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

My Lords, a number of Namibian political Parties, including SWAPO, declined to take part in the recent election conducted by the South Africans. SWAPO's primary aim is to secure independence for Namibia from South Africa. It is not entirely clear what policies SWAPO would implement if it came to power. SWAPO receives support from a wide variety of sources, including Governments, Churches, and the United Nations and some of its agencies.

My Lords, I should like to ask the Minister whether, judging from the high proportion of participation by registered voters, and despite intimidation by SWAPO's agencies, it would appear that the influence of SWAPO internally from external terrorist sources must be very small. Therefore, would it not be wise for the Government now, instead of leaning their consideration to SWAPO, to recognise that SWAPO is a Communist organisation, and is therefore likely to use any influence that it has to make sure that there is not a peaceful solution?

My Lords, the British Government, like their friends and allies, and indeed the United Nations as a whole, very much hope that there will be an even higher level of participation in the elections to be held under United Nations auspices fairly early in the New Year. As to the influence of SWAPO, I think that we will be in a better position to judge that after the forthcoming elections, rather than after those recently held. With regard to SWAPO's intended policies, I think that it is a little premature to brand as Communistic its aims and intentions.

My Lords, can the noble Lord tell the House what the next steps are to be now that the election is over?

My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, Mr. Botha has seen Dr. Waldheim recently (at the end of November), and it is agreed that he will report to Dr. Waldheim, and therefore: to the United Nations, after his consultation with the internal leaders in Namibia, with a view to South Africa co-operating in the implementing of the United Nations plan as a whole, which of course includes the holding of elections a little later, under United Nations auspices. I believe that matters are moving reasonably favourably in that direction.

My Lords, reverting to the earlier Question, I should like to ask the Minister whether it is not the case, whatever intimidation SWAPO urged, that chiefs rounded up villagers and employers rounded up their workers into lorries and took them to vote; and that therefore the 80 per cent. vote cannot be taken as expressing the view of the people in Namibia?

My Lords, we shall undoubtedly all take full note of what has happened in the recent elections, and we have our own interpretation of how the results were achieved. I believe that we should concentrate now on the readiness of the South African Government to participate in the United Nations plan, which includes the kind of elections which my noble friend and anybody else will undoubtedly accept as valid.

My Lords, can the noble Lord say how many persons were held in detention under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act during the course of the recent elections, and whether all those persons will be free, so that they can take part in normal political activities during the run-up to the elections which we hope will take place next year?

I should very much hope so, my Lords, though I cannot possibly be absolutely certain that this will be so. However, I shall take note of what the noble Lord has said. It certainly is essential that everybody should be in a position to take part freely in the elections arranged for next year.

My Lords, is the noble Lord satisfied that in the recent elections the ballot was secret?

I was not there, my Lords. There was a very high participation. We have still to await the detailed results and the outcome, which is a little more complicated than in our own, perhaps over-simplified, system in this country. As I said, we should take note of the high level of participation in the elections, however attained, but we should also concentrate upon achieving an even higher level of participation, with an even more general acceptance for the elections to which the South Africans have agreed, for next year.

My Lords, can Her Majesty's Government in the interim take any active steps to assist in dampening down the inter-tribal enmities which unfortunately are still rife in that territory?

My Lords, we have done, and we are doing, everything we can to help in this matter. It is undoubtedly true, as my noble friend has reminded us, that this aspect of the situation in many parts of Southern Africa is very disturbing. We shall continue to do our best.

My Lords, did I hear the Minister correctly when he said that the Churches were supporting SWAPO, and, if so, which Churches, and in what way are they supporting SWAPO?

My Lords, the way in which they are supporting SWAPO is, I am sure, in a purely Christian and humanitarian sense.

Well, as a mere Presbyterian, I have a high regard for the Anglican Church, which is obviously shared on the other side of the House. I am quite sure that the motivation of the Church as a whole in assisting in these areas is a true one—a humanitarian purpose. As to the identity of the actual organisations, perhaps the noble Lord would care to put down a Question for Written Answer, and I will do my best to give him the details.

My Lords, in view of the disastrous results in other countries —some indeed in Europe—where the Communists have got in through nominally free elections and have come to dominate the whole situation, and considering that SWAPO has the taint of Marxism on itself (not to put it any higher), may we be sure that the Government will regard the situation which results in the present elections with true objectivity? Will they not lean over backwards to favour a Party—SWAPO—and the other Parties perhaps, which have boycotted the elections deliberately?

My Lords, certainly we have not at any time indicated an exclusive partiality for any Party in Namibia. SWAPO is an important element in the political life of that country and, I am sure, will continue to be so, but it is not the only element. We have never said that it is the only political force shaping the future of Namibia. I repeat that, as to its ultimate intentions economically and politically, I think it is a little early to judge.

My Lords, is it true that, when the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, stood for Parliament, he rounded up voters in lorries and other transport to take them to the polls?

My Lords, I really do not know. All I know is that for one reason or another a very high percentage of the population took part in these elections; and, as a mere democrat, I am prepared to welcome a high level of participation, for whatever reason. I think, once more, we should address ourselves to the reasonably favourable situation which is forming, looking to the implementation of the UN plan, including free and fair elections as early as possible in the New Year and possibly including United Kingdom participation in a UN presence, if we are asked.

My Lords, I think that, as we have three more Questions and five debates to follow today, the House will agree with me that we should pass on.

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

My Lords, it is not the Government's intention to review the Instrument in question so as to allow access to these documents.

But, my Lords, is it not a particularly ludicrous example of the Government's policy of official secrecy to maintain confidentiality for 75 years on all these records of interned persons, which date right back to the beginning of the first war? Will not the Government seriously reconsider this matter, particularly in the light of the forthcoming introduction of a Bill by my honourable friend the Member for the Isle of Ely to review the Official Secrets Act?

No, my Lords, I do not think it is ludicrous at all. This decision was taken by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, when he was Lord Chancellor. It is our view that the noble and learned Lord was absolutely right in the decision which he took. There is also a right of privacy in this country, and I think that is a matter which we should also take very seriously into account.

My Lords, while welcoming that unsolicited testimonial, may I ask the noble Lord, with whom I am very happy to agree on this occasion, whether it is not the fact that a great deal of hurt could be done to individuals by the publication of the material in this particular category, and that some regard must be had for the feelings of the persons concerned and their relatives?

My Lords, I entirely share that view.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that a distinguished Australian writer, Mr. Cyril Pearl, has been applying to the Home Office for access to the records of the commandeered troopship HMS "Dunera", which was used to take internees from England to Australia during the last war; that Mr. Pearl has been in touch with a great many of the internees who were passengers on this troopship; and that none of them has any objection whatsoever to information about their presence on the troopship being revealed? In view of the fact that Mr. Pearl is a serious writer, can he not be given access to these documents?

No, my Lords, I do not think he should be. The fact is that if some internee wishes to come forward and vouchsafe some information to Mr. Pearl, there is no objection at all to his making any information available. The point is that, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, has rightly pointed out, a very large number of people would object very strongly to the publication of this information, and we are quite resolved that we are not going to agree to it.

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

My Lords, I am pleased to say that, although a number of important issues remain to be resolved, progress was achieved in the recent Geneva negotiations towards consensus on the structure of the Fund. In the light of this, it was agreed that the conference should be reconvened before the 5th Session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development at Manila in May 1979. At the end of the session in Geneva the chairman of the conference, Mr. Walker of Jamaica, circulated his own conclusions on the outcome of the discussions, and I am placing a copy of these in the Library of the House. I am also placing in the Library of the House a copy of proposals put forward in the course of the conference by the developed countries of Group B, and of a statement made on behalf of these countries at the end of the session.

My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that very full reply, may I ask her whether it is not very important that a decision should be reached on this matter before UNCTAD 4 meets during the coming year? Further, since the British attitude was constructively conciliatory and there was a quite extraordinary change in the attitude of Japan, why was agreement not reached? Was it because of the attitude of the United States of America and of Western Germany? What was the reason for this unexpected breakdown?

My Lords, I am not sure that it was completely unexpected. We have to reach a very complicated decision. The British delegation worked extremely hard throughout that conference for a positive outcome from it, and we all hope that the next round of negotiations, which will be held very early next year, will provide the framework for drafting the articles of agreement for the Fund. We shall be preparing for it on this basis with our partners. Both the developed and the developing countries, I am sure, want to resolve the outstanding problems before the next meeting, the meeting of UNCTAD 5, and I believe there has now been sufficient movement on all sides for this to be possible in the next round of negotiations.

My Lords, could the noble Baroness confirm that Her Majesty's Government's attitude towards these negotiations (which, if I understand it aright, are being conducted by the Community, and not by Her Majesty's Government) and the Community attitude in this is not that there should be an interference with the market prices of commodities but that, on the other hand, it should be an extension, as it were, of the Lomé Agreement which exists between African countries and the Community; that is, between the Third World, the developing countries as a whole—those who need an agreement of this character— and the rich countries, both the new rich and the old rich?

Yes, my Lords; the noble Lord is quite right. We believe that arrangements for the stabilisation of the developing countries' export earnings through the IMF compensatory finance facility and the Lomé Stabex Scheme are necessary complements to stabilising the commodity prices, as distinct from the earnings, through commodity agreements and the Common Fund.

My Lords, may I ask the Minister, are not the two outstanding issues the contribution which Governments should make to the Common Fund and the contribution which should be made to what is termed "the second window", which is for research and industrial development in the developing countries? Is it not a matter of reaching a compromise between two figures on both those subjects, and may that not be realised at the February meeting?

Yes, my Lords; I think my noble friend is right on that. There are problems on the figures that should be involved and the amount of money that should be involved, and there are still outstanding problems on the question of the second window, as to whether there should be voluntary contributions or how this should work. These are things which we hope to get settled in the next round of negotiations early in the New Year.

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

My Lords, consultations are still taking place about the nature and cost of possible schemes for a greater degree of advance disclosure of the prosecution case in trials by magistrates' courts. It was made clear during the passage of the Criminal Law Bill that implementation of Section 48 would depend on economic circumstances. The cost of any such scheme now seems likely to be in excess of the figure of £4 million a year previously estimated. Until a firmer estimate is available work cannot usefully be put into drafting rules.

My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that Answer, may I ask him this question: In assessing the cost of a reform whereby defendants at magistrates' courts would be entitled to know the nature of the case against them, has any allowance been made for the public money which will be saved, first of all, by some defendants pleading guilty instead of contesting the case and, secondly, by defendants electing, where offences are triable either way, to be dealt with summarily rather than going for trial to the Crown Court and cluttering up the lists there?

My Lords, I am sure that that point will be borne in mind. It is a point that was vigorously made by the noble Lord and other Members of your Lordships' House when we discussed this matter. The cost of this scheme appears to be creeping up and at the moment I cannot give any clear indication of what the total costs will be.

My Lords, may I ask whether in assessing the cost the Government have acted on any information except that from the police?

My Lords, not unreasonably, it is the police whom we have to consult in matters of this kind, but those involved in the preliminary discussions included the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Prosecuting Solicitors' Society, the Justices' Clerks' Society and a large number of other people.

My Lords, can the noble Lord give any estimate as to how many extra cases would be heard in magistrates' courts if Section 48 was brought into effect?

My Lords, no. It is impossible to achieve any clear estimate of that.

My Lords, taking motoring cases alone, which form much of the staple diet of magistrates' courts, would it not be possible without incurring additional expense to ensure that in, for example, the charge of careless driving the motorist could be told at any rate the substance of the charge against him instead of it just being stated that, for instance, he had been driving carelessly at a particular time and at a particular place? Could it not be said in the summons that he was, say, driving on the wrong side or the road, or had jumped the lights, or had cut in, or something of that sort, so that he would know what he had to meet?

My Lords, we are aware that many people are firmly in favour of a proposition of the kind that the noble and learned Lord has advocated, and, indeed, in other cases as well; but one must also take account of the costs involved. One of the problems is that those who favour changes of this character in the law sometimes understate the cost of the proposal if implemented. I shall certainly take note of what the noble and learned Lord has said.

My Lords, may we have a clear statement that if the costs prove to be reasonable the Government are in favour of introducing this reform?

My Lords, I made it clear on a number of occasions during the passage of the Bill that we do not believe it possible to bring this particular section into effect until economic circumstances permit. There are many claims on public resources. This is an important claim on them, but I cannot commit the Government beyond that point today.

My Lords, I think it will be for the convenience of the House if I announce that, subject to the progress of business, the House will adjourn before the devolution referenda on Thursday, 22nd February until Tuesday, 6th March.

My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to consolidate the enactments relating to the collection and management of the revenues of customs and excise and in some cases to other matters in relation to which the Commissioners of Customs and Excise for the time being perform functions, with amendments to give effect to recommendations of the Law Commission and the Scottish Law Commission. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a first time.

My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to consolidate certain enactments relating to reliefs and exemptions from customs and excise duties, Section 7 of the Finance Act 1968 and certain other related enactments. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.

My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to consolidate the provisions of Section 9 of, and Schedules 3 and 4 to, the Finance Act 1961 with provisions amending them. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a first time.

My Lords, I beg to move that the British Railways (Selby) Bill be now read a second time.

My Lords, I do not suppose that any one of your Lordships would argue—and I shall not do so— against the necessity of diverting the East coast main line in order to allow the Selby coalfield fully to be developed. But there is one particular matter that I should like to draw to the attention of British Rail who are the Promoters of this Bill. It is provided in the Bill that, when it comes to carrying out accommodation works and all the many things that have to be done to mitigate the effects of the construction upon the surface industries (chiefly, agriculture), British Rail must act within the old 1845 Railways Clauses Consolidation Act. When it comes to compensation payments to those whose land is acquired and to those whose business is adversely affected, British Rail must act according to the provisions of the Compulsory Purchase Act 1965, the Land Compensation Act 1961 and subsequent measures.

It was pointed out when the Bill was read a third time in another place that the 1845 Act was brought in when agriculture and land-owning interests were strongly represented in Parliament and the rules under which the railway undertakers had to build their lines were drawn so that there was a minimum of interference with, or damage to, the fanning industry. Since the Board are under a continuing statutory obligation in respect of the provision and maintenance of accommodation works and are bound to compensate according to the various modern Acts, farmers affected by the construction of this line ought to be reasonably well looked after.

In addition, the Board has recently had a series of meetings with the farmers' organisations with the object of drawing up a code of practice to be adopted; and agreement has been reached on a wide range of matters. But there is one important matter upon which agreement has not been reached. I refer to the responsibility for damage caused through the negligence or wrongful acts of contractors employed by British Rail. Farmers are very aware that although few, if any, new railway lines have been built this century, there has been a very substantial programme of road building; and whereas the obligations of the Departments promoting the building of trunk roads and motorways regarding accommodation works and compensation are normally properly discharged, when it comes to responsibility for the wrongful acts of roadbuilding contractors, the situation is very unsatisfactory. Failing agreement by British Rail as to who shall be responsible for the wrongful acts of railway contractors, the same unsatisfactory situation will arise at Selby.

Experience gathered over some 30 years of road building and the many cases of hardship and injustice which have occurred have highlighted the fact that some acquiring authorities contend that they are not legally bound to accept liability for damage caused by their contractors. There have been many instances where a motorway has been built and a contractor causes damage to land or injury to livestock. When a farmer seeks redress, the contractor has, in the first place, to be identified—and often there is a subcontractor, which makes the task more difficult. Once identified, the contractor is often unwilling to accept liability and the acquiring authority relies on what they imagine to be the letter of the law. The aggrieved party may be a small farmer for whom the cost of proceeding against the contractor is prohibitive and, in some cases the contractor becomes bankrupt and the farmer is left with no remedy whatever.

Up to today the British Railways Board has, during negotiations about a code of practice to be adopted at Selby, steadfastly refused to accept liability for the wrongful acts of their contractors. Not only does it seem wrong that an acquiring authority, having taken land by compulsory purchase and chosen contractors to carry out works on that land, should then refuse to be responsible for any damage their contractors may cause; but also, in taking this attitude, British Rail are out of step with at least two other major bodies: the National Coal Board and the British Gas Corporation.

The record of the NCB in the matter of compensation is very good. I well remember taking part in the passage of the Coal Industry Bill through this House in 1975. When compensation for damage was being discussed, tributes were paid from all parts of the House to the attitude and practice of the Coal Board. I remember particularly a contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, with his long experience of mining areas in the North of England. Perhaps by way of illustration I may quote briefly from the NCB's publication, Compensation for Mining Subsidence Damage:

"The Board recognise that damage for which they have no legal liability is sometimes caused and may result in hardship to the individuals affected. The Board wish to prevent hardship and they are willing also to pay compensation in certain other cases in which they have no legal liability".

The British Gas Corporation have agreed a code of practice in which there is an undertaking, from which I again quote:

"The corporation will accept responsibility for the actions of their contractors and of their sub-contractors and of all persons employed in connection with the [pipe-line] works …".

I cannot see why the British Railways Board should lag behind these two bodies when it comes to agreeing a code of practice in respect of the construction of these 14 or so miles of new line at Selby.

I do not believe that the financial burden of taking on this liability would be great. The Board would surely be in a much better position to repay itself by extracting compensation from its contractors (who could be bound by an indemnity clause), than would a number of individual farmers acting on their own. The goodwill that would be created would be considerable. This has, I believe, been the experience of British Gas, who have already found that the enlightened attitude which the corporation have adopted has made their dealings over acquisition much easier, and, no doubt, cheaper.

So, my Lords, in due course I have it in mind to move an Instruction to the Select Committee considering the Petitions against this Bill, that they should pay particular attention to the question of compensation for those who suffer injury under the circumstances which I have outlined.

My Lords, I have listened very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, has said. I shall undertake to draw his remarks to the attention of the Promoters of the Bill. Of course he is perfectly at liberty at a later date, if he so wishes, to move an Instruction. The Bill is already opposed, and if that Instruction is acceptable to the House, that will be referred to the Select Committee considering these Petitions against the Bill.

rose to call attention to the need for a national council on gambling to be established to take over the work of the Churches' Council on Gambling, which is now being wound up; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Churches' Council on Gambling was wound up two days ago after some 45 years of activity during which time no fewer than three Royal Commissions have reported on the very complex subject of gambling, the last of which—the Royal Commission under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Rothschild—reported in July of this year. I shall be referring to various aspects of that report and I propose to refer to it as Rothschild.

My Lords, before the noble Lord goes on, could he tell us exactly what a compulsive gambler is? Is it, for example, a person who must fill in his pools coupon every week? Is he a compulsive gambler? If so, there must be many more compulsive gamblers.

My Lords, it is very difficult to define a compulsive gambler. I know what happened to me: I felt I had to go on gambling and I could not stop. I believe that is the real definition of a compulsive gambler. I do not propose to worry your Lordships with lurid stories that I have heard from Gamblers Anonymous about what has happened to compulsive gamblers. I will just say this: staking the rent or the housekeeping money is only the start of compulsive gambling, and it goes on from there.

At this point I think it is opportune to pay tribute to the Churches' Council on Gambling, which has operated for the last four or five years. The Council has never been anti-gambling; it has not been interested in private gambling. It has never studied the practice of gambling by itself, but only in the context of its effect on people's lives. During these four to five years it has acted as a watchdog and drawn the attention of Government to abuses. Through its very energetic secretary, the Reverend Gordon Moody, it has kept in touch with all the latest forms of gambling, and in particular, through his efforts, it introduced the concept of Gamblers Anonymous to this country from the United States. I am glad to say that now, some 14 years after it was first introduced, there are about 60 branches of Gamblers Anonymous throughout the country, doing a very good job of work. The idea behind it is very similar to that behind Alcoholics Anonymous. It is a means of self-help not only for compulsive gamblers, but also for their wives and families, and, as I say, I am very glad that they are carrying out a marvellous job.

I think it is quite remarkable that the British Council of Churches, which represents all Churches except the Roman Catholic Church, should have managed to achieve a measure of fundamental agreement on this subject. It must have caused great difficulties and aroused very different feelings as between the liberal and conservative elements in the various Churches. When you read Rothschild you will find a large number of references to the British Council of Churches' report, or to their submission to Rothschild, although Rothschild has not accepted all their suggestions. Now that Council has gone and we have a vacuum, although the very first recommendation in Rothschild is that a research unit should be set up by the Home Office. That recommendation is made because right through the report attention is continually being drawn to areas of ignorance about gambling.

I think this is the moment to distinguish the position of the Gaming Board. It is not a gambling board; it is a statutory body set up under the 1968 Gaming Act and has specific responsibilities dealing with casinos, bingo, slot machines and other amusements. Later on, in 1971, it was given the task under the Football Promotions (Competitions) Act of approving licences to football pool promoters; and in 1975 and 1976 it was given additional responsibilities under the Lotteries and Amusements Act.

It is, as I have said, a statutory body and has no concern with other types of gambling; nor really with the effects of gambling on gamblers. Indeed the Gaming Board itself, in a recommendation to Rothschild—your Lordships will find it in Chapter 16—suggested that an overall gambling authority should be established. This view was supported by the Churches' Council on Gambling and by many other bodies, but Rothschild rejected it and, I think, rightly so, because it would have become much too bureaucratic. Rothschild says that the overall authority on gambling is the Home Office. I should like to say at this point that I have taken note of the statement that was made just under a fortnight ago in another place by the Minister that a new unit has been set up in the Home Office to study the effects of Rothschild.

There is another general aspect of gambling that should be mentioned: the fact that gambling implements are becoming modernised and very sophisticated. With the advent of the computer chip, who knows what new methods of gambling will not be introduced, to interest and attract people who now do not gamble very much in the traditional ways? I am here thinking particularly of women, most of whom gamble only on bingo, but few of whom, apart from bingo, are regular gamblers. They seem to offer a very large target for enterprising gambling operators to shoot at with some new-fangled computer chip gambling idea.

The advent of the computer chip may also bring about another change in the pattern of gambling. I am one of those who believe that our country is likely as a result of the new industrial revolution that we are now about to undergo, to be faced with a far more serious problem of unemployment than anything that we have met before. However that problem is solved, I believe that it is bound to cause more leisure time for more and more people, and, in more leisure time, I think that more and more people will take up an interest in gambling, just because there is nothing else for them to do. Here, again, I believe that women are possibly more likely to be affected than men, as it seems to me that many women may find themselves facing difficulty in finding a job in the conditions of the new industrial revolution.

Rothschild is extraordinarily comprehensive and has produced some 303 recommendations. Among matters which are of general interest and possibly of some concern is the question of improvements in the amenities of betting shops—Chapter 7, Recommendation 9—and there is also the problem of the numbers of permitted areas in which casinos may be licensed, and their possible extension, which is dealt with in Chapter 18. Those are both subjects on which the views of a national council on gambling would be very useful.

The position, then, as I see it is this. There are still very large areas in the gambling field of which we know very little, especially in relation to the extent to which gambling is harmful to those who indulge too much, and also in relation to new electronic gambling processes. With the demise of the Churches' Council on Gambling, there is no continuing group organised to study the possible harmful effects of gambling on our society, nor is there any recommendation in Rothschild to establish such a group. At present there is, therefore, no pressure group to goad Government into taking any action at all on the 303 recommendations of Rothschild. I am not saying that the Government will not do so of their own free will. I hope that they will do so, and they have indicated that they will, but there is no organised group to press them on that.

A number of us believe that there should be some such special pressure group, and a working party under the auspices of the Churches' Council on Gambling has been meeting. It has held five meetings this year and has produced a draft constitution, of which I have a copy here. Its objects are to advance the education of the public about the incidence and effect on society of gambling in all its forms; to promote and undertake research into such incidence and effect and publish the useful results thereof; to relieve the poverty and sickness of those members of our society whose development and participation in society is in any way impaired by gambling, and to discourage gambling in excess.

This working party included representatives of the British Council of Churches, the National Council of Social Service, certain women's organisations and the social service departments of the 33 London boroughs. It has also received support from the Roman Catholic Church and the Office of the Chief Rabbi. I should like to see the gambling operators themselves associated with a national council. I believe that if we are to form such a council, we have to go full circle and have them all sitting around the table. The working party has estimated that to establish a national council with a full-time director-secretary—someone who is paid to make contact with all the types of gambling that are going on—is likely to cost about £20,000 a year.

I have a letter from the representative on the working party of the departments of social service, and I think that it is rather striking. He said:

"It is evident that, whilst gambling is a problem to a number of clients, social workers have little or no knowledge of the dimensions of the problem in society. They, and others in the helping agencies, are slowly recognising that compulsive gambling is a greater problem than has been acknowledged up to now".

He therefore supports the establishment of a national council, and I was very pleased to welcome him yesterday evening as a member of my management committee of the Gordon House Association.

That is the situation. There is a vacuum at the moment. There have been three Royal Commissions, and the most startling recommendation from the latest is that a research unit should be established. There is at present no body that can talk to Government on behalf of gamblers themselves. There are various gambling operators' organisations, which will no doubt be talking to the Government very strongly. I ask your Lordships, by your speeches, to give approval to the concept that a national council on gambling should be established. I also ask the Minister to give us his blessing, and I should like to say one final word. Rothschild cost £585,000. That would keep a national council on gambling in being for very nearly 30 years. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

My Lords, I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Spens, won a place in the ballot for his Motion this afternoon. I admire him for declaring what I might call his interest as a compulsive gambler. I do not pretend to be a compulsive gambler, although I occasionally enjoy having a flutter. But I shall concentrate entirely on the question of casinos.

There always seems to me to be a certain amount of difficulty about figures which are given in reports of various kinds. One figure which was given was that fewer than 300,000 members of a population of 41 million play with any regularity at casinos. Casino clubs are now in a good position. In various ways, they have been through some difficult times. The law has been changed to allow them to choose their members. The rule is that there has to be a 48 hour delay before they accept a member, whether he is of British nationality or whether he comes from abroad. Apparently, this causes a certain amount of difficulty among many people arriving from abroad because they think that they can walk straight into a casino, as they would be able to do in France or anywhere else, and start playing. Because of the structure of our casinos, I am certain that the situation is perfectly right and that it should remain as it is.

There is a certain amount of debate in the Rothschild Report concerning the drinking hours which should be allowed in these clubs. As many of your Lordships probably know, none of these clubs is allowed to have floor shows. It has been suggested that they should be allowed to extend their drinking hours. It is interesting that over the years the number of casinos in this country has dropped from over 1,000 to 121. There is a demand now for new casinos to be allowed to open in certain parts of the country. In the Rothschild Report it is suggested that places like Bath might be willing to open casinos.

I was extremely interested in what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Spens, about the question of compulsive gambling. In 1968, there was a very interesting debate in your Lordships' House during the Committee stage of the Gaming Bill. Lord Kilbracken, a few other Peers and I tried to get a register formed, which could be circulated to all casinos in the country, of people who were, or who admitted that they were compulsive gamblers. The late Lord Stonham, who was then answering from the Government Front Bench, was very interested in the idea but, quite understandably, we found that it was impossible for this register to be formed.

I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Spens, is quite right in his view that a national council on gambling would probably be an extremely good idea. There are many different forms of gambling and it would be very good to have a watch dog to look at the whole situation and at times to prod the Government. However, it is most important that a national council on gambling should not step in any way on the toes of the Gaming Board. The Gaming Board have now established themselves as an important body. They undertake their responsibilities very well and the seedier side of the bad gambling clubs has been dismissed forever more.

My Lords, everybody in this House will thank the noble Lord, Lord Spens, for introducing this subject in an admirable way. He began by saying that his name is Michael and that he is a compulsive gambler. My name is Patrick and I think I can say that I am a compulsive non-gambler. I should like to take that as a tribute to my own virtue, but I cannot do so because I want to put up a defence of gambling. However, perfectly legitimate gambling can lead to a great many troubles if it is mixed with other things. That is why, before I say anything else—which will be confused—I should like very much to support the noble Lord's suggestion regarding the Council of Churches. Mr. Gordon Moody did wonderful work on this Council. I believe that I am right in saying that he is a Methodist, but it is quite irrelevant to me whether he is a Methodist, an Anglican or a Roman Catholic. However, the Council of Churches representatives clearly differ on whether gambling in itself is wrong or whether it merely leads to wrong in others. That is the subject which I should like to pursue for a few moments.

The noble Lord mentioned that there are 303 recommendations in the Rothschild Report. I shall not pretend that I have read the report from cover to cover. However, it contains a fairly comprehensive account of gambling in its various forms, ranging from games of skill that contain some element of chance to games of chance that contain no skill. I am not speaking on behalf of anybody except myself. This is a difficult question. There are, however, some easy questions. One was put forward in the Daily Express this morning by Mr. Osbert Lancaster. It referred to the Liberal Party. One of my favourite characters, Maudie Little-hampton, asked, "What sort of Christmas card is the Liberal Party going to send out?" I thought that was an easy question to answer. The sort of Christmas card that any political Party would send out would say, "We wish you a Happy Christmas and a happier New Year". To a Christian, and to a Member of the Liberal, Conservative or any other Party in this House, that would seem to me to be a fair answer. However, it does not get one very much further.

I see that the noble Lord, Lord Soper, is in the House. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Soper, and others believe that gambling in itself is quite wrong. They regard it either as one of the Seven Deadly Sins or as forbidden by the Ten Commandments. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Spens, is a reader of the Old Testament. I remember him mentioning— although I forget when it was—the ten plagues of Egypt and, rather optimistically, saying that although seven of them do not threaten us now the three which still threaten us are a horror of great darkness, rivers of blood and the death of the first born. If the noble Lord was gambling on those assumptions, I think that he was right.

That is slightly off the point. May I say that I have not yet been convinced that gambling in itself is wrong, and I should be very glad to hear any other speaker in this House say so. On the other hand, arguments have been put up by, among others, a former Member of your Lordships' House, recommending it as a virtue. I think it was the first Marquess of Montrose who said:

"He either fears his fate too much or his desserts are small

Who dare not put it to the touch, to win or lose it all".

That is what I should call a cavalier approach to gambling and we have to face the fact that that particular cavalier carried it out because he was hung, drawn and quartered and I do not think anybody would be ashamed of having taken the line that he did, whether they were monarchist or republican.

To take one other defence of gambling from somebody who was certainly not a cavalier in that sense and who might possibly have been Poet Laureate because he was a very popular poet at the time: I do not like the particular poem more than some of his others but I think he was hedging his bets because the poem is called "If" and it possibly holds the record for being the longest single sentence poem that I know of. He was clearly not a cavalier in the sense that he said:

"If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you".

He then goes on in the middle of the poem to say:

"If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one game of pitch and toss,

And lose and start again from your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss".

At the end of the poem it is clear that he is favouring that as somebody whom he does not despise, if I may put it like that. Women's Lib, would not like the end because I think the last lines are that if you can do all of these things,

"Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!"

I do not know what Women's Lib, would say about that but they would include it as a human being. I do not particularly like the tone of that poem if it is addressed by a Scout Master to a Wolf Cub or even by a school mistress to a hockey pupil. I think it is only tolerable if it is addressed by a fond father to his son, when it would have to be punctuated rather differently "And what is more, you'll be a man—my son".

That is where Christianity comes into this problem of gambling. How far is it justified to gamble with your own money or your own life or your own soul and how far with other people's money or lives or souls, with or without their permission? This is a short debate and it would take a very long time to go into that, but I think most of us would agree that without their permission it is not justifiable to gamble with their souls or their lives or their bodies, whether it is by a defaulting trustee or a Pope who has made errors or even a leading Presbyterian. Other people's souls are to some extent their own, as is their money and so forth. What we are considering here is what are the dangers that follow on from being a compulsive gambler.

I am very sorry that the Churches' Council has come to an end, and I am quite sure that it is absolutely right and proper that some sort of council should take its place, and one that on the one hand does not regard gambling as a deadly sin and on the other hand does not regard it as being something which it is safe to do, for people who know nothing about it. The immense amount of interest in the various forms of gambling that go on is a tremendous temptation to people who want to make money for themselves without doing any work for it, if they can fool other people into doing it.

One would like to speak for 45 minutes on this subject. I have spoken for 10 minutes already, and that is perhaps too much, but I should like to make this distinction between ordinary forms of gambling. First, whether they are legal or illegal; secondly, whether they are right or wrong, and thirdly, whether they are fair or unfair. Any kind of council on this subject does not concern itself so much with whether it is legal or illegal, as has to be done in the very famous gambling case of Shylock v. Antonio in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.That was an interesting case of somebody who was not a gambler. In fact, his sin, if he had a sin, was avarice. He made a bet against somebody who was a highly respectable merchant of Venice at the time and whose sin, if he had one, was arrogance, or perhaps pride. He did not behave very well towards Shylock but it led to some very difficult decisions having to be made; and they were made in that particular play (and of course it might not happen in real life) by the only female character who, by a mixture of Women's Lib, and what would now be called transvestism, intervened and made it into a comedy instead of a black comedy. Shylock's first proposal was going back on all his own feelings of safe investment. The odds had been written down to 3,000 ducats. Owing to the perhaps justifiable, perhaps unjustifiable, fact that he had a chip on his shoulder, he made it a joke:

"…in a merry sport, if you repay me not on such a day,

In such a place, such sum … let the forfeit Be nominated for an equal pound Of your fair flesh."

Apparently he had not an earthly chance of winning that bet, but he did win it, and there had to be a decision as to whether he won it justly or unjustly. I know that sounds a little fantastic. I have spoken for 13 minutes now and I wish to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Spens, on introducing such an interesting debate on the 13th of this month.

The last point I wish to make is that lotteries, which are the most complete form of gambling—although one could be very much cheated by the operators because there is no question of skill in them—were not entirely disapproved of by the early Church because when there was a question of one man being invited (as one might call it) to join a rather exclusive group of 12 people who had been chosen by what I think Christians would call "divine authority", the method chosen was to put it to the lot and the lot fell upon Mathias. If there is a patron saint of gambling I should like to put up a prayer to Mathias—not to be confused with Matthew—to support the contention put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Spens.

My Lords, before the noble Viscount sits down I should like to answer a point that he made in kindly reference to me. The Methodist position is that gambling is not one of the Seven Deadly Sins but it is to be found in the appendix. The other point about the Ten Commandments is that it seems to me to be prohibited in terms of the last of those Ten Commandments. I only wish that I did not have a previous engagement which will prevent me from attending further to this debate, but I am sure the noble Lord will understand. I only wanted to put that point right on behalf of the Methodist Church.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Soper, told me yesterday that he was unable to take part in this debate. I was very glad to see him here; otherwise I should not have mentioned his name. I shall certainly think hard about the last Commandment, as to whether it does or does not prohibit gambling. I am very grateful to him for his intervention.

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, who was a Vice-President of the Churches' Council on Gambling is, unfortunately, not able to be here this afternoon, and it therefore falls to me to speak from these Benches in this debate introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Spens. Like several other good things now taken for granted in the life of the Churches of these Islands, the Churches' Council on Gambling owed its origin to Archbishop William Temple. It was set up in 1932 to prepare and submit evidence to the Royal Commission on Gambling appointed in that year. It remained in being after that Royal Commission had reported, and it continued for over 45 years to offer information and advice on the impact of gambling and on the merits of proposed legislative changes. It was, I think, the particular achievement of the Council to give close attention to the facts of a changing situation. It had the services of a number of full time Secretaries, who not only mastered the statistics and the statutory basis of gambling but also achieved a unique position of trust among the peoples and bodies associated with gambling. These men included Mr. Benson Perkins, later a distinguished President of the Methodist Conference, and none have been more effective in the task than Mr. Gordon Moody, whose recent retirement has in fact precipitated the present discussion.

My Lords, it is a matter for some regret that, as your Lordships have already heard, the Churches and the other voluntary organisations have not felt able, with all the social issues that they have on their plate at the present time, to continue to finance a body that served the nation every bit as much as it served the Churches. I think the Churches' Council offered a unique example of the contribution which can be made to the analysis of public affairs and to the evolution of policy by a disinterested voluntary body. Its emphasis has been on achieving practical improvements rather than on making heavy denunciations. The Council quickly found such an approach sterile and it has always aimed to promote the wise public regulation of gambling, to prevent excesses of corruption and, in particular, to show concern for the protection of the vulnerable, so that the chance of making easy money by exploiting human weakness was minimised.

Many of your Lordships will, I know, agree that the public regulation of gambling is of some importance. We all know that we cannot control people's behaviour by Act of Parliament, though by it we can promote conditions which further the common good or which hinder it. But, as legislators, we know we have to be aware that while we can be a little ahead of public opinion we must not be too far ahead if respect for the law is not to be undermined. A body like the Council on Gambling was very important in helping to form public opinion which then helped us all to legislate for the common good.

I think it has to be said that the work of the Churches' Council has not always been as much appreciated as it should have been, just because it has sought to be a national council and not a specialist lobby. The council has been concerned with the handling of gambling as a phenomenon within the structures of human life in which the Churches and individual Christians of all denominations were inextricably involved with other institutional structures and with fellow citizens of all kinds. And yet the council drew upon the Christian morality of grace, which cannot be structured but which can let loose creativity, spontaneity and imaginativeness in the world, with effects that are often profound, if indirect. It has, therefore, been possible for the morality of grace to help raise the general level of morality and to help ensure that institutions of our common life work in a humane and just way. I do not think it is too much to say that the Churches' Council on Gambling showed by its actions that the nation needs some such body to think on behalf of the public generally about this important matter.

As we have heard, the Council founded Gamblers Anonymous in 1964. As a result of consultative conferences which the Council arranged between 1971 and 1977, an independent learned society, the Society for the Study of Gambling, was formed. It was also the Council that was responsible for launching the Gordon House Association, which provides a hostel for homeless compulsive gamblers and of which the noble Lord, Lord Spens, has told us he is the Chairman. Throughout its life, the Council gathered and published information about gambling in this country, and with its demise there is no organisation equipped with the necessary staff to continue this work, which is particularly important when legislation is under consideration.

Your Lordships have already been reminded that the recent Royal Commission proposed a gambling research unit funded by the Home Office. Although this would not meet all the requirements of an independent body, one can presume that its annual reports to Parliament might make apparent the need for particular changes in public policy in the way that the Council has done up till now. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will tell us that the Government are sympathetic towards this suggestion. If, when they finally announce their views on the Royal Commission's proposals, they do not agree to the proposal for a research unit, then I think that the case for an independent national council will be that much stronger. There are a good many precedents for pioneer work of the Churches being taken over and developed by the Government in the service of the nation. I hope that this will prove to be the case with regard to the national council on gambling.

My Lords, the debate this afternoon has ranged over a very wide area and has witnessed some interesting and patently personal expressions of opinion and predilections. However, I suggest that it would be no exaggeration to say that, whatever the occasion which gave rise to the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Spens, the fundamental reason for debating the subject this afternoon arises from the publication of the extremely important report of the Royal Commission on Gambling, whose chairman was no less a person than the noble Lord, Lord Rothschild.

Therefore, I hope that your Lordships will not regard it as a dereliction on my part if my very brief remarks focus largely upon subjects which have been touched on by that splendid report. It is certainly a report of which the public in this country may be proud. Doubtless the fact that it makes so many recommendations will provide endless opportunity for any proposed national council on gambling to mull over those recommendations for years and years to come. However, there is one matter dealt with in the Royal Commission's report which I believe is of greater urgency than many of the other matters—namely, the situation of lotteries and the situation which has arisen as a result of recent legislation on lotteries.

I do not propose to expatiate at any length on the abuses—indeed, the scandalous abuses—which the report of the Royal Commission has disclosed. I have no doubt whatever that those abuses should be checked and that the loopholes in legislation which have given rise to them should be stopped. However, the main point which I want to emphasise in my brief remarks concerns a matter about which the report is unequivocal and unanimous, and that is not merely its condemnation of the abuses of lotteries, but also its recommendation that there should be a national lottery and that such a national lottery could serve a good purpose. This matter has been discussed in your Lordships' House on an earlier occasion. I remember that a speech by the noble Lord, Lord Wigg— in which he alluded to the problems arising in this connection—certainly set me thinking in a far more subtle way than I had had occasion to do previously.

However, I suggest that the substance of the recommendation of the Royal Commission provides clarification in two ways. First, it certainly recognises the fact that objections to national lotteries may have been genuine in the distant past, although I am disposed to qualify that admission by drawing your Lordships' attention to the fact that we owe no less an institution than the housing of the British Museum to a national lottery, and Westminster Bridge—which many of your Lordships may use every day— must surely be regarded as a beneficial institution.

In the main, I hope that most of your Lordships will agree that, in a world which has licensed the totalisator; licensed betting; premium bonds; and all sorts of trivial lotteries of one kind or another, launched by particular societies or by small local government authorities, it is surely a little ridiculous that the case against a national lottery should still be argued in terms which have long ceased to be applicable to the ethos and the practice of the present situation.

Therefore, in a negative sense, I regard the chapter on the national lottery in the report of the Rothschild Commission as being valuable. I also regard it as valuable in a positive sense. The Royal Commission lists three good purposes which could be achieved through the agency of a properly organised national lottery—contributions to sport; contributions to other beneficial fund-raising activities approved by general opinion; and contributions to the arts.

It is as regards the last matter that I should like to ask your Lordships to bear with me for a few more minutes. I ought perhaps to declare a certain interest in that matter for reasons which I shall disclose in a moment. Let me first take an example in which I no longer have an interest; namely, the question of the enlarged acquisition by the nation as a whole of supreme examples of visual art. Many of your Lordships will remember the furore which accompanied putting on the market what, in the opinion of many well-qualified people, was the supreme example of a serious-minded cartoon; namely, Leonardo's Cartoon—which, at that time was in the hands of the Royal Academy—of St. Anne, the Virgin, the Christ Child and St. John. Many of your Lordships who were acquainted with him will know that the late Lord Crawford laboured incredibly to raise the money for the acquisition of that cartoon by the nation. Although he did not succeed in raising all the money that was necessary, at any rate he succeeded in raising enough to persuade a recalcitrant Government that this was a case where Government intervention was desirable.

However—and I am not quite sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Brown, who, in a recent debate, rebuked me for extravagance of language concerning the relevance of art to society, is in his place—the result was that millions of people have filed through the National Gallery. Last year over 2 ½ million people filed through and enjoyed a supreme example of visual art in any country. Had there been in existence at that time a national lottery, the extreme urgency and concern which the late Lord Crawford and those associated with him displayed need not have been so exacting; I shall not say that their efforts would have been unnecessary.

I now come to the instance in which I have to disclose a present interest. To my great good fortune, I am still a member of the Board of Governors of the Royal Opera House. I shall not expatiate on the complexities of the present position of the Royal Opera House, which bears the adjective "Royal", but which in point of fact is still owned by a private company. However, your Lordships may recollect that owing, I believe, to the initiative of the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, when he was Minister for the Arts, a sum of money was set aside for the purchase of the freehold of the sites surrounding the Royal Opera House. And about time too!

The inconveniences under which the Royal Opera House labours at present, in what in the opinion of many is the most beautiful auditorium in Europe, are beginning to be publicly recognised. The Opera and orchestra have to rehearse in a disused cinema in the Mile End Road, which used to be the Roxy cinema. The ballet rehearsals have to take place at the ballet school out at Hammersmith. Those of your Lordships who have been conducted round the quarters in which some of the most distinguished singers and dancers in the world have to robe, disrobe and perform the other operations which take place behind the stage, will know that they are a disgrace to any civilised country.

The first stage of an extension and rectification of these disabilities has been planned. Stage one will extend the Royal Opera House westward and, in some measure although by no means completely, will rectify some of the worst evils of the present confinement of its activities. Such an extension will cost many millions of pounds and in due course some public appeal will be made for support of such an enterprise. However, were a national lottery in existence on the scale contemplated by the Rothschild Report, the anxieties which the present position must cause—not only to the Board of the Royal Opera House but also to the various Ministries concerned, including the DOI and the Department of Education and Science—would be obviated.

Most of your Lordships will know that an opera house—whatever may be the acoustic merits of the presentation of operatic dramas (and these have come under severe criticisms)—which is architecturally regarded as one of the glories of modern architectural art has been built in Australia, largely by a continuity of lotteries which, so I am informed, have now raised between £30 million and £40 million. Were there such a prospect in this country—and the report of the Royal Commission suggests that a properly managed national lottery might even secure something like £100 million a year—all these anxieties would vanish.

I have already spoken too long. This is a subject which, as noble Lords can imagine, is very close to my heart. I shall conclude simply with some exhortation to speed in this matter. This is not a controversial recommendation in the sense that some of the other recommendations of the Royal Commission are controversial. It is a positive proposal for action which, in the present lull of controversial legislation coming to your Lordships' House and, to some extent, besetting the other place as well, when they have time to pay attention to the legislative process, could quite easily be managed this Session. What a relief that would be to the standing of the Royal Opera House. It must be remembered that we have only had a national Opera House since Covent Garden was rescued from being a dance-hall at the instigation of the late Lord Keynes, by private enterprise—Messrs. Boosey and Hawkes.

If some such alteration could be made in the law as to permit the setting up of a national lottery, not only would it relieve the apprehensions of the Board of Covent Garden, in which I have an interest, but it would relieve the apprehensions of all those hundreds of people who work under the auspices of Covent Garden. It would be a powerful reinforcement to the tourist trade. Last but not least, how much would it relieve the anguish of the two Ministers who chiefly answer questions of this sort in this House— I allude to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Birk—when we badger them with our complaints and reproaches for things which I am quite sure in their hearts they profoundly long for.

My Lords, I cannot think of any cause nearer to my heart than wanting to relieve the spirit of the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, of anguish. Much as I am devoted to that cause, and much, if I may say with equal sincerity or perhaps more sincerity, as I am devoted in my admiration for Lord Robbins, I am sorry to tell him that of all recommendations of the Royal Commission the deadest duck of all is the duck for a national lottery. If I allow myself time I will explain to him, and perhaps to noble Lords who care to listen, but if I cannot do it publicly I will do it privately.

My first task is to thank the noble Lord, Lord Spens, for introducing this Motion this afternoon, and for his kindly correspondence with me in inviting me to take part. It gives me particular pleasure to follow him because perhaps the most enjoyable period of my membership of the House of Commons was the two and a half years I spent as a member of a Select Committee on the Army Act. This was a measure that was born in acute controversy, and from the time the doors closed upon us to the time we finished there was complete agreement on Party lines; when there was disagreement, it cut across both Parties. The success of that was wholly due, if I may say so, to the wisdom and essential goodness of his father. I also therefore am glad to say that I find myself in great agreement with what he said today, and the common sense that he has generated.

Now I come to a more unpleasant task. I have never wanted to bore your Lordships with what, in my barrack room days, was called "throwing my service about". That is to say, recalling where I served; long stations abroad in this regiment, and that one. But unfortunately I have been rebuked by no less a person than the noble Duke, the Duke of Devonshire, at an inconvenient moment in a speech because I had not regaled your Lordships with my murky past. Even the Daily Telegraph have taken me to task for the same thing. So I must tell your Lordships that I am not a compulsive gambler. I am not a gambler; but I bet. I have had a substantial win this year, I am very glad to say, on the decision of whether Mr. Callaghan would hold an election or not. I know Mr. Callaghan very well. I am one of those individuals who never look at the crystal ball when I have got the form book—and I have got the form book. Mr. Callaghan, to my certain knowledge, has never made his mind up about any subject in the world until he was completely and utterly convinced that the winner was past the winning post. Therefore, on that day when he was going to tell the election date, and cheer Mrs. Thatcher up that he was going to take his great decision, I found one of the big bookmakers offering 10 to 1. I took it. I took it, and I do not regard that as gambling; I regard that as taking money from the innocents. My barrack room experience has always taught me never to neglect the chance.

Since I became a Member of the House of Commons, I was a member of the Racecourse Betting Control Board appointed by a Conservative Minister; I was a member of the Horserace Totalisator Board appointed by a Conservative Minister, and reappointed by a Conservative Minister; I was chairman of the Horserace Betting Levy Board appointed by a Labour Home Secretary and re-appointed by a Conservative Minister. I am at present the President of the Betting Office Licensees' Association; an organisation which I joined. I assured them that I retained my complete independence. I gave evidence to the Select Committee, with your Lordships' permission, with my bola colleagues, but on my own behalf as well. I did precisely the same thing in connection with the Royal Commisson, and today what I have to say are my own views. I have consulted nobody as to what I am going to say, and on one major issue I disagree with my bola colleagues and I shall not hesitate to say so. What I am saying is what I believe based, if I may say, on the form book; based upon experience.

I want first of all to turn to the Royal Commission itself. I want to say to your Lordships that one of the interesting things about this subject is that, so Rothschild tells us, 94 per cent. of our fellow countrymen and country women indulge in this so-called pernicious habit of "having a bit on" when it suits them, and that is that. But it is universal. So what happens is of tremendous importance both, may I say, from a political point of view and from a sociological point of view, but also from an economic point of view. It is of tremendous importance. How we treat these matters has very profound consequences.

Let me once again pay my tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, who introduced the early legislation. He did it not because he wanted to help racing; and he did not do it because he was a compulsive gambler; he did it because he became convinced that for social reasons the law on this subject had to be changed. It required an act of some political courage, because public opinion then was not as it is now. But he did it. The fact that it worked differently is neither here nor there. The point is that he did it, and it took away the stigma of breaking the criminal law when somebody had a shilling each way, and made it look respectable. It has grown, and it has demonstrated that this is a social act.

Now may I say a word to my noble friend the Minister who is to reply. Be warned. My reading of history is that the demise of the Liberal Party and its hold upon the masses in this country dates from the time when they started to monkey with the liquor laws. The rise of Tory democracy arises from the errors of the Liberal Party in this particular field guided, if I may say, by very well-intentioned people. They all meant well. But what were the consequences? We have fortunately, in addition to Lord Rothschild in his report, a speech by Lord Rothschild given in the dying days of the period just before the Commission died. It was a speech to the British Academy. Lord Rothschild spelt out in this speech what a remarkable way we have in this country of doing things. I shall read his words. He said:

"It is some 3 ½ years since I left Whitehall, so I am inevitably rather rusty about Whitehall procedures, particularly those involving the right hand of a Department not apparently knowing what the left hand is doing. It is therefore hard for me to understand what was the point of setting up [by the Home Secretary] a Royal Commission to study gambling sponsored by the Home Office if that Department at the same time mounts an investigation into gambling under the guise of a review of gambling literature, which incidentally was excellent, about the same time we published our results independently. I have just mentioned two hands, the left and the right, but in this case there was a third hand. While our Royal Commission was labouring, parturition which occasioned much labour, a Select Committee of the House of Commons made an investigation in depth into one important aspect of gambling, the Tote".

Can we do better than that? Lord Rothschild goes on to point out that the instrument of a Royal Commission itself was an instrument born of the leisured class, which had the public spirit and the intelligence to devote their time and energy to studying a very complicated political subject. But that situation does not operate today. So Lord Rothschild points out that he and eight other gentlemen with varying experience, knowing nothing about the subject, are called upon to sit down for two and a half years, often at the end of the day's labour because two of them were practising barristers and could not come along until half past four at night. They spent two and a half years studying this very complicated subject at the very time when the Home Office was undertaking a quite independent study. The results of those joint efforts are to be found in Chapter 4, "Information about Gambling and its Psychology". About that Rothschild says:

"The conclusion is inescapable. Both from the work of the Royal Commission and that of the Home Office, there is a serious shortage of reliable and accessible information about gambling in the United Kingdom".

What an indictment! But that is not the end of the story. We turn to the first chapter in the second volume, where he is examining the proposals made not by many bodies but by the Gaming Board, and I pay tribute to the work of the Gaming Board, particularly under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, a wise and good Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. Indeed, since he left, the handling by the Home Office of problems in this field has gone down and down. The thought that comes to my mind is that they are on the level of the Stationery Office, but I would not say that because it would be a libel on the Stationery Office.

No matter what the field or the subject —be it prisons, television or anything else—the handling of the matter by the Home Office will be inept in the extreme, and there is a clear reason for that. What does Rothschild say? He examines the prosposals of the Gaming Board, the Churches' Council on Gambling and the Royal College of Psychiatrists and he says that there are two separate issues. The first comprises certain forms of gambling which, it is suggested, require additional supervision by some central Government agency. Dealing with that, he decides against it. On the other hand, in paragraph 16.24, he returns to the main theme of whether there should be some central body with overall responsibility, and he says they must have added resources. That is why in the chapter to which I referred—I need not go into the details because they have been fully dealt with—he recommends the setting up of a central research agency, and there is no earthly reason why that should not have been done a long time ago. After all, the report was published six month ago but still nothing has been done. He then says, and this is particularly interesting:

"Although they may not recognise the description, the institution"—

which is the central body—

"is the Home Office and its subsidiaries the Tote Board, the Gaming Board and the Horserace Betting Levy Board".

I do not want to be unfair to Rothschild —because the Committee had only two and a half years—but in my view that is not very wise to juxtapose those three bodies, because they are different. The Gaming Board is borne on a subsidiary Vote of the Home Office, and its staff and policies are the latter's direct responsibility. It handles the Board's affairs through a wide range of regulations which come before this House and another place.

When we come to the Tote, we come to the wisdom of Butler. Butler, having set up the Tote and the Levy Board, wanted to keep the whole thing as far away from the Home Office as possible, so all he did in respect of the Tote was to appoint a board. What has happened as a result? Here we have Grandmother Home Office appointing the Tote, obviously with the Home Secretary taking personal responsibility for those he selects to serve on it and the policies they pursue. It was brought into being as a result of the 1928 Act and subsequent legislation. What was its fundamental task? The answer is simple: to run pool betting.

There is no single bet placed in any Tote office nor through any bookmaker operating under the authority of Section 14 today which finds its way into a pool. The Tote has been allowed—I am not suggesting that this has been done in any hole-in-corner way, nor do I suggest that they know what they are doing; least of all do I suggest that they face up to the consequences of what they are doing—to become the national bookmaker. If they were to run into a spell of bad luck or even a spell when there was no racing, who would have to pay the bill? The answer is that you, my Lords, would have to pay as representatives of the public.

I forecast that sooner or later, as a result of the policies they are adopting, the Tote cannot fail to end up in Carey Street, because, if they cannot run pool betting, in which they take no risks but simply take a cut out of the pool—in other words, they cannot lose—and make a profit under the present dispensation, what are their chances of running the business of bookmakers when they are paying betting shop prices that none of the Big Four would pay? This is a policy which is completely independent of the Home Office.

I have dealt with the Gaming Board and I now come to the Horserace Betting Levy Board, of which I was chairman. The statutory link there is Section 25 of the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act, which requires that any activity or scheme must be approved by the Secretary of State. From the time the Board was set up until I became chairman in 1967, that was completely ignored. It took me from November 1967 until May 1970 to work out in full detail an Instrument, which the present Prime Minister signed as Home Secretary, which made lawful the actions that had been taken by the Levy Board all through those years; he signed the Instrument and it had retrospective effect. The point I am making is that the Home Office, which had the ultimate responsibility to Parliament, never raised a finger to put matters right.

In coming to the question of lotteries, I must warn the House that one needs a sense of humour. In 1974, a Private Member's Bill came from another place. I know full well that it is against the tradition of your Lordships' House that a Bill should be rejected on Second Reading, but that Bill was such a piece of nonsense—every Home Office official knew it and I knew it—that, having consulted nobody, I came to your Lordships' House and opposed its Second Reading. I did it successfully, though afterwards I was told it was a constitutional monstrosity on my part. Nevertheless, I did it and I stopped that Private Member's Bill in its tracks.

The Government then introduced a Bill of their own, though it was not very much better; it was a stop-gap. I repeat in the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich—because I was in correspondence with his Home Office colleagues on the subject—that it was only a stop-gap measure. Unfortunately, they did not listen and I had considerable correspondence with Dr. Shirley Summer-skill last summer on the subject.

The Home Secretary published a consultative document. He consulted all the parties concerned as to how lotteries would work, though he did not circulate everybody. As a result, there were protests in another place and the matter was debated. The various issues were pointed out, just as they had been pointed out in correspondence. Then we had a Royal Commission. Every hot subject that the Home Office did not understand—which meant, by definition, that there was a considerable list—was referred to the Royal Commission. "Oh", said Dr. Summerskill, "we can't make up our minds. "Yet they had a consultative document, and the mistakes that had been made were pointed out to them. They said, "We will have to wait for the Royal Commission". The Royal Commission sat.

Many of your Lordships have very considerable experience in public affairs. Have any of your Lordships ever read such a condemnation of a Government on an issue of such major public importance? Dr. Summerskill herself had said that it was their duty—she used those words—to supervise and put right the situation. Have any of your Lordships ever heard anything such as is stated in paragraph 12.134:

"Despite the good work being achieved through many lotteries, the situation we have discovered is scandalous. There is wholesale disregard of the law which is inadequate and confused, commercial exploitation to a totally unacceptable degree, gross lack of security, and, we strongly suspect, a good deal of plain dishonesty".

Is there anyone among your Lordships who has ever heard stronger words about a Government than the words issued by the Royal Commission? Yet our noble Press and our even nobler media—who operate under the umbrella of the Home Office—uttered hardly a word. It is said to be a scandal and gross dishonesty, yet nothing is done.

Then there was a debate in another place on 1st December. What happened? First, I should mention at this stage that on 2nd August the Home Secretary, in reply to a Question for Written Answer, said that the subject of lotteries was a matter of urgency. Therefore one assumed that it was to be given priority. After all, six months had passed and the matter had gone on for a considerable period of time. On 2nd August it was said to be a matter of urgency, but on 1st December, Dr. Shirley Summerskill, in the course of a debate, says that the Royal Commission divides itself into three phases: lotteries and pool betting, gaming, and betting. Lotteries are to come first. What are they going to do about lotteries? They are going to issue another consultative document. When is it proposed to issue it?—sometime next year. Yet in August the Home Secretary had described the matter as urgent. That is how lotteries are to be handled.

When it comes to casinos, gaming, and racing, a special unit is to be set up. We have heard about this today. The noble Lord, Lord Spens, welcomed it. In this respect we have to rely upon the Press. The Observer, a reputable newspaper, reported what the special unit was: one lady had reported for duty on 31st October. What was her vast experience in this complicated field, which had beaten a Royal Commission of nine members, and which had been the subject of a survey into gambling, and had been considered by a Select Committee? She had been seconded from the Prison Commission. This is a subject for laughter, but it is also a subject for tears, because the way in which the matter has been handled is not unique.

May I hasten to add, for the comfort of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, that the situation would not have been much different had he been on the other side of the House and noble Lords opposite had been on this side. This kind of thing is inherent in the Home Office. The approaches of the Home Office were born in another century. The noble Lord, Lord Spens, is right; in the 20th century we are moving into a society which has a great amount of leisure. We do not have all the resources we want. We must make do with what we have. The first lesson to be learnt is from field service regulations: time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted. One needs to master facts and to bring into active consultation all the interests involved in the hope that an acceptable solution can be found. When that has been done, there is a chance of making progress. That is what Lord Butler did. I was a member of the Racecourse Betting Control Board, and at the suggestion of the Home Office a small sub-committee of three of us met from time to time, quite unofficially, quite informally, and offered our experience. I am now pensioned off. I am outside this matter, but there are many people in all the fields of activity which are covered by the report who are only too anxious to help.

Before I close and make way for other speakers, I should like to make one point to the noble Lord, Lord Robbins. The reason why a national lottery will not work is that we already have a national lottery which other countries do not have, in the form of football pools. That is a national lottery. It does exactly the same kind of job as what is proposed. Here the Royal Commission makes an error. In paragraph 1.18 the Royal Commission discusses hypothecation. The Commission's report quotes Mr. Harold Lever speaking in a debate on a national lottery—which he was anxious to carry through, but on which he was beaten in another place—as saying that on behalf of the Treasury there was no objection to hypothecation. Obviously, Lord Rothschild and his colleagues have taken up that point, and have reached the conclusion that the Treasury was withdrawing its traditional objection to hypothecation. However, when the matter was read in its context, it was perfectly clear that Mr. Lever was speaking in relation to a national lottery, not in relation to hypothecation per se. So I corresponded with the Chief Secretary, and it became very clear that so far as the Treasury is concerned it is going to have its pound of flesh. It is in business— quite rightly—to protect the national revenue. So if there is a national lottery, there will have to be paid the same duty as the pools pay. Once it is necessary to pay the same duty as the pools pay, and meet the cost of administration, the candle is not worthwhile.

I want to stress a point here because it involves a difference between myself and those who, no doubt well-intentioned, hold the view that in connection with racing the levy should continue. I am quoted in the report, quite rightly, as I voted against my own Party five times in one night. What else could I do? As a member of the Racecourse Betting Control Board I had supported a levy, but I changed my view. I remember the occasion very well when the matter was debated. The one person who spoke up for financial orthodoxy was—as your Lordships may expect.—Mr Enoch Powell. I thought that he was wrong. I certainly thought that racing needed a subsidy, and I believe that on that point I was right.

Rothschild points out that one of the insidious consequences of using hypothecation is that it now has become a subsidy, and the judgment is made in the report that racing now has a subsidy, and that if the subsidy were withdrawn it would collapse; and so it must not be withdrawn. One of the by-products of Rothschild is that every sport in the country—and indeed bodies far beyond sport—is now looking to a national lottery, or to some organisation, to provide it with easy money. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, with the utmost respect: please grow up. There is no easy money in this world, except that which comes from a brush-over by confidence tricksters. Anything you get you pay for. The time has come that if one starts to hypothecate, one gets into very murky fields. Racing has got a levy. Football wants one. The dogs want one. Cricket, particularly if we withdraw the pool Competitions Act 1971, will want one. What would then happen to Warwickshire Cricket Club, and all the other clubs around it?

Perhaps I may say that if your Lordships were to have a look at the troubles of the BBC it would be seen that three-quarters of their financial troubles are because the fee that they get is hypothecation. Here, I believe—steadfastly now; and perhaps, at least on this issue, I ought to cross the Floor and go from here over there—there is nothing on the cheap, and you cannot have hypothecation in total without the most disastrous financial results. The best paper that was submitted to the Royal Commission was the brilliant paper, in my judgment, of the Board of Customs and Excise, who said that if they are to be helped it ought to be a direct charge upon the Revenue, as is the case with the Arts Council. Therefore, you make out the case for the money that you want; and, as to how you spend it, it should not be spent, as I say, through any grandmotherly control. We do not want racing run by the Home Office—heaven forbid! Imagine the terrible consequences of letting the Home Office decide whether a race should be five furlongs or six furlongs! Nothing could be worse than that. We do not want it run by the Home Office; and the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, does not want art run by the Ministry of Education. No—the Arts Council set-up is possibly the way in which we ought to try to go ahead.

Now, may I have just one minute more? This morning the senior steward of the Jockey Club made a speech. I have worked with senior stewards, and I always remember with gratitude and gratefulness the periods I worked with General Sir Randle Fielden when he was senior steward and I was chairman. Yes, we had our rows, but we got on well and we achieved much. I have always worked agreeably with Lord Howard de Walden. He has given great services to racing, and when he goes I hope he will be followed by as good a man as he is. If so, racing is lucky. But he makes exactly the same point as I make. We have got to make do with what we have; we cannot get any more. My Lords, what does the Royal Commission say? It says that the combined rate of taxation and levy, at £8·5 million, is now running dangerously high. There can be no more. Despite whatever the Home Office rulings may be —and they have been pretty foolish in the past—the next levy, the eighteenth, is going to be £14·6 million. If, then, you try to squeeze out of it as much prize money as has been squeezed out, £9,370,000, there will be nothing left for anybody else. That is the simple logic of the situation, and there is no escape from that logic. There is only so much money, and Lord Howard de walden recognised it this morning. If you try to take more, then what you will do is recreate the very social evil that Butler set out to avoid, and that is a social consequence which must not happen. There is only so much.

The way ahead so far as racing is concerned is through a Racing Consultative Council through which the Levy Board, on behalf of the Home Office, should seek its authority, though I do not believe it needs it because (and I played a part in drafting the actual instrument in May 1970) I believe it was drafted in such a way that a consultative council could be financially supported and could be set up with an independent chairman and an independent secretary, and that all the major bodies affected by the levy would be there to play their part. If that is done, that would be a pattern.

My Lords, let me conclude by saying this. I pay tribute to Lord Rothschild and to those who worked with him. There are many points with which I do not agree—as I say, I do not agree in regard to a national lottery—but what I do recognise is that, although they were using an imperfect instrument, they did their best in the public interest, and you cannot ask any more than that from any man.

My Lords, when I entered your Lordships' House last year I little thought that I should be speaking from this Box today, or that I should speak first on the subject of gambling. It is, in the parlance of this debate, such an unlikely double that a bookmaker would have offered very long odds indeed on such a happening. I have studied Annex B of the much-quoted Royal Commission Report. In Annex B—it is called "The Odds", and goes on for some 30 pages—there is something called an off-course forecast. I am not quite sure whether or not that relates to my presence here.

My Lords, we are all sorry to hear that the Churches' Council on Gambling has been wound up. It has done excellent work over the years, particularly under the guidance of Mr. Gordon Moody. I must confess myself surprised that the combined power of the Churches cannot continue such a council from their resources, and feel it strange that they should allow it to be wound up. If I may say so, everything that the right reverened Prelate said convinced me even more of its value, and what a pity it is that they found it necessary to wind it up. To draw from the Commission, I should like to quote a remark from Cardinal Hume:

"Gambling can become wrong when it is inconsistent with our duties or when it is carried to excess".

While many Churches are opposed to gambling in principle—and we have heard the view of the Methodists—Cardinal Hume's view is more moderate. But even that view would seem to call for some monitoring by the Churches of the level of gambling. We have had some statistics already. One which I drew out perhaps proves that gambling has no Party boundaries. My Lords, 17 million people fill in the football pools each week. This compares with the 11 ½ million people who voted Socialist in the last Election.

However, to come back to it, if the Churches' Council on Gambling is not to be, we have to consider the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Spens, that a National Council on Gambling be established. It is a most useful suggestion, and we are grateful for the opportunity to discuss it. I have been interested in the aims of this national council, and, as I understand it, it is a council for the protection of gambler—a kind of watchdog for the general public—and it is also to come to the aid of compulsive gamblers. If I am wrong, perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Spens, will correct me when he winds up.

The Royal Commission has been much quoted. In six paragraphs it discusses the case for a gambling authority with powers to supervise the whole gambling field. The noble Lord, Lord Wigg, has already referred to it. The Commission states firmly that no new such authority is needed as the Home Office is already the supervisor. Again, we have had the theories of the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, on this. I should like to read the paragraph's conclusion. It says:

"It is highly desirable that the body directly answerable to Parliament and in a position to promote legislation should not be too cushioned from the subject for which it is accountable".

In fact, my Lords, it sounds to me like, "no QUANGOs". It goes on:

"To achieve success in this field, two factors are of great importance:

(i) that adequate resources are made available in the Home Office to deal with gambling;

(ii) that the Home Office recognise that they have a vital, and not only responsive, role to play, particularly in stimulating, with the Social Science Research Council, efforts to gather and publish information about gambling".

I should like to ask the noble Lord the Minister, who is speaking next, first, whether the Home Office accept this view; second, whether adequate resources are now available, or are being made available; and, third, whether the Home Office have started to collate and publish more information on gambling.

Noble Lords have already mentioned Chapter 4 of the Commission's Report, which refers to information about gambling and its psychology. The Commission here uses the words "essential" and "urgent" when recommending to the Government the establishment of a gambling research unit. This is to monitor and study the incidence, sociology and psychology of gambling. It further recommends that the unit be funded by the Home Office, and that it should liaise closely with the gambling boards. I am sure the noble Lord the Minister, in his speech, will let the House know what progress has been made in this field. We have therefore advice on two fields of improvement that can be made without the necessity of a National Council on Gambling.

My Lords, to look back at the aims of this council, I should like your Lordships to consider whether help for the compulsive gambler should not come more aptly from the National Council for Social Services. They have the network, the field workers and the organisation already in operation. Would the national council consider it? Would the Government be prepared to approach the National Council for Social Services about this? Perhaps the Government would even consider a separate grant to fund this added work. I understand that the charity has already offered a sum and they might be prepared to match it.

My Lords, I am always nervous of new councils and particularly those dependent upon charity. One wonders why the national council would succeed where the Churches' Council cannot survive. I am a trustee of a number of charities, as I am sure are many noble Lords here. Over recent years, we have seen expenses rise and salaries, cost of running offices and profesional fees increase while we have seen income static and money more hard to find. I do not know whether the Charity Commissioners have any yardstick about the ratio of running costs to charitable gifts in a charity's turnover, but I know it is a fact uppermost in the minds of many trustees. The point that I am making is that with the National Council for Social Services we have a ready-made organisation which, with Government help, could take on this task with minimal extra expense. I have now learned in the course of this debate of Gamblers Anonymous and their active work, who could obviously work hand in hand.

Except for making this point, I find myself in broad agreement with the right reverend Prelate in my conclusions. If the Home Office is accepting a Royal Commission's advice on making adequate resources available to oversee gambling, if they have set up a gambling research unit, the need only remains to help the compulsive gambler. Adequate protection is already available for the punter against the large gambling organisations. This compulsive gambler perhaps could be best helped through Gamblers Anonymous and the National Council of Social Services. If, however, the Government have not followed, and do not intend to follow, the advice of the Royal Commission and do not set up a research unit, then the proposal of a National Council on Gambling should be seriously considered and given the wholehearted support of the Government.

My Lords, I am sure that the House will welcome the opportunity that the noble Lord, Lord Spens, has given us to consider the work of the Churches' Council on Gambling, the work they have done in the immediate past, and the situation as it is now because the Council's existence has been terminated. I think there are also a number of other reasons. Speaking for myself, I am glad to have had this debate, first, for the opportunity of hearing the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Avon, speaking for the first time from the Front Bench opposite. We welcome his appearance on that Bench and I know what pleasure it would have given his distinguished father to have seen his son sitting on the Front Bench in this House. We look forward to hearing him again on many occasions speaking from that Bench.

Another reason why I think we deserve to look back on this debate with pleasure is that we had the benefit of hearing my noble friend Lord Wigg on the subject of gambling, which I know is a matter close to his heart. One of the pleasures of listening to my noble friend is that he believes in the broad sweep approach. He ranged from the demise of the Liberal Party—unfortunately in the absence of any representatives of that Party who were temporarily out of the House; and we welcome them back. I know that they will study Hansard tomorrow with interest —to the Home Office. I have to say this because it was said in the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, who was with us a few moments ago and who I hope is still here. I know that it will give him pleasure that he was excepted from the censures to which my Department was subject. He was excluded as was the noble Lord, Lord Butler. Apart from that, I regret to hear my noble friend say that the Home Office was inept in dealing with any issue. No doubt he made some exception for the period in which the Home Office appointed him chairman of the Levy Board; and I am sure that he would make exception to the handling of another issue in this area, the affairs of the Tote. I was slightly surprised to hear from my noble friend the apparent criticism of the Tote and the way it did its work. I have tried to check what was the profit situation of the Tote, and it is not too bad. In 1976–77, the profits before tax were £400,000; in 1977–78 they were £1,300,000; and in the present year the situation is even better.

My Lords—

My Lords, with great respect to my noble friend, he did address the House for 33 minutes in a debate which is limited to 2½ hours and it is not unreasonable that I should be allowed to answer him. I am sure that he would want to join with me in congratulating the Tote on the excellent record that they have managed to put up—to avoid any possible misunderstanding which might arise from the things that he said in the course of his speech.

Having said that, I would now return to the subject, in the more tranquil waters—if I may mix metaphors—of the Churches' Council on Gambling. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester has reminded us, the Council's origins can be traced back to the time of the Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting of 1932–33; but I think it is the work of the Council in the last two decades which is of particular relevance for the purpose of this debate. That period has covered legislation, consolidated in the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act 1963, which legalised off-course cash betting, the Gaming Act 1968, which established the present controls over gaming and, most recently, the lotteries legislation consolidated in the Lotteries and Amusements Act 1976 which empowered local authorities to promote lotteries and raised the limits on lotteries promoted by voluntary societies.

In this period, the Churches' Council on Gambling has considered developments in commercially-based forms of gambling, their relationship to the requirements of the law and their social impact. It has also endeavoured to maintain contact with the commercial promoters, the statutory boards and all the other people and organisations working in this field. On this basis, the Council has offered advice to the Home Office in the hope of helping to secure the best framework of law in the interests both of those involved in gambling and of the country as a whole.

I think it is right to say that the vigour of the Council's work and its emphasis over the last 20 years owes a great deal to the Reverend Gordon Moody who was appointed General Secretary of the Council in 1958. I think it right to say that it is somewhat remarkable that we are having this debate entirely because Mr. Moody has indicated that he has to resign his present office. I should mention that he was instrumental in bringing about the establishment in this country of the organisation, Gamblers Anonymous, to which the noble Lord, Lord Spens, alluded at the beginning of the debate.

The situation is that Mr. Moody has now just begun a well-earned retirement and the Council has in recent years had to function without a London Office. The appointment of new staff based in a London office would entail a larger expenditure than the modest £5,000 to £6,000 which has been spent on the Council in the recent past. As the right reverend Prelate has said, the Churches cannot see their way to meet that increased expenditure. It is this situation that has led to the proposal that there should be established a national council of gambling financed substantially from secular sources.

The question which therefore confronts us is whether there should be some successor body to the Churches' Council on Gambling, and, if we were to have such a body, how it might be financed. It can. I think, be argued that there have been some developments over the past 20 years which have lessened the need for such an organisation. Some information about horseracing and betting is now provided in the annual reports of the Horserace Betting Levy Board and the Horserace Totalisator Board which the Home Secretary is required to present to Parliament. There now exists in addition, as my noble friend Lord Wigg has reminded us, the Gaming Board for Great Britain, charged with keeping under review the extent and character of gaming in Great Britain, and this Board is also required to produce an annual report for Parliament. However, I must add—and this is common ground because a number of speakers have pointed this out—that the Royal Commission on Gambling have made a number of recommendations on this matter.

In their report they said there was a serious shortage of reliable and accessible information about gambling in the United Kingdom. The Commission recommended the establishment of a Gambling Research Unit to be responsible to the Social Science Research Council. The Commission also urged that adequate resources should be made available in the Home Office to deal with gambling, and that the Department should recognise it had a vital role to play in stimulating efforts to gather and publish information about gambling.

The noble Earl, Lord Avon, perfectly reasonably said the Royal Commission having recommended that, what about the question of the additional resources within the Home Office? I must unhappily say this right at the outset. We are obviously looking at this with all the other recommendations which the Royal Commission have made but we have to approach this matter with some degree of caution. Every Government Department is faced with a whole range of recommendations saying that there should be more resources for this or more resources for the other, and I carry a distinguished former Chancellor of the Exchequer with me as I say this. But at some stage we have to face up to the difficult question about whether we are prepared to have a larger and larger public service.

The consequences in terms of taxation and a whole range of other questions is a very serious matter indeed. So, as I have said, I cannot today give any clear answer to this question, but it would be unreasonable to expect a very substantial increase of the staff of the Home Office in this area. It could only be at the cost of substantial cutbacks in other areas, be it prisons, which were referred to by my noble friend Lord Wigg or the Police Department, for which I have some personal responsibility, and so on. The Government have to approach this in terms of looking at all the calls on public resources and not simply as an isolated question in terms of the issue of gambling, however important that may be.

Having made these references to the Royal Commission, I think it only right that I should express now the appreciation of the Government—and I know it is common ground in all parts of the House —for the work which the chairman of the Commission, the noble Lord, Lord Rothschild, and his colleagues have done in surveying the whole field of gambling. The Government have asked for comments on the report from all interested bodies and persons by the end of this year—indeed within a relatively few days —and will wish to consider these before reaching decisions on the Commission's many recommendations.

Given the commercial interest involved and the strong views held on some of the matters dealt with in the report, it is not surprising that the Commission's recommendations have not met with universal approval. Even today we witnessed a slight disagreement between the noble Lords, Lord wigg and Lord Robbins, on the question of a national lottery. There are similar disagreements in many other areas so far as the recommendations to the Royal Commission are concerned.

As I have indicated, the Government have not yet reached any decisions on these matters. Certainly my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has defined two particular issues which require some priority. My noble friend Lord Wigg referred to this. One is the question of lotteries. This point was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Robbins. There has been a substantial amount of disquiet which has been expressed since the passage of the relatively recent lotteries legislation. This is something which my right honourable friend regards as a matter of some priority and he will give it that attention. Secondly, there is the question of the future of the Pool Competitions Act 1971. In regard to the other matters, he will await the comments we have asked for and there will be full consultation with those concerned in each particular field of gambling before any action is taken.

I return now to the question of a successor body to the Churches' Council on Gambling. I can say that it is the Government's view that the Council has in the 'sixties and 'seventies provided a valued source of information and advice, and that its usefulness has owed a great deal to its independence of both the state and also of course the various gambling interests. We think there will be undoubted gap now that the Council has ceased to exist, and this gap will be the more noticeable because of the need to consider the 303 recommendations of the Royal Commission. We welcome therefore the proposal that there should be a national council on gambling to help fill this gap and hope that some of the philanthropic foundations are prepared to assist with financing such a venture.

But having said that, I must also say —in answer again to the noble Earl, Lord Avo—that we are not convinced that it would be appropriate for the Government themselves to contribute to the income of the proposed national council. We want to look at that question a great deal longer. We think there are several considerations to be taken into account here. In the first place, I am sure that a great deal of the effectiveness of the Churches' Council on Gambling rested on it being wholly independent of the State. I am certainly not arguing that a measure of State help is inconsistent with independence of view or criticism of Government policy; I think a national council ought to be assured of a substantial measure of support from sources other than the State.

Secondly, we think that before the Government could properly consider giving any aid to such a Council, there should have been full discussion of the recommendations of the Royal Commission, in particular the recommendation in favour of a gambling research unit, and that the Home Office should play an enhanced role in the supervision of gambling. The Government will therefore wish to avoid taking any final view on this matter of financial assistance until it has been able to form conclusions on the Royal Commission's report. I repeat that we sincerly hope that this will not discourage others from offering help forthwith, for we are in no doubt that a National Council on Gambling would be of value in the period immediately ahead when the recommendations of the Royal Commission are under consideration. I conclude by saying once again how indebted we are to the noble Lord, Lord Spens, for having raised this issue which has given us the advantage of having a stimulating short debate.

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, for what he has said. In my opening speech I carefully did not ask for any money for this national council from the Government although of course it would be welcomed. What I asked for was support, and the noble Lord has given us that very happily. We have had a very interesting debate. There is not time for me to run through all the remarks that have been made by the speakers but there are one or two that I should like to mention. First of all, the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord St. Just; he referred to the 48-hour rule. As a compulsive gambler, particularly in casinos, I believe that that 48-hour rule is absolutely imperative: it keeps me out of them. I should hate to see it removed. I was very glad for his support for the Motion. I was a little doubtful about his suggestion for a register of compulsive gamblers because it is very difficult to get people to admit that they are compulsive gamblers, and if you are to compile a register on some third person's idea of whether or not someone is a compulsive gambler you could run into trouble.

I was grateful also for the support of the noble Viscount, Lord Barrington. He does not think that gambling is wrong; nor do I. I think that gambling in reasonable amounts is perfectly all right. It is a form of entertainment and in some ways also a form of challenge. It is only when people go over the top that the dangers occur.

I am extremely grateful to the right reverend Prelate for what he said about the history of the Churches' Council. My only knowledge of it stems only from my acquaintance with its last Secretary, and it was very interesting indeed to hear him say that the Church's view is that it has served the nation as well as the Churches themselves. I know the reason why the Council has had to be wound up: the last Secretary showed me a balance sheet only last night. I will not quote from it, but it was in the red: that is the sad thing about it. The point remains that without the Churches' Council there is this gap.

The noble Lord, Lord Robbins, talked about lotteries. I did declare that my country club runs a lottery and my only hope, if a national lottery is introduced, is that it will not detract from the takings which my local lottery at the moment manages to obtain. However, I should like to draw his attention to the remarks made in another place on 1st December at column 999 on an adjournment debate, when the Member who introduced the subject talked about the creation of a board, or whatever it might be, that would decide how to divide up the takings of a national lottery and said that this would be "absolutely autocratic despotism." I wonder how the noble Lord would feel it it was decided that the Royal Opera House was not to be one of the recipients. It depends so much on how a body of that kind is controlled.

I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, for his very kind remarks about my father. He had spoken to me about him before, and my father has told me of his association with the noble Lord in that Select Committee—was it?— and of the very useful work they did together. My interpretation of the noble Lord's speech is that he supports us, because he was certainly blaming the Home Office for being very lax, or very slow, in doing various things that he thought they ought to have done. Indeed, if there is no ginger group to press them, they may eontinue to be as lax.

I am most grateful also to the noble Earl, Lord Avon, for his remarks. Regarding the question he raised as to why the National Council for Social Service do not do the job of looking after compulsive gamblers, perhaps they could. They are in fact one of the bodies sitting on the working party trying to draft a constitution for a national council on gambling. They have given a great deal of help and are still doing so; but what is really needed, we feel, is a body which can employ a paid expert who can go round and make contact, as did the Reverend Gordon Moody, with the various gambling interests and can keep the Council up-to-date on what is happening and be their expert adviser—because the Council itself would be sitting really voluntarily. Without that paid expert staff, nothing would come of it at all. The working party thinks that it is going to cost about £20,000 a year. We very much hope we shall be able to find the funds to start it off, and I am quite certain that your Lordships' support today is going to make it that much easier for us to do so. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers,

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

rose to call attention to the collapse of exploration drilling on the United Kingdom Continental Shelf; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper, and at the start I should like to say how happy I am personally to see that the noble Lord who is to reply to this short debate is none other than the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi. Those of us who tease him from time to time on matters of offshore drilling and so on know how invariably courteous and kindly he is in taking all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that we send in his direction. He is always courteous, always kindly, goes to great lengths to ascertain the facts and displays a manifest wish all the time to serve the House as well as he possibly can.

My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt the noble Earl, but can he define a wildcat well?

Yes, my Lords. A wildcat well is a very wild well. You do not know whether or not there is oil, so the purpose is to see whether there is any at all there. It is the utmost in wildness of exploration, as compared with an appraisal well, which is when you have reasonable cause to think that there is something there, and a development well, which is when you follow it up. The point about wildcat wells is that if you do not have enough of them you do not get sufficient exploration generally. The Secretary of State for Energy—and methinks he doth protest too much—has been saying that the proof that the industry is confident and interested is to be found in the response to the sixth round, for which applications closed two or three weeks ago.

Hear, hear!

The noble Lord says "Hear, hear", but let us wait and see what are the facts. Except for BP and Occidental, all the major companies have put in severely limited applications. Texaco, I understand, has applied for only one block in the Moray Firth. In this round, Shell and Conoco have adopted a very low profile. Exxon —the original name for Esso—are out of it altogether. Yet those three companies have been in the forefront of development hitherto. At least one other major has told me that if the terms prove too stiff it will quit, and I know of one promising group being put together in the summer which collapsed on news of the Government's intention to raise PRT.

Of the 94 companies that have been listed by name by the Government, bracketed into these 55 groupings, somewhere between one-quarter and one-third may well be judged to be inconsiderable; inconsiderable in terms of previous exploration or development experience; in considerable in terms of having surplus tax rebate dollars available for funding, and inconsiderable in terms of their financial standing. Of course, the companies say, "It is easy enough to apply now. These are only options, anyway, and if you apply for a round it keeps you in the game". The real interest, of course, is to get into the queue, in the hope that within a year from now there will be a drastic change of policy.

The first test of Round 6 is not how many people joined in applying. It is how much tribute the companies that have applied are willing to pay to BNOC —how much equity they are willing to surrender. The real test will come perhaps two years hence, maybe later—1980–81— when the time comes, after successful exploration, for the critical decisions to be taken on investment to develop.

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for giving way. Will he say whether he thinks that the big companies, such as Shell and Esso, are not already heavily committed to an extent which may make it difficult for them to undertake fresh commitments at the present moment?

My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord for that intervention. He knows that I hold him in great regard and affection. But that is not the explanation that has come from the majors. That is all I would say. What we have to face is the fact that the Secretary of State has himself suggested, both directly and indirectly through his Department, the welcome which the Government have given, or are giving, to the large number of smaller companies that have applied in this round. Indeed, his Department have put the word about in the oil business that this time the smaller companies may expect to have a better break.

The fact is that the majors are "browned off". The minors are much more likely to surrender anything from 75 to more than 90 per cent. of the equity in the business as tribute to BNOC. And most of the minor—anyhow, many of them—if they get exploration licences, will be forced to farm out the work, which in turn will give BNOC the chance to squeeze yet more equity out of each opportunity. I think I am right in saying that, recently, BNOC has exacted from 7 to 15 per cent. equity as the price for consenting to a farm-out. So boasting of Round 6 at this stage is already counting chickens before they are hatched.

I have a number of questions to put, and I can imagine the Government saying, "Plunge not the finger of inquiry into the pie of impertience. "But why are the Government so coy about naming the 55 groups into which these 95 are gathered for their applications? They have refused to disclose the names of the final groupings applying. They say that this is confidential. But the Dutch Government, when they have a round of applications, immediately publish the names of the applicants, the names of the groupings and the blocks for which they have applied. With the Dutch there is no hole in the corner business or secrecy about it. It may well be that until now one of the conditions of the rounds has always been that the composition of applications shall be treated as wholly confidential. If that has been a condition hitherto, one can only respect it; but perhaps this is a condition which need not pertain in the future. In any case, there is surely no reason why the names of the groupings and the constituent companies in the groupings should not be made known.

Another question that comes to mind is this: How many applicants, on average, are there per block, or on average how many blocks are there per applicant? That information would give away, surely, nothing that was confidential. Also, what is the density of overlap in applications?

That again would disclose nothing confidential to particular companies. And have any companies applied for most or all of the blocks in return for an offering to BNOC of, say, 90 per cent. or more of the final equity?

This is not a time for complacency. There is a fall-off rather than an increase in the estimate of reserves in place as well as in the estimates of production. Dr. Mabon announced in a Written Answer in the other place only a few days ago that the Department had lopped 300 million tonnes off the total Brown Book estimate of reserves in place because of disappointments in the Celtic Sea where nothing has been found. That lops the reserves in place by 6·6 per cent. Operational reports from the Forties Field suggest that the reserves in place there must be estimated downwards from 4,600 million barrels to about 4,000 million barrels, a drop in this case of 13 per cent. Again, operational estimates from the Thistle Field, due to an expected downturn in loading, suggest that this year's production will in fact be about 50,000 barrels a day less than expected, a cut of 25 per cent.

Not only, therefore, is there a downgrading of the reserves in place and a slowdown in the estimates of production that can shortly be expected, but the success rate has changed very considerably, as the best fields were found earlier on. Out of eight major fields, each of them of more than 500 million barrels, only one has been found in the period from 1975 to 1977. Perhaps more serious is the consensus of expert opinion from the oil industry worldwide, that the best fields are always found first—and, therefore, in the later stages of an area's exploration more work has to be done on smaller fields which are harder to find. Hence comes the prediction that if we are to continue our crude oil self-sufficiency from the middle and late 1980s into the middle and late 1990s a very great deal more extra work will have to be done than is at present in prospect. The extrapolation of worldwide experiences argues that between 18 and 32 new fields will have to be found and that between 60 and 95 wildcat wells will have to be drilled every year for the next seven or eight years.

If those figures are not in themselves a grim warning, then what about the greatly and sharply rising operating costs which are reported field by field as of now? Operational reports for the Auk Field show that operating expenses are up 100 per cent. on a year ago; those for the Murchison Field are up 130 per cent.; for the Thistle Field 133 per cent.; for the Piper Field 143 per cent.; for the Claymore Field 144 per cent.; for the Fulmar Field 156 per cent.; and for the Heather Field 220 per cent. Whatever else those figures argue, they surely argue that the medicine for the oil industry is tax incentives rather than tax punishment.

The Government will, I am sure, repeat to us tonight, as they have elsewhere, that of course the companies do not have to worry very much: if they run into trouble, the Government will forgo their 12 ½ per cent. royalty. But what nobody knows is which measures of project worth will be used to determine this and at what point the royalties would be refunded. The industry is still waiting to learn the answer to those questions.

The companies are told, "If you run into real trouble, go and talk to your taxman". I can only say that this is about as encouraging as to invite a small boy to choose his school headmaster as his father confessor. The Government's "take" at present is 70 per cent. If that were cut to 60 per cent. it would raise the company's profits from 30 to 40 per cent In other words, it would increase their profits by 33 per cent., which would make a great deal of difference to security of financing.

There is a steady pressure—it was mentioned yesterday by my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy at Question Time —for lowering the tax threshold on the smaller fields: say, down to 200 million or 150 million barrels. There is the case which is alluded to in the regular briefings put out by BP. I would remind your Lordships that BP is not without receipt of some Government influence. Their briefings point to what is called the staged approvals procedure. By it the development programme of a field is not settled all at once for the next 15 or 20 years, but is settled at intervals—at two or three rather long intervals—and these intervals may be varied. The industry has expressed the fear—and one understands that fears have been expressed in discussions with the Department—that the application of the staged approvals procedure could be used as a delaying device sufficient to nullify what were called the Varley assurances about finds made before 1976.

Another plea is that the squeeze on farm-outs—that is when a company owning an exploration licence hires somebody else to do the drilling—should be eased. At present, a company seeking to farm out part of its obligation to another company with the resources and the skill to do the drilling has to obtain permission, and the price of that permission is invariably a surrender of more equity to BNOC. Finally, there is the request that far more acreage should be made available to the industry at slightly more frequent intervals. The average over the years 1965 to 1976, when exploration really got under way, was 220 or more blocks per annum, whereas the average currently is 43 blocks per annum. This Round 6 ran to 46.

It would be idle to pretend that there is not an atmosphere of, shall I say, imagined malice and suspected distortion hovering over the industry. It has been said that if honour is a luxury for an aristocrat it is a necessity for a hall porter. The Government and BNOC are in fact the hall porters who guard access to the acreage, and therefore when there is the slightest suspicion about their behaviour all kinds of damage to confidence ensue. A wanton and lascivious eye betrays the heart's adultery and clouds of suspicion do hang around BNOC. There is the suspicion that confidential information of a commercial character made available to it through its position as Government adviser is then used to BNOC's own commercial advantage. That charge needs to be refuted and there has been a call in another place for an inquiry into it.

Secondly, there have been completely private allocations of exploration blocks, both to BNOC and to the British Gas Corporation, without the industry as a whole being given a chance to compete. It may well be said—and I am sure it will be said—that the Government have uppermost in their minds the sovereign duty to conserve these precious resources and to make quite sure that they are not run down too quickly. Nobody denies the importance and the value of that requirement—certainly the industry does not— but one cannot expect companies to invest great sums in exploration unless they are going to have the chance of developing the prize when they find it. When we realise that world-wide the average of success in wildcat drilling is about one in 10, and it has been rather better than that in the North Sea although not so much lately, there is a very big gamble involved in drilling at all, and unless there is a real prize at the end of it the drillers will go away. There is a suspicion—which I do not say that I endorse, but it is only fair to report it to your Lordships' House—that the Government and BNOC are a little like a statesman, who out of courtesy to some of my friends on the Liberal Benches I will not identify, of whom it was said that he could not see a belt without hitting below it.

There are particular cases that are widely talked of in the industry and others which I do not propose to mention. There was MESA's Mr. Boon Pickens, and the way he was treated by the Department when he came over here some while back and sought to pay a courtesy call upon the Secretary of State. They tried to make him give all sorts of undertakings about his company's policies before he was even allowed to pay a courtesy call. Then there was the strange disappearance and banishment to Canada of Occidental's Bob MacAllister. Whatever is the inwardness of that story, I can only tell your Lordships that quite a long time ago I mentioned to a member of the Government that this man had been the recipient in negotiations of very odd and unworthy threats.

My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Earl, he is implying that Mr. MacAllister was banished to Canada by the Secretary of State. He was not; he was simply transferred back to Canada by his own chairman, Dr. Hammer.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for making that clear. I was in fact going to say that myself. One appreciates that it was of course his own president who transferred him to Canada, but the inwardness of that story has yet to be written and there are those who have raised eyebrows bigger than mine about it.

The keys of the Government's policy are surely to be found in the Queen's Speech at the opening of Parliament. The critical reference appears at column 3 of Hansard of 2nd November:

"using the benefits of North Sea oil".

That was the sum total in the gracious Speech of the Government's reference to policy in this critical sector. There was nothing about depletion control, let alone about energy policy in general. It is only fair to conclude, both from that and from subsequent experience, that the declared aim is to squeeze the lemon dry. One can only hope that they do not kill the goose which lays the golden eggs. I would remind the Government that the citizens of Mexico would have had 40 years of oil had the Government there not driven private enterprise away 40 years ago. Prudence is the first thing to desert the wretched and one observer wrote, "I do not make jokes, I just watch the Government and report the facts". My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, for bringing this subject to the attention of your Lordships' House. At first sight, it would appear to be a subject of highly professional and specialised interest but I shall try to convince your Lordships that it is a subject which has a profound effect upon the future of this country. We have listened to the noble Earl and I think his remarks alone would underline the theme which I propose to follow—namely, that the economy of this country will be seriously affected by the products of the earth that lies beneath the sea.

Some six or seven years ago, Professor Hubert King and I, looking to the future, established for the first time in British universities a degree in Exploration Sciences at Nottingham University. The object of that degree course was to provide young men and women with a basic training in mathematics, physics, chemistry, mining and geology so that they would have a basis upon which to go out into the world of exploration to utilise the many techniques that are required before one can site even a wildcat borehole. I was also privileged to be associated with probably one of the greatest oil geologists in the world, the late Dr. G. M. Lees, who was the chief geologist of a great petroleum company. It was that man who had the foresight and the drive and the genius to believe that Britain contained oil and amid great opposition he pressed forward and collected around him a number of young, brilliant men. Among these was Dr. Jack Birks, who, not surprisingly, is now the managing director of the British Petroleum Company.

Against great odds, this group of men dramatically found the Eakring oilfield of Nottinghamshire at the outset of war. It made a profound contribution to our defence. That oilfield still produces oil. Had it not been for the foresight of Lees and his colleagues, Britain would not have had any exploration at all, but, with taxation relief on the products of the Eakring oilfield—an extremely wise and prudent attitude of the Government which was lately rescinded—exploration went forward in Britain, putting down deep boreholes of the category referred to by the noble Earl as "wildcat". Without those boreholes, it would have been impossible to extrapolate geological structures out into the North Sea. It is not surprising that the British Petroleum Company who possess this knowledge and expertise were among the successful prospectors of the sea floor.

May I perhaps remind your Lordships that what an oil geologist is looking for is a capricious fold in rocks; it is an upfold called an anticline and in this fold you have intercommunicating cracks. When you are talking about an oilfield, you are not talking about a mighty big hole in the ground full of oil; you are talking about intercommunicating cracks which contain oil, and, if one of these cracks seals up, the oil ceases to flow. That is the hazard that faces the prospector of oil on land and, even worse, beneath the sea. I think perhaps enough has been said about exploration of the sea floor for oil, and particularly of this thing called the Continental Shelf. I should like to convince your Lordships that the exploration of the shelf goes further than this. Every borehole put below the sea floor provides the geologist with information which he can extrapolate, and it is this extrapolation that is so vital for the exploitation of that great area of the world which lies hidden beneath the sea. After all, looking into the far future, mankind will be dependent upon that hidden world beneath the ocean for its raw materials. So it is high time that we took this matter seriously.

It is also important to remind ourselves of the fortunate position that Britain has on the surface of the earth. It happens to be poised over and to have been created by great movements of rock strata throughout the past 1,000 million years. Into those have been pumped every conceivable type of molten material from the earth's interior, and out of this molten material mineral matter has segregated. It is to this that I should like to draw your Lordships' attention. Because of the accident of history we developed a great Empire and even in the 'thirties owned about 30 per cent. of the known mineral resources of the world, so we had no need to exploit our own mineral resources. They are still there. But what we did do was to develop in this country the expertise of smelting metals. We therefore have a backcloth of metallurgical knowledge in this country which is probably not possessed by any other country in the world, and it is this aspect of the picture that I would like to draw to your Lordships' attention at this moment.

Let us for a moment think of what might happen if we forgot oil and said it was urgently required that this country should again make itself self-sufficient in the production of tin. Any geologist will tell you that extending out from Cornwall are probably the most famous deposits of tin in the world, and we know absolutely nothing about the extension of those deposits below the sea floor. I know that many noble Lords will say, "Yes, they are there, but they are inaccessible", and I should like to come to that in a moment. It can be easily understood by anybody who examines the geological picture that between the Channel Islands and Cornwall there are some incredible possibilities of metalliferous deposits, of metal, chrome, and maybe even uranium. You move into the Celtic Sea and there you have a fascinating picture. Extending out from Pembrokeshire you have a buried canyon as deep as that of Colorado, full of sediment, and it is in that canyon that the oil men hope to find oil. But its sides are quite different from the sides of the Colorado canyon. They are composed of rocks over 1,000 million years old; they are part of the original crust of the earth. These rocks contain minerals of considerable value. We know from the evidence of geophysics that there is a big deposit of iron ore lying off the coast of Pembrokeshire, as big as the Karonavara deposits of Sweden, and the development of these could make Britain independent for the next century of any other country in the world for rich iron ore.

One of the spin-offs of this exploration of the North Sea for oil has been again a typically British development of oil platforms. You build a platform, sail it horizontally across the North Sea, tip it up on end and put it with precision over a borehole about a yard in diameter; that is the picture I present to you. There you have a platform which can become the head of a mineshaft. Our knowledge of reinforced plastics makes it quite realistic to say that we could tube our way out of that platform and there you have the pithead and the haulage roadway to a submarine mine, with practically no ventilation problems. Taking that as the potential picture, what could it mean? It could mean that we should be developing in this country a whole group of non-ferrous metals for which at the moment we are utterly and completely dependent upon the rest of the world, because we have owned the countries that produce them and got so used to using them since the 'thirties.

I can quote one example at the moment. We hear the phrase "strategic minerals". There is one that is super-strategic at the moment and that is cobalt. Cobalt is a metal which occurs as a minor constituent of different types of ore and it is difficult to extract, but it is of vital importance in the chemical and metallurgical industries. Throughout the world, the output is probably round about 24,000 tons. Of this, about 14,000 tons comes from Zaire; a little comes from Uganda; a similar amount comes from Zambia, and there is some in Angola. That is why that central area of Africa is suddenly vital. What man has done is to draw geographical boundaries of countries which transect the geological complex that carries these cobalt-bearing minerals. Due to the disturbance in Zaire, there is now a shortfall of some 10,000 tons. Your Lordships may think that I am just talking about peanuts, but 24,000 tons of cobalt controls the man-made fibre industry, controls petroleum refining, controls the magnet industry, controls the machine tool industry, and if countries are denied this small quantity of cobalt that can bring large areas of industry to a halt more effectively even than a trade union. The situation at the moment is something like this. I give it to you in terms of hard cash. The price of cobalt at the beginning of May this year was between £6,000 and £6,500 a ton. On 22nd May, it was up to £7,000. Today you would be a very fortunate person indeed if you could buy a ton of cobalt for £25,000. That puts it into its strategic picture.

When we look to the future, are we to be dependent upon Malaya for our tin when, potentially, we have tin supplies off the shore of Cornwall? Are we to be dependent upon copper belts for our copper when we have the Parys copper mountain, which is alleged to be worked out but which is unquestionably connected with similar deposits between Anglesey and the Isle of Man? One could go right round the coast of Britain, particularly the West Coast, and draw out facts of that kind. However, the point I want to make is that, if we take yesterday's debate seriously, we are looking for areas of vocation which will enthuse young people and give them a sense of purpose in life and some colour. What could be more colourful than to go under the sea and develop the mineral resources of this Island? In my humble opinion, I think that, if any Prime Minister looked at the situation seriously, he or she would be bound to come to the conclusion that here is an area of adventure and stimulus for the young people of this country.

In our small way, Professor King and I have made a contribution by training people specially for exploration. However, let us not underestimate the quality of our young people. They all have the sort of background that could make them super-explorers in this marvellous new field that lies ahead. I plead with the Government to look a little more closely than they perhaps are at present at the apparently somewhat romantic suggestions which I am making, because inside them, I think with all respect, they will find a core of realism and of purpose. Indeed, we could quite reasonably expect in the next decade to find outselves in possession of strategic materials coupled with strategic expertise which will again make us as dominant a force in the material world as we were in the 1930s when we owned 35 per cent. of the known mineral resources of the earth.

My Lords, I think that the importance of the debate introduced by my noble friend Lord Lauderdale in fact deserves more support than it has gathered. The noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, not unexpectedly, has not disappointed us by his speech. He always seems to be able to beguile us with some exciting flight of technical imagination. I do not know where he gets all these concepts from, but he seems to have a new one every time he makes a speech in the House. I am bound to say to him that I am not wholly certain how directly related his speech was to the question of the collapse of the offshore drilling programme which was the point which my noble friend was trying to make. However, I must say that I was fascinated by what he said and I am very glad that he took the opportunity to make some comments. It is clear enough, is it not? that there will be added reasons for increasing the offshore exploratory effort in the years to come.

My Lords, I should like to correct a point. I read the title of the debate as concerning the "exploration drilling on the United Kingdom Continental Shelf." I was dealing with the Shelf and its contents, and not oil.

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, led us into much wider horizons than I was thinking of when we started the debate but I, personally, am not in the slightest bit sorry. My noble friend Lord Lauderdale was on top form today and took full advantage of the fact that, although this is a short debate, he had ample time at his disposal. Of course, the difficulty in which he has put us is that he regaled us with so much information that very little was left for any of us to pick up without repeating what he had already said.

The essential point is that the level of exploratory drilling must be seen as a sensitive indicator of the interest and activity in—I was going to say the North Sea, but I shall now say the Continental Shelf around this country. If there were a falling off in that activity, then it would be confirmation of the fears that many of us have expressed over the last four or five years that the Government's behaviour was in danger of discouraging the international oil companies. It is important to recognise that even if that were true, it would take quite a long time for it to show up, because the time-scales of the oil business are more in the order of 10 years ahead, or something like that, whereas unfortunately the horizons of Governments tend to be 18 months ahead. Indeed, we can say positively that the horizon of this Government cannot now conceivably be more than towards the end of next year and we may be looking for changes at that time.

The Report of the United Kingdom Offshore Operators Association (UKOOA) —one must be careful not to drop into the jargon of initials—emphasises, as my noble friend has already said, the importance of keeping up the level of exploratory drilling if we are continuously to replace and replenish the supply of oil as the fields which are being found are developed and begin to decline in an uncomfortably short time scale. As my noble friend has said, it estimates that if we are to achieve a continuous replacement programme we need to be drilling something of the order of 60 to 90 exploratory wells every year.

We have already gone into the exact meaning of the splendid Texan term for exploratory drilling—namely, "wildcat wells". As I understand it, that is the process of the initial exploration of what appear from seismic surveys to be potentially attractive areas. It is worth repeating again, because there has been some confusion—and I shall refer to this in a moment—that it is very important that we should all distinguish between that activity and the next stage which is known in the industry as "appraisal drilling" where one has made a discovery and wants to know how extensive it is, the quality and the pressure.

Of course, if the appraisal drilling is successful one goes on to the final stage which is the development of the field with production wells. In this connection it is also worth pointing out that there is the rather complicating factor of some of the terminology which is tossed around as regards reserves. We talk of "proven reserves", meaning what we have discovered. We then go on to use the expression "recoverable reserves;"which means the reserves which are worthy of commercial exploitation. It is clear that a recoverable reserve is influenced both by the cost of production and by the selling price. The unfortunate fact, of course, is that if the cost of production rises, it has the effect of reducing the recoverable reserves as the smaller fields fall below the threshold of commercial viability. The effect of this on the medium-term future of this country is to decrease the period for which we might expect energy independence, which I think is the generally accepted objective of people of all Parties.

As my noble friend said, costs in the North Sea have risen explosively through technical factors. He gave impressive details to support that contention. I think that that in itself would be enough to discourage anybody but the most resolute and bold of enterpreneurs. However, we fear that on top of that the Government—or, if you like, politicians generally—have created an inhospitable climate by a combination of tax, imposts and controls which have started to make the gamble of oil exploration simply not worth the candle, because the small fields which are likely to be discovered are now no longer commercially attractive.

If one looks back, since this Government were elected we have had the Oil Taxation Act in 1974, which gave rise to petroleum revenue tax—PRT, as the noble Lord mentioned—and recently the Minister has issued what one might call either warnings or threats that there is an intention to increase the rate of PRT. Then, under the Petroleum and Submarine Pipe-lines Act there was retroactive and unilateral alteration of the terms upon which some of the licences had been issued. Of course, it was that same Act which introduced this hydra-headed monster, the British National Oil Corporation—BNOC. In its capacity as Government adviser, BNOC has been influential in changing Government policy and whittling away the rights of companies. At the same time the Government are now introducing this concept of stage consent; in other words, one has to go back and acquire new Government approvals for the different stages of one's operation, which will almost inevitably create delay. Then, as we have already heard, there is the need to obtain agreement to every farm-in deal; that is to say, if one requires a new partner or drops an old partner.

There have been various tightenings of the terms laid down for the new round of bidding for the blocks in the North Sea. Therefore, it would indeed appear that Mr. Benn has borrowed from his colleague, Mr. Healey, the policy of squeezing the oil companies until the pips squeak. What we fear is that they will no longer be planting any orchards.

Therefore, I do not think it would be surprising if there was a decline in exploratory drilling. Indeed, it is what one would expect to find. But, I derive no pleasure from finding that that is what is happening. However I do believe that my noble friend has made out a formidable case to answer. As he said, the Government seem to respond to this with two voices. On the one hand, we have Dr. Mabon in another place agreeing that he is "analysing the reasons for reduction" in exploratory drilling. The noble Lord himself yesterday was saying that he was somewhat perturbed by some of the figures that he was producing. Against this we have the euphoric announcements about the confidence demonstrated by the results of the sixth round from which the Government, apparently, derive comfort and self-assurance. However, I suggest that they have been extremely coy about letting us into the details which give them so much joy. I think that I would go even further and say that I am not at all sure they are not going beyond suppressio veri to the stage of actually being guilty of suggestio falsi at times.

If we are to be persuaded by the Government, then the first thing they have to do is to clear up the muddle in the figures which was created at columns 72 and 73 in the Official Report of the Commons debate on 11th December, when Dr. Mabon appeared to be saying that instead of three exploratory wells being drilled, it was 39, and then the number went up to 58, all in a matter of a few minutes. Figures of that kind make a nonsense of any argument at all, if there is any doubt about them. Here again, one suspects that at least some people have got into a muddle as between exploratory wells and appraisal wells.

I do not for a moment suppose that on past form the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, will let us into very many more of the secrets of the sixth round. I think that my noble friend has already asked how many blocks had more than one bidder in this round. I should like to add one more question, confident that the noble Lord will not reply to it, but it is worth a try anyway. I should like to ask for how many blocks did BNOC bid or in how many bids did BNOC participate. My noble friend has already pointed out that the significance of the results of this round is really the absentees. Exxon has not bid at all; Conoco, which is one of the most experienced drilling companies, is not bidding as an operator this time; then we have the very restricted interest by Chevron, Shell and Texaco. I should like to suggest that, unless these questions can be convincingly and honestly answered, we cannot be blamed for continuing to be alarmed that the indicators point to a potentially disastrous downturn, and that either the Government are refusing to face the results of their policy or else are deliberately trying to cover up the unpalatable warning clouds which seem to us to be gathering on the horizon.

My Lords, I should like to say at the outset that I fully agree with the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, that the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, was in top form this afternoon and I thought made the best of the case as he saw it. I am very glad that other noble Lords took part, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, although I again agree with the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, that the ground he covered was rather outside the debate. Nevertheless, I am sure that, with his great knowledge and experience, what he said will be very carefully noted by all concerned. I am grateful to the noble Earl for his kind remarks about me. I am very glad once again to be taking part in a debate on this important subject, which I find as interesting and fascinating as he does. I should like to congratulate him on his foresight in providing us with this opportunity to discuss the matter.

The Government's basic objective is to secure the full and early exploration of the oil and gas resources of the United Kingdom Continental Shelf. On any assessment of our oil reserves, a large number of prospects remains to be explored, and it is only exploration which will show whether or not they contain oil or gas in economically recoverable quantities. I think that was recognised by both noble Lords.

Obviously, this objective of full exploration does not in itself decide the pace at which exploration is to proceed. First, experience has taught us that the rate should be a steady one and that, as the consequences of the fourth licensing round, which was of course the round instituted by the Conservative Government, show, licensing in a series of hectic bursts can be disruptive. Applications were invited for that round in June 1971, and, in the end no fewer than 282 blocks were licensed. Despite the enormous benefits to the economy as a whole from the many discoveries made in that round, which I readily concede, the sudden burst of development which resulted has not been free from difficulties, since it overstrained the capacity of the offshore supply industry so that some orders had to be diverted overseas and contributed to the severe escalation of costs in 1974–5, and then formed one of the causes of the hiatus in platform orders in 1975–6. More recently, licensees' need to decide which part of fourth round blocks to relinquish in March 1978 under the terms of their agreements led to a burst of exploratory drilling in 1977 followed by a sharp fall-off in drilling activity this year, as the noble Earl has said.

I repeat, my Lords, that we can scarcely over-estimate the importance of a steady rate of exploration. This consideration alone must cast some doubt on the wisdom of the policy—which I note Lord Strathcona supports—recently advocated by the United Kingdom Offshore Operators Association, of the most rapid exploration possible; a viewpoint that is, I may say, not shared by the National Consumer Council which, in its report to the Energy Commission, reached very different conclusions.

The exact rate of licensing to be chosen will depend on a number of factors. Early exploration and early knowledge of the extent of reserves available to us will help us to choose the wisest policy for the future. The Government must also consider the need for a stable flow of orders to the offshore supplies industry. Above all, the rate of licensing cannot be independent of the Government's policy on the depletion of our reserves. The Government set out in the Green Paper on Energy Policy, which was published this spring, a statement of the factors affecting depletion policy. The Energy Commission recently devoted a full discussion to our offshore oil policy. Depletion policy was naturally discussed at that meeting and the Energy Commission intends to discuss it again in the context of a review of the prospects for other fuels.

As I said yesterday in answer to a Starred Question by the noble Earl, the Government are well aware that this years level of offshore drilling for the purposes of exploration and appraisal is lower than last year's. Indeed, it will be lower than the level of 1976. Obviously, the Government must take such a decline seriously and the Department of Energy is presently engaged in a joint study with the industry in an attempt to throw further light on its causes. I may say here that it is not correct to claim, as the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, did in one of his supple-mentaries yesterday, that the number of mobile drilling rigs engaged in exploration drilling has declined from 26 in October 1977 to 9 this October. As I explained to the House yesterday, the figure of 26 refers to the total number of mobile rigs engaged in offshore drilling in October 1977. The comparable figure for 1978 is 19. Out of the 26 rigs active in October 1977, 19 were engaged in exploration drilling and the remainder in appraisal drilling. The comparable figures therefore are 19 and 9, not 26 and 9. But I agree that the key question is whether this year's lower figures, which are, I admit, still much lower than last year's are symptomatic of a continuing trend, and how far they are due to special factors affecting this year and last which may not recur.

Some of these special factors can be identified. Last year's high level of activity may well have been due to a wish by licensees to decide which parts of their fourth round blocks they should surrender in accordance with the terms of their licences in March of this year. It would be reasonable to assume that, in the year following such a burst of activity, fourth round licensees had relatively little exploration work which they wish to undertake immediately. Fifth round licences were issued later than expected, as the noble Earl said, so that relatively little exploration work has been carried out this year on fifth round blocks.

The noble Earl suggested, and it is often suggested by the Opposition, that the delay incurred in the granting of fifth round licences has been the responsibility of BNOC. I would remind the House that the settlement of joint operating agreements requires careful consideration by all parties concerned and by its very nature cannot be a hurried process. The Government recognised that this would take time, and indeed the process did take longer than we originally envisaged, but there was no undue delay. The matters under discussion have been of considerable importance and both sides had legitimate interests which they had to seek to protect in agreements which may last for nearly 40 years.

My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to intervene? He is always so kind and courteous in these matters. Can he tell us how the speed of agreeing exploration programmes under round five compares with the speed under previous rounds? Does he happen to have that information at hand?

My Lords, I cannot tell the noble Earl exactly, but I can tell him that Round 4 was entered into in a very hasty and, indeed, impetuous way by the previous Conservative Government, and we are reaping some of the consequences of that now. I do not want to go into some of the follies of the previous Administration's handling of North Sea oil, for I am feeling in a rather benign mood and Christmas is approaching, but I think that caution is really the better policy.

As these fifth round licences were issued later than we had expected, there has not been time for as much drilling on blocks licensed under the fifth round as originally planned. A further reason is that some rigs normally active on our Continental Shelf have spent the high summer working in the Atlantic off South West Ireland, where the weather window is narrower: they returned in the autumn. There is also some evidence that certain licensees are operating under tighter financial constraints than usual, and I shall have something to say on PRT later.

Against this, one can discern some longer term factors which would make it natural to expect drilling activity to continue at a lower level than in the peak years of 1975 and 1977. First, the large relinquishments of Fourth Round blocks have substantially reduced the total acreage open for drilling. Under the Government's present policy of smaller, even if more frequent rounds, the total amount of territory under licence is unlikely to reach the peak achieved immediately after the fourth round. Secondly, the North Sea proper has now been fairly thoroughly explored. It is reasonable to assume that licensees began with the most promising prospects and will, as time goes on, be more selective about exploration. I think Lord Strathcona recognised that. Thirdly, it is a well known fact that any oil province "matures", in other words, there comes a time when its geology is fairly well understood and exploration and discovery continue, but at a steadier pace.

Besides the factors I have mentioned, different aspects of Government policy have been blamed for the reduction in exploration activity. In a series of questions which the noble Earl asked during the debate on the Address on 2nd November, he singled out, inter alia, the proposed changes in PRT announced in another place on 2nd August, the existence and character of BNOC, the Government's policy on assignments, and the Governments policy of awarding "sole licences" to BNOC and BGC.

I must, first deny the suggestion that BNOC has abused its advisory role by exploiting confidential information for its own commercial purposes. Nothing could be further from the truth or potentially more damaging to BNOC's reputation. At the Government's request, the Corporation has seen to it that its employees are aware of their duty to observe any limitations on the commercial use of confidential information, and the Government are satisfied that BNOC fulfils its advisory as well as its commercial role successfully and with propriety. Rather, however, than debate individual allegations, I should like to call your Lordships' attention to the underlying theme of the noble Earl's complaint. Each facet of Government policy to which he takes exception is intended either to secure a fairer share of profits for the nation and to maximise the gain to the balance of payments, or to assert great public control over the development and use of this unique and irreplaceable resource so as to enable successive Governments to see that the national interest is served. These are the key objectives which the incoming Labour Government set themselves in 1974.

I need not repeat what I said earlier about how inadequate we found the situation when we first took over. I should like, instead, to comment on BNOC's achievements. BNOC was created to help ensure that the nation shares fully in the benefits of oil from the United Kingdom Continental Shelf, to increase the information about oil developments available to the Government and to reduce the country's dependence on the private sector, mainly of course the multinational oil companies. The Corporation has had a most impressive start. As an adviser, it has helped to improve the Government's appreciation of the issues involved in the exercise of regulating powers over offshore activities. The decisions on such powers of course remain with the Government. BNOC is, accordingly, not a regulatory agency, as is often said and as has been said in this House, although not, I am glad to say, today. As a commercial enterprise, its professionalism and dynamism stand to be admired.

In three short years it has not only built up its staff from nil to over 1,000 today, but it has also become a major North Sea operator, contributing to over a quarter of all UK/CS exploration and appraisal drilling undertaken in this period and bringing on stream as operator the Thistle oil field in the North Sea, which has already produced 2½ million tons of oil in 1978. It has successfully concluded complex participation and operating agreements with over 100 companies and this year has become active as an oil trader. By the early 1980s, the Corporation will have access to over one-third of United Kingdom Continental Shelf production. The Government regard this as an excellent achievement.

On the question of sole licences to BNOC and BCG, we wish to enhance the national interest in offshore activities and to reduce the country's dependence on the multinational oil companies, as I said. However—I wish to stress this—there will be continuing opportunities for the private sector on the United Kingdom Continental Shelf. The response to the sixth round was proof of that. Both noble Lords opposite made great play about the sixth round. I do not want to be accused of suppressing the truth by Lord Strathcona, but I am afraid I cannot tell him which companies have combined into which groups. As is known—it was published in Hansard of the other place—there were 94 companies applying in 55 groups, but I am afraid I cannot tell him which they were because that is commercially confidential.

I can, however, tell him that BNOC applied for all blocks on offer, as did companies in the private sector. I can confirm that the applications will be treated as commercially confidential to the Department of Energy and the applicant concerned. BNOC has provided my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy with advice, but advice only, about how offers made by applicants under the optional criteria might be assessed.

I was asked about Shell, Conoco and Chevron and whether they had applied for very few blocks, and again I must say that the nature and content of the individual applications is treated as confidential. I can say, however, that the only large company that has not applied is Esso, but the chairman has confirmed, as my honourable friend Dr. Dickson Mabon said in another place on Monday, that they are interested in applying for future rounds.

My Lords, the Minister is being very helpful. When he was talking about BNOC's application, I understood him to say that BNOC had applied for all the blocks. He also said that BNOC would advise the Government on the allocation of the blocks for which other companies had bid. Does that mean—it surely must— that BNOC will have to be told the full details of all the other applications while they themselves are presumably competing for those blocks? Is that not precisely the kind of problem about which we have always been concerned?

My Lords, I can confirm that BNOC has applied for all the blocks because, under the participation agreements, where they have a 51 per cent. interest, they are associated with all the blocks. They have provided advice about how offers made by applicants under the optional criteria might be assessed. I think that is a very different matter from actually seeing the applications themselves; they provide overall advice but they do not see the actual applications.

My Lords, the noble Lord said BNOC was involved in applications for all the blocks, but may I ask him to say whether BNOC is involved in competitive applications for any of the blocks?

I am not sure about that, my Lords. I think that might run into confidential territory. I know they have applied for all the blocks. Of course, they have the sole licences in some blocks. They are shown as applying in the list of companies given in Hansard of the other place for 1st December, but I cannot say more than that at the moment.

My Lords, perhaps I may put the question in a slightly different way. Would the noble Lord agree that all applicants must have some BNOC tie to make an application worthy of consideration? If that is the case, can the noble Lord say whether there are any competitive applicants for blocks, because if there are, BNOC must then be involved in competitive applications?

I cannot say, my Lords. These are details on which I am afraid I cannot answer.

My Lords, may I ask a small question? I am totally ignorant of this matter, but can there be applications which are not competitive? What is the purpose of having a number of applications if they do not compete with one another?

My Lords, if I may follow up that point, I should say that there may well be two or three blocks which one company wants and another company does not want. Those would be non-competitive applications. I hope that that answers the point.

My Lords, my noble friend may be referring to the sole licences for BNOC and British Gas. I now wish to say a few words about PRT. The Government's proposals to increase petroleum revenue tax are necessary to ensure that a fair share of the profits from the national resource which North Sea oil represents accrue to the public. The proposals were not made without a careful study of their likely impact on the future development of the Continental Shelf. We do not believe that they will endanger the future exploitation of our oil resources. Even after the changes, there are generous tax reliefs for less profitable fields. Capital costs are written off immediately for both PRT and corporation tax. The oil allowance still gives valuable benefit to smaller fields. There is an automatic safeguard which eliminates PRT if the pre-corporation tax return on historic capital costs in any year drops below 30 per cent. If, nevertheless, there are any worthwhile developments which prove to be uneconomic, the Government have powers to repay royalties which we stand ready to use where it is in the national interest, and we are very happy to talk to the oil companies about the effect of our proposals on their future exploration and development plans. However, on the evidence so far available, we believe than an adequate incentive for the future remains. My Lords——

My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord for giving way, as it is most helpful to pick up these points as we go along. On the question of the Government's willingness to forego royalties, can he tell us what measures of project worth will be used, and at what point royalties will be refunded, because this is a matter of some obscurity in the industry, I understand?

I am afraid that I cannot, my Lords. These are really matters for my right honourable friends the Secretary of State and the Chancellor. I should like to say a few words about assignment policy. The objective of the current assignment policy is to improve the relatively small share of equity held by the State corporations in first to fourth round licences. However, provision is made for the private sector companies to play a continuing role in farm-in activity, and this is proving to be the case in practice. Details of individual transactions are commercially confidential, but I can say that, in a third of the cases where BNOC has been approached, the corporation has declined to negotiate for any part of the interest on offer, thereby leaving the private sector companies free to conclude agreements without a measure of State equity involvement.

In other cases, BNOC has sought to acquire only a share of the interest on offer, and agreements are being reached between the private sector parties and the corporation. Furthermore, while it is too early to assess the effect of the current policy on farm-in activity, the fact that 10 new proposals have been put forward since the policy was announced on 5th April suggests that the flow has not dried up.

The noble Earl also spoke about Mesa Petroleum, and said that it is smarting from the unfriendly treatment it has received. Were the Government, though, wrong to encourage Mesa to change its development plans after advice from independent consultants so as to minimise the risk of oil pollution from a field hardly a dozen miles from the nearest coastline? Perhaps the noble Earl would care to note the presence of Mesa Petroleum among the applicants for the sixth round licences.

With regard to the sixth round, I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, made great play of the fact that several of the smaller companies were taking part in applications. This of course is true. I am sure that it will please the other Opposition Front Bench spokesman on energy, the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, because in the last debate on the matter he chided the Government for not encouraging the smaller companies more.

The picture which the Opposition paint is overdrawn. The Government have acted to adjust the balance between the public and the private sectors. The noble Earl may not approve of this, but I hope that he will accept that the Government envisage a continuing and a major role for the private sector oil companies in the development of the Continental Shelf. For their part, the Government are confident that an enhanced role for the public sector need not mean the exclusion of the private sector and that, even with the changes which have been announced, there will remain adequate incentive for continuing private sector involvement in the development of our Continental Shelf; and I should like to stress that.

It may be, as the noble Earl suggests, that not every company will wish to take an active part in exploration all the time, and there is no point in denying that some holders of licences have not applied for licences in the present sixth round. But, my Lords, does it necessarily matter that licences are not awarded to the same firms in each successive round, provided that we secure sufficient expertise and commitment to undertake the exploration which is required? It is natural, surely, that some licensees should drop off the list, perhaps temporarily—I hope so— and that some should be added to it. Indeed, is there not a gain in a diversity of approach to the uncertain business of exploring for oil?

In the last resort the Government's success in attracting exploration efforts to the Continental Shelf will be determined by the facts of geology and by the attractiveness of the terms offered. Geology is of course outside Government control—a matter which I did not think was quite recognised by the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, although I think that he meant the point kindly. As for the terms and environment offered, the Government have continuously sought to strike a balance which will give companies adequate incentive to seek licences and to participate in the development of our Continental Shelf. I suggest that the number of applicants for the sixth round shows that the Government have succeeded in this task, and gives ground to look forward not to the "collapse" which the noble Earl mentione—and which he included in his Motion—but to a continuing, lively interest in the exploration and development of our offshore oil and gas resources.

My Lords, first I must express my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, who I am sorry is not in his place at this moment, and to the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, for their part in the debate. I should be the last to suggest that the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, was not germane. I believe that it was very germane indeed in that the drilling for oil has in more than one quarter of the North Sea led to the discovery of other deposits, notably coal and gas, for which—as yet—there are no exploitation plans. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, in his romantic speech was none the less realistic and his contribution was, as we would expect, sophisticated and elegant. We are much in his debt, as always.

The noble Lord, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, dotted i's and crossed t's in his own inimitable fashion, and drew attention to a particular point which perhaps was not taken on board as thoroughly as it might have been by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi; namely, the question of lowering the tax threshold on the smaller fields. But without wishing to press any allegations of suggestio falsi, to which Lord Strathcona alluded with such delicacy, I believe we have to say that the answer we have had from the Government might be described as a classic restatement of the Government's Socialist policy. However, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, for the invariably moderate and friendly way in which he replies to criticisms which, however friendily directed, are none the less sharp from time to time.

The noble Lord referred, as one felt sure he must, to the whole question of depletion policy. Nobody denies that that is necessary. On the other hand, you cannot expect private enterprise to invest heavily in exploration unless it is going to have a reasonable chance to enjoy the fruits. One is aware that the Government are afraid that too high a private enterprise investment in exploration could build up pressures that may be difficult for a Government to resist for immediate development—and by "immediate development" I mean development against the Government's judgment of what is in the country's long-term interest. As a matter of fact, it is interesting to note that there is declining pressure by the exploration companies to proceed to early development. Half of the fields that have been found in the last four years are either still being examined by the companies that found them—notably, Brae, Hutton and North-West Hutton—or have only just been proposed to the Government for precise development plans, notably Maureen and Magnus. On the whole, the performance of private enterprise has not been to rush in hastily and propose precipitate exploitation. On the contrary, the companies have become more conservative as they have gone along.

Then the noble Lord was good enough to offer the assurance to the House that the Government of course still foresee an ample role for private enterprise. I am bound to remind him of a celebrated remark early in the days when the noble Lord, Lord George-Brown, was a Government Minister. He said that the Government at that time pictured a long period of co-operation between the public and private sectors, but the boundaries of the private sector would become narrower and narrower as time went on. This, of course, is the fear that many of us have about the way in which the Government are proceeding now. Their treatment of the multinational companies, the increasing erosion of the situation by BNOC——

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl, but would he not agree that all other oil-producing countries in the world control their own oil, either by State control or by nationalisation, and that some of them have much stricter controls than we have?

Yes, my Lords, I would not deny that for a moment; and I would have thought that in many cases—and Mexico is a classic example—that very fact should be a warning about our own future. But it is suggested to us that if the multinationals choose to depart then BNOC can do it all themselves. My Lords, of all the pieces of imaginative oratory that I have ever heard in this House in some 10 years, that is quite the most imaginative; because private enterprise engaged in the North Sea is just about one half of the oil industry of the entire free world. To imagine that BNOC, with its staff of only 1,000 (the best of whom come from the Burmah Oil Company anyway), can ever match the resources of half the world's oil industry is, I believe, a pure flight of fancy. At any rate, we have the noble Lord's assurance that the Government's intention is to give private enterprise, including the multinationals, a fair crack of the whip. Although that was not his exact phrase, I hope I am not distorting what he said.

The noble Lord was good enough to refer to the statement put in to the Energy Commission by the 'United Kingdom Offshore Operators' Association, and remarked how it has been countered by another paper, I have to say rather slenderer, that had been prepared by the chairmen of the energy consumers' councils. Neither the noble Lord, I think, nor I, certainly, were present at that meeting of the Energy Commission, but the story I hear is that the latter paper was not very well received and did not arouse very much interest. This is not the time to go into it in any depth, but it was not a great effort of draughtsmanship, of statistical analysis or of controversy. It was a feeble proposition. Anyway, the noble Lord of course made to us the familiar points about the kindliness of heart of the tax people and the gentleness of their imprint upon the industry.

My Lords, we will take that as it is, but I think it is important to go back to the points that he was making about Round 4 —the "impetuous Round 4" —and all the high-tension pressure for exploration and discovery that followed it. It did not happen today, but it did happen in the debate in the other place two days ago, that the Government virtually claimed credit for the eight fields that are now operating. The noble Lord will know very well how many of those were found before and how many after the present Government laid their hands upon the affair.

My Lords, the noble Lord assured us that the role of BNOC is not regulatory. We shall judge by results. I am sure the industry will read what he says, and no doubt they will try and hold BNOC to that principle. But the noble Lord mentioned one point that it may well be important to come back to at a later date, and that is his categorical denial that there has been any improper use by BNOC of information of an exploratory character that had derived from other companies' work in the preparation of their own applications. If there is nothing to hide, then I take it that the Government would not object to a perfectly independent inquiry if that were pressed for.

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl again but he interrupted me a few times. Is he referring to Block 30/17? He did not refer to this in his speech. If he is, I wholly reject this allegation. I suggest that the truth of the matter is that BNOC acquired commercially whatever data was commercially obtainable in this area and, using its own expert technical analysis, came to the view that it contained an attractive prospect. I mentioned that because it has been in the Press, and I think it should be denied, and denied strenuously.

My Lords, I am most obliged to the noble Lord——

My Lords, would the noble Earl allow me to correct the situation? I was talking about the collapse of drilling for minerals in the Continental Shelf, but let me come in context with the noble Earl's remarks. I think that on assessment the geologist whose attitude has to be taken very seriously in assessing the value of the block is very conscious of the fact that all these oil fields are intercommunicating. I tried to make this point. Therefore, in the assessment of a block such as that to which the Minister has just referred, one has to assess whether the potential for the extraction of oil from that block is going to affect the extraction of oil from the neighbouring block. It is a geographical break up of geological structure which may or may not be realistic. I think that in many ways the possibility of a cessation of drilling is due to the fact that we now know so much about the structure of oil fields that companies are able to say, "This is not worth drilling at this moment in time."

My Lords, I am sure we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, for his contribution just now. He will be aware that I earlier expressed my thanks to him for his most interesting, elegant and instructive speech earlier in the debate. I think that all that remains for me to say now is that there have been several questions which were put to the noble Lord in the course of this debate that he was not equipped to deal with on the spot—and nobody will blame him for that. But perhaps at some suitable time he can go into the questions which stay unanswered. The decline in activity is something that we on this side of the House have consistently forecast. We forecast it throughout the debates on the oil and pipelines Bill—just as we said there would be a decline in confidence if the Government proceeded with their declared policy retroactively to change the ground rules.

Since Christmas is coming, and the noble Lord is in a benign mood, I do not want to be more controversial at this stage, particularly as we have had the assurance yesterday and today that the Government are discussing with the industry the causes of the present decline in activity. We all hope that those discussions will proceed fruitfully, without rancour, without any sort of threats or hints of arm-twisting, that they will be undertaken frankly and honourably.

I look back on the noble Lord's ingenious reply to the case that I tried to put forward in my own ignorant kind of way. Doing so I think that if one were going to write an epitaph for the noble Lord—and I hope that many years go by before that is needed—one might say that he had the gift of making chaos cosmic. Whether or not that is so, the House is greatly indebted to him for much of the information that he has given, for some of the ideas he has confessed to, as well as for his kind and gentle treatment of those with whom he disagrees from the sole of his feet upwards. In view of the reply that we have had and the noble Lord's very real endeavours to meet, at any rate, some of the points that have been put before him, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This Bill is intended to amend the Representation of the People (Armed Forces) Act 1976 so as to restore to persons residing in the United Kingdom who are spouses of members of the Armed Forces the right to be registered otherwise than as Service voters if they so desire. These Amendments are intended to restore a measure of voting dignity to those people, men and women, with the somewhat undignified description of "Service Spouse". The rights of these men and women to be treated as voters in their own right while residing in the United Kingdom was taken from them by the Act of 1976. The Act of 1976 made all Service spouses into what are called "Service voters" thus differentiating them from ordinary civilian voters. In my view, this is a quite disgraceful situation and contrary to basic democratic rights of citizens under our constitution.

Most of the persons concerned are, of course women, the wives of members of the Armed Forces. The present position which this short Bill intends to rectify is another example of the difficulties that have arisen in regard to the bureaucratic insensitivity towards women. This Bill is intended to restore the rights to women who are married to members of the Armed Forces. The present position of these women is another crude example of the cavalier fashion with which the rights of women are so often treated today.

May I first emphasise that this Bill is only concerned with Service spouses, men and women, who are resident in the United Kingdom; it does not affect in any way the Service spouses who are abroad. May I take up your Lordships' time for a moment to describe the current procedure for voting for women who are the wives of members of the Armed Forces. They must first obtain a Form F, Vote 34, either from their husband or their husband's unit. This was found to be a most unsatisfactory method of procedure and some attempt has been made by the Ministry of Defence to send them now directly to the wives concerned. I am told that the method in operation recently was that this was done by seeking out the husbands and asking them, the husbands, to address envelopes to their wives. Having completed the form, they then have to have the form attested with the signature of an officer or a senior NCO, a doctor or a clergyman. No councillors are allowed to attest. They are not recognised to be capable of attesting.

This, in itself, differentiates the wives of members of the Armed Forces from the ordinary electors. Then they have to return the electoral registration to an officer of the constituency in which they want to register their vote. Why, I ask rhetorically, should a woman or a man who does not want to be registered as a Service voter be denied the basic right of voting like any other citizen resident in this country?

I have prepared myself for this debate by reading the reports of debates and conferences in regard to the voting rights of individuals but I do not find any evidence which would justify depriving Service spouses of their rights to vote, except perhaps the recommendation that it might be more efficient for some reason or another that voting should take place in the way I have just described.

However, there are greater issues than efficiency in the matters which I am raising before your Lordships tonight. The procedure to be adopted, as you will see, is, first of all, that the Service wives, having obtained this form, require the counter-signature of a responsible person on this registration form. No civilian voter in this country needs this indignity. It also means that when they are registered on the electoral register they have to have the letter "S" by their name on the register when it is published. This designation of the letter "S" alongside the so-called Service voter is a very serious matter. This letter "S" further distinguishes them from other civilians. I am advised—and I have letters in my hand written from sources which I know to be reputable and reliable—that the position of the letter "S" by their names on the electoral register may lead to serious trouble or inconvenience to the persons concerned.

I am told that recently there were five Servicemen's wives living in a road in the South of England. They were all burgled on the same night. All their names were entered on the electoral register with the letter "S" by the names. Nobody else in that short road was visited that night. My informant tells me that when she tried to persuade another Serviceman's wife to register the wife refused to do so because of the possible danger to her inherent on being distinguished in this way on a published document. I am also told— and I have no reason to doubt it—that certain insurance companies advise their employees to look at the electoral registers and deliberately go round to those persons who have the letter "S" against their name. I leave your Lordships to try to guess why that instruction should be given by certain firms.

For many years there has been a problem about the registration of Servicemen to vote. The present system regarding Servicemen is not at all affected by this Bill. As a result of the Representation of the People (Armed Forces) Act 1976, Servicemen register once for the duration of their service and are only asked annually if they want to change the details of their registration. They may choose where they are registered and vote by proxy when they cannot do so in person. So far, so good. The objection is to the way that, willy-nilly, wives of these Servicemen have been made Service voters under this Act and also to the way in which they have been treated since.

I want to emphasise that the Service voting qualification makes good sense for wives who are abroad. The 1976 Act is not even doing the job that it was intended to do. When a General Election seemed imminent recently, I understand that the Ministry of Defence admitted that only 40 per cent. of those who should be registered were in fact reached; the rest would in effect have been disenfranchised. This is a further scandalous state of affairs.

Many wives find the procedure deeply humiliating. I was greatly impressed by attending an annual general meeting of the Armed Forces Wives Association recently with two members from the other place, Lieut.-Col. Crawshaw and Mr. Winston Churchill. We were all deeply impressed by the sincerity of the large number of women attending that annual general meeting. They stressed to us that their registration forms can only come to them via their husbands, and some of them were frank to say that some of the husbands did not adopt the procedure, perhaps from forgetfulness, or many other reasons.

In October, 1977, when the Act first came into force, there was immense confusion at bases and camps all over the country because no one had told the wives what to do. The Ministry of Defence failed to provide either enough forms or publicity. I am again advised that one-third of naval wives were left off the register in the town of Gosport alone. They were completely disenfranchised with no choice in the matter. These women are not members of the Armed Forces, they are not subject to military discipline except when it says that they cannot have a vote as an ordinary citizen.

This year, as I have said, the Minister of Defence has promised to send registration forms direct to the wives. I hope that he is able to do this with a more direct and efficient procedure than so far. Dissatisfaction with the measures at present in force is very strong. Some wives are refusing to register at all until they can register as civilians. As I have emphasised, this Act does not alter the position for the Servicemen themselves. It does not alter the situation for those Service wives who wish to be treated as Service voters. Wives residing in the United Kingdom should be treated as civilian voters unless they elect to be treated as Service voters. Thus, a measure of dignity and choice should be restored to the spouses of members of the Forces.

Having dealt generally with the problems that this Bill attempts to put right, may I briefly draw attention to the Bill itself. Clause 1 of the Bill says:

"A person residing in the United Kingdom who is the wife or husband of a member of the forces shall not have a service qualification for the purposes of the Representation of the People Act 1949 unless that person makes an election under this subsection;".

It means that Service spouses can make up their minds whether they want to vote as an ordinary citizen of this country or whether they want to be a Service voter and then be subject to the procedures for Service voters in the Act. The rest of the Bill is largely formal and the purpose of the Bill is therefore simple and clear. The terms of this short Bill are most reasonable and cannot give rise to real problems of administration.

The present voting registration system for Servicemen's spouses is quite undemocratic and discriminative. Many women feel that they, as women, should be allowed to vote as ordinary citizens when resident in this country without the approval of someone who holds rank or office. This view is fundamental to their rights as residents in the United Kingdom. I have no hesitation in recommending this Bill to your Lordships. My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.

My Lords, this Bill has the full support of my Party. We are very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, for giving us such a very clear explanation of the Bill. Since 1977 a very big campaign has been waged by several Conservative Members of another place, notably Mr. Peter Viggers, the Member for Gosport, in whose constituency more wives of Servicemen probably live than in any other constituency. In saying that, we must not forget the husbands of women in the Services. They must not be left out.

I think it is rather a pity that the Act of 1976 was passed without its being realised what, in the main, were the implications for these wives. We know from the Speaker's Conference of April 1973 that the transfer of names between the Service and civilian wives was difficult to get right and was most likely to lead to confusion, with many people not being on the correct list and thereby losing their vote totally. In a perfect world I think possibly all commanding officers of all units would have explained everything to their men; but we do not live in a perfect world and, whatever system is eventually decided upon, I sincerely hope that there will be produced by the Government a very good, short pamphlet, that is clear and easily understood by the most junior soldier, sailor or airman. It is inevitable that some voters will be lost to the register, but that number must be kept to a minimum.

It has been explained that this Bill has one purpose only: that is, to allow wives of Servicemen, and of course the husbands of Servicewomen, to make their own choice between being a Service or a civilian voter if living in this country. There are two main reasons why they want this. One is that they do not like being "chattels" of their husbands—I speak, in the main, of wives, because they form the larger part— in a non-military matter; and in these days of sex non-discrimination, with the many laws that surround it, they have a very good argument. Secondly, they feel very strongly about having the letter "S" against their names.

The noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, mentioned this. Anyone can see the electoral rolls, and the wives of men serving, for instance, in Northern Ireland feel that they can be singled out all too easily as terrorist targets. Feelings are running very high and there is a great amount of resentment among many Service wives at this time on this subject. Many letters have been written to Members of Parliament and to noble Lords, complaining about the current situation. I personally believe that these wives should be listened to.

There is definite fault in the present Act which needs to be rectified, and I hope that the Government will not find it necessary to put up any kind of smokescreen to prevent the change. Perhaps they will say that since the Act is only two years old it is too soon to make a change. But I piloted a Bill through your Lordships' House and two years later amended it because that was found to be necessary. Everything cannot be foreseen, and it is clear that in this case an error of judgment has been made. Perhaps the Government will consider it to be a matter for a Speaker's Conference; it has happened before. This really is a simple matter of commonsense. The recommendations of a previous Speaker's Conference have now been proved to be imperfect by the people who are affected by them.

It may be said that the change will be difficult to organise or to put into practice; but that is no argument either, because although it might not be widely known, each of the Services has set up a unit specifically to check all the applications of Service voters and to check their authenticity and eligibility. It will therefore be comparatively easy for these units to sort out the Service voters from the civilian voters and determine those who wish to be one or the other. It is a logical answer, for these units already exist and the machinery is there to be used.

My Lords, this is a small Bill, the hour is late and I do not wish to detain you unduly; but it is important to thousands of Service spouses, whether they be men or women, who are citizens of this country and who feel very strongly on this issue. We on this side of the House agree with them and hope that no obstacles will be put in their way, especially as the machinery is already in existence. They need our support, and they certainly have it from this side of the House.

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity which the noble Lord's Bill affords us to consider the electoral registration of wives and husbands of Service personnel. Let me first say to the noble Lord, Lord Newall, that the Government do not put up smoke-screens at any time. They merely set out the position as they see it and it is always a matter for your Lordships to decide what you are going to do: whether you will accept the Bill and let it go through its normal stages or whether you will reject it. The Government's position on this matter is very clear; that is, to set out the position as they see it.

All of us in this House approach the subject with close attention and a considerable amount of sympathy. I think we are conscious of the burden which is placed on Service families and we naturally wish to make it as easy as possible for them to carry out their civic privileges and responsibilities. Indeed, I would go further and say I believe that it is the duty of Governments and of people in authority to see that this is done, as a result of the debt which we owe to people in this position. So when the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, if I may say so, eloquently outlines a new scheme for electoral registration which he believes will meet a particular need and lead to an improvement in the rate of registration of Service wives, I think it is incumbent on the Government to look at this and to make a positive response if it is possible to do so.

I also hope that it is possible for us to treat this in a non-partisan way, although the noble Lord, Lord Newall, started off as if it were a Party matter, with his "smoke-screens". Despite what has been said by some members of the Press on this subject, it can be in no one's democratic interest in any Party to deprive any section of the community of their electoral rights; nor to devise schemes which so set them against the electoral system that, as the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, suggested, they choose to opt out of it.

Before the House reaches a view on this Bill, I think it would be helpful if I were to set out the matter, so far as I can in the time at my disposal, in its historical context. Noble Lords will know that since 1918, when the first separate system of electoral registraion for Servicemen was introduced, the registration of Service personnel and their families has been a continuing cause of debate and of difficulty. No scheme so far has been devised since then which has met the needs of all Service people or which has satisfied everyone concerned.

When we talk of Servicemen we are, of course, thinking of a group whose domestic life and circumstances is inevitably as varied and uncertain as any in the Community and probably more varied and more uncertain. That is obviously reflected in the patterns of life of their wives and families. One does not forget Servicewomen in this context; nor their husbands and families also. Some Service families, particularly those in the Army, may expect to move from one part of the world to another with, one might almost say, disturbing regularity. Others, particularly those in the Navy, are more likely to have the same domestic base for the greater part of their married lives, but I appreciate that many of the families and dependants of Service personnel resent being lumped together and classed as dependants of the Services. They resist —I do not think unnaturally so—the notion of being Service wives and Service husbands. They want to be regarded as citizens in their own right, free to lead their own lives as they wish.

The variety of circumstances, and the often uncertain nature of Service life, do not match easily with our electoral system. As noble Lords know, this system is based on annual registration related to a qualifying date, and is dependent mainly on forms completed by the heads of households. It is not a voluntary system. The returns on Form A are compulsory. But it is a simple and readily understood system, which relies a good deal on co-operation between electoral registration officers and members of the public. It calls upon the electoral registration officer, and his canvassers, to know his area and to use all the local information available to ensure the accuracy of the register. It has been estimated that in most parts of the country he achieves an accuracy of something like 95 per cent. or more.

Over the years, different schemes have been tried to meet the difficulties posed by Service registration. There have been no less than four major inquiries which have considered Service registration since 1918: the Vivian Committee of 1942, the Oliver Committee of 1944, the Speaker's Conference of 1965 and the Speaker's Conference of 1973. Legislation has been enacted on no fewer than five occasions. I do not intend to weary your Lordships with a full account of the recommendations of all these committees, and of the legislation which ensued, because we are concerned today only with the spouses of Service personnel and not with the Services generally. But I think that it indicates the degree of attention which Parliament has given to the subject, and the very great difficulty which arises in finding a satisfactory solution. I should add—a point to which I wish to return later— that the last major change in the circumstances was enacted as recently as 1976, as the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, said, and that the electoral register which is presently in force is the first drawn up under the scheme then enacted, and it has, in fact, been in existence for only about a year.

So far as spouses are concerned, the first coverage of wives under the Service voting arrangements took place in 1949. For the first time, wives of members of the Forces residing overseas with their husbands were able to make a Service declaration and register as Service voters. Thus there was a dual system in existence for many years. Wives resident in the United Kingdom could register along with other civilian householders on the local electoral form, Form A. Those who went abroad with their husbands could register as Service voters. Until 1969, when there was a general change in the arrangements, Service registration was a permanent arrangement. New forms did not have to be submitted each year. As a result of the recommendation of the 1965–68 Speakers' Conference, it was decided to alter this system and to adopt annual Service registration.

When this resulted in a very low rate of registration, the Government asked that a Conference presided over by Mr. Speaker should examine the matter again. In 1973 they did so, and recommended that the system should revert to permanent rather than annual registration. In fact, they made a series of recommendations which I need not quote, except for the last sentence in their report. It is the sting in the tail, so far as the present debate is concerned. They recommended that the wives of Servicemen should be registered as Service voters. That was a public recommendation. It was made in a letter of 20th June 1973, from the Prime Minister to Mr. Speaker. The letter was laid before both Houses of Parliament (Cmnd. 5363) and received widespread attention.

A private Member took the opportunity open to him and introduced legislation to implement the Conference recommendations. Mr. Cranley Onslow's Bill, which was supported in all its stages by Conservative Members, included the provision relating to Service wives. This was in Clause 2 of that Bill. The reasoning behind it was succinctly described in this House by the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, on 15th June 1976. She specifically mentioned to the House that minority of wives with whom the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, is mostly concerned, and I have the permission of the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, to quote what she said on that occasion, because it was put very well and very succinctly. She said:

"I should like to emphasise that this Bill will not put anyone at a disadvantage. There are wives, although it is considered they are in the minority, who are perfectly well served by the normal civilian arrangements. There is no question of disenfranchising these. They will simply get on the register by different means than existed before. There may be the odd case where the elector resents being compelled to take one route to register rather than another, but I understand that the Secretary of Defence believes it will be for the benefit of the great majority of Service wives to make this change".—[Official Report,15.6.76; cols. 1203–4.]

That ends the quotation from the contribution of the noble Baroness on that occasion, and she is not without experience on these matters. So that when we made the change in 1976, this House was fully conscious of the consequences.

The introduction of the new arrangements meant that we had tried three schemes for Service wives since Service registration was first introduced—a period when there was no separate procedure for Service wives, and they were registered as civilian voters; a period after the second world war when they were registered as civilian voters while residing in the United Kingdom, but as Service voters while living overseas, and the present position when all the spouses of Service personnel are registered as Service voters along with serving Servicemen.

As the noble Lord has explained this Bill, it means that we now try a fourth scheme. Wives who were overseas with their husbands on duty would register as Service voters as now, but wives resident in the United Kingdom would have an option to choose whether to register on the civilian electoral roll or as Service voters. This is, indeed, an ingenious permutation and the noble Lord is to be congratulated on it. At first glance, it may seem to have the merit of meeting all the difficulties that could be posed and of satisfying all quarters, but I have to tell your Lordships that they are deceptive merits. The Government believe that the scheme proposed by the noble Lord has disadvantages and that we should, in any case, give the present arrangements time to prove themselves. I come back to where I was some time ago, in pointing out to your Lordships that the 1976 Act has been in operation for only one year, and I ask whether it is fair to make this change, which amounts to a change almost every two years.

The first point is that the proposed scheme will unnecessarily complicate the procedure in a way which could lead to extensive multiple registration and to some people being left off the register altogether. Electoral registration officers will not be in a position to know which people living in their area have chosen which option, so they will be hampered in carrying out their statutory duty of registering all those who appear to be eligible. Some wives may not easily recall from year to year, especially if they are moving about, whether they have made a permanent Service declaration in one place and therefore should not make a further annual declaration in another. The scheme may ease the system for a minority, but only at an unacceptable cost to electoral registration as a whole. At least, that is how the Government see it.

The second point is that the Government believe that it is unwise to attempt to redraw the system so soon after the 1976 Act. While the Government are prepared to consider improvements and modifications, they feel that the principle of the new arrangement ought to stand.

Let us take a closer look at the system which operates now. When the Speaker's Conference in 1973 examined the subject of Service registration they found a serious situation. Only about one-quarter of those eligible had registered. The statistics for the present electoral register show that, consequent upon the new arrangements, the proportion has risen to about 40 per cent. So there has been an increase in registration. I accept that this is still unsatisfactory but it is a good start and the benefit should be cumulative, given the once-for-all nature of the system and the interest which is being shown in electoral registration by new recruits.

The new statistics are not strictly comparable, in that the overall numbers of Service voters include Service wives for the first time who were not included in the earlier group. Indeed, they may disguise a decline in the number of wives of personnel who have registered. This is contrary to the expectation described by the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, but it must be remembered that we have only one register to work upon. The arrangements were new and, despite very widespread publicity, may not have been appreciated and fully understood.

I recognise also that there are some legitimate areas of concern. I appreciate that many Service wives resent the fact that they did not receive the declaration form direct but in many cases got them through their husbands. This has now been put right. In future, all forms and all publicity about the arrangements will normally go direct to each individual.

I understand also that many Service wives object to the procedure of attestation, commonly known as counter-signing. However, it is a long accepted requirement that electoral registration officers should have some guarantee of the validity of an electoral registration application which may come from abroad. If it originated locally, the officer would be able to make a local check at the address if he had any doubts and was seeking further information. The countersignature is a substitute for that. I accept that there is a difference between a civilian obtaining the signature of the head of a household before sending in Form A and a requirement for a Service voter to obtain the signature of an officer, or a non-commissioned officer, or a justice of the peace.

My honourable friend in another place, the Minister of State at the Home Office, is very much aware of these criticisms and has been reviewing the procedure with his honourable friends in the Ministry of Defence. The Government are not yet ready to announce their conclusions on the subject of attestation, but I believe that there is a good chance that a modified procedure may be possible, perhaps using information kept centrally by the Ministry of Defence, which will meet many of the objections which have been, quite naturally, raised this evening.

I do not want to be accused of taking a negative attitude in this debate. I have made it clear that the Government have approached this matter in the spirit of wanting to find the most equitable and efficient system for all those concerned in the Services. We are prepared to do all that we can to make the latest scheme understood and effective, but we do not accept that the time is yet right for further substantive legislation.

I do not think that I can usefully say anything more than to ask the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, whether he is prepared to accept what I have said. I see that he shakes his head in a negative sort of way; therefore I gather that there is no point in my suggesting to him that perhaps this is not an opportune moment to make the change. I wanted to say, "The Government are looking at the matter; let the Government go on looking at it; let the Government see whether the points which the noble Lord has made can in some way be incorporated without further legislation".

Having said that, if the noble Lord feels that he cannot meet the suggestion which I have made, I can only say, as I would say on other occasions, that it is really a matter for your Lordships to decide.

My Lords, I must express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Newall, for the support he has given to this Bill and for saying that it has the support of his Party. As the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, said at the beginning of his speech, this is not a Party matter. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for his lucid and careful analysis of the past. Indeed, his speech seemed to me to fall into three parts. The first part was a most eloquent tribute to the Services and to the members of the families of Servicemen, coupled with sympathy for the basic principles contained in my little Bill. The second part of the noble Lord's speech was an accurate historical review of electoral procedures to date. Then came, to my surprise, that extraordinary non sequitur—an indication to me that at this stage I ought to withdraw this important Bill.

All that the noble Lord had to say against my Bill was that it is an ingenious permutation, with deceptive merits. The noble Lord's historical review made it clearer than any speech of mine that an immediate change is desirable. According to the Government—and the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, is speaking on behalf of them—there are two deceptive merits about my Bill. There is the danger of multiple registration. Under our present electoral system, however, there is multiple registration for ordinary citizens. Why should wives of members of the Armed Forces be in a different position from ordinary citizens in regard to multiple registration?

Of course, the noble Lord says that it is a question of administration and efficiency, but we are dealing with rights far more fundamental than a question of administration and efficiency. In this Bill we are dealing with the dignity of womanhood; we are dealing with the basic right of women to be treated as voters in their own right when they are living in this country. They should not be enabled to vote only by a procedure which depends upon their husband's position while they are living in this country. Some women have told me that if all Service spouses were men, this problem would never have arisen.

I think that the noble Lord, Lord Newall, expressed this point extremely well, in the eloquent and elegant manner in which he always addresses your Lordships. He used the happy phrase that in these modern times wives should not be chattels of their husbands in non-military matters relating to voting rights, and he said about the past—again using a very happy phrase—that an error of judgment had been made in the 1976 Act and also in the letter of the 20th June 1973 to which the Minister referred. Let us this evening accept—and I hope the noble Lord the Minister will accept this—that an error of judgment has been made and that my Bill shall be read a second time.

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This is of course virtually the same Bill as we debated last Session. Since that time it has benefited enormously from the assistance of Parliamentary' Counsel, who have totally recast it. When I see the effects of their work I am left in wonderment and admiration for their skill, because clearly what has emerged is now a much more workmanlike piece of legislation, and I hope that the product we have today will now commend itself to the House as being worthy of a Second Reading and will indeed pass into law as quickly as possible.

It is almost impossible for me to express adequately my gratitude to many who have helped in this process. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell, who was very courteous and almost encouraging, although he had a neutral brief on the last occasion on behalf of the Government. I am grateful to his colleague, Dr. Summerskill, the Minister in the Home Office, for allowing Parliamentary Counsel and making readily available to me the officials at the Home Office who have played such a great part in the redrafting. They have given enormous thought, care and understanding not only simply to the technical drafting of the Bill but also to the reasoning behind the Bill. I am bound to offer thanks with great pleasure to others who have been so helpful. The noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, has helped by his criticisms last time and parts of the Bill bear the imprint of his experience and advice.

Outside, we have had many consultations with the National Farmers Union; with Mr. Butler, the Vice-President, who has been very courteous and helpful all through. In addition, Mr. John Hotchkis of the Deer Society has been untiring in his work to get this Bill into final form; and I should also like to say that General Brockbank, the Director of the British Field Sports Society, has been immensely helpful on a number of occasions and issues. That list of those who have contributed so much gives us a good start for hoping that we now have the Bill in an acceptable form.

Secondly, I should explain to your Lordships what happened to the Bill last Session. It was late in getting to the other place and a lot of consultation had to take place in the hope that it might go through, as it is called, "on the nod" at four o'clock on a Friday without any opposition of any kind. This meant that we had to clear all the obstacles in the way of further reservations that arose after consideration in your Lordships' House. Those obstacles were cleared and the consultations with the National Farmers Union and others were all finished, but our final chance of getting the Bill through, which unfortunately did not arrive until July, was too late and indeed, ironically and tragically, the Bill was then opposed by only one honourable Member in the other House because she thought that the Bill was not tough enough. Half a loaf would have been a great deal to have achieved last Session, and I am sorry that the matter ended in that way. Anyway, here we are again, and I hope that this time, with the Government's help in redrafting, we have virtually an agreed Bill. I also hope that if we have some minor opposition again in the other place, the Government will listen sympathetically if I have to ask for some Government time in order that the Bill may finally complete its passage during this Session.

The need for this Bill is as great as ever. Deer poaching and illegal killing are now reaching alarming proportions; trespass is widespread; there is disregard for law and order; there are threats against gamekeepers and physical violence is perpetrated on them. Unscrupulous gangs are highly organised: they threaten reprisals, property is damaged, farm animals are killed, maimed and hustled. Such journals as The Field and The Shooting Times and the newspaper the Sunday People have recently published articles showing horrific cases of sheer barbarity; grisly methods used by villains delighting in cruelty on a massive and unprecedented scale. They run down deer with vehicles, pull them down with lurcher dogs, cut their throats and this they call sport. The traffic in illegally killed venison is then extensive. Poachers have persecuted some deer populations to such an extent that control and management is now impossible. One cannot wonder at this perhaps when one realises that until recently a red stag carcase was fetching about £140 and a large fallow buck about £80. Police are having to organise special patrols, but even then the convicted poachers are open in their defiance and publicity for themselves and have no expression of regret when they are punished.

Against all this we have only the Deer Act 1963 applying to England and Wales only. It was good in its time but it is now out of date and ineffective. Apart from Italy we have the weakest legislation on deer in Europe. I would go one stage further. In Northern Ireland there was no legislation at all on deer, but in this Bill it is now included. I have to convey to your Lordships the apologies of the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, who last Session got us to bring in Northern Ireland. He is ill, but he has assured me that he would have liked to be here today to give support to the Bill as it is now drafted. Perhaps the extent of public support for this Bill can be gauged from a quotation from this week's Shooting Times:

"We on the Shooting Times believe that any further opposition to this Bill can only come from those who do not have the best interests of deer at heart .

The breadth of support is not just in the printed word. The three police organisations—the Chief Constables, Superintendents, and the Police Federation—have signified their approval and support. The whole sporting world, including the British Field Sports Society, I understand, are now happy with the Bill. Scientific bodies are all behind it, as are the veterinary authorities. The environmental authorities are satisfied and the NFU—subject to two reservations with which I want to deal in the course of my speech—are now happy with the Bill.

I now therefore turn briefly to the content of the Bill. In the first place, I should like to make it clear, as I did last Session, that the Bill has nothing to do with deer farming. There is a committee on this set up by the Red Deer Commission in Scotland, and although the legislation must come in due time it is as yet too early to see what that legislation ought to be on the whole issue of deer farming. Therefore, we have to leave it out for the time being; that will be something that will come along later.

As I said, the drafting is a radical reconstruction, although the meaning is still the same as it was last Session. The difference I can illustrate by taking the exceptions. When an offence is created, the exceptions are now placed close to the definition of the offence instead of all being lumped together in a clause on exceptions. The special applications necessary for Northern Ireland, for example, are now scattered through the Bill rather than in one general clause about Northern Ireland. It is more workmanlike, as I said earlier.

The major change in the Bill is in Clause 4 taken together with Clause 18(2). The change that is made is that the former licensing by the Nature Conservancy Council is now deleted. That was in the 1963 Act. This covers licensing by the NCC for the darting of deer and similar purposes. The Government made absolutely clear to your Lordships' House last Session that they opposed this because the NCC had no money for it, no particular expertise for it, and it was time it was changed. The change is to ensure that any such certification, if one might call it that, for these practices shall now be done in the presence of veterinary surgeons. This is the best safeguard we can think of, and I think this will be an adequate safeguard. Again I want to thank the Home Office, because it was they who helped us to reach agreement with the veterinary authorities and got their support for their inclusion in the Bill at this point.

My Lords, I turn to the particular details of the Bill. Clause 1 defines the close seasons and the nightly close times, and these are brought together in one clause. The exceptions, fully debated last Session, for a farmer protecting a crop from marauding deer are there carefully set out in the same form as last time. Although, perhaps, some of the wording has been tightened up, I can assure your Lordships that in no sense has the meaning of that Part been altered. The farmer is fully protected.

I come now to Clause 2 where we reach the major reservations; of the National Farmers Union. Clause 2 deals with prohibited firearms and ammunition and the power of the Minister later on to phase out or to ban various forms of firearms and ammunition. Here, the National Farmers Union have strongly pressed for two particular changes. I should like first of all to read to your Lordships part of a letter which Dr. Shirley Summerskill sent to me last February and which I am authorised to repeat today. This, I hope, will finally reassure the NFU. It concerns what happens after this Bill is passed and takes into account one of the things about which the National Farmers Union is concerned.

Dr. Summerskill writes—and I apologise for the length of the quotation:

"I can certainly give an assurance that the inter-departmental review, which it is proposed should be under taken when your Bill becomes law, will include consultation with the National Farmers Union as well as with any other organisations having a major interest in the subject.

"We have not yet given detailed consideration to the precise scope of the review. What we had in mind was that it should examine the position of deer in England and Wales with particular reference to the aspects subject to legislative control—which by that time would be the control contained in your Bill. In view of the interest in the scope of this exercise, however, we propose that the proposed terms of reference should be circulated to the interested organisations for comment before they are finally agreed. This will give an opportunity to ensure that they are broad enough to cover any matter which a particular organisation thinks ought to be included".

Here we come to the crucial paragraph interesting the National Farmers Union:

"I can also give an assurance that if your Bill has reached the Statute Book no attempt would be made to exercise the powers it confers on the Secretary of State to phase out the use of the shot gun in protection of crops etc., before the interdepartmental review had been completed and its conclusions were known".

I hope that pledge to the National Farmers Union, that until a thorough review of Government policy about deer in general has been completed there will be no Government moves on phasing out the shot gun, satisfies the main worry of the NFU.

Secondly, the NFU want an amendment of subsection (5) of Clause 2. This is the subsection which deals with the power of the Minister to vary by order the prohibited firearms. The NFU want it to be amended to read that it shall be the Home Secretary acting with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries who shall make such orders; they shall make them jointly. I realise the force of this argument and the pressure for it and I give the assurance today that I shall move an Amendment in those terms at Committee stage. I hope we can show to the Government the force of feeling about this matter and get it finally settled in that form. I think it is a legitimate point by the National Farmers Union, although I would not, and they would not, I understand, want this joint activity by Ministers to apply elsewhere in the Bill. In any case, I would point to a later clause which means that all statutory orders have to involve widespread consultation before any of them come to be made.

Clause 3 deals with weapons and practices outlawed. Clause 4 I have partly dealt with; this concerns the moving and darting of deer and veterinary supervision. Clause 5 deals with exceptions. I must say to my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell that the Deer Society would be particularly grateful if they could be consulted on Clause 5 (5) (a) and (b), which give the Government certain powers in emergency situations, like rabies and so on, to do almost anything. They could set snares, set poison, do almost anything otherwise illegal in those emergency situations. I think it reasonable that they should be asked to consult the Deer Society before any such practices are applied in an emergency.

Clause 6 is new. This is based on the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1968 which gave additional protection to farm animals. Deer are now being handled, darted, netted, drugged, loaded and unloaded in vehicles for transport all over the country and into foreign countries, in numbers which many knowledgeable people consider have reached quite unacceptable proportions. This new provision, together with the Transit of Animals Order 1973, should go some way towards enhancing the welfare of deer where there would be danger and where there would be protection by no other legislation. I cannot stress too strongly that deer are wild, not domesticated animals; they must not be regarded in the same light as farm stock. They are subject more than most animals to extremes of distress. If the 1968 Act was considered necessary to protect farm animals, it is crucially necessary to protect deer, the most sensitive and timid of Britain's wild animals. I am very glad to see the drafting of Clause 6 to achieve that end.

Clause 7 is the former Clause 4 which concerns the outlawing of poaching. I hope that we have got it right. We have had years of discussion about this and I am particularly grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, who has helped us to get it right.

Part II deals with the "Control of Sale and Purchase of Venison" and it is as in the original Bill. I hope that it will not be thought restrictive. It is easy to get a game dealer's licence for £4.75. They are not in short supply—they are not restricted. It only means that we shall have control over the disposal of venison as a further, and indeed absolutely indispensable, check on poaching. Part III deals with "Miscellaneous and General." Clause 17 (1) deals with widespread consultations on any statutory orders. Part III, the definitions and the Schedules are all as in the last Bill.

I have spoken as briefly as possible in introducing the Bill. I said at the beginning that I thought that with the immense help of the Home Office and Parliamentary Counsel, to whom our debt is immense, we now have a workmanlike Bill. We still have an area of great need—an area of barbaric cruelty which it is time we stopped. I hope that the Bill is worthy of being put into law as quickly as possible. My Lords, I beg to move.

My Lords, I am pleased that I have been lucky in the draw and am the first person to be able to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, on his persistence in again bringing the Bill before your Lordships' House. I should also like to congratulate him on his flexibility in listening to the points which were made in the previous debates, both here and in the other place, and to the representations made to him by bodies such as the National Farmers Union. He knows that I have had experiences similar to those which he is going through. Therefore, he will know that I also am aware of the immense value of Parliamentary draftsmen in helping an ordinary Member of your Lordships' House to pull together a Bill, to make the intent of the Bill clearer and, indeed, to make the Bill hold water as a legal instrument with more certainty.

Therefore, I wish the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, great good fortune with the Bill. Our wishes are for the Bill to succeed and for it to go through both your Lordships' House and the other place. On the other hand, I hope that the noble Lord will continue to listen to the points that are made in the debate. They will be made, so far as I and my colleagues on these Benches are concerned, with the sole object of improving the Bill and of removing any possible anomalies that may arise between the operation of the Deer Acts in Scotland and in England.

There is one very important provision missing not only from this Bill but from the promises which accompanied the Bill in the noble Lord's introductory speech, and that is any form of ongoing Deer Commission in England. I believe that any legislation concerned with the protection and welfare of deer in England will eventually require a Deer Commission. An inter-departmental review is not an ongoing commission. Therefore, I feel that at this stage we should put on record that ultimately a commission of some sort to deal with these matters in an ongoing way will be needed. I am sure that the noble Lord will accept that that is so. I take the opportunity provided by this debate to make that point. I know the difficulties that would have arisen if there had been an attempt to insert provision for a commission into the Bill. Therefore, I appreciate why it does not appear in the Bill.

There are a number of improvements to the Bill as it now stands which those of us who participated in the previous debates readily and quickly recognise and which have been drawn to our attention by the noble Lord, Lord Northfield. There is still one feature of the Bill which I do not like. Indeed, I should be surprised if anybody really liked it and I cannot see why it has to be retained in the Bill. I am referring to the necessity—for so it appears—to make the farmer defending his crops guilty and. then to place upon him the responsibility to prove his innocence. The curious feature is that, as I read the Bill, the huntsman who, not with the car but with the horse, has chased the sensitive animal and pulled it down, not with a lurcher but with a pack of hounds, is allowed immediately to use a sawn-off shotgun—a type of weapon which it is illegal for anybody else in the country to possess or use for any purpose.

My Lords, stag hunting takes place on Exmoor and the hounds are not allowed to pull down the deer. The huntsman has a sawn-off shotgun or some other weapon with which he shoots the deer at bay. The hounds do not pull down the deer: they are not allowed to do so. I want to make the point that the deer is shot dead.

My Lords, that is not my point. My point is that there is great sympathy shown for the man with the sawn-off shotgun who is merely pursuing his sport, whereas the farmer who is in fact protecting his livelihood is taken to court and there has to prove that he is an authorised person, that he has the right to use the weapon and so on. I believe that it would be only just that the farmer should be assumed to be innocent and that the onus should be upon the authorities to prove him guilty. That could quite simply be done by the deletion of a few words which would not in any way alter the strength, purpose or shape of the provisions. It would merely put the farmer into the position where he knew his rights and he did not have to prove that he had those rights.

Another reason why I think the Bill is still defective relates to the blanket way in which it chooses suitable weapons with which to pursue deer of widely differing sizes. At one end of the scale, we have red deer weighing 20 stone, which is the size they grow to in many parts of England. At the other end of the deer scale, we have the little muntjac which is no bigger than a hare and which weighs a few pounds—possibly not even a stone. Apparently both those species must be shot with weapons of the same muzzle energy. Clearly, this is not right, because if you were to use a weapon like a seven millimetre magnum on a muntjac and you hit it fair and square, the animal would disintegrate. Obviously, you cannot use the very heaviest calibre of weapon upon the smaller deer. In fact, from the point of view of safety, convenience and of preserving the venison of the smaller varieties of deer, it may very well be that smaller types of weapon should be allowed. Indeed, in Scotland for roe deer people frequently use a 2.2 magnum of some sort, which is perfectly adequate for the smaller types of deer. I think that this point may well be dealt with by the interdepartmental review, and would certainly need to be dealt with by any ongoing Deer Commission. However, it seems to me that it is a weakness in the Bill that the weapons cannot be chosen for different classes of deer and cannot be made more suitable for the purpose for which they are required.

The final point, on which I still have some criticism of this Bill, is in the choice of game dealers as the automatic venison dealers. I suppose that at this stage I should declare my interest, in that I am a game dealer and a venison dealer as well as being a producer of the substance. But it seems to me that difficulties might conceivably arise across the Border where, on one side of the Border, game dealers will be licensed to deal in venison and, on the other side of the Border, venison dealers will be licensed to deal in venison. If one looked at the Bill more carefully and at the problem more carefully, I cannot help feeling that it might be possible to make the venison dealer from Scotland a valid operator in England without having to take out a further licence; likewise, perhaps the licensed English game dealer, if he is licensed to deal in venison, could operate in Scotland without having to take out a venison dealer's licence.

I am not sure of all the problems involved here, but I think that there are problems. I ask the noble Lord to look at this again because I think that he might find that to have a class of venison dealer would, in fact, be to the advantage of the English trade. I am sure that there will be some game dealers who do not wish to handle venison. This is certainly true in Scotland where not all game dealers handle venison; indeed, not all venison dealers handle game. Therefore, it might well be to the advantage both of the authorities who want to check on these things and of the trade across the Border if this matter could be looked into. Having mentioned those comparatively small disagreements with the Bill as it is now drafted, I repeat that we wish the Bill well and will, indeed, endeavour to help the noble Lord get it through at the second attempt and to make progress in the efforts to obtain proper legislation for deer of all species in England.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley, has very kindly allowed me to speak before him instead of after, as I have to get home. I must apologise to your Lordships if I have to leave before the end of the debate, but the reason is the same as usual: I have to get home. It is a curious coincidence that any debate for which I happen to put down my name always seems to be relegated to the end of the day. Perhaps there is some significance in that. If any noble Lord wishes to see a debate put in that position, let him get in touch with me and I shall put down my name for it, and we shall see what happens and whether I am right.

However, I should like to say that I am very strongly in support of this Bill, and I think that the House owes a great debt to the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, for his persistence in carrying it through. It will be a great protection for several reasons. I should like to point out to any noble Lords who may have suspicions about this Bill that it is not merely a Bill to please the sentimental visitors to Richmond Park. It is much more than that. I spent a weekend with a cousin in Herefordshire in the summer and he complained about the frightful methods which poachers use upon the deer on his land. Apparently they use the most inhumane methods of slaughter. This Bill will at least ensure that there is a legal weapon to use against them. I believe that the clause on the sale of venison will do even better. Therefore, I wish the Bill well and I congratulate the noble Lord once again for having put it forward. I hope that it will receive a welcome from all your Lordships.

My Lords, I have no intention of treating your Lordships to a repeat performance of last year's Deer Bill, for the simple reason that I see so many familiar faces; in particular, that of the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, who, despite the fact that he seems to thrive on punishment—whether it be as chairman of a Quango or chairman of his committee on land ownership—has returned to do "Deer Bill battle". At the rate that he appears to enjoy such criticism, I am sure that he will soon qualify to be a farmer.

I know only too well that over the past few days your Lordships will have re-read the Hansard debate of last year's Deer Bill. I hope that I am correct in believing that every Member of your Lordships' House is as concerned as I am about the absolute right of the farmer to protect his crops. Certainly I found this view very forcefully expressed by all noble Lords when I read the debate on last year's Bill.

Therefore, it is following on from this point—the right of the farmer to protect his crops—that I wish to ask two questions of the Government, which have already been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Northfield. First, will the Government accept that deer—as I believe your Lordships accept and certainly the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, accepts—are an agricultural problem? As such, do the Government accept that the Minister of Agriculture should be the Minister responsible for orders under Clause 2(5) or—as the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, said—in conjunction with the Home Secretary?

Secondly, I want to ask the Government for the present position regarding the inter-departmental inquiries. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, for reading his honourable friend's letter, which is of great help to us. I think that I am correct in assuming from that letter that the Government will not introduce any orders under Clause 2(5) until this inquiry has reported. Again, I should be grateful if the Government could tell me how much progress has been made by this inquiry since the letter written to the noble Lord by his honourable friend Dr. Shirley Summerskill. I believe the answers to these two questions, particularly the first, to be of vital importance to the working of the Bill. It is for that reason that I warned the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, in advance, so that the Government would be able to give a considered and definite answer tonight.

As I have said, I do not wish to copy the BBC and put on a repeat performance. If I did, who knows but some of your Lordships might cast me in a leading role perhaps in "Some Mothers do 'Ave 'Em"; but I must remind the Government that, although no doubt they blame the failure of the last Bill on me, I still put the onus as much, if not more, on them, for not, if I may say so, coming clean at the start, and then for introducing a major Amendment, if not a wrecking one, at Third Reading. This was a tactic which was foreseen by my noble friend Lord Mansfield very early in last year's debates, if you read Hansard of 21st April, but which, I fear, was not foreseen by many of your Lordships.

Last year I blamed the civil servants at the Home Office, for which I was quite correctly reprimanded. So I must now, as instructed then, put the responsibility fairly and squarely on, I feel sure, the willing shoulders of the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for telling us what the Government's views are on this Bill; for I see from reading last year's Hansard a stumbling block in getting the Government to accept that deer are an agricultural problem affecting farmers' crops. Hence my desire, before we start tabling Amendments, for an answer to my two questions relating to this problem.

My Lords, I should like to join with other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, on producing this excellent Bill again. I am 100 per cent. in support of its principle, although I may be a little doubtful about some of its details. One of the areas about which I am slightly doubtful is Clause 1(7). I think that the noble Lord has been a little hard in asking that a defence of being an authorised person should be:

"any member of the occupier's household normally resident on the occupier's land, acting with the written authority of the occupier;".

We get situations arising in the farming world—I have one close to me—where you have three brothers who work a farm. I should not like to say which one actually owns it unless I had looked at the deeds. Must the owner of a farm, on the passing of this Bill, instantly go and, for instance, give a written authority to his son, or to anybody who works on his place, in order to justify them in taking any action to kill a deer? Could we not simplify this matter rather than impose on farm owners the need to work out which of their family or employees has to have written authority to do these things?

I have a further small complaint. I think that on Second Reading last time I raised the subject of "an area or place". I still cannot see how you can define an area. Is a hunt entitled to pursue a deer from one place to another? When does it come out of its area or place into another place? Is it entitled to do this? If not, it leaves me rather uncertain as to what "area or place" means.

I have only two more small points to make. First, we come to the records of game dealers, which I raised on the last Bill. Are we to assume under this Bill that a licensed dealer in game has to keep one set of records? I raised with the noble Lord on the last Bill the question of a licensed dealer who bought from another licensed dealer. I see that it is nicely laid out here. Is he entitled under Clause 12 to keep two sets of books, or must he keep only one set of books? The first would be for the deer which he shoots and brings in, and then he fills in the form set out in Schedule 3. Can he use the same records when he buys from another licensed dealer, using only columns 1, 5 and, I think, 6, saying "Date of purchase", without having to complete all the rest? Could this matter receive consideration, and something clearer dealing with a sub-purchaser of venison be put into it?

The only other thing I have to say is to ask whether the noble Lord is quite satisfied that the penalties in this Bill are adequate. It is a horrible thing that the poachers do. They cause a tremendous amount of pain and suffering to these animals. I have a feeling that these penalties are rather too small. Apart from that, I welcome this Bill, and congratulate the noble Lord on bringing it forward a second time.

My Lords, I too welcome this Bill and the noble Lord's persistence in bringing it back to us again. I tried to think of another word, as "persistence" has been used several times, but it is the best one in the circumstances. I was not able at the last moment to take part in the debate last year on this subject but I followed it most closely and was, I think, almost as disappointed as Lord Northfield when it failed. That said, I hope that the noble Lord will take any criticism that I have of the details as purely constructive. He has undoubtedly taken a great deal of advice from those who know a great deal about this, but where my opinion and experience differ I shall say so.

I think I have to declare an interest at this stage, although I hope it will be seen more as a qualification than anything more sinister. I own a small estate in the South of England where there are a number of deer now resident. I am a regular stalker of roe deer and all other sorts of deer and have been for a number of years. I am also a director of a leading firm of London gunmakers who make the implements referred to in those clauses of this Bill.

The noble Lord said that the need for the Bill was as great as ever. I should have put it rather more strongly than that; the urgency has increased in the last year or so, in that, certainly in my experience, the population of deer, particularly roe deer, throughout southern England has greatly increased, and so have the depredations of the poachers. I keep a careful watch on the number of deer on my small piece of land and I would say that the numbers have more or less trebled in the the last couple of years, and that is the experience of a number of my friends throughout the south of England. Indeed, I believe the spread of roe deer continues inexorably throughout the country.

The problem with the Bill, if there is a problem, is that of steering a course between the highly laudable cause of protection and increased status for deer, which have been thoroughly underrated for years, and the pressure for control, particularly from farmers. Control is not easy throughout most of England, due to the pressure of population and the safety factor and I believe that, in part, the restrictions in the Bill are too onerous. The details of that will come out in Committee and I shall not go into the nitty gritty of the matter now. I shall give only two examples and I give them reluctantly because, while the main aim of the Bill is to make the shooting of deer in England more sporting, the restrictions are too onerous in two respects.

First, concerning the shooting of deer from vehicles, I appreciate that this has been banned in Africa and most civilised countries for many years, but occasions arise when, through lack of time—with the season nearly ending and too many deer in an area—it is, I am afraid to say, an unsporting but extremely effective method of control. Secondly, regarding the banning of light-intensifying infra-red equipment, the Bill provides for deer to be shot one hour before sunrise and one hour after sunset. Often at those times on a dark day it is extremely difficult to shoot them, given the state of the light, and I should have thought the use of modern infra-red or light-intensifying telescopes would reduce the likelihood of wounding deer and would help control rather than hinder it. I appreciate that the noble Lord will say these are both weapons of the poacher, and I could not be more against the poacher, but they are also weapons for the proper control of deer and I hope he will think about that again.

I wish to deal briefly with the question of firearms and ammunition. I accept reluctantly that it is practical, if the Bill is to get through—and, as I say, I wish it well—that smooth-bore guns as restricted and defined in Clause 2(4) should be used for the smaller deer species, and the minimum shot size chosen, which is generally known as AAA—it has about 34 pellets to the ounce—is probably a good minimum. I should have preferred this to have been mentioned in the Bill to save people having to look it up in tables of shot sizes, but there may be legal reasons why it is not.

That said, I think this size of shot fired through a shot-gun is just adequate up to the size of fallow deer. This is a personal opinion, but it is probably effective at close range and in responsible hands. However, I am not convinced that it is adequate against red deer stags and I hope that when the commission considers this whole issue, the phasing out of shot-guns will start with the red deer. I should like to see it introduced into this Bill straight away so that red deer would be treated differently.

The noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, spoke about the difference between a muntjac doe weighing a mere 15 pounds or so— one could virtually shoot it with a catapult, to be absurd—and a red deer stag weighing 300 pounds-plus. These are of course utterly different animals and I should therefore like Lord Northfield to consider eliminating the use of shot-guns other than those using single ball shot against red deer at any time.

My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord will look at the debate we had at great length on this issue the last time round. We did not find the solution then and we are not near to one yet. It is an issue to which I hope the inter-departmental inquiry or any other inquiry of that kind will gradually find the answer, but no answer is available yet.

I accept that, my Lords, and I was aware that this had been heavily debated, but it is something about which I feel strongly and I am sorry if I have taken the time of the House on something that is already understood, but it is a serious point. I mentioned single ball ammunition and smooth bore shot-guns; it is not well known in this country that it is a better weapon than many people appreciate, and I have seen the results of tests with it.

I re-echo the criticism of poachers. In the part of the world from which I come, in the south of England, this is unquestionally an increasing problem, with lurcher dogs being the main weapon, if I may use that word, against deer. They frequently maul deer for several minutes before they are caught up with by their owner and it is a cruel and despicable situation that cannot be allowed to continue, and one which I hope the Bill will strongly discourage. If lurcher dogs are not used, then the problem is indiscriminate shooting by people with no time or inclination to follow up any wounded deer, and I have seen the results of these people's activities with my own eyes.

I am afraid we lag behind the civilised world in this field of deer conservation and control, and of course this is only a very modest measure. The other day while out in the country a deer tried to jump a fence near to where I was standing and broke its neck. A Continental gentleman standing beside me asked, "To whom must you go to report this?" I looked at him amazed and inquired, "Report it?" He replied, "We would have to report it immediately to the nearest deer authority" We are a very long way from that sort of thing here and I welcome the Bill as a modest step towards the proper recognition of the place of the deer in England.

My Lords, having introduced the original Act of 1963 before which no deer in England and Wales were protected, I felt that I could not let the Second Reading of this Bill pass without saying a few words. Before speaking about the Bill, I wish to say that I completely disagreed with the noble Lord who has just sat down when he objected to banning infra-red telescopic sights and to shooting deer from mechanically propelled vehicles. Under the Bill it is allowed to shoot deer in an enclosed deer park from a mechanically propelled vehicle, and I think that that is chiefly to take into account Richmond Park and other Royal parks; but I am all against allowing everyone to shoot deer from mechanically propelled vehicles, as poachers do.

I heartily approve of the Bill, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord North-field, on continuing the battle. However, no matter how good the Bill is—and it is good—it suffers from the weakness from which all such deer Bills suffer, including the Bill which I introduced. The definition of an authorised person who is allowed to shoot in close season is rather wide, though that is probably unavoidable. The definition of the land on which deer can be shot by an authorised person in the close season is also wide, because almost all the woodland in England is enclosed. I am not quite clear what is the definition of"pasture". Does "pasture" include rough grazing? So far as I am aware, the Bill does not say, "enclosed pasture"; it says merely, "pasture". That also is probably unavoidable. I heard my noble friend Lord Stanley of Alderley read out his brief from the NFU, and I do not want to quarrel with the NFU, but there is this weakness in Bills of this kind. I am certainly not blaming the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, for that. As I have said, at the moment the weakness is unavoidable. We must also consider the effect if this weakness is combined with what is provided under Section 98 of the Agricultural Act 1947.

The present Bill has nothing to do with Scotland, but I should like to tell your Lordships of an instance there which, to a certain extent, is parallel with what we are considering. I know of a certain smallholding near to me in Scotland. We have a very good sergeant of police who is very hot on poachers, and whenever he catches a poacher, he says, "Well, it's not much good, sir, because he says that he had permission to shoot the deer on Mr. X's croft". This croft is only about ten or 12 acres, and in fact there would not be standing room for the number of deer which are claimed to have been shot on Mr. X's croft. Admittedly under the Bill a person who shoots deer in certain circumstances has to be able to satisfy the court; but with due respect to magistrates' courts, I must say that some magistrates do not always have the necessary practical knowledge to give the right sentence. However, I must add that that is merely my opinion.

I wish to turn to the question of firearms. I suppose that at present it is too soon to introduce a Bill to provide what I should like to see in this regard. I should like to see a provision under which one was allowed only to use a shotgun when firing a slug or other single projectile. No matter how small the deer—whether a muntjac or a Chinese water deer—when using a shotgun, even with only 36 pellets to the cartridge, there is much more chance of wounding the deer, whereas with a single projectile, if one shoots and the range is right, the chances of wounding are very remote, provided of course you can shoot.

I wish to refer to a matter raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso. It was a very fair point. Presumably he was referring to the Somerset Staghounds or the Quantock Staghounds. The question was: Why is the huntsman allowed to shoot the stag with a sawn-off shotgun? The reason is that when the hounds are baying a stag, the huntsman can go up very close to the stag. It is a very different matter from shooting deer that are not bayed by hounds. A farmer might fire at a deer with a shotgun from 50 or 60 yards with ordinary shot, and he would wound it. So it is a completely different question.

I now turn to Clause 7(3) which worries me. Clause 7(1) says:

"Subject to subsection (3) below, if any person enters any land without the consent of the owner or occupier or other lawful authority in search or pursuit of any deer with the intention of taking, killing or injuring it, he shall be guilty of an offence".

Subsection (3) says:

"A person shall not be guilty of an offence under this section by reason of anything done in the belief that he has lawful authority to do it or that he would have the consent of the owner or occupier of the land if the owner or occupier knew of his doing it and the circumstances of it".

Does not that give people carte blanche?

No.

Does it not? I am sure that a clever barrister could defend even the most wily criminal who had come on to one's land and said, "Ah!, but if so-and-so had known I was going to do it, it would have been quite all right". You might as well say that you can take somebody's car and then say, "If he had known I was going to take his car, it would have been quite all right". That subsection certainly worries me; but apart from that I do not really think I have any other criticism.

Of course, the Bill is very much like the one the noble Lord introduced previously; he has pointed out the differences. I thoroughly agree—and we had this in the previous Bill—with Clause 11 in Part II, "Control of Sale and Purchase of Venison". There is one thing with regard to Clause 15, "Forfeitures and disqualifications". I am rather worried when it comes to the question of dogs. What is the court going to do with all these dogs? It is not the fault of the dogs. What are they going to do with them? It is perfectly correct, no doubt, that a man should lose his dog if he is using it for poaching; but what is the court going to do with these dogs? Are they going to put them down?

My Lords, perhaps the noble Viscount will permit me to interrupt him. During the passage of the previous Bill I asked the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, if he would take out the provision concerning the destruction of dogs, and an undertaking was given by the National Canine Defence League that they would take into their care, retrain and rehome any dogs which were forfeited.

My Lords, I am very pleased to hear that, and I thank my noble friend. It seemed to me to be rather unfair to the dog. I should like to end by saying that I wish this Bill a quick and successful passage through your Lordships' House. I also hope it will have the same passage through another place, and that the fate of the noble Lord's other Bill will not befall this one.

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Lovat had to go and catch his train to Inverness, and he asked me to extend his apologies to your Lordships. He would have liked to speak, and had his name on the list of speakers. Also, my noble friend Lord Dulverton. As your Lordships will know, this is a matter very dear to his heart, and he was very sorry that he had to go to some formal dinner and was unable to be present; but he wished me to add to mine his congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, for once more introducing this Bill and, if I may say so, for the extremely skilful way in which he appears to have steered this Bill and its many intricacies in such a way as to make it appear to be more or less an agreed Bill. Having heard the many divergent views of your Lordships here, let alone those of Members in another place or of people outside, to have done so is, I think, nothing short of genius.

I cannot emphasise too strongly the urgent need for a Bill of this sort to deal with the prevention of cruelty, which has been mentioned on a number of occasions already this evening. I was somewhat shocked when the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley, said, I think, that he took responsibility for having the previous Bill scuppered in another place. I sincerely hope that, if this is the case, he will not be taking similar action here.

My Lords, will the noble Lord give way? I am sorry; I think he misheard me. I accepted responsibility for causing some trouble and delaying it in this place, not in another place.

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord. I thought that perhaps he had been responsible for prompting a Member to get up and object. I am glad to hear that that is not the case, because this is a matter of some urgency. There is a lot of cruelty taking place, and it is important that this Bill goes through.

What interested me was that those who were worried that the Bill was not giving enough protection to agriculture did not mention what I think is one of the most serious dangers to agriculture and to the control of deer; that is, the new explosion which has taken place in deer farming. If there was too much deer farming, if there were a great many more venison carcases coming on to the market, this could very well be a serious danger to wild deer unless there was a marked improvement in the marketing of venison. At the moment, there is a limit to the amount of venison that can be sold. If you have too much put on the market then there will be a depression in the prices, and this will make the killing of deer far less economic and thereby reduce the number of deer which will be killed. This has already happened in Scotland. When the price of venison dropped (as the Red Deer Commission's reports will show) there was a very marked drop in the deer cull in Scotland. This could be a very serious matter for the wild deer because it might mean that they would not be properly culled. There is another complication here. Only on Monday I attended a meeting at Edinburgh called by the Government on venison marketing and was informed by the veterinary officer that the keeping of deer in confined conditions could cause veterinary problems, not least of which is TB. If you have a deer farm in the middle of your land and TB on it you can imagine the complications that might exist for domestic animals round about. Therefore, it is important that urgent steps are taken to have legislation on deer farming. But I should like to emphasise, as did the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, that this is not the Bill for it. It is something that is needed urgently and, as he said, the Red Deer Commission are responsible for the setting up of an expert committee among whose members are Dr. Blackstow from the College of Agriculture in Aberdeen who was the original initiator of deer farming. These people, I hope, will not be too long in reaching agreement and I hope that legislation on deer farming will follow shortly afterwards.

There is another problem that I foresee in this; that is, the darting of animals to anaesthetise them for handling. The Nature Conservancy Council have not been at all happy about trying to authorise this and they are about to give up doing so. I am not happy with the wording in the Bill—that any veterinary officer may do almost as he wishes in this respect. I know that it has to be for the good of the deer—and I think that there is wording to that effect—but, even so, much as is the respect that I have for the veterinary profession, as is the case with most professions, I am afraid you will not find all to be of the best quality. I should like to see a little more control in some way over the authorisation of veterinary officers to do this sort of work. I wonder whether the veterinary officers' own governing body could not issue authorisations where necessary. There is a great deal of very undesirable darting of animals going on at the moment; and this is something which badly needs stopping.

The noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, I think, mentioned the use of ·270's on the muntjac. I agree that should you hit a muntjac with a ·270 there will not be much left of it. But you do not have to use a ·270, according to the Bill. The minimum size is the ·236 or the 6mm. So that I am not certain that his arguments are really sound on this matter. The other point which I took up while the debate was progressing was that raised by the noble Lord, Lord de Clifford, and his objections to the proposal for granting permission to kill deer on the ground. Similar provisions already exist in Scotland for the killing of deer. What is more, instead of there being a number of people, as in this Bill, authorised to kill deer, in Scotland the tenant farmer, apart from himself, can authorise only one person at a time to kill rabbits. In fact, authorisation granted for deer—or, we hope, about to be granted—in England is very much more lenient than for killing rabbits in Scotland. I hope that the noble Lord will not be unduly worried about that particular clause.

I should like to say how much I appreciate the noble Lord's efforts and how much we require similar action in Scotland, although it may be harder to secure agreement there. But it is not so long since the police removed a live deer, with two of its legs broken, from the boot of a car in Scotland. The penalty which the villains received was derisory. This sort of thing must be tightened up and not only in England, for it is a United Kingdom matter. I have pleasure in wishing the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, the best of success with this Bill. I have no doubt that your Lordships will give it a fair wind here and I only hope that the Bill will not founder in another place.

My Lords, I should like to add my tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, first for his pertinacity in continuing when many thought that the cause might well have been lost, at least for this Parliament. But it has not been los—at least not yet. Secondly, I must congratulate him on his flexibility. It is not easy if one comes new to a subject to realise what other people mean, especially if they do not express themselves too well. The noble Lord has overcome all that and succeeded in having a Bill drafted which I think meets all or nearly all the valid objections which were levelled against the last effort. Thirdly, we must pay tribute to his generosity; he has emerged smiling and affable as ever in spite of the frustrations which he must have undergone. He was generous enough to pay tribute to those who might be considered as opponents but who were in fact only trying to help.

The last Bill was deficient, as the noble Lord has been good enough to say. It was not only a matter of drafting. It would not have done what the sponsors intended it to do; it would have created a number of legal anomalies and unfairnesses and I might almost say nonsenses. It would not have protected deer in the way the noble Lord and his supporters wanted it to protect them. It would have caused resentment and disrespect for the law, which I for one was very worried about. That was my principal objection.

When the last Bill received its Second Reading, I ventured to express that opinion. I was all for what the noble Lord was trying to do but not in the form of the Bill which he presented to the House. For my temerity I was roundly railed at —if that is the word—by certain noble friends on these Benches. On this occasion I took the precaution of asking the "usual channels" to put me well down the list of speakers so that any criticism, except by way of interruption, can come only from noble Lords opposite. I have been quite crafty in doing that. So far as discussion of the Bill is concerned, I want to stick to principles which I believe to be right in a Bill such as this. I am not going to go into Committee points such as sizes of shot and matters like that, fascinating though they will no doubt be when we discuss them during the next stage of the Bill.

Any Bill like this—and one is immediately put in mind of the Badgers Bill which the noble Earl, Lord Arran, so skilfully piloted through your Lordships' House some years ago—can only create the political environment which it seeks, the protection of deer and the discouragement of poaching, if it detracts from the rights of those who may occupy and work the land in question; and, indeed, those who may take their ordinary enjoyment on that land. One cannot affect one man's rights without affecting the rights of others, too. That is the drawback—if it may be so called— of all animal legislation which to some extent affects the rights of the landowner and occupier. If one is concerned for the constitutional part of this, as I always am when I see these Bills—perhaps it is my early training—one has to balance the value of the Bill to the creature which it is sought to protect against the diminution of rights about which I have already spoken.

When one looked at the last Bill, the balance was wrong; when one looks at this Bill, it is, in my opinion—and I speak for myself alone although, geographically, I occupy a place on the Front Bench— now about right. Various noble friends have expressed worry regarding certain parts of the Bill. The noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, did not like the idea of placing the burden of proving his innocence upon a farmer. With all respect, it is not a very heavy burden; he has only to satisfy a court on the balance of probabilities that the various matters set out in the clause—in fact there are two which bring this into question—relating to him are present. I do not believe that an honest farmer, trying to remove deer from his crops and killing them, is going to have very much difficulty in doing that. In the same way, I think my noble friend Lord Massereene showed a certain lack of confidence in the magistrates' courts of this country. I do not think the magistrates' courts which would hear this type of case would have too much difficulty in deciding whether or not a farmer or occupier of land had discharged the burden.

Similarly, my noble friend Lord de Clifford was worried over Clause 1(8), pointing out that you may get a number of brothers farming and occupying land and that the clause apparently does not take them into consideration. I think there are two things one can say about that. It is quite easy under Clause l(8)(d) for the brother to take advantage of that section if he is an occupier in partnership with his brother. He will, in that position, have the same right to take or kill deer as his brother. I really do not see any difficulty in that.

Then the point was made that it would be "boring", to use a perhaps rather silly word, to have to give written permission or authority to employees to take deer. If one stops to think, it is not something which is going to take a long time; nor indeed need it be done more than once. I do not like being personal about these things, but on my property nobody is allowed to take anything without written permission. It protects them and it protects me; and it is very easy, when people are engaged, for someone to write out a piece of paper saying that so-and-so is entitled to do this or that or, perhaps more importantly, that so-and-so is not entitled to do this or that. Everybody then knows where he is.

The only matter which concerns me about this Bill is back on Clause 7, which is the clause that caused a great deal of trouble when the Bill was last before your Lordships' House. Some of your Lordships may recollect that one of the points I was most concerned about was the question of people pursuing wounded game across boundaries: Clause 7(3) is designed with just that situation in mind. There again, I do not believe that if people—poachers—are found with unlawfully-taken deer any court is going to pay much attention to them if, without any other facts or evidence to back them up, they say: "Oh, I thought the owner would not have minded". I do not think that is going to cause very much trouble to the courts or, indeed, to the people who try to prevent poaching.

There is one other matter I am a little concerned about. It is this: if one takes the position which I believe subsists in South-West England, where areas of land are bought up by anti-hunting organisations who thereupon stop stag hunts coming on to that land, and the hunt, in full pursuit of the stag, crosses the boundary, one is minded to ask what will be the effect on those taking part in the hunt. Quite obviously, the Master and the hunt servants could not claim the benefit of subsection (3): they would be in peril if they went across that boundary. The innocent person following the field, who has no idea where he is but is merely trying to cling on to his horse and get a bit of fun, might, I suppose, be able to take advantage of subsection (3). But it is not very satisfactory, because that is really putting a burden both on that person and on the court to do justice. I can put it another way, and say that here is a case where, previously, only a civil remedy was available, in that the anti-blood sports society would have had to take out an injunction against a Master or any other individual they chose, and thereafter could prevent him from entering upon the land. As I read the clause, they will now be able to initiate a private prosecution and, if they can produce the evidence, have those people convicted in a criminal court.

It may be that your Lordships will say we must have this in order to produce the effect which we want in this Bill, and I think, speaking for myself, that this is something that one has to bear. But it is a matter which your Lordships and the sponsors of this Bill should know about, so that everybody will know what effect Clause 7 could have in the future.

I think that I have spoken quite long enough. All noble Lords will wish this Bill a speedy and fair passage through your Lordships' House, and indeed through the other place. I am sure that, if there are any Committee matters which will exercise us other than by way of discussion, they will be quickly dealt with. Once more, I should like to congratulate, and indeed thank, the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, for having done what he has done so efficiently and pleasantly.

My Lords, I hope your Lordships will allow me to say that, in some respects, this has been quite a model debate in the sense that speakers have been very brief, they have been to the point, in every instance some useful contribution has been made, and in some cases matters have been raised which will obviously have to be looked at. Like others of your Lordships, I have a very clear and distinct recollection of passing this way before, and I take no exception whatsoever to the forthright manner of the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley' as he deals with me from time to time. This is perhaps how it should be.

I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I preface my brief speech with a tribute, like others of your Lordships, to my noble friend Lord Northfield, and an expression of my own personal admiration for his persistence and single-mindedness, which has demonstrated very clearly his refusal to be baulked by the setbacks which have dogged his efforts to get a Deer Bill on the Statute Book. As my noble friend Lord Northfield has explained, the Bill before your Lordships' House today is a revised and improved version of the Bill he brought in in February of last year which, having passed all the stages in your Lordships' House., failed to make the proper progress in another place. It says much for my noble friend's tenacity, although some of us, particularly those who claim to be his friends, might prefer to use the word "obduracy" On the other hand, it might even be said that the Government were so helpful, because they were in fear of him or they loved him—I am not sure which. But he invites your Lordships to tread again the well-worn paths which we have traversed before and, like your Lordships, I commend his stout-heartedness.

My noble friend has, with his customary clarity, explained the background to the Bill and there is no point in my taking up time trying to cross the t's and dot the i's. But I should like to comment on some features of the Bill which distinguish it from its predecessor, and which are evidence of the continuing discussions— I think that this is important—which took place right up to the introduction of the Bill last week. There has been a tremendous amount of thought, attention and care given to it. First, it makes illegal a much wider range of articles for use against deer than either the present law, the Deer Act 1963, or the 1977 Bill. Firearms and ammunition apart, there is a formidable list of objectionable articles set out in Clause 3.

May I single out for your Lordships' attention a single provision— Clause 3(1)(c)—which bans the use of any missile "for the purpose of taking, killing or injuring any deer"; and "any missile" the Government understand to mean "any missile". Therefore, throwing sticks and stones at a deer to take, kill or injure it is out, unless—and I repeat "unless", for it is important—the intention to kill is an act of mercy or is in self-defence. To some of your Lordships this may seem to be rather like over-egging the pudding, but the Promoters of the Bill are anxious to make this provision as comprehensive as possible so as to cover such vicious articles as catapaults, slingshots, boomerangs, throwing sticks and the bolas.

In the second place, your Lordships may have noticed that the licensing functions exercised by the Nature Conservancy Council under the 1963 Act have disappeared from this Bill. Those functions, which were designed to ensure the proper treatment of deer which were captured and often tranquilised by dart gun and then moved from one area to another, were concerned with the humane treatment of deer and not with questions of conservation, which is the prime concern of the Nature Conservancy Council. The sponsor agreed with the Home Office and with the Department of the Environment that the aim of these provisions could be achieved much more effectively, without involving any Government Department or agency, by simply providing that the taking of deer in such circumstances should be done by, or in the presence of and under the direction of, a veterinary surgeon or practitioner. This is the purpose of Clause 3(2) and (3).

Clause 6 of the Bill is quite new and is modelled on a similar provision in the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1968. I think my noble friend Lord Northfield will agree with me if I describe it as the key to the thinking behind the Bill; namely, that unnecessary pain or distress to deer in circumstances where man has direct charge of them is to be condemned. I should explain to your Lordships that the provisions which are necessary to apply the Bill to Northern Ireland have been allocated to the appropriate part of the Bill rather than located in a somewhat perplexing mass at the end, as they were on the last occasion. In this regard, I ought to mention that a consequential provision so far as Clause 9 is concerned, to take account of the position in Northern Ireland, may be needed at the Committee stage. My noble friend Lord Northfield also drew attention to that fact.

Your Lordships will recall that when we considered the noble Lord's Bill on the last occasion I gave an undertaking on behalf of the Government that should the Bill reach the Statute Book an interdepartmental review would be initiated on the subject of deer. The precise scope of the review has not been considered in detail. However, we had it in mind that the review would examine the position of deer in England and Wales, with particular reference to the aspects subject to legislative control, which by that time would be the control contained in the Bill now under consideration. I am happy to be able to repeat that undertaking in respect of the present Bill, with the addition of Northern Ireland to the scope of the review.

I can also assure my noble friend, noble Lords and others who may have an interest in the review that the National Farmers Union, as well as any other organisation with a major interest in the subject, will be fully consulted. I know that my noble friend is particularly anxious that the National Farmers Union should be consulted before any order is made under Clause 2(5) of the Bill; that is to say, an order dealing with the firearms which may be used by farmers against deer in protecting their crops. I would draw your Lordships' attention to the provision in Clause 17(1) which expressly commits Ministers to consultation with such bodies as are likely to be affected by, or interested in, any such order. This was a matter put to me, I believe, by the noble Lord, Lord Northfield. In short, no attempt would be made to exercise the powers that the Bill gives to Ministers to phase out the use of the shotgun in protection of crops, et cetera before an inter-departmental review, to which I have already referred, had been completed and its conclusions were known.

Your Lordships may recall that during the Second Reading debate of what one might call the "Mark I" Bill I drew attention to features which we hoped to persuade the sponsor to remove or amend. By the time the Bill left your Lordships' House and following a series of meetings between Mr. Hotchkis of the British Deer Society and officials of the Home Office in consultation with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food it had been remodelled to remove the vast majority of the objections made by the

Government and I understand, in addition, many of those voiced separately to the noble Lord by those interests likely to be affected by the Bill, namely the farming and the hunting lobbies.

We now have a Deer Bill "Mark II" which has had the benefit of the attention of Parliamentary Counsel—though this, I hasten to add, because I want to make it perfectly clear, in no way makes the result a Government Bill. It is still a Private Member's Bill. The Government's view is that the "Mark II" version is a great improvement on "Mark I", and on behalf of the Government I would say that we applaud the spirit behind the Bill and hope that your Lordships will give it a fair wind. I can promise the House that, although we shall examine carefully any Amendments which may be tabled, and we may find it necessary to object to some —that is quite likely—we shall not seek to put obstacles in the way of the Bill's progress. We believe that the Bill will go far towards achieving its aim of reducing the amount of cruelty inflicted on wild deer.

During the discussion we have had tonight just two or three points have arisen. The noble Lord, Lord Northfield, asked whether we were prepared to consult the Deer Society. I cannot give a very definite reply to that, except to say that the provisions in Clause 5(5) relate to emergencies and I doubt whether it would be possible, without giving it very careful consideration, to give the undertaking that he needs. However, I will give your Lordships this undertaking; I will arrange for the request that my noble friend has made to be looked at much more closely before Committee stage and I will let him know the outcome in due course.

The noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley, raised two matters: one the inter-departmental review which I think I have been perfectly frank about and the other one related to the order-making powers. The relevant provision of those in Clause 1 (2) relating to species and close seasons; in Clause 2 (2) relating to prohibited firearms and ammunition and Clause 2 (5) about weapons permitted in defence of crops and then Clause 12 (2) regarding game dealers' records, relate to species, close seasons, prohibited weapons and already have a counterpart, as he will know, in the 1963 Act.

I do not think the Government themselves would have wished to propose change in the provisions of that Act which give power to make and vary orders to the Secretary of State. But let me say this in answer to the question that he puts. There may be a case for looking more carefully at the new order-making provisions about weapons permitted in defence of crops, which may be the particular point which the noble Lord has in mind. But no doubt at the appropriate time the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, whose Bill it is, will perhaps also want to consider this matter and we may hear more about it at Committee stage. Meanwhile, the Government will also look at the matter. I can only say in reply to the last question put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley, that the Government recognise that deer can be and are in some respects a very serious problem to farmers, but I do not think I ought to go further than that tonight.

My Lords, at this time of night I would be trespassing on the tolerance of the House if I were to reply in detail. I have noted 17 points raised in the debate, and I will do my best at Committee stage to deal with them. I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I do not try to do so at this hour. If I may say so, they were all valid points that I should like to look at very carefully indeed. Some of them have been answered for me—and I am very grateful—by the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, from the Opposition Front Bench. I think he will have to become co-sponsor of this Bill if it goes on like this. He has been extremely helpful, and he did, I hope, set at rest some of the fears expressed opposite about particular details. I was very heartened by his choice of words when he said that he thought that the balance of interference with rights in order to protect this particular animal is now about right. I hope we can approach the Committee stage with that sort of feeling, that this is what we are trying to do. Some impositions on owners and occupiers and farmer will be there, but we are trying to keep them to the minimum in the hope that we are getting the balance right.

Secondly, I should like to say that a number of the Committee points that have been raised will arise when this proposed inter-departmental inquiry takes place. For example, the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, made the point about there being a Deer Commission for England, and this is precisely the sort of thing an inter-departmental inquiry will need to look at. I think it will also look at the point, raised by the noble Viscount and by the noble Lord, Lord Tryon, about variations in sizes of shot to be allowed. I think it is early to try to do this in one Bill, and a good inquiry will, I hope, bring this out and clear it up and enable the Minister most effectively, and with due regard to the rights of farmers and so on, to exercise the powers in the Bill.

I have one other remark to make before I sit down; that is, to thank my noble friend, Lord Wells-Pestell, for his great generosity and for the very helpful words that he has expressed in the course of commenting on the Bill on behalf of the Government. The fact is—and I know he will allow me to say so—that I have had such a lot of help from the Government that I am immensely in his debt. I hope that his final words, that he hopes this Bill will have a fair wind, will be noted in all parts of the House, and indeed in the other place as well. I am afraid that is where we have our fears; namely, that it will be elsewhere that the Bill might be held up. I hope he has done one other thing, besides being so generous and helpful. I hope he has finally helped the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley, in regard to the points that concern farmers. Two specific things that the National Farmers Union have asked for have been repeated by me, and now by my noble friend on behalf of the Government. I think that during the Committee stage we must convince the Government finally on the second point; that is, the joint exercise of powers in relation to prohibited weapons—the joint exercise by two Ministers instead of one. I would be trespassing if I went much further tonight. I shall give an absolute undertaking to look at all of these points before the Committee stage.

A Private Member of your Lordships' House, introducing a Bill of this complexity is at an enormous disadvantage. He does not have civil servants passing notes from the Box to help him deal with all the difficult technical points raised during the debate. Therefore, a lame duck like me has to say, "Yes, I have heard them all and I am puzzled by some of the points which have been thrown at me. I shall do my best, as I have done during the history of the Bill, to try to meet all those points one by one and I hope that I shall do so in a spirit of conciliation." I express my thanks to your Lordships and especially to those who have taken part in tonight's debate. I hope that we can now give the Bill a Second Reading and wing it on its way to enactment.

rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will reverse present policies towards British-American Chambers of Commerce in recognition both of the contribution which their members make to British-American trade and of the adverse consequences to British-American trade when such or similar bodies are dissolved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper. The Question concerns British-American Chambers of Commerce in North America, and I should at once declare my interest. My firm is a member of the British-American Chambers of Commerce in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. I have addressed the New York and Los Angeles Chambers of Commerce and I have accepted an invitation to address the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce next year. I assure your Lordships, however, that I intend to address the House on this problem with my customary lack of prejudice.

My Lords, we are most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, for introducing this Question. Perhaps I should remind the few noble Lords remaining that the United States market has 200 million customers, and that is what we are really talking about tonight—one of the greatest of the world's markets—and there are 50 million people in Great Britain who are able to understand those 200 million without too much trouble. It was George Bernard Shaw who said we are two nations divided by a common language, and that is still true today.

I must declare a past interest as a former member of the New York British-American Chamber of Commerce for a few years. At that time I was working with the late Commander Whitehead, who did so much for some very effervescent exports to the United States and elsewhere. I can safely say that the Americans were "Schwepped" off their feet by his efforts. During that time the company I was then with had very close associations with all the Consuls and Consuls-General around the country, but we were quite big and successful and we had a good British image, so they liked us. But what about all the small companies who were just starting up and wanted help? When we think of the United States we must remember that we are dealing with a Continent, not just a country; it is 3,000 miles from one side to the other, as far as from London to New York. There are many large markets in between the two coasts of America and there are few companies that could even consider tackling the whole market at once. The country has to be broken into sections and each section approached independently.

I think that this is obviously appreciated by the Government, as there are Consuls and Consuls-General in no less than 15 cities in the United States. I think that they do a great job, even if they, like other people, are probably suffering from some potential cutbacks. We do need diplomatic representation, but more importantly to our balance of payments we need commercial assistance, especially for the smaller companies. I believe that there are two basic ways of helping businessmen abroad. The first is through Government Departments, the British Overseas Trade Board, and through commercial Consuls and various other organisations allied to the Government. The second way is through some form of non-direct Governmental support—but letting them get on with the job.

Perhaps I may take a hypothetical example of a small British businessman who decides for good reasons to interest Americans in his products. He makes some contacts, he picks up his samples, he takes a Freddie Laker plane, thereby incurring minimal costs to his company. However good his contacts are, as everything is relative, he is unlikely to have enough contacts at this very early stage in order to make comparisons as to the efficiency or the ability of his original contacts. So where does he go? He has the Consulate and the various organisations that are provided by the Government; he is very courteously received by a civil servant who probably deals with 523 other products, and gives him a list of possible people to talk to, but taking enormous pains to show no favour towards, or against, any of them. Undoubtedly, that is very helpful, but it is a rather cold, unapproachable way.

His alternative to this is to go to the British-American Chamber of Commerce where undoubtedly he will be warmly welcomed, probably told of several people to see, with a recommendation and a description, and various other attributes will be described. People will be telephoned, introductions will be made, and, as likely as not, the businessman will be asked to have a drink with some of these other people in order to meet them socially and very informally. I know which method is more likely to produce the most business. Where else could the new businessman meet the head of United States Customs, or American bankers and insurance chiefs, and many leaders in commerce and industry altogether under one roof?

The British-American Chambers entertain a great many people from a wide selection of places: Her Majesty's Ambassador, editors, such as those of the Economist, or Time magazine, the chairman of Pepsico, Mrs. Thatcher, Mr. Ivor Richard, the United Kingdom Permanent Representative at the United Nations, and a great many others who are in the world public eye and who are very important also in the business world.

What else do British-American Chambers do? They offer platforms for distinguished speakers: Ministers, diplomats, industrialists, and even members of the Royal Family. They organise small business meetings, luncheons for visiting Government and union officials, and senior businessmen. They hold regular seminars of specialist groups of members. They offer members the opportunity to meet regularly to exchange and express their views and increase their business. They have highly qualified standing committees which are readily available to advise and assist the members. They receive many inquiries from firms and bodies which they deal with. They provide a comprehensive reference library with directories of all kinds. They represent their Chamber membership and the British interest generally by appearing before the House and the Senate committees regularly, which a Government cannot do.

I support these Chambers of Commerce very much. I suppose that I am slightly biased, but I admit that I regret that they cannot really exist without some help. I know how much they achieve in real terms. After all, what they achieve, they achieve in the market. They are not outside the market. They do something that no Government organisation can get involved in very often, and they are the obvious people to whom to go for help. That is their main role. No Government official can lobby Congress in Washington. The British-American Chambers can do this, and do do it; and they need to do it. It is a normal procedure in American business, and it is quite common. To lose this asset would be a major loss.

So what does it really cost? Is it going to break the Government to give money to British-American Chambers of Commerce? New York got nothing this year; San Francisco got about 7,000 dollars last year, or £3,500, and that is going to ! be halved this year; and Los Angeles got about the same paltry amount. These Chambers, covering the enormous mileage which they do, need merely a good director, as the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, suggested, and a minimal staff for the paperwork. What very paltry sums are being curtailed? Perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, would care to tell me what assistance is given to other countries—maybe Japan, Iran in better times, Middle East countries and even Australia. There may be some money which is given, maybe it is not; but it is perhaps important to know what is given. I have not been able to find out; it is supposedly privileged information.

But, my Lords, whatever are the arguments in justification of the Government's

action in reducing to nil the support for the British-American Chambers, these small sums of money do have a value far above the actual cost. There is an enormous reservoir of goodwill which cannot be measured in purely financial terms, and we do not want to lose it. Even now, at this stage, the British community in America has a smaller and reduced identity compared with any other European nation despite our language similarities, and this is based mostly on the fact that all other European nations have much larger Government support than we have. It is very necessary for the Government to have full consultation with the business interests involved before cutting back further on this very small but valuable aid to British-American trade. And the trade goes both ways, my Lords.

Perhaps the Government could discuss the situation more fully with the British Overseas Trade Advisory Committee, who are extremely knowledgeable on this subject. Let us at least ensure the continuation of these Chambers of Commerce somehow. They are efficient in many ways —some, I agree, more than others. They perform a very necessary function, and they assist companies in a thousand and one different ways; they are nearly always unsung and unpraised, and always behind the scenes, helping to boost trade both ways. I would suggest that the Government should support them with Government speakers; this, I am afraid, they are becoming rather shy of doing at the moment.

Let us keep the Chambers in existence for as long as possible. Their cost can be estimated from a Telex I received from the San Francisco British Chamber just the other day. They said that the cost of operating a Chamber was about 30,000 dollars. They have asked for only 10,000 dollars themselves, in fact—not a lot of money—and the 30,000 dollars which they actually find it costs them is less than the salary, allowances, transportation costs, children's education and all those other things that a low-ranked United Kingdom-based diplomatic officer receives. And who does the better job? Of course, a British Chamber can do far more than a single person.

Perhaps I may be allowed to quote from Mr. Eric Varley, who wrote in one of the British-American Chamber magazines:

"The British-American Chamber of Commerce does much to bring the opportunities for investment in Britain to the attention of American industrialists. I hope it will continue this work and encourage more US companies to make what I am certain will be a mutually profitable investment in our future".

So I would urge the Government to give an undertaking to have further talks with the people who are involved; to remember that the sums we are talking about are very small; and to bear in mind that, from a commercial point of view, in no way can a Government organisation fulfil this task—a task undertaken with great skill by the British-American Chambers in America.

My Lords, may I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, for having raised this important question of aid to the British-American Chambers of Commerce. My task at this late hour is simply this: to urge the Government to take careful heed of the submissions of the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, coupled as they have been with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Newall, who has had practical experience of the operations of the Chambers of Commerce in America. In the course of my professional experience, acquired chiefly with science-based industries internationally, there has been a great change in the relationship between British companies and American companies during the last decade. It used to be said that it was very difficult for small British firms to make any money in the American market. But now the position has entirely changed. More and more smaller firms—and by "smaller" I mean firms with under 500 employees—are going into the American market; but sometimes they have not got the expertise and knowledge to deal with the difficulties that appear in the various environments in which they are endeavouring to trade.

It seems to me to be incumbent upon the Government to consider that at this time it is essential to maximise the effect of our trade operations by the investment of comparatively small sums of money in America. I should like to pay high tribute to the Embassies and the trade commissions in America for the great work they do. The assistance that they have given to British traders during the past decade has been invaluable. I am sure that they will accept what I am about to say: that they have the difficulty in their operations that they are not in the trade. These British-American Chambers of Commerce act as quasi-diplomatic institutions. They are associated with the trade; their presidents are usually distinguished people in some trade or another; and, therefore, the operations of these quasi-institutional bodies, the Chambers of Commerce to which I have referred, are complementary to the work of the Embassies and the trade organisations. Therefore, I would submit that were the Government to invest (if that is the right word) in these Chambers of Commerce in America at the moment, that would give them a very good return. I strongly support what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, in urging the Government to assist these Chambers of Commerce in their valuable contribution to British trade.

My Lords, it is in some ways rather sad that this debate, which is of very considerable importance, should have come at this time of night. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hacking for having raised it and I am only sad that a number of people who would have been able to speak with great authority on this subject have been prevented from being present by the lateness of the hour and the difficulty of knowing exactly when the debate would start. My noble friend Lord Redmayne, like me, was informed firmly yesterday by what is known as the "normal channels" that the debate would take place between 6 o'clock and 8 o'clock. I rushed back from a hospital in Winchester to be here in time. He had to leave just after 8 o'clock as he had another appointment. This is the way, as your Lordships know, that affairs are often conducted. It is a pity because my noble friend Lord Redmayne was until very recently chairman of the North American Advisory Group of the British Overseas Trade Board and he has had a great deal of experience of dealing with American business affairs in the most practical manner possible. He asked me whether I would indicate that had he been able to be here tonight he would have been a witness to the very strong support of both industrial and commercial firms in this country by the British-American Chambers of Commerce and, for that matter, by the British-Canadian Trade Association also.

My Lords, as you know, I was at one time, for my sins, President of the Board of Trade, an office which, sadly, has disappeared into a much less important Secretary of Stateship. At that time, I had a certain amount to do with these types of operation. During the time that I was Secretary of State, the British Overseas Trade Board came into being to replace the BNEC which had existed up to that moment. I suppose to some extent I have to admit parenthood of this child—if one can admit parenthood when, so far as I know, no woman was obviously involved.

All I can say, having watched the progress of the British Overseas Trade Board since that date, is that I have to admit that I am ashamed of the child for which I was at least partly responsible. The reason for that is that when it was born, or when it was procreated in my day, it was expected to have complete control over the money it was assigned, and the chairman of that organisation was supposed to argue with the Treasury as to what amount of money it should have. Neither of these things has happened. No chairman has argued with the Treasury about the amount of money that is needed for the very important operation of promoting British exports, and no chairman has had control over the money that he has been allocated. The Treasury have, since the day the Board was created, argued in detail about whether or not they should spend any given amount of money.

My noble friend Lord Newall indicated —and I am sure that the noble Baroness in her reply will tell us whether or not he was right—that the amount of money which has been suggested for the two American Chambers of Commerce in Los Angeles and San Francisco is of the order of 14,000 dollars a year. £7,000 my Lords! A good deal less than half the salary of a very low grade civil servant in this country. And how many civil servants are the British Overseas Trade Board employing? The picture is really totally deplorable when one thinks that British-American trade is not just a very important part of our balance of payments, but America are easily the biggest trading partners that we have at the moment.

If we expect—and I think we should— that the British-American councils in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York are going to do an important job of work for our traders who go over there, we have to do two things: we have to give them stability; we must not say to them: "You may have 6,000 dollars one year and 2,000 dollars another year". My noble friend suggested that we should pay the salary of their chief executive officer. If that is to be effective—and I do not disagree with that as an idea—I reckon we are talking—and I am out of touch now by three or four years with costs in America—in terms something nearer 100,000 dollars for each Chamber. I still would not think that was money irresponsibly spent.

I happen to have travelled most of the world and have talked with a large number of Consuls, High Commissions and Embassies. As one moves around the world, there are two problems which continually come upon one's mind if one happens, as I did, to have had some experience of business as well as being a politician. First—and my noble friend mentioned it—is if one is dealing with an official Government body, they are unable to give any preference or favour between one, two or three firms who may be all competing for business at the same time. It is often perfectly clear to the Embassies or High Commissioners concerned that only one, or possibly two, of the firms concerned have the slightest chance whatever of completing the task at the right price on time. But they are obviously not allowed to say so. This is not so with a Chamber of Commerce, because they can introduce them to the right people and say: "We know these people, and they can do the job". So that is a very great advantage, and officials clearly have extreme difficulty in finding a way round.

Secondly, in the old days when I was a good deal younger, Consuls and Consuls-General in most of the important places in the world were local people who had lived there for 40 or 50 years and knew everything that happened in the area. Today our Consuls and Consuls-General are lucky if they are left in a place for three or four years, and they are very lucky if they have any knowledge whatever of what really goes on behind the scenes, and if they have made a few friends before being moved somewhere else. This, to my mind, is a very important distinction between the Chambers of Commerce which are continuing and our Consuls and Consuls-General who, for perfectly good reasons, cannot do that.

The last thing, or the last but one thing I want to say, is this: If the Government seriously believe, and if the British Overseas Trade Board seriously believe, that they want the Americans to believe that we regard British-American trade to be important, then for the British Overseas Trade Board to deny the sort of sums that are being asked for—14, 20, 30, 40: the noble Baroness will no doubt tell us—if they believe we are saying, "No" to these sort of numbers, why should any American businessman think that the British Government care one hoot about British-American trade? Those of us who have been involved in trade for a great many years know how important it is; and it is high time that the Government and the British Overseas Trade Board showed that they know how important it is by not being so totally petty over what are, in effect, very tiny sums of money.

My Lords, because of the lateness of the hour I rise with some diffidence, but I assure you that I shall be brief because I have no recent detailed knowledge of this problem and any knowledge that I have is confined to Canada rather than the United States. But I do want to lend my strong support to the general thesis advanced by my noble friend Lord Hacking.

Years ago, it was said that Ambassadors used to refuse to have any contact with commerce. Thank Heavens! those days are past. Today, I like to think that the Diplomatic Service is highly skilled, of high quality and does a superb job in a number of ways. It is certainly excellent in general economic intelligence and other things of that kind. The noble Lord, Lord Glenkinglas, has just made the point that continuity is a major factor in maintaining contacts in business relations. This is lacking in the Service as it is today, and I often think that perhaps too much emphasis is put on the diplomats and not enough emphasis is laid upon business interests.

When I first joined the Service and served in Canada, the Trade Commissioner Service was entirely distinct from diplomacy. One of the best and wisest of our Trade Commissioners, then based in Montreal, which was far from the diplomatic establishment (and he thought that was right) was told during the war years that he would have to move to Ottawa and possibly have to share a building with the High Commission. He was absolutely emphatic that if he was required to do that it was essential that he had a back-door which bore no relationship to the High Commission, so that his business friends could go in and not be tarred with the diplomatic brush. That, no doubt, is a totally out-of-date philosophy, but it represents a substantial point which is of relevance to the general matter that we are discussing this evening.

In my time as High Commissioner in Ottawa, we had the fullest co-operation with a whole variety of bodies, some of which have now passed on. There were the Dollar Export Council, the Canadian and British Manufacturers' Association, the trade centres, and so on, and I can say from very definite experience that, however bad a job I did, I could not possibly have begun to do it on the business side without powerful assistance from all those commercial organisations.

I therefore want to lend my very strong support to the general thesis that, at a time when our exports are so vital, we cannot afford to neglect any opportunity of increasing them, and that we should look to the business interests both in the countries concerned and at home to support our case.

My Lords, is it too outlandish to ask that the Government consider abolishing or at least reducing the commercial Consuls and aides in America which my noble friend Lord Newall said are not very useful to potential British salesmen and ploughing the money saved into the more efficient Chambers of Commerce? This would at least help to refine the extra cash problem.

My Lords, I feel somewhat like the Consul of the noble Lord, Lord Glenkinglas, who has not been around very long and who has not made many friends tonight. But I have listened to the debate tonight with very great interest, and I should like at the outset to assure noble Lords that the Department of Trade and the British Overseas Trade Board, which directs its export promotion programme, value very highly the contribution which British Chambers of Commerce overseas made to the promotion of United Kingdom exports. There are very close working relationships between overseas Chambers and Her Majesty's diplomatic posts, and the links are constantly being strengthened.

Without having rather more notice than I have had tonight, I should not like to make any reply to the noble Lord, Lord Rankeillour, as to whether we should dispose of the consular trading posts and plough the money into the American Chambers of Commerce. Responsibility for providing export services now, at home and overseas, rests, however, on the official machine of government, which, through the Department of Trade and Her Majesty's diplomatic posts overseas, provides a comprehensive range of services which is very well used and is appreciated by industry.

The Government recognise that overseas Chambers may wish to offer their members and others services either similar or additional to those offered by posts. In these circumstances, we believe it is right that independent bodies such as Chambers should be prepared to finance them through membership subscriptions and charges. Chambers of Commerce and similar bodies overseas should, therefore, in the Government's view be able to sustain their activities independent of official support, and many of the 43 known to be in existence have throughout been able to do so.

The British Overseas Trade Board is prepared to examine sympathetically requests from overseas trade organisations, either on a pump-priming basis when first setting up. or during periods of temporary financial difficulty or to fund special and approved projects. Assistance is normally given if the Board has confidence in the organisation's ability to achieve financial independence or a return to viability. Assistance is not, of course, given towards the cost of activities which duplicate work done by the official services. The Government's policy towards Chambers has been generously and flexibly interpreted, and provides financial assistance to overseas Chambers on an exceptional and a short-term basis. But your Lordships will also recognise the need to maintain a firm but fair attitude to requests for Government money. I accept and recognise the importance of trade with the USA, as with other countries, but the Government consider that this is a sensible approach to the question of assisting overseas trade organisations, and it is consistent with the policy which we have adopted towards trade associations in this country.

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. I do not expect her to answer my question tonight, but perhaps she could find out the answer and let me have it later. Would the noble Baroness consider what other countries, which have perhaps an even less important connection, are spending on their equivalent operations? What worries me desperately is that we expect the Americans and the British over there to pay for the whole thing. No other country does; they are all subsidised by their home Governments.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. As he will understand, I cannot give him exact figures tonight. However, I will check up on them and then write to the noble Lord to let him know what the position is, so far as we know. Since the inception of the British Overseas Trade Board in 1972, from time to time it has given very generous help to 20 overseas organisations. In the current financial year, so far we have indicated grants in support of eight, including the British-American Chambers of Commerce in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Both of these Chambers have been in receipt of generous assistance from Her Majesty's Government since the early 1960s, but in accordance wih the Government's policy, the British Overseas Trade Board, since its inception in 1972, has asked these Chambers to make determined efforts to achieve self-sufficiency as soon as possible, and we have given them a very generous period in which to achieve this.

The New York Chamber, which received assistance up to 1976, is to be commended on achieving financial independence, and we understand that there is a very strong disposition among its directors to maintain that position. The Chamber is gaining in membership, and it seems to be becoming a very lively and effective body. The Chambers in Los Angeles and San Francisco are similarly demonstrating a determination to continue their activities and are trying to do so without continuing assistance from Her Majesty's Government. Los Angeles and San Francisco have been established long enough now to be able to decide whether they are or are not viable organisations. We shall help any Chamber through a bad patch if it is clear that in the long run they will be able to stand on their own feet. Our objective is to help a body to meet the occasional temporary need, up to a limited sum, if that body looks as though it has an effective life ahead.

I cannot go all the way with the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, but I can give him an assurance that we would help and that we shall help, as we did in Iran, if business suddenly grows and if local business and commercial interests want to form a Chamber. We would help if there were sudden financial difficulties for a short period and if help was needed to adjust to new circumstances. The British Overseas Trade Board has worked, and continues to work, very closely with us on our present policy, and it supports and endorses our attitude. I was asked certain questions about finance and the kind of assistance that we have given. From 1972 to 1977, the New York Chamber was in receipt of £111,034. Since 1977, they have been able to stand on their own feet. Los Angeles, from 1972 until, we estimate, 1979, will have received £58,579. San Francisco will have——

My Lords, I apologise for interrupting the noble Baroness, but I should be most grateful if she could break down those figures. There were certain special circumstances which called for certain special payments. The concern, as I presented it and as the noble Baroness will remember, is that it is annual support.

Yes, my Lords, I accept that there is concern. On the question of the New York Chamber of Commerce, for example, there was the sum of £40,219 in 1975–76, which included a grant of about £37,500 in respect of a loss which they had incurred on a lease. These figures have been broken down over the years, and they are now, in accordance with our policy, a decreasing figure each year. However, over the pericd from 1972 until the end of the year 1978–79, we shall have given to these three Chambers the sum of £218,094. As I have said, we are still willing to help them out over temporary difficulties, but we feel that they have now been going long enough and they ought to be viable and ought to be able in normal circumstances to stand on their own feet.

I am grateful, as I am sure other noble Lords are—and I regret that there are not more in the House—to the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, for giving us the opportunity to air this subject. It has been an important debate and we have had the opportunity of sharing his undoubted expertise in this field. I envy him his intimate knowledge of the Chambers and how they work. For my part I will certainly bring to the notice of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State what has been said in this House tonight, so that he is aware of the views of the Members of this House who are closely associated with the British-American Chambers of Commerce. But I must ask your Lordships to accept that the British-American Chambers of Commerce have received substantial financial support from Her Majesty's Government over a very long period of years, and now accept that the continuation of their services depends on the willingness of their members and United Kingdom companies and other trade organisations to contribute adequately to their finances.

The boards of directors have accepted this and we are told that they are anxious to ensure that they can continue without further subsidy. I hope that all noble Lords will—as I am sure they will—use their influence to encourage exporters in this country to give full support to the British Chambers overseas, but it is not the policy of the Government to hand out the annual grants or to pay for the cost of the Directors-General of any of these organisations. Government policy is that there must be a decrease in grant over the years and that the Chambers should be made to be viable and to stand on their own feet. If business and commerce demand these services, then business and commerce will have to pay for them.

My Lords, just before the noble Baroness sits down I should like to ask a second indulgence. Before she came to the Chamber today she was not able to know the detailed argument that I was going to present to her, or indeed any of the arguments of my noble friends. It would be of great assistance to me—and I speak only on behalf of myself—if the noble Baroness could write to me and answer the particular points that I raised, and particularly the point, for reasons that I urged upon your Lordships, that these Chambers of Commerce, in their operations in the United States of America in their special assistance of British trade, are not commercial units and can never, in all sensible terms, be so considered and be judged thus, in the way in which Her Majesty's Government erroneously continues to judge them.

My Lords, I did say that I would bring all the views on this matter to the notice of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, and I will certainly undertake to write to the noble Lord on the points that he has raised and to other noble Lords who have taken part in the debate, so that they may know the official replies to it.