive and Parliament which at the same time preserves essential security and creates essential accountability. Accountability does not stop at government level; it comes down to this level. In coming down to this level it reaches the people who are represented here and, more effectively, those elected in the other Chamber.

I do not believe that we have heard the last of this debate today. As the noble Earl said, it is a difficult point. One must preserve security on the one hand, but on the other it is not sufficient to be told that things are not going wrong when so many people know from their personal experience that they are going wrong. On the one hand, we have the Government's assurance that everything is all right; and on the other hand, we have a wide and growing body of reputable knowledge which suggests that things are not as they are said to be. I do not think that we can allow this situation to continue.

What I hope will happen as a result of the debate—and this is where I draw what I have to say to a conclusion—is that when the Government produce their White Paper they will extend it beyond the point that they have been thinking about until now which is to deal only with the Official Secrets Act. They must take account of the fact that without breaching essential security it is vital that the people of this country, and their elected representatives, shall be able to assure themselves that we do not have a body of people who though they are within the law—and I was glad to have the assurance of the noble Earl that they are within the law—are pretty widely suspected of operating outside the law. This point has to be tackled. I hope that as a result of our discussions today the Government will agree with the many speakers on both sides of the House that in one way or another this matter must be tackled. I hope that we shall hear rather more of what we have been talking about today on another and not too distant occasion.

Beg leave to withdraw!

My Lords, I do not know whether I should beg leave to withdraw. I am only asking for Papers. So far as I can see there is no reason why I should withdraw a request for Papers. If it is desirable to withdraw, I shall; but before I do so, I should like to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this informed and at the same time good-humoured debate. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement which has been made in another place by my right honourable and learned friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs about the White Paper on Hong Kong. The Statement is as follows:

"A Hong Kong Government White Paper, The Development of Representative Government: The Way Forward was published in Hong Kong earlier today. Copies of the White Paper have been placed in the Library of the House.

"The publication of the White Paper marks the end of a wide-ranging review of developments in representative government. A Green Paper, published in May 1987, sought the views of the Hong Kong community. It set out a range of options for possible change; none was ruled out in advance. The Green Paper elicited a widespread public response. We were also able to benefit from a wide range of views expressed in this House during the debate on 20th January.

"The White Paper discusses the full range of issues raised in the review. The main decisions which it announces are as follows:

(a) 10 directly elected members will be introduced into the Legislative Council in 1991;

(b) in 1988 the number of appointed members in the council will be reduced from 22 to 20, and the number of members elected by functional constituencies will increase from 12 to 14. In 1991 the present system of election by members of district boards will be abolished; but the urban and regional councils will each continue to elect one member to the council;

(c) links between the urban district boards and the urban council will be strengthened;

(d) the governor will continue to be the President of the Legislative Council for the immediate future.

"We are committed to the steady development of representative government in Hong Kong. We believe that the decisions set out in the White Paper mark an important step in that direction; and that they represent a balanced and reasonable response to the views expressed by the people of Hong Kong and their representatives".

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord for repeating the Statement to which we listened with great interest. We are all aware of the natural sensitivity of the Hong Kong community to these critical developments. It is essential that all parties in this country should seek to present a united front in ensuring that the joint declaration is fulfilled in the spirit as well as in the letter.

We must not appear to be abandoning Hong Kong or letting matters drift during this transitional period. I believe this to be the view of Her Majesty's Government. I was glad therefore to note the words in the Statement:

"We are committed to the steady development of representative government in Hong Kong".

We strongly support this reaffirmation. I assume that Her Majesty's Government have kept in the closest touch with the Government of Hong Kong throughout the preparation of the White Paper and on all other developments.

I am bound to say that my first reaction to the main decisions in the Statement was one of some disappointment. I think that the White Paper might have proposed more than 10 elected members in 1991; but it is I concede a step forward. Can the noble Lord say what will be the reaction of the community in Hong Kong to this decision? Has this surfaced yet? Can he also say whether further steps towards democratic rule are envisaged between 1991 and 1997? I presume that this is not the final stage of democratic development.

Finally, we all appreciate that the most important event will be the Basic Law. It is encouraging that China has involved Hong Kong in the drafting process. Can the Minister tell us when the draft Basic Law will be published? What further opportunity will be given to the people of Hong Kong to comment on it? What role will Her Majesty's Government have in relation to the provisions of the Basic Law. I hope that the House will be given ample time to debate these matters in full in due course.

My Lords, we agree with both the major points made by the Leader of the Labour Opposition. We are naturally with the Government in their attempts to achieve an orderly handover. We also share the noble Lord's disappointment about how much is planned to be done at present. There has been a recent consultation on which the Government base both their decision on what to do and the speed at which to do it. It has been obvious to anyone who has looked at the questions asked and the pattern of the responses that it is virtually impossible to draw any precise conclusions about what the people of Hong Kong want to see from that consultation.

Naturally we welcome the appearance of directly elected members in 1991. The increase in the functional constituency members is not entirely to be welcomed. This is an element of the corporate state which does not usually turn out to be extremely good in democracies. Obviously the Government fear that what they may do will create a turbulence which will make the handover difficult. Is it not the case that one is more likely to get turbulence from not doing enough than from doing too much? How much confidence do the Government have that they are at present not doing too little and too late, and especially to late? Very precisely, when is it proposed to do more between 1991 and the end of the lease?

Lastly, do the Government have it in mind to look beyond the liaison group and build officials of the Beijing Government into the structure of the Government of Hong Kong at a suitable medium-low level in order to give them a direct, hands-on experience—always under British control—of what it is a government do and must do to maintain the sensitive freedoms upon which the prosperity of Hong Kong depends?

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Cledwyn and Lord Kennet, for their response to the Statement. I am especially gratified that the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, should have stressed as he did the need for a united response over this most important matter both in spirit and in the letter.

The noble Lord asked whether the Hong Kong Government had consulted Her Majesty's Government on this matter. I can assure the noble Lord that there is, and has been, the closest consultation between both governments on the subject, and the decisions which the Hong Kong Government have taken in the matter have been fully endorsed by Her Majesty's Government.

As to whether the people of Hong Kong are satisfied with the White Paper and its contents, I must say that we have had no report yet of any media coverage because the White Paper was only debated in LegCo earlier today. However, I can say that the White Paper accurately reflects the result of the review. It contains something for everyone who has made a representation to the consultative process. I sincerely believe that it is a result which is as good as it possibly could be in all the circumstances.

Naturally, there will be some people who will be disappointed, but I think it will be widely accepted by the people of Hong Kong as a balanced decision. I hope that now the White Paper has been issued the people of Hong Kong will rally to the decisions which have been taken and will do what they can to ensure that they work as smoothly as possible.

The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, and to some extent the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, suggested that we might be doing too little too late. The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, was most concerned that 10 directly elected seats in 1991 would be too few. I must say in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, that the White Paper is a significant step forward. On timing, it is not right to make a major constitutional change in 1988 when opinion is as sharply divided as the noble Lord observed. There are also strong arguments for letting the Legislative Council continue for one more term rather than undergo a second restructuring—because that is what would be required—after only three years. The directly elected seats in 1991 will in fact constitute 17 per cent. of LegCo. It is important to bear in mind that a further 16 seats (28 per cent.) are indirectly elected. Therefore, this is an impressive and significant step forward and it leaves room for possible further development before 1997.

As regards other developments about which the noble Lords, Lord Cledwyn and Lord Kennet, asked, the White Paper recognises that representative government will need to continue to evolve to provide continuity and a smooth transition in 1997. Those longer term issues will have to be considered in the light of the provisions of the Basic Law after its promulgation in 1990. The need will be to ensure that structures can develop smoothly up to and beyond 1997. It is important that there should be a clear indication of timing for the next step in 1991, and that is precisely what the White Paper provides.

In regard to the Basic Law and the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, about its publication, I understand that the full text of the draft Basic Law will be formally published, after refinement, in May of this year. The people of Hong Kong will then have four months to comment upon it before it is further revised, after which there will be opportunities for further comment. That procedure, of course, takes place before the promulgation in 1990.

The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, asked whether Chinese officials from the People's Republic of China would be included in the consultation structure, and so forth. There can be no question of incorporating Chinese officials into the structure of government for the simple reason—indeed it is a principle which the Chinese share—that it is the people of Hong Kong who rule Hong Kong as agents of Her Majesty's Government. Therefore, I do not think that his proposal is one which even they feel is a realistic possibility.

I turn to the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, that we should have a debate on the subject. That is an important matter and one of which I am sure the usual channels will take note.

My Lords, I am not an international diplomat; so I will put a direct question to which I do not expect an answer. Will the Minister tell us how far we have received assurances from the Chinese Government that some sort of elected representative government will remain after the takeover?

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Baroness appreciates that there are exchanges with the Chinese Government on a wide range of matters, including, of course, Hong Kong. That is helpful and beneficial. However, I cannot give an answer to that point, but I can assure the noble Baroness that the consultations we have are extremely fruitful.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. It covers an area of great importance to people in Hong Kong. I, for one, shall want to study it carefully. Meanwhile, there is one point upon which I would like clarification. Is it a firm decision as to what will happen up to 1991? Will nothing change between now and then; or, is the arrangement subject to yet more debate and possible amendment?

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose, whose experience in Hong Kong matters is of course well known to everyone, especially to those who live in Hong Kong. I agree that the White Paper merits the close study which I am sure the noble Lord will give it. As regards further study between now and 1991, the answer is that there will be no change on that particular issue. However, through the auspices of the joint liaison group, there will be further consideration of how the process up to 1997 will be implemented.

My Lords, I, too, welcome the Statement and wish to study it more closely. However, one aspect worries me a little. I accept the view of our Government and the Hong Kong Government that it is far better to postpone change and have it right, than to introduce something now which is not right. But there will be many people in Hong Kong who will be disappointed that there is a postponement, as the Minister has already said. Can the Minister give the House an assurance that there will not be any further postponements from 1991?

My Lords, as I said earlier, I accept that there will be those who will feel disappointed because they have a particularly strong view that direct elections ought to be introduced earlier. But certainly the 1984 White Paper did not make a commitment to introduce direct elections in 1988; it merely noted the state of opinion at that time. The 1984 White Paper undertook to review the position in 1987, and that undertaking has been carried out to the full. So the options were left open, including the possibility of direct elections in 1988. I am sure that the noble Lord will accept that a very great deal has happened since 1984; the joint declaration itself was signed, which was a historic event if ever there was one, and the Basic Law to which the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, referred is being drafted.

It is only natural that this and other factors should have affected people's thinking about direct elections. However, as I said to the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose, there are means for consultation to take further the whole range of issues involved in the changes which will come about in 1997.

The noble Baroness asked me a specific question earlier and I should perhaps have said that the joint declaration provides that the legislature of the Hong Kong special adminstrative region, when it becomes that, will be constituted by elections. But it is not specific on the mode of those elections. I think that to some extent this answers the point which she raised.

Rodney rose to call attention to the effect of pseudo-religious cults on family life and young people; and to move for Papers.

My Lords, I am sure the House is grateful to the noble Lord for giving us an opportunity to discuss this very complex and sensitive subject. I hope that what I have to say will not divert the debate from the noble Lord's principal complaints and observations regarding the activities of these pseudo-religious cults. I regret that I cannot follow the noble Lord in that because I have never been a member of a pseudo-religious cult. Indeed, not for many years have I been a member of any religious group or cult at all.

The background to the noble Lord's speech came in his concluding remarks regarding the recent action of the Attorney-General in relation to the case that was still pending after several years relating to the Unification Church. I regret that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, is unwell and unable to take part in this debate today. Some of us can well imagine what he might have said about the Moonies, because in every debate on charities the noble and learned Lord has introduced the subject. That long-drawn-out litigation under the Charities Acts has been brought to an end with the Attorney-General having to admit with reluctance that he cannot proceed further.

I should like to remind your Lordships that the Unification Church secured registration as a charity, claiming to be a religion, and it was registered by the Charity Commissioners. There was a public outcry about some of the practices of that church, and in the end the Government decided to require the Charity Commissioners to cancel the registration. The Charity Commissioners, relying on their statutory responsibilities, refuse to obey any such request from the Attorney-General or from the Government. The litigation that followed has been, in form, an appeal to the courts to declare the Unification Church unfit or unqualified to be registered as a charity and to direct the Charity Commissioners to cancel the registration. All that has collapsed. I read this morning that the Government are paying all the costs, which will amount to at least £50,000. Now that church against which so many complaints were made remains a charity and no court can change it. Now it will depend entirely on Parliament whether the conditions for registration of charities are changed.

All religions are organisations, and in our approach to this matter we must remember the basic freedoms: freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom to worship and freedom of speech. We must bear all those in mind when we challenge the right of people to espouse causes and to proselytise beliefs and religious doctrines which we may feel are contrary to public policy. I suggest that Parliament alone can deal with this, and even Parliament has to have regard to the charter of human rights and other covenants concerning freedoms to which we have subscribed over the years.

It should also be borne in mind that registration as a charity is an enviable position because the privileges of charities are considerable. The financial benefits of registration are enormous and are growing. The Government are putting fresh opportunities in almost every Budget for additional claims to be made upon the Revenue for charitable relief. Now we have contributions to charities which are deductible under pay-as-you-earn provisions and allowable for tax purposes. We must look very closely indeed at the question of charitable registration.

With the present consideration of the position of charities relating almost wholly to administration, financial control, accountability, and matters of that kind, we have left aside, for the time being, any review of the conditions of registration of charities. Therefore, we are not likely to consider those matters for some little time, although the Attorney-General has said that he will pass on to the Home Secretary the feeling of disquiet which was expressed in another place about the decision which he announced. No doubt he will be saying something in due course about the Government's view of the conditions for charitable registration.

As regards religious charities, I suppose that all charity had its beginning in the religious belief and approach to life. Therefore, religious bodies were in the front row when the state and parliament came—and the monarchs came even earlier—to look at the statutory position of charities. Religious charities probably get on the register more easily than any other type of charity. A religious body does not have to prove to or satisfy the commissioners that it is contributing to the good of the community. All other charities must be able to show that what they are doing is for the good of the community, whether in the fields of education, ethical values, care of animals or in dealing with poverty, as was set out in the Act of 1501.

Religious bodies do not have to do anything of that kind. All they have to prove is that they believe in a supernatural being of over-riding power, authority and responsibility. If they show that they worship a divine being who is over all mortal conditions of life and death, that is a religion. Of course, that definition has been brought lower down the scale of belief and values by politicians. I believe that Nye Bevan said: "Priorities is the religion of socialism". We have heard at different times that Marxism is the religion of communism. However, it does not qualify for registration under charity law. Belief qualifies for religious registration, and not good works.

If anyone is thought to be operating against public policy, then it is not the charity commissioners who can deal with that matter. It is Parliament and Parliament alone. I am bound to say that Parliament will have some very difficult drafting problems to face if it tries to define what group, cult or association of free citizens represents a menace to society in general. When we come to consider charity law, we shall be in a hornet's nest.

The main proposal for changing the registration of charities has been up to now that a charity shall not claim registration and the benefits of being a charity on belief in a divine being alone. Preaching and doctrine alone are not charitable because those are not necesarily good for the community, even though such groups may claim that they are religious and God-given. They are not necessarily good for the community, and in order to qualify for charitable status we look to religious bodies to do good works as well. In other words, such bodies will have to qualify under the condition that they are contributing to the good of the community. I know that many churches think they are contributing in that way. However, not all of us believe that they are. We do not have to drift very far in this debate before beginning to discuss some very large religious cults—not pseudo-cults but real cults of great antiquity with great power and influence in the world.

I should not like to spend even what short time remains to me in telling your Lordships what life was like in a household with a father who was a dissenter. He dissented on religious grounds against almost anything that claimed to be religious. That led the family into serious difficulties. He refused to pay the education rate when contributions were required for the upkeep of the Anglican Church. He went to prison rather than pay. As a schoolboy, I used to meet him outside when he came home. That was the state of my family for years before the First World War. I therefore know what dissent means. I was never christened because my father would not have me christened; that was dissent. He would not have me vaccinated when that became compulsory; that was dissent. I know a good deal about dissent, and I know what price can be paid for it.

I have described to your Lordships the great problem which the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, has raised. It encompasses almost everything that makes for complexity and controversy. I do not think that there is any simple remedy for the complaints which he makes. However, I hope to hear more about the reform of charity law in order to take part in that debate. I shall be pretty hard on religious cults which claim that they act for the good of the community.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, is to be thanked for raising this important subject. I congratulate him on his introduction, which has stirred up our debate, and led to the interesting contribution of the noble Lord. The more the whole subject is brought into the open, the better. If I were preaching a sermon—heaven forbid!—I should use those well-known words of Jesus in the Gospel of St. John:

"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free".

Perhaps I may also say how much I look forward to the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford, who I suspect will say some of the things which I shall attempt to say but will say them much better.

I start by raising the matter of freedom, as that is at the heart of the problem. As long ago as October 1984 my honourable friend Mr. David Alton introduced a Bill in another place,

"to control the activities of religious sects and cults".

He made an eloquent speech, after which the Bill was read a first time. However, it made no further progress and was lost in the way Private Members' Bills so often are, despite its obvious merits.

Mr. Alton made it clear that the Bill had one simple aim and provision:

"to allow parents and next of kin rights of access to relatives who have joined religious cults".

He went on to say that he was not codifying the respective merits of different groups and—an important point—he accepted the need to guarantee fundamental religious freedom. The aim of the Bill was to provide worried parents with legal redress where access to next of kin was denied.

We have all read heartrending stories of how young people have been virtually kidnapped, brainwashed and kept from their families. All too often, those who follow a cult are taught that ordinary relationships are evil and that they must never see their relatives again. I believe that the right of access is one of the key issues in our debate and that cult members should be approachable at all times. Otherwise there is tragedy, and, if individuals become social and mental wrecks through involvement in cults, society should not turn its back on them.

Perhaps the noble Earl, when he comes to reply, can tell the House whether there has been any improvement in the arrangements for access over the past three-and-half years since the Bill was tentatively introduced. Certainly the more the media and Members of both Houses of Parliament can expose the dangers of cults, the less potent they will be. I understand that membership of undesirable cults falls dramatically under the light of publicity. In a famous declaration loved by liberals, John Milton said:

"Let her [truth] and Falsehood grapple! Who ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?"

Where there is nothing to hide, no cover-up is necessary.

A week ago the Attorney-General made the statement about the charitable status of the Moonies to which the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, referred. It would be interesting to know what action the hard-pressed Home Secretary, to whom the buck seems to have been passed, will now take to reform the charity law. I believe that action is required.

Your Lordships will recall with deep sorrow the death of Sonia Martin, an ex-cultist found hanging from a signpost in Devon. At best—although that is hardly an appropriate word to use—she committed suicide. At worst, some say that she may have been murdered before she could give evidence as a key witness against the Unification Church. That is a serious allegation, and we need to know the truth.

We need also to consider the European position, which has already been touched on. As long ago as 1983 Mr. John Hume called for the removal of charitable status from the Unification Church. He referred then to what he called:

"the complacent and obstructive attitude shown by the Chief Charity Commissioner".

I do not believe that that criticism holds water today, but there are difficulties with the present law and current needs of society.

In 1984, Mr. Richard Cottrell published his report to the European Parliament on new religious movements in the EC. In that preliminary report, which noble Lords may know, he accepted that different sects could have widely differing levels of acceptability. He stated:

"To describe the majority of the cults as inspired by genuine humanitarianism is facile. Some may well be deeply and insidiously dangerous. If individuals become social and mental wrecks, that is the concern of any caring society: if people are parted from their money, goods, or their property by misrepresentation, those same concerns apply."

Breaking the law should certainly be punished. We need to ask how far the law needs to be changed.

In his report, Cottrell refers to recruitment techniques. He says that those most at risk are aged between 18 and 25 and are often second and third year university students. Some of what Cottrell says is surprising and disturbing. He states:

"Most come from stable, largely traditional middle-class backgrounds, where there is generally an acceptance of Christian belief: there are rarely financial or marital problems within the family. Most recruits appear to demonstrate a healthy idealism common to the young and a willingness to consider and discuss new ideas."

Clearly we have to see that idealism and intelligence are not warped but are wisely directed.

So far, I have dealt with what may be considered the negative side of the matter—evil practices, and how they can be stopped. I now turn to what is being done positively to improve the situation by two organisations, one called Housetop and the other INFORM, to which the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, has already referred. Both are glad to offer advice and seek understanding rather than indulge in fruitless confrontation or, as it has been termed, "cult-bashing"—replying in some cases to evil with evil.

Dr. John Wijngaards, a Catholic priest with some 16 years' experience of living and working in India, heads the Housetop organisation. He makes the following points about someone who has turned to a cult for help (because that is what such people are often doing). First, your friend is searching for something valuable. Secondly, at all costs keep in contact, even if you get no response (something is indeed very wrong if contact is prevented). Thirdly, it is inadequacies in our own Christian response that have given the new religious movements an unprecedented chance to flourish. Fourthly, there is an enormous variation between them; some indeed are positive and can be beneficial. It is therefore important to take the trouble to study the movement in question. Lastly, he emphasises the importance of prayer with your friend, in the conviction that the truth will indeed set him or her free from special emotional problems.

The other counselling service about which parents and children caught up in religious cults should know is INFORM, which the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, has attacked. As he says, it stands, rather ponderously, for Information Network Focus on Religious Movements. It is often depressingly difficult to obtain objective information, and I believe that this organisation offers one way of doing so. INFORM was launched in September last year at the London School of Economics by the sociologist, Dr. Eileen Barker. She said:

"I realised that cults can give rise to a lot of anguish and even tragedy, and objective, value-free science is not going to help if it is not made available".

An article in the Guardian of 16th September said that Dr. Barker was one of the few people to be able to retain a sense of humour in "this highly charged area". As has been said, she has won support from the Government, with a start-up grant of £120,000; the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury is a patron and the Church of England contributes £3,500 a year. Catholics and Nonconformists are also helping. Doubtless the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford will comment on the matter. The article ends:

"Now, thanks to Dr. Barker's diplomacy, governments, churches and academics can act together and settle down to some serious cult-watching and counselling with no vestige of cult-bashing".

I end as I began, by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, for giving us the opportunity to discuss potential evils and possible remedies.

My Lords, I believe that we are greatly indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, for proposing his Motion calling attention to the effect of pseudo-religious cults on family life and young people.

There can be few Members of your Lordships' House who are unaware of that problem and, indeed, of particular instances where deep pain and sorrow have been caused through the activities of some of those cults. The noble Lord has described desperate cases and doubtless others will be cited in the debate.

Many of those movements have received adverse publicity for far too long and public concern has rightly been aroused, most recently through the report of proceedings in another place. Both in my last diocese and in my present one, I have had personal experience of speaking with distraught parents, as well as with the devastated spouse of someone who disappeared from the family scene as a result of being brought under the evil influence of one of the most notorious of those cults, which rejoices in the name of The Children of God.

It is hardly surprising that politicians and clergy are besieged with requests to "do something" about this problem, and that we feel the urge to respond. But what can we do? To answer that question we must ask, "What is this phenomenon, and why has it happened?"

We are told that in the United Kingdom there are some 500 new movements which have sprung up in recent years, which may with varying accuracy be referred to as "religious". Most of them have their origins either in Eastern religions or in Christianity. Some have linked those traditional faiths with particular strains of modern philosophy, psychology or therapy. Some of those are genuine religious movements containing insights and spiritual practices of considerable worth; some are superficial, while others are dangerous in their teaching, using dubious, not to say illegal, methods of attracting adherents. Some of those new movements are open, free, and have an infectious joy about them, while others, such as those referred to by the noble Lord in his Motion, are secretive and tyrannical, dividing families and causing deep pain.

We are told that in total probably fewer than 15,000 people belong to such groups in the United Kingdom. Your Lordships may feel that that is not a menacingly large number, but I have to say that the teaching and methods of some of those movements are a shame to those who perpetrate them and cause distress out of all proportion to the numbers involved.

If one looks back into history one finds that it has happened before, particularly at periods of social and cultural upheaval. We should not be surprised. What attracts people to such movements? Evidence suggests that it is not usually their teaching, which is sometimes bizarre, but rather their offer of a new purpose in life, their enthusiastic commitment to a cause and their warm supportive groups. They appeal to idealistic young people who are seeking a cause and an alternative community to which to belong. They attract a middle-aged man when the bottom falls out of his world and he seeks to roll back the years of what seems to have been a pointless life. So, what are we to do?

Desperate situations often lead people to adopt desperate remedies. Your Lordships will have read of young people who, through the efforts of their families, have been kidnapped in order that they might be de-programmed. Whatever the rights or the outcome of such action, surely we cannot see in that an answer which can be of general application. What are we to do? Are we to attempt to legislate against these movements? There are Members of your Lordships' House who are better qualified than I to pass judgment on the practicability of such a course of action.

The British Council of Churches has rightly pointed out the huge problems to be encountered in any attempts to legislate against religious movements as such, even when they are regarded by the orthodox churches as being in grave error and by society at large as either potty or dangerous, or both. Whether one likes it or not, one immediately comes up against the universal Declaration of Human Rights. One could be in danger of playing into the hands of those atheistic regimes in Eastern Europe which are seeking to justify their suppression of religious freedom.

However, if legislation concerning religious movements as such is problematical, we can and must watch that they do not contravene the existing law and infringe the rights of others. Moreover, when such infringement occurs, the law should be firmly applied.

I believe that there is room for tightening up in this regard—for example, in the application of the law against soliciting in the streets, which is engaged in openly and frequently by the cults. It may be that new legislation is called for. The present state of the laws governing charitable status certainly warrants some drastic action. The churches have not been and will not be unwilling to help in any consideration of this matter, but of course we must note and accept that such legislation must apply equally to all, whatever their religious beliefs. I noticed this afternoon that tabled for debate in the General Synod is a private member's motion deploring the charitable status of the Unification Church.

However, for the ultimate answer to these pseudo-religious cults it is not sufficient to look only for new legislation. The ultimate answer to these movements is a revitalising of society and a renewing of the Christian Church and the other older religious movements. Very many of the adherents of these cults have been disillusioned with a materialistic, self-seeking and individualistic society and, I have to admit, disillusioned with a Church which appears to be at odds with itself and lukewarm in its commitment. The best antidote to such movements would be an enthusiastic and idealistic church made up of supportive groups of Christians. Where such a church exists, other groups have limited scope.

It is our task in the Church to work for such a renewal of the Church and I believe that that is going on. Moreover, I believe that all of us together have to commit ourselves to seeking to create a society which is not about the pursuit of an and materialism but is a society in which ideas and ideals can flourish; a society where whatever things are true, honest and just and whatever things are pure, lovely and of good report may be safeguarded, nurtured and allowed to fill the thoughts and aspirations of those in all age groups who look for purpose, direction and meaning.

In conclusion, I want to report that the bishops, working with Christians of other denominations, have recently decided to appoint advisers in each diocese who will provide clear information and advice on all matters arising from these movements and who will be ready to put those who need counsel in touch with those who can counsel them. Our initiative has been greatly assisted by what I believe is a unique experiment—a coming together of academics, voluntary agencies, the churches and government to establish an independent body whose task will be to provide objective information on the teaching and practice of these movements and about available counselling. This body, which is called INFORM, has itself recently been the subject of criticism in some sections of the press. The noble Lord, Lord Rodney, has voiced his own misgivings. I am reliably informed that much press criticism is largely due either to a misunderstanding of the role of INFORM or a misguided desire to undermine its work. That is often the fate of organisations which are called to work on the perimeter of the safe and the known. However, the churches intend to work with that body and continue to contribute to its work their own experience and insights. I commend the Home Office for its financial support and continuing interest.

The Centre for New Religious Movements in Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham, the Centre for New Religious Movements in King's College, London, the Roman Catholic Missionary Centre in London entitled Housetop, Family Action Information and Rescue, are all agencies at work in the bewildering complexity of the new religious scene. We wish them well and we trust that from this debate in your Lordships' House there will come a strengthened resolution to seek to bring to light hidden things of darkness and to offer hope and practical help to those who find themselves caught up in what can prove to be for them an experience of confusion, pain and grief. There is an urgency about the situation. I believe it demands the best endeavours of us all.

My Lords, we have been privileged to listen to a most distinguished and authoritative maiden speech from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford. I am sure that the whole House wishes to join with me in congratulating him on his speech. Flanked as he is by his brother bishops on this occasion, he has spoken out on a matter which has so clearly been brought to our attention by all previous speakers, especially by my noble friend Lord Rodney, to whom we are much indebted.

There is a figure absent from the Chamber this afternoon, and that is my noble and learned friend Lord Denning, who unfortunately is ill at the present time and unable to be with us. He has indicated to me a particular matter upon which, although I feel most inadequate correctly to interpret his comments, I feel I shall do well to follow his advice. He suggested that the debate should examine carefully the statement given in reply to question No. 89 on 3rd February in another place by my right honourable and learned friend the Attorney-General, Sir Patrick Mayhew. I shall quote only that part of the reply which refers particularly to the Unification Church. The Attorney-General said at col. 977 of the Commons Hansard:

"Whatever view may be taken of its tenets, the Unification Church must, as a matter of law, be regarded as a religion. In English law there is a strong presumption that any trust for the advancement of any religion, without distinction, is charitable unless the contrary is proved by evidence admissible in court proceedings. Teachings that are in their very essence contrary to morality would be an example. It is for any challenger to bring forward such evidence: the burden is on him".

Your Lordships will be well aware that the particular interest and repugnance of Members over the situation as it stands today gave rise to no fewer than 12 supplementary questions. I feel that this authoritative statement by the Attorney-General must be based on the four classifications of charity given by Lord Macnaghten in 1891. This means that it is nearly a century old. It lays emphasis most particularly on the need that your Lordships examined as recently as 27th January when, on the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, we considered a very important report by Sir Philip Woodfield on the supervision of charities. Perhaps I may be permitted—I do not wish to weary your Lordships—to quote what the noble Lord said at col. 668:

"Although the scale of misdoing is easily exaggerated, the public is entitled to believe that there are safeguards against misuse both in fund-raising and in actually running charities".

The theme was taken up by the noble Lord, Lord Grimond, who said at col. 674:

"Therefore, I must reiterate that the public have a complete right to know what goes on in charities in order to forestall any possibility that they may be used for evil purposes".

Several noble Lords have asked what we should do now. With great diffidence perhaps I may suggest that in discussing the subject one should relate it to the debate that we had two weeks ago and draw attention to three recommendations that Sir Philip Woodfield brought forward. The first is recommendation No. 8, that a graded system of submission of annual accounts with a narrative report under existing legislation if possible should be carried out. This is most important as it is one of the few recommendations in the report that would not require legislation, so far as Sir Philip Woodfield could discover. I wish therefore to draw this fact to the attention of my noble friend Lord Ferrers before proceeding further. Recommendation No. 12 unfortunately requires primary legislation because it deals with the deregistration of charities. Recommendation No. 13, however, does not. It is that the commission should require registration as a precondition for dealing with any business from a registered charity. Any business can require a whole range of matters to be taken into consideration. This is the very tightening-up of the law suggested by many noble Lords, including the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford.

I hope that these are practical matters, some of which could be put in hand at a very early date. I suggest that recommendation No. 8 falls into that category because it is very clear from what your Lordships have said this afternoon that the urgency is far greater than our ability to reform charitable law as it stands.

My Lords, it is indeed useful to open the window wider to let in to this difficult and complex subject more fresh air. I pay tribute to the powerful statement of the right reverend Prelate, which was filled with valuable facts and presented with great force. I hope that we shall hear often from the right reverend Prelate.

We all share the general revulsion at the deplorable abuses of their opportunities by a minority of scandalous organisations. We should all like to see strong measures taken to intervene to make it impossible for this small number of powerful and strongly financed organisations to exploit their members. However, we have to accept, as the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, said, that we deal with a complex set of phenomena stemming in great part from the breakdown of the capacity of traditional values and institutions to satisfy the needs of the younger generation, who have experienced the global communications revolution and cross-cultural interchange. There is an authentic desire for self-betterment in many young people, who have an urge to explore what is new and unusual and to see whether there are any clues for them.

I hope that we do not overreact to the notorious abuses of the minorities. We have to maintain a sense of proportion. How grave is the scale of abuse and how great is the risk of increase of such abuses. Compared to the central threats to society—drugs, crime, violence, alcoholism and rampant materialism—many of the cults are pretty harmless. I would not particularly want to see any of my children dancing down Piccadilly in orange tunics, but they do no particular harm and they give some mild amusement. I recall a respected elderly cousin years ago when I was a youth who had become involved with a group that believed that the end of the world was about to break. The practice at intervals—I think about every six months—was to go on what was supposed to be the next appointed day for this catastrophe to a particular place in Bedfordshire where they donned white clothes in order to be ready to be taken up to heaven. She gave a lot of money to this cult, but it did neither her nor anyone else any harm.

As to the scale of the problem, we hear that 15,000 individuals—I was very interested in this figure— may be exposed to some of these grave abuses. In the context of the major ills of society we have to keep the cult in proportion.

I sympathise deeply with the bewildered parents, unable to get a response from their blinkered and deluded sons and daughters. I hope that it may be possible, by legislation if necessary (as the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, reminded us) to introduce a legal right of access. But there is no easy way to rescue those who have been brainwashed. We are dealing with a psychological condition. I was interested in what the right reverend Prelate had to tell us about the new institutions that the Church has set up to help the captives or those who are related to them. I am sure that that will be of great importance and value.

There is a limit to the extent to which force can usefully be applied in countering force. It will not necessarily change the individual. A zombie can perhaps be converted into another kind of dependent zombieism by modern psychological techniques, but he or she still remains immature, vulnerable and unable to accept full self-responsibility. Only to a limited extent can the problems be tackled by legislation.

By all means may the authorities use all the powers at their disposal now to catch up with and prevent the crime that already gets away with it. But, as noble Lords have pointed out, I am not sure that it is best to look to the Government for anything like direct restraint. One gets into deep water on human rights. It is too difficult to draw the line between harmless innovative groups and those that exploit, dominate and corrupt. Nor do we want to encourage anything like vigilante groups within the community to start making life difficult for these movements. This kind of thing would be bound to lead to cult-bashing and misdirected witch hunts. The media would take it up and gallop away with it.

Those of us who supported Clause 28 last week discounted the risk of witch hunts in the context of the Bill, but in this field—which after all is the classical area of witch hunts—we really have to be very careful. After all, Socrates was condemned to death in a free democratic society for the simple reason that he encouraged questioning of accepted views. There is a lurking monster in every society. We all react against the unfamiliar. We have a tendency to attack and suppress what is different and anything we do not understand.

Tolerance is, we all in this House agree, one of the most rare and fine flowers of human civilisation. There is little enough of it in the world. We tend to underrate it in this country because we probably have more tolerance than any other nation. Outside the former British Empire, United States and Western Europe there is precious little tolerance left.

How is it that young people who see themselves as honestly seeking truth at a higher level than it has previously been presented to them can be trapped? Is it the glamour of different ideas or the need to belong to a group for identity? How is it that, having been sucked in, they close their minds and take a defensive stand against those trying to help them? I think the answer is depressing. The causes are built into our present society: the abdication of parents and too many teachers in schools from their duty to discipline and guide, itself the result of lack of true values and faith. Where children grow up in materialistic and permissive homes and attend weak and uncaring schools they are vulnerable to specious and plausible offers of an alleged path of self-fulfilment and higher values.

The only way a victim can rise above the condition of his entrapment is, I suggest, to acquire the capacity to question his beliefs with an open mind, to grow out of the need for dependence and group support and to make up his mind for himself.

How are we to achieve this? Once a young man or woman has succumbed to his or her weaknesses, it is not easy to rescue that person but it is perfectly possible to inculcate against these infections by the method that most of your Lordships have unwittingly followed. Hence the emergence of your children as good citizens. Young people must be endowed by their training to have such strong and free intellects and such independent and responsible characters that they cease to be vulnerable.

Your Lordships may fairly ask: what is the hope for such a far-reaching transformation of our sadly degenerated society? That is quite right. There is no quick way out. Action against the symptoms of Western social sickness cannot be taken effectively and rapidly, but we can start. The cure lies in better education at home and in schools. If we acknowledge our target and direction and commit ourselves to work for them, there could be a transformation belying our most ambitious dreams.

My Lords, Members of your Lordships' House and people far beyond will, I am sure, be very grateful to my noble friend Lord Rodney for introducing the debate, however short, this evening. Before I go on I should like humbly to congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford on what I consider to be an absolutely brilliant maiden speach. In my opinion, he spoke more for the Church than we have heard in your Lordships' House for a very long time.

For far too long the cults have been escalating in this country and all over the world. My noble friend Lord Rodney is quite right to call them "pseudo" because they are fake and they are phoney. Unfortunately it is the word "religious" that appeals to some of our young people. Often these young people have grown bored with the established religions in this country. They are easily snared into trying something else. The something else might just as well be drugs, drink or crime, so long as it is different.

Many cults are extremely dangerous, both psychologically and morally. Their well-organised and well-trained tentacles reach out and grab the inexperienced young person. Before he is aware of it the child has been indoctrinated and hooked by these organisations. One father, who is a Member of your Lordships' House, has asked me to say that so severe is the indoctrination given by some of the cults that a child can be hooked within 24 hours. If parents then wish to remove their child from the organisation they must also do so within 24 hours. Once hooked, it is the same as having an insidious disease which is almost impossible to cure or shake off.

One thread which seems to run through the teaching of most of the cults is that the family as a unit is wrong. The victim is taught that all the past must be left behind and that the future must be blind obedience to the guru and those in authority.

In this country the concept of the family is one of the fundamentals of society. When parents have brought up their children with care and love it is cruel in the extreme to watch and see them snatched by one of these pseudo-religious cults. The letters which I and other noble Lords have received are tragic and pathetic. They are tragic because of the great unhappiness which is caused to the parents and they are pathetic because the parents are so helpless.

It is about time we actively discouraged these cults, and certainly we should not give them charitable status. We were so grateful when last week, in answer to a Question in another place, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said that the law in this regard needs to be looked at.

Meanwhile, we must do our best through education to warn school-leavers of the dangers of the cults, as the noble Viscount, Lord Thurlow, has said. That means talking to the parents as well as to their children so that both are aware of the perils they may face. The recently formed organisation called the Cult Information Centre is ready and willing to go to schools by invitation to talk to some of the pupils about the meaning of being a member of a cult. Those who go out from that organisation have themselves been members of cults. I should like to ask the Minister about the organisation called INFORM. I hope that one of its objects is to educate and inform people, as I have tried to suggest.

Today I received a letter, among several, which I should like to read to your Lordships. It states:

"Our 25 year-old daughter, Mary, was recruited into Scientology during her fourth and final year at music college and as a result failed her final examination due to the demands made upon her by Scientology. She has summoned her 72 year-old partially-sighted father to appear at the High Court early in 1988 to answer to charges of wilful restraint. We cannot afford a lawyer; he will have to defend himself. The law as it stands is unable to deal with these cults and many people long for something to be done. Any support that you can give in this direction will be greatly appreciated."

I hope that as a result of this all-too-short debate people will wake up to the great difficulties faced by many parents and young people due to the present increase in the cults in our country. I should like to express my grateful thanks to my noble friend for having introduced the subject this evening.

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Rodney deserves the gratitude of the whole House for initiating this debate. It is a subject which knows no party boundaries. I should like to say how much I appreciated the wise and invigorating maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate.

Much is known about the leading cults: the Unification Church, Scientology, the Children of God and Hari Krishna. We are told that approximately 500 others have been established in this country. Frequently none is recognised until a recruit finds himself subjected to the well-known and incredible discipline and strictures. Families are anguished to lose contact with the loved one because the recruit is taught to despise his home and parents and all the familiar home contacts which are said to be evil.

It is not difficult to find a cult. A walk down Kensington High Street soon shows one that; it abounds with folk eager to interest one in their strange ways of life. A 21 year-old Austrian girl whom I knew, and who was usually very levelheaded, suddenly announced that she had fallen hopelessly in love with a young fellow who had talked to her in the High Street. He emphasised to her all the details of the Book of Genesis and after a week she decided to take him home to see her parents and then to marry him.

A visit to his headquarters in Ealing revealed to her several hundred others with his beliefs to be found around the area living under their interpretation of Genesis. It was all very exciting until a telephone call came from his shepherdess reporting that he was sick and unable to recover quickly. Suddenly, in a flash of understanding, my friend became convinced that the cult was wrong. Her sensible mother had been in touch with her from Germany and, mercifully, that was the end of the interlude. My friend was lucky. Those less fortunate who, by devious means, have finally returned to their families are in great need of support and re-introduction into the real world.

Some people wonder how others can be prey to such organisations. If your Lordships will allow me a short anecdote I can give an illustration of how they approach more widely those living around them. One evening there was a knock at my fifth-floor flat. At that time we were having difficulty reaching the fuse of an electric gadget hung high on the wall. Our caller turned out to be a good looking, tall, fresh-complexioned young American. He asked if there was any job we wanted doing around the house. I immediately directed him to our little local difficulty. With immaculate efficiency he carried out the repair. Over coffee it transpired that he was a member of the Church of Unification. When I said that that must mean he was a Moonie he was indignant and told us that we had obviously been duped by the press. His description of how he lived sounded like fairyland where money played no part and much was wrapped in mystery.

The young man said that he had left his parents—his father was a dentist—and family. He had turned his back on a very happy home saying that he was convinced that he had never found real happiness until he met this cult. The mind boggles to think of those who loved him who were so freely thrown overboard.

We can have no illusions about what is happening to youngsters in our midst. For a decade or more we have tried to ignore and forget this potential threat to the family. This debate seeks to recognise and highlight one of today's most insiduous and cruel assaults on families and individuals.

My Lords, although we are accustomed to short speeches, I am very happy that that has not caused us to drop the custom of first of all thanking the noble Lord who opened the debate and congratulating a maiden speaker. All I can say to the right reverend Prelate is to remind him that Chelmsford is not very far from Westminster and I hope that he will be with us frequently.

I believe it is common ground to all of us that young people who become involved in these cults are seeking something. Presumably they are seeking something good and if they join one of these cults they must—at least at the time of joining—assume that what they have found is good. The question then is how to forewarn them so that they do not take up something as good which everyone else knows to be evil, or once they have made the mistake, how to recover them.

One of the difficulties is that although we speak of pseudo-religious cults—and it is a very useful phrase that my noble friend has used for the purpose of this debate—where does one draw the line? When is a cult pseudo and when is it not pseudo? People can dress up in funny clothes, give themselves funny names, do the most extraordinary things and march around the streets. Does that make them pseudo? If it does, then we could find ourselves condemning the Salvation Army. One has only to mention such an example to see the absurdity of that. Is a cult pseudo simply because it splits up families? It is the tragic splitting up of families to which my noble friend has particularly drawn attention; and some dreadful examples have been given, not least by the two noble Baronesses who have just spoken. However, I remind your Lordships that Jesus himself prophesied that his teaching would split up families: two against three; three against two. That was in a long and emphatic passage, and we know how truly he spoke. We have seen and heard from friends the anguish of Jewish families when one of their members becomes a Christian. Therefore, we are not dealing with a simple matter. Because we can see something to be awful which has appalling results, do not let us believe that we have an easy task in defining it. It will be incredibly difficult.

How should we begin to look at these cults to see whether they really are evil or whether perhaps there is some good in them? I suggest that we bear in mind the saying of St. Francis de Sales:

"True devotion never causes harm".

It may be that the harm that false devotion causes may not show up for quite some time and there may be difficulty in applying that motto; but it is worth bearing in mind. Then I think we can look at the antecedents of a movement. Some spring from esoteric practices like magic, and I do not believe we need concern ourselves too much with them. Some come from the oriental religions and philosophies; and the difficulty there is that very few of us know anything about oriental religions and philosophies. Some may be genuine upsurges and attempts to bring those philosophies into a western picture. Others may be degenerations from them. Then there are the rather quaint human potential cults. I do not think we need waste much time with them. Some of them verge on the ridiculous like little green men from outer space and things like that. However, the greater number of the cults are derived in their origins from Christianity and there are, as has been said, hundreds of them. The majority are quite harmless. That is another great difficulty. If we say that all these pseudo-religious cults are taboo then we shall find ourselves banning quite a lot of comparatively harmless matters as well as the small number of viciously damaging ones.

We can also look at the qualities of the founders and leaders of these groups. Their lifestyles give one some sort of indication of the quality of their philosophies. For example, one thinks of poor Jonah who was so terrified of being told to preach in Nineveh that he ran away to sea. We Christians think supremely of the agony of Jesus in the garden as he prayed for strength to accept the horrors that would come upon him in the next 24 hours. I have never read any text in the Bible or elsewhere where God encourages a budding prophet, "enrichez-vous." However, some of these gurus are among the richest men in the world. That seems to me a tell tale sign of a thoroughly pseudo-religious cult.

The last characteristic I mention is their secretive nature. In ancient times many religions including Christianity kept much of their religious practice secret. I believe I am right in saying—and there are plenty of right reverend Prelates here to correct me if I am wrong—that in the very early church even the catechumens were put out before the mysteries were celebrated; and, unlike the present Church, they would not put up notices outside saying, "all are welcome." Nowadays, if we find that cults are very secretive about what they do and what they believe, then I believe we have good grounds for being suspicious of them.

Those are some of the indications. However, we are still left with the great difficulty of telling the gold from the fool's gold, or the sheep from the goats. How to win back someone who has been taken into a bogus cult is quite obviously a problem of enormous human difficulty. Surely the key word is "love". I believe—to revert to one of the sub-plots of this debate—that INFORM have probably the right solution to this rather than the cult-bashing answer. Keep contact, and never fail in love, supported by prayer. Wherever possible—and one of the reasons why INFORM has been criticised so much already, though it is hardly off the ground—is that it does this, and I am sure it is a good thing to do. We must keep in touch with the cults themselves. The extreme cults will not allow that contact, but the more moderate and sensible ones will. That seems to me to be the method of thought of 20th century ecumenism, whereas mere cult-bashing is the line of thought of the 17th century religious wars. We shall make no progress that way. Above all, let us not lose hope that truth will prevail: Magna est veritas, et praevalet.

My Lords, the House always expresses its gratitude to noble Lords who have tabled Motions for debate which are of great public concern. With this Motion we have more reason than usual to be grateful to the mover. The noble Lord, Lord Rodney, has raised a topic which has created much anxiety and to which at the same time there is clearly no simple solution or antidote.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford, in an admirable and remarkable maiden speech, gave the whole size of the problem. It was interesting to hear how enormous has been the growth of these movements. He also described the responsibility that the Church is taking on in this regard.

Previous speakers have fully covered the different elements of this subject. All have come together in agreement regarding the pain and anguish that families undergo when their young have been seduced by the more reprehensible of these pseudo-religious cults. Like many other noble Lords, I have received letters from parents whose anger and bitterness and particularly their feeling of powerlessness, has been brought to bear. I have been struck by the way in which the letters describe how the child has suffered a personality change, how he or she has become quite incapable of independent thought. They describe how a young person, once tempted and separated from the reality of his or her natural framework and isolated from the world outside, becomes open to conversion.

One letter from parents in Wales described how, more than eight years ago, their teenage son was picked up by the Moonies while on holiday in America. The letter describes how he is still there, married to a Japanese stranger, who was able to enter the United States on his green card obtained by Moonie lawyers. The whole set-up, says the writer, seems to be a gigantic immigration racket. From what we have read of the Moonies that seems to be quite true.

As I said, there is agreement on the pain caused, but what is more difficult is how to inform and protect vulnerable young people while at the same time drawing back from condemning as a cult everything other than the established church. There is undoubtedly a serious definitional problem. That has been brought out by, in particular, the noble Lord, Lord Craigmyle. I am sure that many of us have been approached by religious groups who are very worried about being lumped together with those who employ malpractices. However, all those who work towards alleviating the present situation agree that objections to cults are not concerned with beliefs but with practices. Among those practices deception, exploitation and manipulation of the mind are foremost.

Therefore, in my few minutes I should like to make some comments on what is at present being done in this field and what more could be done. First—a point raised by every speaker—why should the Unification Church have charitable status? My noble friend Lord Houghton gave us a full account of the case and made it clear how unreasonable this seems. He also made it clear how this reflects a weakness in our charity law. The Attorney-General, making the announcement of the withdrawal of the case concerning the Unification Church, said that charity law is in the domain of the Home Secretary and that he was unable to speak on the subject. However, I hope that the Minister replying to this debate, who is responsible for home affairs, will be able to make some comment on this extremely worrying subject, which is also topical as the announcement was made only last week.

I should like to repeat what was asked in another place; namely, that if our present law prevents us from taking action against the Moonies, is there not an urgent need for the review which the Home Office is carrying out, following publication of the Woodfield Report, to include strengthening the powers of the Charity Commissioners to prevent organisations whose objectives and tactics are clearly not regarded as charitable by the majority of British people from continuing to enjoy charitable status? The noble Lord, Lord Sandys, made a very good point in the part of his speech relating to that matter. It is extraordinary to all of us and, I am sure, to everybody outside this House, that nothing can be done to alleviate this problem. As I said, I look forward very much to hearing what the noble Earl has to say.

What is being done to inform and counsel young people as to the dangers of the cults and what is being done to assist parents of cult members? First, as the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, said, there is Family Action Information and Rescue; a family-based organisation which clearly gives as much information and guidance as its means permit. However, those means are pitiful. It has extremely little money and what it does is done out of concern and anxiety because so many of its members have themselves suffered from these cults. The organisation receives no assistance from the Home Office. In a letter to me, Mrs. Martin describes FAIR in the following way:

"FAIR, like Amnesty International, has always striven to be neutral and impartial. I think it is fairly successful in this, since it is subjected to criticism both from the families it helps—who often consider it is too sympathetic to the cults—and from the cults—who see it as 'anti-cultist'."

Then there is the organisation which, again, every speaker has mentioned. INFORM has Government funding but was only set up in January of this year. Therefore it is too early to discern exactly how it is to carry out its work. What seems to be clear is that it has already attracted a great deal of suspicion and mistrust, both from FAIR and from other organisations working in this field. Therefore, whatever are the rights and wrongs of INFORM, there seems to be little doubt that it needs immediately to acquire a good reputation if it wishes to carry out the important work that the Home Office expects it to do.

I agree with the right reverand Prelate that there may be a misunderstanding of its role. I understand that the Home Office describes INFORM as a cult awareness, rather than an anti-cult, organisation which has been set up to provide high quality specialist and objective information on cults and to provide a counselling service. Therefore, it informs rather than warns. It is perhaps that misunderstanding that has been a worry. Perhaps it would be right for the Government to examine its composition and aims more closely and give some support to the closer harmonisation of the efforts of groups working to inform, educate and indeed warn young people of what cults are actually doing. As I said, if these organisations work against each other, it bodes ill for those young people who might be prevented from becoming embroiled and those others who clearly need counselling and treatment when wishing to become disentangled.

Finally, I should like to comment on the EC inititative in this field which the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, mentioned. I believe that had it been pursued it could have been very useful. This was the Cottrell Report, which was commissioned by the European Parliament and published in 1984. The report dealt with the activities of certain religious movements within the European Community.

What has impressed me most is that in response the chairman of the Legal Affairs Committee at that time, Madame Simone Veil, gave this opinion when writing to the chairman of the Committee on Youth, Culture, Education, Information and Sport:

"At its meeting of 21st February 1984, the Legal Affairs Committee heard Mr. Cottrell speak at length on the activity of certain 'new religious movements' within the European Communituy.

"It shares the legitimate concern expressed by the rapporteur and in the legal sphere it fully endorses the reference made to Article 9 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights.

"This article provides an adequate legal framework for a Community solution to the problem raised since it guarantees the fundamental right to freedom of thought and religious belief, whilst specifying the limits which may have to be put on this right if the freedom and safety of human beings are at risk."

That is a very important paragraph. The letter continues:

"Proceeding from this premise, it is also desirable and legally correct to develop political co-operation and try to find whatever kind of agreement may help to prevent acts which jeopardise human freedom, especially the freedom of young people."

Unfortunately, although there had been a recommendation for the report to go before the Council of Ministers, this recommendation was rejected and the report has been dropped. Therefore the opportunity to use the European framework to try to solve a problem which certainly must exist in all the European Community member states has been lost for the moment. One wonders why this should not be taken up again or at least whether an ombudsman should not be appointed at European level to monitor and advise. I believe that a retired diplomat or a lawyer would be a more suitable person than someone who is intellectually and personally involved with this particular subject.

One asks whether we are doing everything we can in Britain. One wonders whether the British Council of Churches is fulfilling its responsibility. The right reverend Prelate asked himself this question. Should not the Government show their concern in more practical ways? There is a watchdog committee to watch over the well-being of farm animals. There should be a parallel body set up to focus on or watch over the activities of the pseudo-religious movements which it is clear bring so many human tragedies in their wake.

My Lords, in concert with everyone else I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Rodney for having introduced this debate this evening. It has been of enormous interest and it is one which I believe has evoked the sympathy of the whole House. It is a debate about which everyone is unanimous in their concern for the way in which young people are brought up and for the way in which people can inadvertently stray or be pulled away from what most of us would consider to be the straight and narrow path.

It is not without a quirk of chance that this evening we have had two debates. The first was about the secret services and the second was on cults. It may be thought that there was a similarity of attitude over the latter one. There is a certain amount of secrecy and people do not know what is happening. At least this debate has given us the benefit of a maiden speech from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford which I believe was of great significance. It was a remarkable speech and a sympathetic one. It was clear, precise and a most moving speech. I was glad to hear from the right reverend Prelate of the initiative of the Church in setting up its own counselling services to try to help with this problem. I hope that the right reverend Prelate will be present often, as we all do, and that he will be able to give us his views in that same clear way on many other occasions.

It is not the first time that my noble friend Lord Rodney has raised the issue of religious cults and their effects on families. I am grateful to him for giving us the opportunity today to debate it and for me to explain the position of the Government. When anything is awry one always says, "What are the Government going to do about it?" I believe that most people recognise that this is a very tender area. Cults are not a new phenomenon. In the 1960s and 1970s there was a growth in their number. They are characterised by the elevation of a leader into divine or semi-divine status. To many of us their claims are ludicrous, but one cannot deny their general appeal to the young and the inadequate, promising as they do to build character and to improve the opportunities of their adherents to succeed in a competitive world.

As a result, wealth has often accrued to these leaders at the expense of their misguided followers, leaving people indebted and disillusioned. I believe that we are all alive to this sad and sometimes tragic experience. We are aware of the consequences which involvement with cults can have for people, particularly the young, and of the distress and alienation caused to parents. There are many distressed relatives and friends who have the experience of young people estranged from their families. We have heard of them this evening. They have been involved with and dominated— sometimes even destroyed—by such cults. Even those who escape may remain permanently scarred by their experience.

We have heard the bad examples given this evening by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and my noble friends Lord Rodney, Lady Macleod, and Lady Lane-Fox, besides others. My noble friend Lord Rodney referred to the Children of God and said that this was an organisation which encouraged prostitution and child sex abuse. Allegations have been made about these malpractices. No evidence has been forthcoming and, if there was, any investigation would be a matter for the police since offences of that nature would be against the criminal law. There is an argument for taking people to court if that happens because it is against the criminal law, but it is not an argument for banning an organisation. It may be wholly distasteful.

My noble friend Lord Rodney referred to the Scientologists with their begging bowls and the right reverend Prelate also referred to them. He said that they are people frequently seen with begging bowls, but in the cases which have been brought to our attention we have found that the devotees have in fact been in possession of valid house-to-house street collection or peddlers' licences which have been lawfully granted by local authorities. If my noble friend knows anything different I should be delighted to hear from him.

The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, referred to the registration of new churches under Mr. Alton's Bill. The proposal raises difficulties because it limits the freedom of religion guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights and it was opposed by the established Churches. He was also concerned about parental access to the members of cults. We have no information on which to judge whether access has improved over the past three years. To hinder access is unacceptable and can only increase the distress of the parents.

It is understandable that those whose children are involved ask the Government to do something and propose direct intervention. The problem is that we enter that difficult and dangerous territory where order has to be balanced against liberty and where the cure can sometimes be even more harmful than the evil it seeks to remedy. In this country we have a long-standing tradition of religious toleration. Religious freedom—including the freedom to change religion or belief, and the freedom to manifest religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice or otherwise—is guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights. My noble friend Lord Rodney said he was disappointed that the Government have not taken action against cults. I must tell him that it is a difficult area. My noble friend Lord Craigmyle put it fairly succinctly when he said that people are seeking something. What are they seeking? There is nothing wrong with seeking something. People are always doing that. My noble friend Lady Lane-Fox asked how people are caught up in these cults. We should all like an answer to that question. However, when one starts to legislate and say, "This one, that one and the other one are unacceptable but the other five are acceptable", one is moving towards a dangerous line of thought. Somebody has to be the arbiter. The Government cannot be the arbiter. It may be that the courts should be the arbiter, but then the legislation must be very clearly defined. That will be a difficult task.

The noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, said correctly that this would be a difficult area. He said that we have to be careful not to have a witch hunt. He is quite correct. If we are not careful, if we try to pursue this too far, we shall get into a minefield of problems and may end up with the position being worse than it is at the moment. I shall come on later to what the Government propose to do but I sympathise with what the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, said. It is a difficult area in which we find ourselves wishing, quite understandably, to move and to change.

However, in the end these are very much matters of personal conviction and of the way in which one brings up one's family and children. The Church has a great part to play in this, as do teachers and parents. I suppose that one can only look back on the words of Edmund Burke and say that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

We can keep a close eye on the activities of the cults. We have always urged members of the public who have evidence of any organisation or its members being involved in breaking the law to inform the police immediately. However, where there is no breach of the law we cannot take action against an organisation just because some people regard its activities as socially undesirable. The activities and the views of many organisations are deeply repugnant to most sensible people. That applies to a wider range of groups than those which are normally regarded as cults but we have to live with them. It would strike at the root of our system of law for the Government to attempt to take any action against them. Proposals for a system of voluntary guidelines were accepted by the European Parliament but were criticised not only by new religious groups but also by the established Churches, which considered them seriously to limit religious freedom and also likely to affect the established Churches.

It is not for the Government to adopt an anti-cultist approach. In fact they must scrupulously attempt to avoid being partisan. The public exposure of the true nature and activities of cults will help people to reflect more carefully before being involved. Such an approach, adopting a nonjudgmental stance, seems from the Government's point of view to be the most desirable. To adopt an anti-cultist approach would often, in any event, make matters worse, driving to more extreme positions those whom we would seek to help. We all know that, by warning that some action is wrong or dangerous, a parent or teacher can harden the resolve of the youngster to continue in his or her folly. We also know that the more militant activity of the anti-cultist involves kidnapping and "deprogramming", which can make the cure as distasteful as the disease, let alone being quite unlawful. While we sympathise with anyone who sees his child taken away into an organisation of which he disapproves, one cannot go around the world kidnapping people because they belong to an organisation of which one disapproves. If one has a child who happens to go into a monastery, perhaps against one's wishes, one cannot go and haul him out, especially if he has made that choice of his own free will. The Government are concerned to ensure that in any alteration of the law we do not make the matter worse than it is at present. We are concerned to ensure that all those organisations are alert to the methods and ways of keeping people informed about what these cults do.

The noble Baroness, Lady Macleod, asked about INFORM, which is the organisation the Government have decided to help and sponsor. We are currently providing some funds for INFORM, which stands for Information Network Focus on Religious Movements. My noble friend Lord Rodney was apprehensive about it, but INFORM will make available high quality and objective information about the activities of cults in this country. It will operate through a network of experts—mainly academics and churchmen—who keep in touch with the changing circumstances of cults. It is proposed that the information INFORM produces will be available to parents, teachers and to others who are involved with the pastoral care of young people, so that they may be alert to the dangers which exist, particularly for sixth-formers, school-leavers and university students. It will provide a counselling service.

I am sure that that will be welcomed but I am aware that some members of the anti-cultist groups believe that those who have been responsible for setting up INFORM are too closely involved with cults to ensure its objectiveness. One particular target was Dr. Eileen Barker, who chairs the working group responsible for setting up INFORM. Her researches have necessarily brought her into contact with the Moonies. She has attended conferences organised by them both to present papers and to further her researches. I was interested in what my noble friend Lord Craigmyle said. If I may paraphrase his words, he said that one has to understand what other people are doing and one has to be able to have access to these bodies. That is precisely what Dr. Barker has done.

Indeed she has said that it would be nothing short of professional irresponsibility for the sociologists not to attempt to observe and understand the Unification Church's perceptions at first hand. The great thing about INFORM is that the Churches—the Anglican Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Methodists and the Baptists—have all welcomed its establishment and have been represented on the working group. The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury has agreed to act as a patron. The General Synod of the Church of England is providing funds and the Methodist Church Office is providing accommodation.

I welcome the involvement of the Churches. They have an important role to play in guiding and teaching. I have no doubt that the cults will flourish only where a spiritual and moral vacuum is left unfilled. I suggest that the Churches should assess their teaching so that they support and encourage those who are most vulnerable. I was glad to have heard from the right reverend Prelate that they are doing that work in the different dioceses. In that way, they should be able to help expose the falseness of the cults' claims.

We regard the establishment of INFORM as a significant step towards healing the harmful side-effects of the activities of cults. We hope that all those who are concerned about the effects of cults on family life, and I am thinking particularly of FAIR and others involved in support of parents and ex-members of the cults, will co-operate with INFORM and will regard it, not as an obstacle, but as a valuable tool in the work of exposing the unsavoury and unacceptable aspects of the cult movement. We shall watch developments carefully and will continue to keep cults under scrutiny. If there is any evidence of illegal activity, we shall ensure that it is referred to the police.

Many of your Lordships, including the noble Lords, Lord Houghton of Sowerby and Lord Hampton, quite understandably, honed in on the subject of charitable status. My noble friend Lady Macleod said that charitable law needs altering. The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, also referred to the charity law. It may be helpful if I were to comment on one or two of those matters.

The noble Lord, Lord Houghton, said that religious charities should show public benefit. But he will know that one of the four limbs which are essential in order to obtain charitable status is the advancement of religion. Therefore, the proviso is that the organisation has to show that it is advancing religion. To show that something which purports to do that is not doing so is a difficult challenge to undertake.

As your Lordships will know, charitable law is based on common, rather than statute, law, and on precedent built up by the courts and the Charity Commission. An organisation has a legal right to charitable status if its objects are exclusively charitable in law. It follows that the High Court, or the Charity Commission acting in its stead, cannot deny an organisation which has exclusively charitable objects full status as a charity.

Reference has been made to the decision by my right honourable and learned friend the Attorney-General to discontinue his action in the High Court to challenge the charitable status of the Unification Church. My right honourable and learned friend gave a long exposition from which my noble friend Lord Sandys quoted. I should like to remind your Lordships of the reason for that exposition. My right honourable and learned friend said:

"I have now been advised by leading counsel that it is most unlikely that, if the appeal proceeded to trial, I should be able to dislodge that strong legal presumption of charitable status".—[Official Report, Commons, 3/2/88; col. 977.]

In other words, however much people may wish that that should be the case, if the Government or my right honourable and learned friend had pursued the matter, the chances are that the court would not have found in their favour. If that were the advice given to my right honourable and learned friend, it would not have been prudent to pursue a case which at the outset looked unlikely to succeed and which would have involved much time and great deal of expense.

There is no doubt that the Unification Church must, as a matter of law, be regarded as a religion. In English law there is a strong presumption that any trust for the advancement of religion is charitable unless proved to the contrary. I remind the House that only two weeks ago, in a debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, there was unanimity that the Government should not open up the question of charitable law and charitable status. The noble Lord, Lord Houghton, said that it would be a hornet's nest. I, too, think that it would be.

I can say three things which I hope will reassure those of your Lordships who feel disappointment and frustration that some of the organisations of the kind we have been discussing receive and retain charitable status. First, the Government have already announced that they are taking major steps to improve the monitoring and supervision of charities in line with the recent efficiency scrutiny report by Sir Philip Woodfield. The report recommends a number of ways in which the running of charities, their public accountability and their fund-raising activities should be much more closely supervised in future.

The Government have already announced that they intend, within the life of this Parliament, to strengthen the powers of the Charity Commission. We are determined to ensure that organisations which register as charities cannot take the public, the Government or the taxpayer, as it were, for a ride.

Secondly, just because an organisation has charitable status and becomes entitled to tax concessions as a result, those tax concessions do not follow automatically. The Inland Revenue has always had powers to scrutinise the way in which charities apply their income and to disallow for tax purposes expenditure on activities which are not fully charitable in law.

Thirdly, we appreciate how daunting a task it is to contemplate any changes in charity law; how long such changes might take to develop and consider; and how careful we must be—this is important—that in dealing with one mischief we do not create many others which are more problematical. However, in spite of all those things, I can assure your Lordships that we will look closely at all the suggestions which have been made during the debate to see whether there is anything more that can be done. I say that, not because I can see an easy way ahead, but merely in recognition of the unanimity of feeling which has been expressed by your Lordships.

I share the concern and disquiet that has been expressed by your Lordships from all parts of the House. That is why, as we consider the legislation which should be put in place to give effect to Sir Philip Woodfield's report, we will study carefully all the points which have been made to see whether any of them can help to improve the legislation.

My Lords, perhaps I may first thank all those noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. I appreciate the fact that they have stayed until the end of the debate and have shown such interest in the subject. I should especially like to thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford for his reassuring and sympathetic speech. As so many noble Lords have said, I hope that we shall hear him more often in the House. I was most reassured to hear that the Church is to have its own people out in the dioceses to help counsel those who are in trouble with these cults.

I should also like to express my appreciation to my noble friend the Minister; he dealt fully and sympathetically with the subject. My noble friend has obviously taken a lot of trouble to go into all the aspects of the matter. However, I cannot honestly say that I shall leave the House full of joy. However, that was not the point of the debate.

The debate has demonstrated the genuine and deep concern that there is on all sides of the House about this problem. I appreciate that it is not a problem for which there is a simple and easy solution. But drawing attention to it and to the anguish caused by these cults can only do good. I hope that the whole question will not be forgotten but that people will continue to review the problem in order to find some solution for it.

We have heard some reassuring words about INFORM. I thought it only proper that I should express my worries. If it comes up to expectations and fulfils the role for which it is intended, I shall be the first person to acclaim it. I very much agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, said. I hope it will not only inform but also warn. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

rose to move, That this House takes note of the Report of the European Communities Committee on Agricultural Stabilisers [9th Report, 1987–88, HL Paper 43].

My Lords, before I begin my short speech about the report I should like to add to the words of the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, about the tragic death of Lord De La Warr. I knew him as a boy. His father was Under-Secretary for the Ministry of Agriculture when my husband was Minister of Agriculture in the early 1930s, and I have been closely associated with the De La Warr family for more than 50 years. The shock this morning was really terrible, and I am sure we would all like to send our sympathy to his wife and his family for this terrible event.

When I first heard the word "stabiliser" I could not think what it meant. Today, having listened to and questioned so many different societies and agricultural interests, I understand its meaning. It is much the same as what we have recommended in several of our Sub-committee D reports. We have always agreed that there should be a close liaison between what farmers produce and what consumers want to buy. "Do not produce what you cannot sell' is a good principle. Unfortunately, it is not always adhered to.

In the words of the report, the delicate balance between budget production and market needs requires careful attention. That is putting it mildly. I have been stressing that consumer needs are vital to the farmers. We do not think enough about that. If a policy of stabilisers can help, this is certainly the moment to start. There is one thing which I always find it difficult to assess about quotas or restrictions. How can we follow the fluctuations in demand as well as production? Sometimes one is told that milk is overproduced. Then the next day one reads in the Scottish papers that we cannot meet the demand for making cheese because there is not enough milk. How does one cope with that? Agricultural supplies take time to produce. Things cannot be altered in a matter of days, months or even years. If I concentrate first on the subject which I know most about, it is to discuss what has been said about sheep. Your Lordships know that I am deeply involved in that particular section of the industry and I have had very long experience.

First, I think we must realise that there are two very different periods in the production of edible mutton. There is rearing and there is fattening. The main areas for the production of sheep are the areas which are only fit for breeding and grazing. Of the total area, 57·2 per cent. is given over to that type of production. As I think your Lordships know, those areas are called "less favoured"—why, I have never known. To illustrate what enormous importance they have in all our countries, in Scotland they represent 98.6 per cent. of production, in Wales the figure is 79 per cent. and in Northern Ireland the figure is 76.6 per cent. Those figures are in the report.

Without sheep production, those areas would be wasted. The sheep farmer in the United Kingdom has an average of 389 sheep per farm. In the EC, the number is 80. In the real hill country in which I live, and also in Wales, Cumbria and other parts of Scotland (both the Borders and the Highlands), the number of sheep involved on a bigger sheep farm would average between 1,000 and 3,000 ewes.

That system also provides arable mixed farmers with sheep for fattening because we sell our sheep into areas where they can be fattened. The farmers who buy them raise them for the butcher and the public. The industry is tremendously important because it covers such a wide experience in the farming world. That is why we are all opposed to the limited proposal put forward by the European countries. We wish to see that the sheep industry is not overproduced or the public oversupplied. If it were not for the fact that we can produce what we in fact produce, we should go bankrupt. I therefore strongly support the recommendations in the report at paragraphs 59, 60 and 61, which have been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher.

As regards the actual effect of stabilisers on limiting certain produce, I agree with the report that the outcome is doubtful. We can only tell how the various countries will work out the critical introductions from experience. To date, although European countries have talked about the matter for a long time, the will to carry it out has been lacking, and it remains to be seen whether it will be done in the end.

There is one other principle which I feel sure cannot be ignored. If farmers are to crack down on production, there must be some compensation. That brings in the worrying matter of how to provide compensation. Will the set-aside policy help? I think that that will be very difficult to carry out. Our next inquiry will deal with that very matter. I hope that we shall reach some useful conclusions and that our next report will be as useful as I believe some of our reports have been in the past.

My Lords, I join, from these Benches, with the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, in expressing our deep sorrow at the sudden death of Lord De La Warr. I should also like to thank the noble Lord for the way in which he introduced the report and for the report itself. It is not lengthy but it brings out, in my view, all the essentials as regards the suggestions which are coming from Brussels.

All of us in every political party agree on the need to control expenditure on agricultural support. If the Common Market is going to survive, that must be done without too much damage to the agricultural industry. It is a great tragedy that an industry which has excelled in increasing its productivity, both per acre and per man—probably more so than any other industry—should find itself in the position of having been too efficient.

We must also never forget the place of agriculture in creating the countryside which we all love and in providing employment in remote rural areas. There are some of us who can remember the state of the countryside in the 1930s. None of us would care to go back to that.

There is no doubt in my mind that the arable sector of the Common Market produces the greatest problems of surpluses and rising coasts. As the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, has said, the use of the price structure as a means of curbing production is at best an ad hoc response to the problems of a particular year. That was also stated in the report. To be politically acceptable, such responses would have to be minor and followed through year by year. It is therefore a tragedy that the advice of this country was not taken eight years ago when the proposals for using the price structure to prevent the creation of too many surpluses were put forward. Such responses would also have to be introduced in such a way, and be so minor, that they did not impose too great a hardship on the agricultural community.

As the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, has said, to look at stabilisers in isolation will not achieve the desired reduction in production. Those policies must go hand in hand with a policy of set-asides. I am delighted to hear that the committee is now looking at the proposals for set-aside. It is only if the two matters go hand in hand that we can achieve a reduction of surpluses.

I believe that set-aside, in itself and properly introduced, is probably the quickest way of controlling budgetary expenditure while maintaining a reasonable income for the farming community. However, there are dangers, and I make no excuse for talking about the matter because I find it desperately important that we look at it together. There are dangers in a set-aside policy, and I think that compensation should not necessarily be contemplated on a long-term basis. However, it would give the Community breathing space in which to reduce its surpluses. During that period, the Community should concentrate on the marketing of produce to avoid further surpluses, perhaps by the creation of cheap credit facilities for third world countries.

The set-aside policy would have to be adequate to safeguard the farmers' income. But there are problems even there; we only have to look at what has happened in the United States to see that. A straight acreage payment would obviously favour the large farmer and care would also have to be taken that not only the most unproductive areas of land were taken out of production. It might be necessary to think in terms of a sliding scale of compensation under set-aside.

For those reasons, a policy of set-aside should be contemplated to stabilise the market on a short-term basis in the first instance. Stabilisers without set-aside will not work without creating excessive hardship.

As has been mentioned, the most controversial proposal from the Community is that dealing with the sheepmeat regime. Like the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, I should like to question whether it is necessary to introduce stabilisers at this stage when only 80 per cent. self-sufficiency has been achieved within the Community, when Continental Europe is nowhere near achieving self-sufficiency and when in a butcher's shop in France a leg of lamb is twice as expensive as an equal weight of sirloin. In many parts of Europe lamb is still a luxury meat. Therefore, I do not see that it is necessary to deal with the matter now, particularly in view of the fact that the sheep regime will come up for review in 1988.

It would be quite wrong to introduce stabilisers which militated against Great Britain. The whole principle of the CAP is that it is a common policy and the whole of the Community should be treated equally. Britain should not be penalised because it is more efficient.

I was pleased to hear that it is now unlikely that the limit on ewes will be reintroduced. We are quite happy with the acceptance that the premium should be paid on ewes, but we should have been strongly opposed to the introduction of a limit of 500 ewes on good land and 1,000 on hill land. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, I farm sheep—in the Western Highlands and also in Oxfordshire—so I have a personal interest.

The sheepmeat regime at present in force in England, which, as has been said, is a deficiency payment system, has worked well for many years. Perhaps the Government should try to persuade other countries within the EC to accept a similar regime. I believe that farmers in this country feel keenly that they are being penalised in many ways. If we are to have a proper common market all countries within the Community should be able to compete on equal terms.

I do not know whether any noble Lords present tonight watched "Panorama" on Monday. It dealt with what was termed the "rip-off"—fraud in the Common Market. The programme mentioned figures of £2 billion, or 10 per cent. of the Community budget. I have no idea whether the figures are correct or exaggerated, but if the fraud amounts to only half that figure it represents an enormous slice of the Community budget. Fraud occurs on the Irish border, in Germany, and all over Europe. There is no incentive for member states to prosecute because if they do so they have to pay back the levy. In my view the Commission must be given greater power and allowed to set up a much stronger fraud squad than that which exists at the moment, which I am told employs only about 15 people. I mention that point only because the sums involved are so large that they have a tremendous impact on the whole of the Community argricultural budget. I believe that that is also something to which we should turn our attention.

My Lords, as a member of the sub-committee I find that this report makes rather gloomy reading. That is not a criticism of the drafting but a comment on the Commission document on which the report is based.

Nearly everyone with a passing interest in the countryside expresses dismay at the CAP and its runaway budget. This report makes clear that the stabiliser proposals will not be very effective overall but will have a considerable effect on many individual UK farmers. Onlookers are not impressed by that inability to find a solution; but if there were an obvious answer to oversupply, it would long ago have been implemented. There are no magic alternative crops or enterprises.

There are many commodities in surplus in the EC and tonight we are only considering two—cereals and sheep. Any proposals have to cover such a wide climatic and social range that whatever is proposed will be felt to be discriminatory in some region or country. That is an inherent problem with the CAP.

Worldwide oversupply is unlikely to ease in the immediate term, with the USA also overproducing cereals. Perhaps even more seriously, Chinese peasant farmers are becoming more organised and are likely to become net exporters in the near future. Thus the fact that Community cereal acreage has been reduced slightly since 1984 is dwarfed by that last fact alone. Likewise, the effect of recent inclement harvest weather in Europe is balanced by the great strides that scientists are making to increase plant yields and performance each year.

All those factors call for a more determined policy that looks to worldwide rather than narrow domestic considerations. One member can upset any agreement, as in the example of the infamous guarantee thresholds quoted in the report. There is a great mountain of food in the world, but famine still claims endless victims because political will can override human considerations and group benefits with narrow-mindedness of outlook. Surely this is a worldwide problem calling for larger scale thinking. We have gone from domestic markets into the EC: should we not be thinking now of worldwide markets?

However, to return to the immediate problems and in particular to those affecting many farmers in the UK, there has been a gradual squeeze on income combined with milk, sugar and potato quotas, leaving limited room for manoeuvre. I should like to emphasise paragraph 49 of the report. There is a very real danger that many farmers will see the price cuts,

"as part of the continuing 'cost-price' squeeze which encourages producers to greater efforts to improve efficiency, rather than to cut production."

The obvious move has been into sheep but the Commission is forestalling that move with a maximum guaranteed quantity scheme provisionally set, as we have heard, at 87 million head, the existing Community sheep count.

We have already heard about those proposals, so I shall mention only that fencing is a more basic and expensive difficulty. Another danger for the typical mixed farm is the lack of grain storage facilities. Often grain is held in cattle yards until November and sold just before the dairy cows come in for winter. Intervention buying, delayed until the 1st November as is proposed, would have an immediate effect on the prices that this type of farm could expect to receive. It is the cereal producers who are suffering particularly from the effects of the green pound. A devaluation would greatly help British agriculture.

The conservation, tidyness and prosperity of the countryside are dependent on farmers having a little left over in their pockets at the end of the day for such non-income producing activities. However, there are partial solutions on the horizon in the form of either the government-inspired farm woodland scheme or the EC proposals for set aside and extensification. Either of those could be a help to farmers, but their degree of usefulness is dependent almost entirely on the rate of incentive. It is in this regard that stabilisers, in conjunction with the measures that I have just mentioned, could play a useful role in cutting production but still keep a reasonable rural economy in place.

On a budget level there is a danger that the administrative and policing costs of the alternative schemes will mop up much of the savings of the stabilisers; but it must be right to pay as much attention to safeguarding rural communities and jobs. Our committee looks forward to reporting on set aside. The rates must be high enough to cover fixed costs, meaning at least £300 a hectare; but workable schemes to produce less of the same acreage and encouraging organic farming are most welcome. Whatever combination of stabilisers and other schemes are chosen, I am sure that all farmers will put in a plea for another type of stabiliser; namely, stability of policy. There must be a long-term plan which is stuck to, so that farmers can plan their cropping and budgets and avoid the farcical situation that has developed in the past two seasons, when farmers have deliberately grown more cereal acreage in the fear of some quota system being based on their existing acreage. That has only had the effect of pushing up production of barley and wheat of course.

The farmer knows that he cannot go on producing commodities in oversupply. Let us create a system that will work to cut production and thus eventually cut central costs. The long-term answer must be as stated in the report: price cuts over a period of years with direct payments to small farmers and in addition a financially worthwhile set of extensification schemes.

My Lords, as a member of the subcommittee I should like to begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, for the excellent way in which he introduced this report which reflects the splendid way in which he chaired the sub-committee. With a rare combination of wit and firmness, he guided the committee safely through a very complicated subject.

The report makes clear that stabilisers are one method of budgetary control. They are an attempt to combine production capping with cash limits. Taking the worst view of them, they can be regarded as impractical, unfair and based on very dubious statistics. One obvious unfairness which concerns us as farmers is the difference in harvest performance not just across the Community but within each country. To take the 1987 season as an example of a year's harvest, the north-east of Scotland and East Anglia had one of the worst harvests in living memory, the West Country had a good harvest, and the middle of England, as always, had a fairly average harvest.

That shows what can happen in one country. Let us look at the problem on a European scale. The stabilisers are to be based on an estimate of the total of the European harvests. There could well be a situation in which one country has had a bad harvest and the other countries have good harvests, and the total of the harvests triggers off the stabilisers and cuts in prices. The country with the bad harvest would be hit very hard indeed.

The report also makes clear in paragraph 38 the preferred policy of Sub-committee D.

"The Committee's preferred instrument for controlling agricultural production is a policy of rolling price-cuts sustained over a period of years and announced well in advance with direct payments for small farmers".

Those members of the committee who are farmers must have wondered when that sort of recommendation was produced whether we should not be compared to the proverbial turkeys who voted early for Christmas. We have to agree with this recommendation. It is logical. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, said, it is probably not now politically possible.

Further to confuse a very confusing situation, there are the proposals for set aside. I do not propose to go into this matter in great detail and pre-empt the discussion that we shall no doubt be having on a subsequent report. The proposals, which were produced by the ministry as a consultative document, were overtaken to some extent by the Commission's proposals. In the evidence given to it, the committee was very clearly told that there was a political linkage between stabilisers and set aside. If there is no agreement concluded in Brussels this week—and let us hope that there will be—on the stabiliser proposals and there is a linkage, presumably that means that it will not be possible to have a set aside scheme for the 1989 harvest, or 1988 and planting.

If one must await agreement at the summit in Hannover in June, one must wonder whether it will be possible to devise a set-aside scheme and start this autumn. Should that prove to be the case, it will be another opportunity that has been missed in a year when cereal stocks in the Community are declining rapidly.

I must say that I did not entirely understand why there has to be the political linkage. In the long term, as was said by the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, there has to be such a relationship; but in the short term, if we do not have the stabilisers and cannot reach agreement on them but do have a set-aside scheme which is mildly successful, it would reduce the need for stabilisers. That is the point. If we cannot have stabilisers it will be better to start off with set aside until we can reach agreement on the stabiliser system.

A further complication that was touched on in the report refers to fluctuations in currency and their effects. There was a debate last week in this House on the common internal market in which I made the point that one of the major implications of the common internal market is that MCAs and the monetary and compensatory amounts can be applied:

"only in a way which acts as a barrier to free trade. Therefore the Community is committed to removing all MCAs in four years' time at the latest so as to comply with the Single European Act … It is just not possible to abolish the green currencies and the MCA system unless the market rates of currencies are kept in a very closely controlled relationship, namely the EMS".

I drew the inexorable conclusion that we must join the EMS if the agricultural support system is to survive. That was confirmed by the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook, when, replying for the Government, he said:

"MCAs are an integral part of the current system of agricultural pricing in the Community and we should like to see them abolished in a phased way. However, a number of our partners would not be able to accept that easily. The single market will not be achieved while MCAs remain".—[Official Report, 3/2/1988; col. 1154.]

That point should be borne in mind when considering the stabiliser proposals. When the Minister replies, I hope that she will explain to the House exactly how the stabiliser system relates to the paraphernalia of the green currencies and MCAs and how the whole shooting match, with the stabilisers as well, will in turn be affected by the proposals for the common internal market by 1992.

The report refers to uncertainty as something with which we must deal in the Community. Paragraph 62 states:

"The extent to which stabiliser mechanisms are triggered and to which the resulting penalties would impact on the cost of the CAP is not easily quantified, but there are uncertainties as regards harvest yields, exchange rate fluctuations, and stability of markets".

Another uncertainty was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington. She referred to the BBC programme "Panorama" last Monday which dealt with fraud in the common agricultural policy whereby 10 per cent. of the agricultural budget is redirected—it seems towards the Mafia. I shall put this as delicately as I can. There is another form of redirection—insider dealings. Preknowledge of levies and harvest estimates could be very useful commercial information. Given the complications of stabilisers, I wonder whether this is yet another avenue being opened for the redirection of Community funds.

I declare an interest here in oilseed. I was for some years a member of the oilseeds advisory committee of the EC in Brussels. It occurred to me then that people enjoyed great commercial advantage if they had preknowledge of subsidy rates immediately before they changed.

The report is an excellent analysis of a complicated subject. I conclude as I began by congratulating the chairman of the committee, my noble friend Lord Gallacher, on producing the report and so enabling the House to debate this important topic.

My Lords, I take part in the debate with some trepidation. I am not a farmer. It is a great many years since I looked at the common agricultural policy. In view of what I am about to say, perhaps I should add that I was in favour of the United Kingdom joining the EC on balance. The negative part of the balance was the common agricultural policy. If asked about the prospects at the time we joined, I should have said that by 1988 we would have it reformed and sorted out. I would have thought it unbelievable for the common agricultural policy to be in a greater mess in 1988 than when we joined. I say that to put the matter into context.

We are asked to look at the subject of stabilisers because of the need for curbs on the ever-increasing spending on agricultural support. In other words, our concern is with the budget. It is clear, whatever else one says about the control of public expenditure, that this part is completely out of control. As several speakers including the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, have pointed out, there is a paradox. If stabilizers—or, in my view, any of the other interventions that we are asked to consider—were used effectively to control the budget, they would be so disruptive of the agricultural sector that it would become politically impossible. In other words, the notion is, "Either you use the stabilisers to stabilise the budget, in which case the thing blows up politically" or, "We cannot allow the political ill-effects to occur so we invent stabilisers, but then use them almost as a fig leaf-. That is a matter of serious concern.

To pursue the economics of stabilisers, I am much in agreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood. I, too, was at a total loss to know what this or any of the rest of the terminology meant. Unlike the noble Baroness, I think I still do not understand what it means. In so far as stabilisers might conceivably have some effect on the budget, the concern is that they would then destabilise almost everything else: they would destabilise farmers' incomes, production and prices—or, at least, there is a danger of that.

This leads to the other aspects that concern me. Here is a set of proposals which the committee has examined but which it is fairly clear the people in Brussels have not thought through. The economics seem to me extremely complex, but we are offered no serious analysis.

I have referred to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, on stabilisers, with which I agree. I note that both she and my noble friend Lord Carter mentioned the subject of fraud. Here again I must take a negative view. Within a system as arcane and bureaucratic as the common agricultural policy, fraud is in my opinion inevitable. The idea that one can somehow get rid of some of it by adding to the number of bureaucrats seems to me even more preposterous. Given a system that appears to have been set up in the first place so that smart operators can manipulate it, I am amazed that anyone should be surprised when that happens. It is what any economist would predict must inevitably follow.

I am worried by a point that my noble friend Lord Carter mentioned and to which reference is made in the report. If one views stabilisers or any of the other interventions from the point of view of the farmer, they are really mysterious. If I were a farmer, I would regard them as much more likely to produce difficulties than to assist me. I should be particularly worried about the uncertainties that seem inevitably to follow from them. If one intends to do something of this nature, I am a great believer in having a set of rules. I have a strong suspicion that, if we move in this direction, stabilisers, too, will be manipulated, and not necessarily to the advantage of farmers.

Stabilisers are about the budget. I do not doubt for one moment that the excess spending is an important matter. I hope that, in considering stabilisers and the budget, we will not be led away from what many of us in the economics profession regard as the much more serious faults of the common agricultural policy, namely, that it is monstrously inefficient and unfair. Stabilisers appear to do little to address those problems. Although I do not disagree with the concern of the Prime Minister with the budget, one hopes that it does not overwhelm all other considerations in the assessment of what is going on.

In following my noble friend Lord Carter, one cannot but reflect on the anomaly that we have a Community built around free market principles in which the outstanding topic of the day is unification of markets and the reduction of artificial barriers. Bedded within it, however, is the common agricultural policy, which is an affront to free markets, to efficiency and to equity; and, indeed, we are considering further interventions to effect even more manipulation.

In conclusion, I am bound to say that I believe that your Lordships are right to scrutinise in detail stabilisers, set-aside and any other proposals put forward. None of that is a substitute for fundamental reform of the common agricultural policy or—better still—its abandonment in favour of a more sensible system of agricultural support.

My Lords, it must be said that it is not very easy to form a judgment on the latest proposals of the European Commission to curb Community expenditure while negotiations are still proceeding.

The noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, has explained why the Committee concentrated on the measures proposed for just two commodities, cereals and sheep. The proposals for sheep have been dealt with so comprehensively and clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, and by my noble friend Lady Elliot of Harwood that I shall say no more on the subject save this: I believe that the criticisms of the sheep stabiliser proposals contained in the report—that they would discriminate against the United Kingdom and are therefore not acceptable in their present form—are justified.

As to cereals, we are in a difficulty. As the noble Lord, Lord Carter, said, it is impossible adequately to assess the likely effect of the stabiliser proposals when both the level of production at which they are to be triggered and the price cuts to follow are not yet fixed.

The report weighs up the likely effect of the stabilisers, given the numbers that the Commission believes should be written in to be effective. The report, as we have heard, concludes that the measures proposed are not likely to be very effective in stabilising budget spending. It suggests that they would be unlikely to have significant effects on the levels of production and, finally, it takes the view that as they stand they would bring significant disadvantages in their train.

These are not very enthusiastic conclusions. They have already been greeted by adverse comment, though not, it appears, here tonight. The sense, if not the words, indicate a rather sharp criticism that the report underestimates the need to resolve the financial crisis in the EC and that it is high time for a large measure of support by the taxpayer to be removed from the feather-bedded agriculture industry and a bed of nails provided consisting of really steep and effective price cuts coupled with an immediate curb on the use of fertilisers.

How easy it would be if the CAP could be reformed in such a cheap and simple manner. If that were so Ministers and heads of government would not be locked as they are now in such complicated discussions and negotiations.

I comment first on the fertiliser suggestion. I believe that constraints on production such as a nitrogen quota are economic nonsense. Whatever is done to limit output, one cannot tell an industry which is highly geared to technological advance, as is British farming, that in future it has to produce inefficiently. It would be just as foolish to tell supermarkets that they must go back to selling through the corner shop or coal miners to go back to using picks and shovels or the textile industry to forgo the use of man-made fibres.

I now turn to the question of price cuts. All noble Lords who have spoken tonight agree that the member states, through their Council and ministers, have been negligent in allowing levels of prices that have stimulated production of cereals beyond what was required for home consumption and what can be sold abroad without upsetting the pattern of trade.

The Sub-committee, of which I have the privilege of being a member, has been saying that for years. It would be quite unfair to accuse it of being unaware of the budgetary implications and the urgent need for reform. Because the process of gradual and measured control of prices over the years, which we have long recommended, has not been adopted the savage cuts that are being advocated are actually under way now. As we feared, the brakes are being applied too late and many would say too hard.

I remember quoting the figures when we debated the Commission's 1987–88 farm price proposals last May. Last year cereal prices were cut by up to 12 per cent. and this year by a further 7 per cent. The effective price cuts are greater by reason of the other related measures which were imposed at the same time. Oilseed rape has taken a 25 per cent. price cut this year. One really cannot brush off a 20 per cent. cut in grain prices over two years and say that nothing is happening. Of course the EC expenditure runaway bus must be brought under control, but the methods used must be sophisticated.

The present health of the farming industry and this country's capacity to produce reasonably priced food are not in a state to survive the kind of bludgeoning which I have heard advocated. As our report on prices said last May, there has been an average fall in the purchasing power of net farm income in the Community of 25 per cent. in the past 10 years. In the United Kingdom the fall has been 40 per cent. due to the effect of large negative MCAs, whose malign effects continue to discriminate against our own farmers. The noble Duke, the Duke of Somerset, referred to that and so did the noble Lord, Lord Carter.

I have heard a figure mentioned which indicates that at present, because of the green pound, UK cereal producers are suffering from a return that is depressed by about 18 per cent. Last May I quoted some of the Government's figures for farmers' returns. These can now be brought up to date following the publication of the 1988 Annual Review of Agriculture. I think it justifies the rather gloomy picture I am painting and reflects what all of us in farming know very well: that the weather plays a far larger part than is ever allowed for by those who predict future levels of production. For example, Table 30 of the MAFF 1988 review shows that for English farms growing mainly cereals, taking an index figure of 100 for average net farm income in 1982–83, the index figure rose to 134 in the good harvest year 1984–85. The following year it was 23. The forecast index figure for 1987–88 is 10. For English lowland livestock farms it is down to just 5 from a figure of 100.

As the noble Lord, Lord Carter, has reminded us, for those of us who farm in eastern England, all the way from Kent to Northumberland, the 1987 harvest was a disaster and these figures bear out what we already knew. It appears from Table 31 that farmers in Scotland have done better—according to the MAFF review, that is. But we should not forget that in 1985–86 the average result for Scottish cropping farms of all sizes was a loss of no less than £11,000 per farm.

If it is necessary to knock some of the stuffing out of the featherbed (if there is one) then, in recommending how to do it, never let it be forgotten under what hazardous conditions our food is produced. Nevertheless, when that is said, the long-term trend of cereal production must be upwards, though yields will rise probably less steeply and certainly less steadily than was envisaged in the forecast that we had before us when we debated our report on cereals in 1986.

Consideration as to the form of the control that should be imposed on both costs and output is in the forefront of the current debate on the CAP. Stabilisers as now proposed are only one mechanism. I can understand why the Government have accepted the principle. It is perfectly logical that overproduction should lead to price cuts and in our report we state that if such a brake is adopted it should be capable of being applied automatically. It is difficult to agree when to apply the brake and how sharply it should be applied. We draw attention to the unpredictable effect on farm incomes of allowing agricultural stabilisers to operate in an unfettered fashion. We state in the report that stabiliser controls as now proposed for cereals carry with them many disadvantages and by themselves may not be effective.

I believe that the most important conclusion in the report is that contained in paragraph 46. It states that:

"Agricultural Stabilisers should be seen only as part of an overall Budget strategy toward the CAP.".

In the next paragraph we state that:

"Agricultural Stabilisers, on their own, cannot be regarded as the sole mechanism for controlling agricultural spending.".

There are other potential measures in addition to price restraints. There is the transfer of land to nonagricultural use; alternative crops, including forestry; import substitution; the development of industrial uses for farm products; and set-aside, as we have heard tonight. All those and other mechanisms are under discussion and it is our view that budgetary problems must be tackled by a combination of some or all of those.

The proposals for stabilisers can only be effective as part of a package, but that package must be devised with the greatest care. A draconian assault on the farming industry's capacity to produce, such as I have heard advocated, would be very damaging and its effects would reach right out into the nation's economy.

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, and I are the only two speakers who are not members of the committee. Nevertheless, we can sincerely compliment the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, on the way in which he introduced the report today. He covered a great deal of ground but there is still a great deal of ground to be covered. I note that one of the first matters he mentioned—almost in the second sentence—was set-aside and I shall return to that subject later.

I was intrigued to note that my noble friend Lord Peston is the only person I have heard claiming that the CAP was in a mess in 1973 when we joined and that the whole system was wide open to fraud in any event. Not for one moment do I suggest that he is being wise after the event, but it would be interesting to find his reference for those statements. However, we shall leave the matter there.

We are all agreed—nobody could disagree—that something must be done about the surpluses and their cost. One of the major costs (approximately £2,000 million) is the handling of the present surpluses sitting in store, and that problem must also be tackled. As my noble friend Lord Carter and other noble Lords pointed out, if the job is to have any effect before the budget is bankrupt, it must be done quickly.

This morning I read a report in a newspaper to the effect that it appears that the German Minister of Agriculture and our Minister are a little closer than has been the case in the past, and if something might be achieved this week that is a good sign. However, if the next harvest is planned and planted it is too late for another year and things will be in a sorry state. As was pointed out in the report, there is a lack of political will.

I looked at the report carefully and then turned back to the first paragraph which straightaway sets out almost everything that is required. It is a good paragraph which reads:

"Stabilisers have in the past year become a key feature of CAP reform. The name is new: it refers to any mechanism to keep market support for an agricultural commodity within budgetary limits. The concept is not new: quotas and levies on sugar production are existing stabilisers; so too are co-responsibility levies and quotas for milk. Now the Commission is proposing stabilising mechanisms for a wider range of agricultural commodities.".

That is a far-reaching paragraph.

If one then turns to paragraph 62, which contains one of the most succinct conclusions I have ever seen in a report, one finds that one could have carried out the whole job in two minutes and not bothered to go into the detail of the report at all. However, I should like to make one or two points that I have picked out from the report for discussion. The report picked out sheep and cereals, and that has been emphasised by various noble Lords in the debate. Of course it is also anxious about the Commission asking for more power to deal with the situation.

To put it fairly simply, the Commission wants stabilisers to reduce the price to the farmer by various means, and they have all been mentioned—namely, maximum guarantee qualities and in some cases reducing the intervention periods. The noble Duke, the Duke of Somerset, mentioned one technical point, that if you have grain in a cattle yard, you will have to sell it when you bring the cattle in. There is also the point that you often have to sell it for reasons of cash-flow, which is also rather important, and if there is no market and no intervention, you are in a bad way. There is also the question of increasing the co-responsibility levies, and so on.

I presume that the theory behind this is that if the returns are low enough, farmers will stop producing. The committee very ably points out the fallacy behind this. If you do that quickly enough—and we are all agreed that it is necessary to do it very soon—the effect on farm incomes would be disastrous. The noble Lord, Lord Middleton, has given us figures on what is happening anyway in reductions, and there is no sign of anybody going out of production because of that. If it is spread over a long period, farmers will make every effort to increase production—the noble Duke, the Duke of Somerset, mentioned this—and they are doing that to stabilise their incomes.

I read an article in one of the agricultural papers last week by a young economist from Cambridge. He pointed out the figures for the increase in production that has taken place over the past 10 to 15 years and how there is no sign of that stopping. He gave some figures of how much land could be taken out of production simply by increasing the size of our crop yields, etc. As the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, pointed out, paragraph 48 is headed:

"Stabilisers do not control production".

How right that is! The report is to be commended on that point.

With regard to sheep meat, I suppose I should declare an interest. Although I have no sheep, I have a lot of grain production, oilseed, and so on. Most noble Lords who are interested in sheep meat have pointed out that their main objection is that it would be detrimental against the UK and there seems to be a considerable unfairness in having a separate stabiliser for sheep numbers in this country.

As I said earlier, in its conclusion the committee mention the question of set aside. I have looked at this situation for quite a few years and at one time I was very keen on quotas because on the whole that seemed to be the fairest method. However, when one starts to look at the administration of quotas, particularly for grain, with all the different ways in which grain is disposed of, the amount that is used on the farm and the amount that goes from farm to farm, I came to the conclusion that administratively quotas were almost impossible. They work for milk and sugar mainly because these two commodities go through one source of manufacture, and in that case it can be done.

That brings me to set-aside, particularly for arable crops. My noble friend Lord Carter was right in saying that the only way to control the stock is to control the number of female animals—cows and sheep. Of course, there is no pig regime but they will also need to be controlled if necessary. Therefore, the amount of animals that come on for beef will be controlled. That raises the question—and of course I pointed this out to him—that you can buy Irish store cattle and at one time we brought in a lot of Canadian store cattle. However that could no doubt be controlled. The great thing about that is that both set aside and the control of female animals can be easily administered.

I spent a whole afternoon with the county agent for Minnesota in the United States looking at how they control set-aside. He has a very small staff and although I do not want to give all the details, I will say that they used a helicopter and an infra-red camera. If a field was a colour that it should not be, it was checked. The agent maintained that administration of set-aside was not as difficult as is sometimes made out.

The other point I want to make is that whatever we do with set-aside, it must be mandatory. All sorts of suggestions have been made regarding tendering, and so on, but I believe that we must make it mandatory. One does not need to go to 20 per cent. as 10 per cent. would take out about 3 million acres in this country and that would certainly do the job.

The noble Duke, the Duke of Somerset, gave figures which I hope can be obtained. He spoke about £300 per hectare. That is £120 per acre. I do not think the noble Baroness will accept that because I tackled her earlier and she suggested a figure of half that amount. I shall be interested to hear what she has to say to the noble Duke.

I look forward to the committee's next report on set-aside because that will be the most important issue in the near future. Like many noble Lords, I hope it will also include the green pound. That certainly will keep it busy.

My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, and my noble friend Baroness Elliot began in the way that they did because I should like to start by saying how poignant it is, today of all days, to see the name of Lord De La Warr as a valued member of the sub-committee. He will be sadly missed.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, on the production of this valuable report on agricultural stabilisers. As your Lordships are well aware, negotiations on the Commission's stabiliser proposals have now been under way for some months. Indeed, the special meeting of the European Council in Brussels over the next two days will be seeking to reach agreement on these proposals as the key part of an overall agreement on the future financing of the Community. It is certainly the Government's firm intention to get this matter settled now, so long as our esential concerns are properly met.

The committee has expressed some doubts about the effectiveness of the stabilisers proposed. With respect to my noble friend Lord Middleton and other noble Lords, I must take issue with that assumption. The stabilisers are surely a major step in the road to CAP reform—the biggest step so far. I believe they could make a major contribution to tackling excess production and expenditure. CAP expenditure must be brought under control, and if action is needed in future to ensure that budgetary limits are respected, we shall take it.

The European Council in Brussels last June gave a clear mandate to the Council to adopt all the measures necessary to complete an overall agreement, including measures to ensure that budgetary discipline is fully observed. The UK has consistently made it clear that we were not prepared to accept any fudging and would not address the question of additional resources until agreement was reached on binding control over Community spending. The stabiliser proposals were one part of the Commission's response to the European Council.

To quote from the report:

"The Committee wholeheartedly support efforts to control the cost of market support under the CAP as a crucial part of the refinancing of the Community budget".

The open-ended guarantees of prices under the CAP, with very little relationship to market realities, contribute to the development of the surpluses which concern us all. The reduction of the present over-high prices is of course what this is all about. It is the Government's firm belief that prices under the CAP must be adjusted to allow supply and demand to play a greater role in agricultural markets and to restore intervention to its original role as a safety net rather than an alternative market outlet. Here we are absolutely at one with the committee: stabilisers work by reducing prices.

Although the term "stabilisers" is yet another piece of Euro-jargon, the concept is not a new one. The committee's report recognises this, and further recognises that there are a number of areas where stabilisers, or some form of stabilisation mechanism, already exist. The difference in the present proposals is their scope. They tackle almost all the major areas of CAP expenditure and introduce more widely the concept of making stabilisers operate more automatically—that is to say, without further intervention by the council. That final point is an important one to which I shall return in a moment.

The Government's firm objective on stabilisers is I believe the same as the committee's and that is to secure agreement on mechanisms that will be effective. By that I mean that they must be quite specific as to the way they operate. They must be workable, legally binding and fair; and they must deal with the problems of surpluses. They must also bring about greater budgetary discipline. I referred earlier to the importance of automaticity. The Commission's proposals for new stabilisers include provision for predetermined adjustments to the support regimes which would take effect if specific production or intervention thresholds are reached. This would obviate the often lengthy council debates on such matters and allow corrective action to be taken quickly, in many cases within the same marketing year. The committee have, rightly, recognised the importance of this aspect and the Government want to see as much automaticity in the provisions as possible.

I understand the reasons why the committee's report focuses particularly on the stabilisers proposed for cereals and sheepmeat. First, the arrangements for cereals. The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, stressed the importance of cereals, and the committee has rightly concentrated on this sector which is now probably the most in need of corrective action. My noble friend, Lady Elliot, spoke of fluctuations. Were it not for the poor harvests in the past two years, the position today would be even worse. Your committee has questioned whether stabilisers will be effective in curbing production. This will depend on the mechanism adopted. Certainly sustained reductions in support levels for cereals would eventually lead to lower levels of production. And we have made it clear that we are looking for stabilisers that, over a period of years will provide—and very importantly, will be known by the farmer to provide—a substantial reduction in support levels. Provided, then, that the maximum guaranteed quantity is not set at too high a level, and provided there are realistic cuts in support levels if the MGQ is exceeded, stabilisers should make a major contribution towards controlling production.

As we have already heard, there has been considerable opposition in the council to the Commission's proposals for cereals, and for other arable crops, oilseeds and proteins. The proposals now under discussion for oilseeds and proteins are largely similar to those orginally proposed, but for cereals there are some significant changes. The latest ideas would postpone any price cut until the year following the one in which the MGQ was exceeded; but there would be an increase in the co-responsibility levy at the start of each year. Under this system price cuts would be cumulative.

We continue however to have reservations about the use of the co-responsibility levy as a stabiliser mechanism. Unfortunately, other member states do not share our views on this point and we are likely to have to accept an increase in the levy if we are to secure an effective package on stabilisers. However, we are continuing to press two points. First, the principal weight of any stabiliser mechanism should fall on price cuts, not levy increases; secondly, the Commission's discriminatory proposals that the first 20 tonnes of cereals produced on a holding be exempt from levy should be rejected.

The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, and other noble Lords, mentioned set-aside. Before leaving cereals I should like to touch on that subject. The noble Lord, Lord Carter, said that we should get on with set-aside even if stabilisers are not agreed quickly. Set-aside must be complementary to stabilisers, not a substitute. The Commission agrees. It will not propose its stabiliser ideas formally until it is sure that there will be satisfactory agreement on stabilisers.

The Commission has now come forward with new proposals on set-aside. These would build on the existing provisions on extensification and if adopted would replace them. The proposals would set up a separate set-aside scheme, covering other arable crops as well as cereals. They would also provide for a separate extensification scheme, which would require a 20 per cent. reduction in output rather than in area. This new approach has been generally welcomed, although disagreements remain on some points of detail.

The Commission has made it clear that its proposals on set-aside complement its proposals on stabilisers; they do not replace them. We have generally welcomed the Commission's new proposals, as we have consistently argued that a tough price policy should be accompanied by a voluntary set-aside scheme designed to encourage producers to reduce levels of production and to cushion the impact of lower prices on those least able to cope. I would not, however, wish to go into the details of these proposals now. I would back up the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, and remind your Lordships that the Select Committee on the European Communities is currently taking evidence on these proposals, but that is for another day.

If one is looking for someone who has great personal experience regarding sheepmeat, one has only to look as far as my noble friend Lady Elliot. I should now like to turn to the stabiliser for sheepmeat. I can only agree with the committee that the separate guarantee threshold for Britain is a most unwelcome proposal. We have argued very strongly that, while we want a fully effective stabiliser for this, as for other sectors, it is quite unfair to single out, as the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, said, one region within the Community to be penalised in this way. But I must warn your Lordships that our views on this point have met with no sympathy from other member states or the Commission.

The noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, and the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, suggested that stabilisers on sheepmeat are unnecessary given that the EC is only 80 per cent. self-sufficient and that the regime is to be reviewed anyway in the course of the year. It would be tempting to excuse the sheepmeat regime from the budgetary discipline implicit in stabilisers but the cost of the regime has rocketed from 500 million ecus in 1985 to a full cost of well over 1 billion ecus this year. We firmly believe that this regime cannot be exempt from proper restraint. Even with a stabiliser the Commission foresees production continuing to rise in the years ahead, as evidence to the committee shows. Community self-sufficiency will therefore also rise.

As for the proposed headage limit on the number of ewes per flock which would be eligible for annual premium, I agree that this proposal too is not in UK's interest, given our structure and flock sizes. We have opposed it, just as we have successfully done in several previous price-fixing negotiations. I am glad to say that it now appears probable that it will not form part of the settlement on stabilisers: I have no doubt, though, that we shall have to oppose it again during the forthcoming review of the sheepmeat regime.

The committee also referred to the additional powers required by the Commission to operate the stabilisers. We have argued that it is necessary for the Commission to have the requisite powers but that these powers should be clearly defined and that the Commission's actions should be transparent. I am, however, hesitant about the committee's suggestion that a new mechanism is needed to review the operation of the stabilisers. There are a number of existing financial committees that can, and should, oversee the stabilisers as part of their budgetary monitoring.

The committee's report touches on the question of direct payments to support farmers' incomes. The Government see income support as essentially a social measure which should be left to member states. It seems perverse to construct a preferential social security system for one section of the population. We are particularly sceptical about the Commission's proposals for income aids funded from the Community budget. Though nominally production-neutral, they could so easily become a very expensive route to increased production. However, the Government welcome the parallel proposal to constrain the national aids which member states can pay their farmers. All member states are unhappy with the Commission's income aid proposals, though for differing reasons, and debate is stalled. It remains to be seen whether the Commission will reformulate the proposals so that discussions can start again.

The committee is quite right to consider the effectiveness of the mechanisms proposed and their ability to constrain expenditure effectively. We have of course pursued very much the same line of approach to the negotiations. For cereals, there are inherent difficulties for effective budget stabilisation when only about 15 to 20 per cent. of production is supported and the major item of expenditure is on export refunds. This means that a 1 per cent. increase in production has a disproportionate effect on costs which could be offset only by a much larger cut in support prices. However, any price cuts will result in a reduction in the level of export refunds and thus expenditure will be lower than it would otherwise have been. For other products, however, effective stabilisation is much more readily attainable within the framework of the Commission's original proposals. Overall, the Commission estimates that its proposals now on the table will save over 600 mecu in 1988 and over 1,400 mecu in 1989.

It is true that levels of CAP expenditure also depend on world market prices which, in part, are influenced by currency fluctuations. The Commission has proposed a monetary reserve of 1 billion ecu which can be drawn on to enhance agricultural spending if the requirement increases due to a fall in the value of the dollar. A certain amount of fall would be allowed to take place before this mechanism would be triggered. We are insisting that the mechanism must work both ways: a rise in the value of the dollar must also be taken into account. The Commission has also suggested that a regular examination of expenditure against average profiles of expenditure over previous years would provide early warning of sectors where spending was not being adequately controlled, and has suggested that it would need scope for remedial action in such circumstances. The Commission has not followed up these ideas with detailed proposals.

There is one further point in the report which was referred to by the noble Duke, the Duke of Somerset, and which I should like to address—the reference to the serious effect on farm incomes and possible destabilisation of markets. The Committee expressed concern that:

"Were Agricultural Stabilisers to be operated in an open-ended fashion for a major crop such as cereals … the result on farm incomes would be unquantifiable and potentially serious".

That is not the situation, my Lords. The proposals for cereals are not open-ended; they are subject to a ceiling on the extent to which support can be reduced. In addition the proposals on set-aside, as well as the wide range of measures which the UK have brought forward in the last year would provide an alternative for those producers who might be most affected.

I do not want to go down the fraud path referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, and the noble Lord, Lord Carter, except to say that we strongly support any efforts to improve Community financial control—for example, by means of the new anti-fraud unit which has recently been set up in the Commission. I should like to say that my right honourable friend the Minister takes this matter very seriously and has already drawn attention in the Agriculture Council this week to the need to take firm and effective action against fraud. We shall continue to press for recognition of the importance of the fight against fraud.

The noble Lord, Lord Carter, gave me a certain amount of warning on the question of the green pound and- my noble friend, Lord Middleton, also mentioned it. We have yet to see what the Commission will propose for further adjustment of green currencies in this year's price fixing. I am aware of the strong feelings on this subject and my right honourable friend the Minister will take these strong feelings into account when considering the extent of any green pound devaluation to be negotiated in the price fixing.

With regard to MCAs, which again I think were raised by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, the abolition of MCAs is the Commission's declared aim, which the UK supports. A good start has been made, but a lot of hard negotiation remains to be done if the timetable of 1992 is to be met. Certainly a common internal market implies common price levels throughout the Community. Membership of the exchange rate mechanism has no automatic effect on green rates. We would not move to the same level of prices as members of the exchange rate mechanism just by joining the mechanism ourselves.

One last point. The noble Duke, the Duke of Somerset, spoke of extra land used for cereal growing in case of the quotas coming in. I am told that this is not borne out by the acreage figures available. The area of land devoted to cereals has fallen by some 100,000 hectares from its peak in 1984.

Finally, I note that the Committee touched on the lack of political will which has so often impeded radical across-frontiers reform in the past. In that context, I have already endorsed the Committee's views on automaticity. We in the United Kingdom have been and are vigorously pursuing a fair and effective solution to the vast burden of CAP expenditure which bears so heavily on us all. It is essential that all member states share this burden fairly, and that reforms take proper account of the diversity of farm size and structure throughout the Community. We shall continue to take that line. It would indeed have been interesting to hear what your Lordships would have said had this excellent debate taken place after, instead of just before, the decision-taking talks which will be going on in the next few days and weeks.

My Lords, I should like to thank both the noble Baronesses and all the noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. A particularly pleasing feature of it so far as I am concerned is that there was practically no repetition in any of the speeches made, so that, taken as a piece, this should make useful reading in Hansard.

May I also express my thanks to the noble Baroness the Minister for the detailed reply and the update which she has given us. We shall be watching with considerable interest the outcome of the talks on the 12th and 13th. As I understood it, it appears to be felt that stabilisers plus set-aside equals happiness, and happiness equals agreement. I am a perennial optimist, as is the noble Baroness, but in a good Scots phrase, "I hae ma doots".

In respect of the congratulations which were extended to me personally, perhaps I may say that much of the credit belongs to our clerk, Mrs. Martin, and the specialist adviser, Simon Harris. With those words, I commend the report to the House.