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

My Lords, output per person employed rose in volume terms by 1·9 per cent. between the last quarter of 1980 and the first quarter of 1981.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. As my Question is the first on the Order Paper today, I should like to ask my noble friend and the Government whether they would not agree that, in the light of the magic of yesterday when we and hundreds of millions of people witnessed the moving scene of two young people, the Prince and Princess of Wales, dedicating their lives to the service of their country, our problems would be lightened immeasurably if all of us everywhere—I include myself—whatever opinions we may hold, could rise above self and think only of our country?

My Lords, I of course agree with my noble friend, but I am afraid that I cannot confirm that the activities of the people to whom my noble friend referred are included in the statistics which I gave.

My Lords, can the noble Lord tell us how productivity is measured—whether patriotically, per unit of labour employed or per unit of capital employed?

My Lords, the figure that I gave was calculated in terms of output per person employed, although other measures are sometimes used, like, for example, output per operative hour.

My Lords, in view of the noble Lord's statement that output per worker has increased, are the Government going to take an early opportunity of praising the British workers for their enterprise and devotion?

My Lords, I think that the figure that I mentioned speaks for itself, but I would certainly confirm the view offered by the noble Lord.

My Lords, if it is per operative, then artists, craftsmen and such people as those will obviously have the minimum productivity. Is that really realistic?

My Lords, as I have said, the figure to which I referred in the original Answer was calculated in terms of output per person employed, and, of course, the statistics are calculated only by reference to those whose output can be properly measured.

My Lords, is it not a fact also that output as a percentage of the gross national product is down and not up?

Yes, my Lords.

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

My Lords, a number of research projects are under way with the aim of assessing the effectiveness of community policing. While it is too early to draw any firm conclusions, there are, I understand, indications that community policing schemes may have the effect of increasing the flow of information between the public and the police about criminal activity, facilitating co-operation between the police and other agencies within the community and improving relationships between the police and the public. The extension of community policing schemes is a matter for the operational judgment of individual chief officers. They are, I know, determined to take whatever measures may be appropriate to maintain and strengthen links with all sections of the community.

My Lords, while thanking my noble friend the Minister for that reply, I should like to ask him, first, when is the research likely to be published and known? Secondly, would he not agree that almost inevitably community police—that is, the policemen on the beat—are likely to have knowledge of and a relaionship with the people in their area which is far better than that of any other police? Thirdly, I wonder whether my noble friend is able to say anything about the Berlin scheme, the Berlin police having copied the English police in their system of community policing and now being said to have improved on it? Is the Minister able to comment on that?

My Lords, as regards the question of when the current research will be published, I point out that there are four different pieces of research of which I have some details, and another two possible further projects, and I think that on those I ought to write to my noble friend, which I shall do. Secondly, I entirely agree with the view which my noble friend has expressed that those who are policing in this way are likely to have more knowledge of their local area and therefore to be more effective in their policing. Of course, the factor common to all community policing schemes is to have enough policemen. In that respect the substantial increase in the total strength of the police service over the last two years has been very important. I should like to study what my noble friend has said about the project in Berlin, which I know has some aspects which are of importance to us in this country.

My Lords, has not the experience of community policing, introduced by the splendid Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall, already shown provably that improvement in the various ways that he has introduced there cannot only improve relations between the public and the police, but can actually reduce the incidence of crime?

My Lords, there is little firm evidence about the benefits of community policing, but we all know that what the noble and learned Lord says is true. What the Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall and other chief constables have found is that, among other things, there is a major task in this area of persuading people and local organisations that they are responsible, with the police, for the maintenance of law and order.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that his Answer appeared to reveal that the Home Office was reluctant about following up this research? The problem is very urgent and a great deal is known about it. Can he not confirm that the tradition in this country, going back to the earliest times, is that the people themselves were very largely responsible for policing?

My Lords, I hope that no reluctance has been shown by my replies. All the pieces of research, which were the basis of the Question tabled by my noble friend Lady Faithfull, are already being undertaken either by the Home Office Research Unit or at the behest of the Home Office. On the second point which my noble friend Lord Inglewood has made, this is exactly what I tried to say at the end of my reply to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones.

My Lords, will the Government encourage all chief constables to have crime prevention panels? I was somewhat astonished to find that Greater London does not have a crime prevention panel.

My Lords, we are in touch with chief constables about the importance of crime prevention panels. I shall certainly take into account what the noble Baroness has said in this respect.

My Lords, having been one of the Members who went to Hyde Park for the fireworks display, may I say that the policing there and the whole attitude was absolutely magnificent? I think that they should be given every credit for what they have done in the last two days.

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend and I shall draw my noble friend's words to the attention of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

My Lords, while considering community policing, may I ask whether the noble Lord will make comparisons between community policing, which is taking place in the large urban areas—and I speak particularly of Handsworth in the city of Birmingham—where there are serious difficulties, and that which is taking place in areas such as Devon and Cornwall? Will the noble Lord accept that one of the real problems with community policing is that normally there need to be mature policemen on a community police basis, because the younger members are still learning the areas in which they are operating?

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes a crucial point. At a time when I suppose that the percentage of the police force taken nationally is younger than it has ever been, there is a very real difficulty about getting the more mature men and women actually on the beat. However, I know that chief constables have this very much in mind and do their best to try to take some action in this particular respect.

My Lords, will my noble friend agree that the reason for this was that the pay scales came out of alignment, and that now the pay scales for police have improved, the average age of the policeman on the beat should gradually increase?

My Lords, that is right, but we have a problem at the moment, and the noble Baroness quite correctly identified the problem.

My Lords, I think that we should move on to the next Question.

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

My Lords, I am afraid that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport could obtain this information from the large number of undertakings involved only at disproportionate expense.

My Lords, I am extremely sorry, but I could not hear a word that my noble friend said. However, whatever he did say, is my noble friend aware that I have reliable information that there are indeed many vacancies for bus conductors and bus drivers? Does it not surprise him that this should be so in times of high unemployment? Is he aware that, despite good pay, people are unwilling to take such jobs, which involve them in weekend work and which thus prevent them from taking part in local club life?

My Lords, bus hours are, indeed, a deterrent to recruitment, and given shifts—work varying from day-to-day, evenings, early mornings and weekends—many people find this disruptive of family life. I should be happy to study any information about this which my noble friend Lady Trumpington possesses, but I can only quote from a picture painted by bus undertakings themselves; for example, the recently published annual report of a national bus company—an operator in the North-West—says:

"The year saw an end to staff shortages in most areas and a low level of labour turnover".

My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether he is aware that a simple phone call to the National Bus Company revealed two hours ago that there are no vacancies whatever for conductors in the three subsidiaries—that is, Cumberland, Ribble, and Crosville Merseyside area—of the National Bus Company. What few vacancies there are for drivers are not being filled, partly because of promotion possibilities for conductors and partly because they want to avoid the possibility of redundancies due to drop in services. If there are vacancies in other undertakings in the North-West, would the Minister agree that there seems to be a basis for considering why the National Bus Company has no vacancies whereas other undertakings may? May it have something to do with unsocial broken hours?

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for answering this Question so well at his own expense.

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

My Lords, an order prohibiting the holding of public processions may be made only when serious public disorder is otherwise unavoidable. In the Metropolitan Police District, this is a matter for the judgment at the time of the Commissioner of Police. Neither he nor my right honourable friend the Home Secretary wishes to sec further disorder on our streets. Equally, neither wishes people's enjoyment to be curtailed unnecessarily. I very much hope that if the Notting Hill Carnival does take place it will be a peaceful and happy event.

My Lords, while I thank the noble Lord for his Answer, may I ask, would he not agree that, following on Toxteth, Moss-Side and all the other disturbances we have had, and given the fact that the record of the Notting Hill Carnival is extremely mixed, and given the fact also that the Anti-Nazi League and the National Front both propose to participate in the carnival, widespread public disorder is virtually inevitable and that therefore a ban should be imposed?

My Lords, may I first of all say that I fully appreciate that inconvenience can be caused to people living locally when an event such as the carnival, at which there are large crowds takes place. But, having said that, really it is too soon for the Commissioner accurately to assess the prospects for this year's carnival, although I can say to the House that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has in hand detailed plans for the maintenance of public order.

My Lords, is not the noble Lord perhaps a little surprised to receive this Question after London has witnessed probably the largest and best attended procession that the world has ever seen, conducted with perfect peace because there was perfect co-operation between the organisers and the police? Cannot he encourage the organisers in Notting Hill to get together with the police wholeheartedly to make this another splendid show of which London can be proud?

My Lords, I think the noble Lord is absolutely right. I think that the only thing that I ought to add is that habitually there have been two organising agencies for the carnival, which has always made the organisation perhaps a little more complicated than it otherwise would have been. None the less, I am sure that the organisers, whoever they are, should heed what the noble Lord has said in his question.

My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether he is aware that the Answer he has given to this Question will not only please all those of us who have had the benefit of being at carnivals in the West Indies, and indeed Notting Hill, but also all the people within our islands who express their joy once a year at carnival time? I am sure that they will have enormous happiness from the Answer he has given.

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. I can understand why the noble Marquess asks the Question, because large gatherings of people can create difficulty for people living near, but I really think that the evidence of the last two days has shown that huge gatherings of people, provided relations between the police and the public are good, can be held in this country in a happy and secure manner.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord to consider that the Royal Wedding and the Notting Hill carnival are two completely different things? May I also observe that people who put the two together are really living in Cloud Cuckoo-land?

My Lords, I do not think any of your Lordships, or the Government, are putting the two together, but I think we can all learn from what has happened in the last 48 hours, including those who will be organising carnivals and other things for the rest of this year.

My Lords, would not the Minister agree that the carnival committee of Notting Hill has done its utmost to prevent violence on these occasions, and with great success over the last two years, in co-operation with the police? Will the Minister seek, in view of the coming occasion, to get the greatest co-operation between the police authorities and the carnival committee to prevent violence on this occasion?

My Lords, we shall certainly take into account the question of the noble Lord, and so, I know, will the organisers and the Metropolitan Police.

My Lords, dinner will be available today at the usual time. The Report stage of the Education Bill will be adjourned at approximately 6 p.m. The debate on the BBC External Services will then take place.

My Lords, I beg to move that this House do concur with the orders made by the Commons, set out in their Message of Monday last, on the Lloyd's Bill.

A few days ago I moved two Motions to allow Private Bills which are at present in this House to continue their progress beyond the end of the Session, and this is a similar Motion coming to us from another place, to enable the Lloyd's Bill to continue its progress beyond the end of this Session. I beg to move.

rose to move, That the Fourth Report from the Select Committee be agreed to.

rose to move from the Select Committee be agreed to.

moved Amendment No. 1:

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Banks, is right to say that we debated at length a similar amendment tabled by himself and the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, in Committee. I have studied this further amendment carefully and I can see that he has made alterations to his original amendment, no doubt to meet some of the objections that I raised when we debated this matter before.

The amendment would have the effect of requiring LEAs to place every child with a statement in an ordinary school unless the child had such severe needs that its education there could not be achieved satisfactorily or was incompatible with the provision of efficient education for other children in the school. There are difficulties with that because if we take the proposition to the extreme, every child with special needs could be educated on the premises of an ordinary school, if local education authorities had unlimited resources from which to provide individual support services. However, if that meant educating the child in a class of one, it could hardly be called satisfactory provision. It would certainly not be consistent with the principle of association with other children which is set out in subsection (7) of this clause.

I do not think there is any difference in intention between the Government's proposals and this amendment. We are all concerned to safeguard the child's interests and to take account of his parents' wishes. We are all concerned that children should attend ordinary schools wherever practicable and suitable and that no child should be forced to attend a special school unnecessarily, and we believe the Bill achieves that as it stands.

I have studied very carefully what noble Lords said in Committee about a similar amendment and, as the House will know, I have been willing to consider and accept amendments which will improve the Bill. I must say, however, that having considered this amendment and the arguments the noble Lord, Lord Banks, put forward, I cannot sec a convincing case for making a change. This amendment is not backed by a corresponding duty on LEAs to provide the supplementary aids and services in support of the child with a statement. Its effect therefore would be to put LEAs under a duty to educate these children in an ordinary school even if they did not have the money to provide the supplementary aids and services. As I said in Committee, the Government's statement of principle about integration in Clause 2 is, we believe, realistically and properly drafted. Some noble Lords may not like the reference to "the efficient use of resources", a term used in the 1980 Act, but no Government of whatever complexion would surrender their duty to the taxpayer and ratepayer to see that scarce resources are wisely used. The integration of children with severe and complex special educational needs into ordinary schools will continue, and in the Bill the Government have made it clear that it is to the ordinary school that LEAs must look first when considering the placement of a child with a statement. However, the pace of integration will necessarily be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

I believe that this amendment is unrealistic in the absence of a requirement that a child's special educational needs must be met. Because, as I have indicated, there is no difference between the intention behind the Government's proposals and that behind Lord Banks's, I hope he will accept that this amendment should be withdrawn.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, for the care with which she has approached this amendment. I listened with great interest to what she had to say. The major point of difference between those of us who support the amendment and the noble Baroness, Lady Young, as she indicated at the conclusion of her remarks, is the use of the phrase, "the efficient use of resources". It is, of course, in the current context that we are particularly anxious about that phrase. But we have left in the phrase:

"efficient education for the children with whom he will be educated'',

and I should have thought that that was a sufficient safeguard of general efficiency. We know that it is the Government's intention to carry through the integration programme without the use of additional resources. We know what the noble Baroness has said about falling rolls and the redeployment of money as a consequence, and we understand that position, but we are still not convinced that no extra resources will be needed.

We are afraid that the reference to "the efficient use of resources" could be an excuse for inaction. After all, when we were discussing the Disabled Persons (No. 2) Bill we saw how the wording of the planning legislation, by the use of the words "practical and reasonable", provided an excuse for inaction in the application of the provisions dealing with access. We would not want a repetition of that. It is extremely important to get the beginning of this Bill right. However, the noble Baroness put forward some other criticisms of this amendment and I would certainly like to consider what she has said. In the circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 2:

My Lords, I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady David, as to the need to monitor the progress of this Bill when it becomes an Act and what happens year by year. Furthermore, I am sure it is very important that everyone should monitor its progress in the same way. If the Act is monitored differently as between the north and the south, or as between the east and the west, we shall not see a true picture of what is happening. However, I question the noble Baroness's proposal to bring this matter before Parliament. If every Bill that we passed called for a report to be brought before Parliament we might find ourselves in some difficulty. I support very much the monitoring of this Bill when it becomes an Act, and I am very grateful to my noble friend the Minister for having seen my point of view on this question and for giving me an assurance that it is in her mind and that of her department that it should be monitored, but I cannot agree with the noble Baroness, Lady David, when she says that it should come before Parliament.

My Lords, I too should like to add a few brief words in support of this amendment. We have all said that there is a great deal of worry about monitoring. It is interesting that Professor Ed Martin, who was responsible for the United States' Education of all Handicapped Children Act 1975, said at a conference on special educational needs in Southampton a few weeks ago that some resistance had been encountered after the first year or two of that Act, which had not been anticipated. They had spent so much time talking beforehand that they had rather neglected "selling" the Act afterwards. I believe this amendment would help us to see how things progress. The noble Baroness the Minister said that she was willing to consider any amendments which would improve this Bill, and I am sure that this amendment would do that.

My Lords, I want to associate myself with the remarks which have been made by the noble Baroness, Lady David, because when I read in the Official Report the reply which the noble Baroness, Lady Young, gave to me in the last debate I was not very happy at her statement that,

"We have every intention of ensuring that future statistics will reflect the new, less simple view of handicaps".

She went on to say that the Government agreed with Warnock to that effect. What concerns me is this. If the only statistics which are going to be kept relate to those children with severe needs—those children about whom local authorities have made statements—how shall we know about all the others, perhaps the majority, who will be integrated into ordinary school numbers? Such children will comprise the largest percentage of those requiring special education, but they will not be designated as the most severe cases. I use the word "severe" in the way that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, used it in her reply to me. Surely if there are to be collected only the types of figures that we have heard about, the local authority will already have those figures simply because it has had to make a statement. The figures will be readily available.

The Bill is concerned with integration into the ordinary system, and so I believe it is important for us to know how successful is the integration. This is the main theme of the Bill. We must monitor the integration to see how successful it is, to see whether it is successful and is giving the best advantages to the children concerned, or whether it is merely a "paper" integration without all the services and resources being given to the children. It could easily become that kind of integration if we are not careful. In view of my great interest in the partially sighted and the blind, I am in particular concerned that there shall be proper monitoring of the integration; otherwise the children will not receive the services, aids and resources.

Even if the Government do not want a report, they should be able to supply statistics when Members ask for them; otherwise we have no idea of how the legislation to which we are party is progressing. I say with the greatest kindness to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that the Department of the Environment collects all kinds of statistics from local authorities. Members can ask all kinds of questions. They can ask, for instance, about how many council houses have been sold, and Ministers can quite easily give the statistics. It is not difficult for a local authority to keep statistics, and we are asking that the statistics should cover not only severe cases but also those involving children who are to be integrated into the ordinary school system.

I speak against the amendment, though I believe that probably it reaches for the ideal. I feel that it might have the effect of delaying implementation of the Bill. I listened with great sympathy to what the noble Baroness has just said about the need to have statistics in order to see whether implementation is working out well, but surely it is bound to be a question of evolution when it comes to getting it to work properly. In the end if an amendment of this kind will hold up the passing of the Bill, surely it is more important and more essential to get the framework of the Bill on to the statute book. We have heard from my noble friend Lady Faithfull that my noble friend the Minister is ready to give something on this very point. Therefore I oppose the amendment, and I shall be very interested to hear what the Minister has to tell us on this particular point.

I think that the conflict of opinion which has been expressed from various quarters of the House is possibly somewhat unreal. It seems to me that in this particular respect, where in the past the duties of society in relation to the disabled and the mentally handicapped have not been as extensive as might have been wished, statistics are absolutely essential. On the other hand, I have some sympathy with the point of view expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, in that I feel that the words "each year" might strike some apprehension in the hearts of those who are of the opinion which has been generally expressed throughout the House. I wonder whether the difficulty could not be resolved by providing in the amendment for a report every other year or at some other precise time. If that were done, the amendment would certainly have my wholehearted support. To produce each year the kind of analytical, statistical survey which would be involved might impose some difficulties, but I cannot believe that it would be unreasonable to demand not only that the matter should be monitored by the officials concerned, but that at stated periods we in both Houses of Parliament should have an opportunity to discuss it.

My Lords, I basically support the amendment and I agree with the noble Lord who has just spoken that it would probably be more sensible to have a report every two or three years. The Secretary of State, whoever he or she was, would still have to make the report. If the noble Baroness would agree to alter the amendment so as to provide for a report every two or three years, it would have my full support.

My Lords, I find it rather astonishing that we seem to be making such heavy weather of the question of this particular report. Two days ago I collected from the Printed Paper Office two reports from other Government departments. Those reports are published yearly and are only two of a very large number of reports. They referred in particular to the activities of the Home Office, provided detailed statistical information about prisons and prisoners, and contained various sections and subsections. Those of us who have been involved in education know that Her Majesty's Inspectors are always under an obligation to present reports. The mere fact that a report is presented to Parliament does not mean that anything is done about it, unless we demand a debate on it. I am very astonished that such heavy weather is being made of this one particular Bill, since surely all Acts of Parliament contain some machinery for the annual presentation of reports.

My Lords, in answering the various important speeches that have been made on the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady David, it may be helpful if I explain how we see the Bill being implemented. Once its provisions—and in some cases the transitional provisions—have been brought into force local education authorities will be under a duty to implement them.

The process of implementing the provisions of the Bill will be continuous. It will be one that will involve the whole of the education service in a local education authority, from the teacher in the classroom, acting day to day, to formal meetings of the education committee. It will involve review and reappraisal—and it is for that reason that it is not a process which can be charted and accounted for on a particular date annually in a way which would be truly useful without a very great administrative exercise by LEAs and officials of the Department of Education, and by the local authority inspectorate and Her Majesty's Inspectors in a way that could not be justified. The noble Baroness, Lady David, in the course of her remarks, said that she felt it would not involve extra resources; but, of course, the time of people is a very expensive resource, and the time devoted to a very detailed exercise is time that is taken away from other matters. That, I think, is a point to which my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox drew attention.

There was another point that was raised, again both by the noble Baroness, Lady David, and the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth), about how we would pass on instances of good practice. I would suggest that this will be done in the way that good practice is passed on throughout the education service. It will be partly by reports published by the inspectorate (a point to which the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, drew attention); it will be passed on by conferences and professional meetings of teachers; it will be passed on by conferences among teachers, local politicians and national politicians, and so on. All those processes will continue.

But as to the sort of point that the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, was making—she asked about the detailed information—the department publishes an annual report. I picked up the one for 1980, which is the most recent publication—it has just been published—and, of course, it gives statistics as to the numbers of pupils broken down in some detail. It is not, I think, in the detail which the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, was asking for, because she was asking, "How do we know, when children with special educational needs are integrated into schools, whether it is a proper integration or", as I think she described it, "a paper integration?" I suspect that no one is going to admit that they have a paper integration anywhere, so this would be something it would be difficult to collect. But if, as we assume and believe—and I believe—there will be pupils who will go in and out of ordinary schools, or who may have special educational needs for a time and then come out, how far you can collect these detailed statistics is going to be quite a difficult exercise; but it is one that we can certainly look at in the light of this Bill.

If, as I say, your Lordships read the latest report from the department, one of the paragraphs draws attention, not only to the White Paper that was coming but also the Government's intentions on the Bill that is currently before the House. Clearly, in any annual report there would have to be a reference, I believe, to how this Bill would affect special education, because there is a part in the report devoted to special education, and it could include at any rate some of the things which have been referred to in this debate this afternoon. It is in that sense that my department will be monitoring the workings of the Act, as I explained to my noble friend Lady Faithfull when we discussed this matter earlier on; and as I have already indicated, the Secretary of State is required to make an annual report to Parliament. Should the Secretary of State be in a position to announce that, for example, additional resources would be available to local education authorities which were intended for the purposes of special educational provision, such information would of course be announced in Parliament as appropriate.

I therefore think that the answer to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, was making is that the opportunities to discuss special education could arise, either in the circumstances that I have described, where there might be more money going for this purpose; or on the publication of the annual report of the DES; or, of course, in your Lordships' House on one of the many opportunities which we have to debate matters of this kind. I would suggest, if I may say so, that either one of the Wednesday Short Debates or a long debate—because this is clearly a matter to which your Lordships attach great importance—would be an opportunity to discuss the Act, perhaps following on the basis of the DES annual report, and would be an opportunity to talk about good practice—and I am very pleased to see my noble friend Lord Swinton here, who, of course, gave us some very good examples of LEA good practice when he spoke on Second Reading. That would be an opportunity to draw attention to any of these matters, and I think we all agree that your Lordships' House is an excellent forum for discussion and dissemination of matters of this kind.

I therefore hope that, with this explanation, the House will feel that this amendment is unnecessary, bearing in mind that we do have the regular DES report, which is similar to reports of the kind to which the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, referred. I will certainly consider very carefully the points that have been made, and whether there are other statistics that should go into the report and that we should be collecting. I think this is important; and I hope that we shall take the opportunity provided particularly by your Lordships' House to discuss this matter perhaps in a year or two years' time, when we have experience of the Bill. I think this would be a very useful debate to have, and one which would be very valuable for the professionals working in the field, who would like to feel that there are so many people who take a great interest in the work that they do. With those remarks, I hope very much that the noble Baroness, Lady David, will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

My Lords, I am a little discouraged by the Minister's reply because I do not feel that we are perhaps going to have all the information that we should like as to how this Act is working. I take the point about the DES annual report, but I wonder how many of us have in fact held it in our hands. I do not think it is unusual for reports to be laid before Parliament. The noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, gave us examples; and I think the Disabled Persons (No. 2) Bill has in it a clause, Clause 7, which is very similar to the one that I have suggested.

If I may say so to the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, I do not think that if this amendment were accepted it would delay the implementation of the Bill, and certainly not its passing. However, I shall not press the amendment. I shall follow with interest, of course, any reports that come out, and I am quite sure that we shall take the opportunity to debate what is happening in the country so far as this Act is concerned within a year or so. I ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 3:

After Clause 2, insert the following new clause:

I have listened with great care to what the noble Baroness has said. I recognise that, as in the case of the first amendment, she has looked at the debate which we had at Committee stage and has altered her amendment in order to take account of some of the points of difficulty that were raised on that occasion.

I feel bound to say to the noble Baroness that we are talking about the Education Bill—which is intended, in the words of the Long Title, "to make provision with respect to children with special educational needs" —and not with the Bill which is now the Disabled Persons Act, which has a slightly different purpose.

Let us consider what benefit this clause is intended to bring to children with physical or sensory disabilities. It follows the principle that children with special educational needs should be educated in ordinary schools, subject to the safeguards set out in Clause 2. It then places a duty on local education authorities to review and keep under review the arrangements which they make to ensure that such a child is not obliged to attend a special school solely because the ordinary schools of the area are inaccessible to or inconvenient for the child as a result of his physical or sensory disability.

It may be that the ordinary schools are inconvenient: an old building may be acoustically quite unsuitable for a child with defective hearing, and not capable of being made suitable, in spite of the advice given in the DES Design Note No. 25. It will not be possible to provide a deaf child with the special educational provision he requires in such a school. There is immediately a conflict between the provision in this new clause and the requirements of Clause 2.

The approach of the Bill is to say, "a child with certain disabilities has special educational needs; local education authorities must see that special educational provision is made to meet those needs. So long as the provision to suit the child can be made in an ordinary school, he should be educated there". This amendment looks at the buildings, not at the child's needs. Its approach is incompatible with that of the Bill, and on that ground alone it is unacceptable.

There are other reasons why the amendment is unacceptable. Subsection (2) requires LEAs to submit details of their arrangements to the Secretary of State for approval. This would import into the Bill a degree of control over detail which is inconsistent with the relationship between central Government and local authorities. It would add unnecessarily to the work of central and local administration, and could divert effort from the real tasks of providing for children.

Subsection (3) goes well beyond the scope of the Bill. It would require local education authorities to look not only at the ordinary schools which a child with special needs might attend, but at any school which a person with a sensory or physical disability might wish to work in, or visit as a parent or casual visitor. That would go further than the Act which this House has recently passed. That Act imposed some responsibilities in respect of new educational buildings: this amendment would extend to existing buildings.

I have spoken at length on this because I would not wish the noble Baroness to think for one moment that I had not carefully considered her amendment and what she is trying to do. We all have every sympathy with the aims of the noble Baroness and others who wish to see us going further in access provisions. I hope that they will accept that this is not the right approach or the right Bill in which to do this and will accept my assurances on the kind of things which in principle the noble Baroness wants, that the children with special educational needs will have the best education we can provide for them in the right circumstances.

My Lords, I should like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Leeds education authority for their good facilities for handicapped children. They have special schools for those who need them and a splendid ordinary comprehensive school with access to all departments for disabled children who have to use a wheelchair or crutches or have other difficulties. This school is called Holt Park. It also has a community library included in the complex. If Leeds can do this, why cannot other educational authorities? As Leeds have had these facilities for some time, perhaps before the Third Reading the Government will report on how successful they are proving. This amendment seems very reasonable and I should like to support it.

My Lords, I think that the Minister was a little hard on this amendment. All it asks is that it shall be the duty of every LEA to review and keep under review the arrangements made by them. It is not trying to force the pace too fast. The Minister said that it did not look at the child's needs. I thought it looked at the need of the child with a physical disability to be with other children of similar abilities and to be with many other children, which we all agree is the right thing and is also good for the other children in the school. I wonder whether she thinks that the third subsection is going beyond the scope of the Bill and whether she would think of accepting subsections (1) and (2) if the third one was taken away and this amendment was brought back at Third Reading.

My Lords, as we are on Report, I speak by leave of the House for the second time. There is no doubt at all that subsection (3) is beyond the scope of the Bill and therefore could not be accepted. I am sorry if I did not make myself quite clear. I am bound to say that I do not think the principle in subsection (1) of this new clause is the same and is strictly compatible with the proposals within the Bill as a whole. Perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, although I was delighted to hear of the very good example she quoted—and I hope we shall hear of many good examples—will not mind if I say it is quite different to have one school where this is possible rather than the implication contained in this amendment, of the duty upon every local authority which would ensure that no child with a physical or sensory disability is obliged to attend a special school solely on account of buildings or other premises of ordinary schools. That, of course, has a much wider context than having one school which is suitable.

I am quite certain that we should all like, in an ideal world, to see that all schools are suitably equipped. I believe that this will come about in the passage of time, first, as regards new buildings and then, as resources allow, in other buildings. Of course, there are many examples of schools which are accessible to pupils in wheelchairs, to those who are deaf or who have some sensory disability. I do not believe this process would necessarily be speeded up; but what is important is that the Bill requires local education authorities to look at the special needs of the children, and that is more than access to buildings. It covers all their needs. In some cases it may be access to buildings but equally, in other cases, it may be much more than that. That is the point of principle I was trying to make.

My Lords, I was interested to hear the way the noble Baroness dismissed the phrase "under review" as not committing central Government or other authorities to something that could be quite onerous in certain circumstances. "Under review", in the terms of a legal statute, means something. It means that the matter really has to be kept under review, and I should have thought this was less likely to become onerous under certain circumstances: for instance, if a specific time limit of two or three years were given. But to leave it "under review" in that open-ended way in certain circumstances, with the reaction of certain people, could become very onerous indeed. I should have thought that in terms of good language in the statute, this was much too wide to be accepted in this Bill.

My Lords, I apologise for intervening because, in order to answer my question, the noble Baroness will have to ask for leave of the House once more. She said, I think, on two occasions that subsection (3) of the proposed amendment was outside the scope of the Bill and therefore was unacceptable. However, I am sure she will agree with me that this House, unlike another place, has the right to change the Long Title of the Bill and therefore there is nothing unacceptable, so far as the traditions of this House are concerned, in accepting the amendment as drafted, on that particular aspect of the matter at least.

My Lords, I think I am going to be most unpopular here with the "mobile Front Bench", but I should like to support what my noble friend the Minister has said. I find myself in great difficulty over supporting this amendment and I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy, in this connection, though I have already informed her by telephone that my views may not be exactly like hers. I find great trouble over the words "within the area", which occur about three times. Nothing states what "the area" is. My noble kinswoman, my wife, made a very good point about Leeds. We hear a great deal about the problems of inner city areas, but Leeds has a great bonus, that of distance. It is very easy for Leeds to put up one enormous comprehensive school with a lot of lifts and things, and they can move children from the city area there if they meet that problem. But what happens in an area such as my own, where perhaps there is a secondary school which is incapable of taking a child in a wheelchair and the nearest secondary school is 35 miles away, and that may well be unsuitable also? It seems to me that "an area" can be anything. It can be the catchment area of a school; it can be, as my wife said to me on the way down, a local health area; or it might even be a local authority area. It could mean almost anything. I think there is a very real problem here, in that in a rural area you cannot involve every single school; and of course we are thinking here not only of secondary schools, but of primary schools. The catchment area of a primary school may cover a large distance. I see a great many problems in this, and I must admit that I have not been convinced by the "mobile Front Bench" to give my support to this amendment on this occasion.

My Lords, by leave of the House, perhaps I could just say in answer to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, that of course I understand it is perfectly possible for this House to amend the Long Title of the Bill but, as he will see, the Long Title of the Bill refers to making provision in respect of children with special educational needs, with which the whole Bill is concerned. If he looks at this amendment, new Clause 3(1)(c) refers to,

"people with physical or sensory disabilities in the local community in the vicinity of an ordinary school …".

I think he will agree that this is outside the Long Title of the Bill, and it would be very difficult to amend the Long Title to take in this particular group. If one starts to do that, one has to look at all sorts of other people who might be affected by it, and I do not think it would be an appropriate place to include this proposal. Important though this is, it was the sort of matter which was discussed under the Disabled Persons Act, now on the statute book. There it was appropriately discussed; but not under this Bill.

My Lords, if I may, I should like first to thank the Minister for the number of replies she has made. I am sorry she has had to go into the matter so often. I should like also to express my gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady David, for her comments. I do not think the amendment asks much, but it does look at the child's special educational needs. I realise it is singling out one particular aspect, but I had tried to prove that it is really an aspect which is singled out in its essence anyway. I had hoped that the Minister would find herself able to accept this amendment, perhaps without subsection (3), which I agree goes wider than the scope of the Bill. I had hoped very much that she would perhaps offer to meet me some way. However, I shall read very carefully indeed what she has said in Hansard, and I may even try to come back with yet another modification of this amendment on Third Reading. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 4:

After Clause 3, insert the following new clause:

My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Alexander of Potterhill, is not in his place today, but I understand that it was difficult for him to come. He was, after all, a director of education and I was a director of social services. Some years ago the then Minister of Health, Sir Keith Joseph, ordered a development plan for the social services and every single local authority throughout England had to get out such a plan. It took the most enormous amount of time and money. But all those plans are now in the waste-paper basket, having never been used because of the change of circumstances.

I know that the noble Lord, Lord Banks, dealt with the question of the change of circumstances, but at the beginning those development plans were an absolute millstone around my neck because at that time we could have done more if we had known about the change of circumstances. Therefore, it works against the wellbeing of our departments and what we do. Equally, if circumstances are changing the other way, then one has wasted a great deal of the staff's time, money and expertise. We should be much more flexible in meeting circumstances as they arise. For that reason I think that the noble Lord, Lord Alexander, as a chief education officer, and I would oppose this amendment, bearing in mind that under Clause 2(4),

" It shall be the duty of every local education authority to keep under review the arrangements made by them for special educational provision ".

My Lords, on the merits of the amendment I do not have any comment to make. But on the reasons advanced by the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, I am astonished that she could suggest that no one should have any development plans because they are ultimately not carried out by Governments. Unfortunately, Governments change in the meantime and, surely, development plans are an opportunity which we all have to take when we are in administration.

Many times I have been engaged in this type of exercise, and it is possible to discover that you have been working on something for so long that you have not realised how inefficient you have become in certain particulars. Only a fully implemented search into whether your methods are good, or whether they could be better, can demonstrate this, but you will never do this unless you are directed to do it. The great thing about a development plan is that you have to sit down, look rather cold-bloodedly at your own exercise and decide how best it should be implemented. I suggest to the noble Baroness that this is certainly no reason for saying that a five-year development plan is a bad idea.

My Lords, by leave of the House, may I reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips? Every year the chief officer of a local authority has to get out the estimates for the following year. At the time when he gets out the estimates the work for the future year is reviewed and the work of the past year also is reviewed. So it is almost automatic that one's work is reviewed, and my committee demanded a plan for the following year.

My Lords, I simply do not understand how local authorities will get on without having some kind of plan on which to work. The noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, referred to the noble Lord, Lord Alexander, as a director of education. I have spoken within the last few days to a director of education in our area, to ask him what he thought about this. He is actually in post now. He said that his area was making a plan, which would be a 10-year plan, and he did not see how they could possibly manage without it because they have to think about how they will use their buildings.

I was interested to see a press notice from the Department of Education and Science, which went out on 16th June, asking LEAs to review their plans on surplus school places. If I may quote just one or two extracts, the notice said:

"Authorities are asked to review their plans to rationalise their school stock and to inform the DES by the end of the year of action they propose to take up to 1986 "—

that is, five years from now, and five years is what is mentioned in the amendment. It went on:

"It is estimated that by 1986 there will be over 3 million surplus primary and secondary school places in England and Wales—even after allowing for space standards to be brought up to those of a well designed new school".

It also said:

"recognising that taking permanent places out of use often requires some building work in order to expand or improve the schools which receive pupils from closed schools".

Here is an admirable opportunity to add units to existing schools when little building has to go on. Then there is a part headed "Urgent Review" which reads:

"The circular asks those LEAs who have not yet done so to review urgently how they might rationalise their primary and secondary school stock in the light of staffing and curricular needs of their school population.

" LEAs have been asked to send the following information to the DES".

There is a lot about pupil numbers, but it also asks for similar information about special schools.

I should have thought that, if local authorities had to do all that, it would not be difficult, within that same exercise, to make a plan showing how they will deal with their special schools and with the adding of units to other schools; in fact, showing their general plans for integration. I should like strongly to support the amendment.

My Lords, I, too, should like extremely briefly to support the amendment. It seems absolutely fundamental for making the Bill work. The Minister said on Second Reading, at column 979 of the Official Report—and she said it again today, when speaking to Amendment No. 1—that the Bill was evolutionary rather than revolutionary and a plan is needed to ensure that things go in the right direction at a realistic pace.

My Lords, I should have thought, with the great concern that there is at the moment for handicapped people, that the vast majority of education authorities were already making plans and revising existing plans. Therefore, this proposed new clause is probably superfluous and it could tie the hands of local education authorities by putting their possibly wider ideas into a narrow context.

My Lords, I think I am right in saying that there have been massive cuts in educational funds. This is a great danger because local authorities may cut educational facilities for handicapped people, too. Therefore, there should be a plan, because one has to be more careful with resources.

My Lords, as an old member of a local authority, I cannot understand the objection to this amendment. We have to make plans for drains, sewers, roads, housing and all kinds of aspects of our work in local authorities. We have to do that, if only so that we can budget and get our costs and priorities sorted out. I find it quite incredible that it is suggested that the message should go forth from this House that the Bill can be implemented without local authorities doing any planning. I should have thought that any concerned and good local authority would do this as a matter of course because it is the only way to work. By giving the amendment the blessing of this House we should be helping local authorities to take the idea of planning in this sphere as seriously as they take the mending of sewers.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Banks, was quite right in saying when he moved this amendment that we debated a very similar one in the Committee stage and the Committee voted upon the matter. So we are looking again at an amendment on which your Lordships have already expressed a view. One of the difficulties is that there really is a misunderstanding about what the Bill says and a misunderstanding, if I may suggest it to the noble Lord, Lord Banks, and those who have supported him, over what his amendment says. I was very grateful for the intervention of my noble friend Lady Faithfull, with her experience as a local authority officer. She made clear that when she was director of social services she had to plan, just as local education authorities will undoubtedly have to plan their provision for children with special educational needs. Nobody is going to argue against that—certainly I am not going to argue against it—on this occasion or, indeed, on any other occasion.

The amendment before the House is asking for a development plan to be reviewed as necessary and for all such development plans to be submitted to the Secretary of State for his approval. As I think noble Lords will recognise if they consider the matter, this is a very different proposition. May I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Banks, that coming from his political party which believes very much in devolution to local authorities, this is something which local authorities would not particularly welcome. If they have got to obtain the approval of the Secretary of State to amendments to their plan at regular intervals, they will find this to be a quite time-consuming business. The same, I suspect, goes for the noble Baroness, Lady David, who said that she had discussed it with a director of education. No doubt he said he was making a plan, but whether or not he and his committee would like their plan to be submitted at intervals for the approval of the Secretary of State is a different matter.

There is therefore a misunderstanding about the amendment. I believe that many of those who have spoken in support of it would not wish the Secretary of State to have these kinds of powers in this particular case. The fact is that all past experience of development plans has been that as a long-term proposition they have been a waste of time. If, as happened with development plans in the further education schemes under the 1944 Act, they are not kept up to date, they either impose a rigidity which prevents a response to changing circumstances or they become so far divorced from reality that they are ignored.

In preparation for this amendment I looked again at what was said at Second Reading, and if I may quote my noble friend Lord Swinton I was very struck by what he said on that occasion. He described a school in his local authority and said of that school:

"It started off life as what might be described as just another ESN(M) school, but it was lucky enough to come into the building programme immediately after the Warnock Report and it got very rapidly changed. It opened its doors to its first children after Easter, and it draws them from a very scattered rural area".

My noble friend went on to describe this and then he said:

"How does it differ from what noble Lords perhaps think of as a normal special school? To start with, it has a nursery unit [which] will be admitting children of two years old and upwards. That works in close co-operation with the children's unit at our local hospital. Indeed, the paediatrician in charge of that unit has given us an enormous amount of time and advice …".—[Official Report, 23/6/81; col. 1000.]

Then he goes on to describe other matters. I quote this because it is a very good example of the very best of good practice.

When the Warnock Report came out, clearly the local education authority considered it and had an opportunity to implement something because of the flexible arrangements which could be made. If they had had to review their plan and get it altered, they might not have been able to do so, time would have gone by and the opportunity for this very interesting development would have been missed. This Bill builds on the very best practice of local authorities now, something which we want to encourage.

If we ask for a review every three years, I cannot see how this can be a success. Although we all recognise that there must be proper plans, they are not the kind of plans which need to be approved or rejected or reviewed by the department. I hope that, following the Bill, local authorities will not be spending a great deal of time and money upon planning to do things and thinking about planning to do things rather than upon putting into effect those things which we wish to see in the Bill. It is for these reasons—I have gone into the matter in some detail because I recognise that the noble Lord, Lord Banks, having raised it for the second time, must feel very strongly about it—that I hope he will accept that there is no disagreement on principle between us, that we both want the Bill to proceed as effectively as possible and as quickly as possible but that his proposals might delay implementation rather than speed it on its way.

My Lords, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, recognises that the two principal objections which she put forward to the original amendment at the Committee stage have been met in this amendment, so we are not now producing something which has been voted on in this form on a prior occasion. We took notice of the criticisms which were made and amended the amendment so that the reforms required by the criticisms would be incorporated into it.

The argument today is between those who feel that we are not going to get anything done to implement this important new departure uniformly and over the whole country unless an obligation of this kind is placed upon local authorities and those who feel that an obligation of this kind would, in the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, be a millstone round the neck of those who are required to carry it out. I make no comment on the particular development plan which was a millstone round the noble Baroness's neck but I cannot see how what is required here should be a millstone for anybody, particularly when, as the noble Baroness, Lady David, and others pointed out, planning is going on already, there will inevitably be planning in each authority and if there is no planning then no advance can be made.

With regard to the criticism made by the noble Baroness, that it is undesirable that these plans should be presented to the Secretary of State for his approval, I see no reason why in the first instance, since this is a new departure of great importance, the Secretary of State should not be satisfied that all local authorities have produced such plans. It would then be up to the local authorities to amend the plans, as provided for in the amendment, as circumstances might dictate. This is a matter where there is a clear division of opinion and it would be right to test the opinion of the House. I should like to press this amendment to a Division.

moved Amendment No. 7:

Page 4, line 28, at end insert ("in the form and language known by the local education authority to be understood by the parent").

My Lords, I should like to support the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, who I think put up an excellent case for the ethnic minorities. The noble Baroness drew attention to the words "form and language known by the local education authority to be understood by the parent". I think that it is important for us to realise that many parents are completely bewildered when they have to meet officials of any description. Not all parents are equally knowledgeable or "pushy". Therefore, perhaps the approach to the assessment—if we accept what the noble Baroness says—must be in a way that the parent really understands. Here I am talking particularly of those parents in the community who want the best for their children but who are perhaps not the most vocal and not always the most intelligent group. However, they want what we all want, which is the best for their children. Therefore, the form of language must be readily understood.

I should like at this stage to compliment the noble Baroness, Lady Young, because I think she has accepted this point because in many of the new pamphlets that have gone out from the Department to the social security offices it is stated in quite clear English, readily understood by applicants who have to go there, how to use the service which is provided. I should like to join the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, in saying that perhaps that same approach could be undertaken in this Bill.

My Lords, I am sure that all noble Lords will know that local education authorities are very much aware of the need for parents who do not understand English or Welsh to be properly informed about what is happening to their child. Indeed, in principle I accept what the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, has said in speaking to the amendment, because I am sure that what she is enunciating and, indeed, what the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, is saying, are examples of the very best of good practice.

However, I am sure that both noble Baronesses if they consider the matter will realise that there is a practical problem about the amendment because of the wide range of mother tongues which can now be found in this country. The noble Baroness will, I am sure, have read some of the inspectorate's reports. She will know that there can be schools in which there can be up to 30 languages. It would, therefore, be very difficult for a local education authority to be quite sure that it could translate into the appropriate language what it was trying to say to the parents. However, what we can and do expect is that a local education authority will make every effort, particularly where it knows that there are language difficulties, to communicate with the parents.

What I think is most important is that what it is saying should be understandable to the parents. That is the important factor. In that regard local community leaders are often willing to help, particularly where there is a language barrier between the authority and the parent. I believe that very considerable efforts are being made by education authorities to communicate with non-English or Welsh-speaking parents. We support that activity. We believe that this is an area where the possible problems of communication cannot be realistically covered by legislation. it is an area for guidance.

I should like to assure the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, that in post-legislative guidance we shall certainly include a reference to this problem because we recognise that it is very important. The Bill stresses in many places the importance of bringing parents into discussions and enabling them to take part in the discussions on their children's future education, both at the time when a statement might be made and when the statement has been made and at times of reassessment. It is important that the parents should understand that. It is not something that we shall forget, but we believe that it is an area which is best left for guidance rather than primary legislation, because exactly how it will be done could well vary from authority to authority. What is important is that it should be done and done effectively. That is why we think guidance rather than primary legislation is the right way of dealing with the matter. I hope that with that assurance the noble Baroness will withdraw the amendment.

My Lords, I appreciate what the noble Minister has said and I know that she is the last person in the House to be complacent about the situation. However, it is a fact that the Warnock Committee found that the situation was not totally satisfactory, and there are references to the disabilities and serious difficulties which ethnic minority groups are suffering due to lack of understanding of language and of resources available. I do not feel that we should push that on one side and say, "Well, we hope that by sending out some guidance things will go better now". We put down the amendment because of the situation as we understand it to be at present.

However, I appreciate that the noble Baroness is well seized of the problem and I am sure that she will do her best when sending out guidance to ensure that this point is taken care of. We thought that an amendment would be an encouragement to the good authorities and perhaps also a bit of a spur to those that are not trying hard enough. However, in view of what the noble Baroness has said—and I assure her that we shall watch the situation carefully—I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

My Lords, the next amendment is Amendment No. 8. If Amendment No. 8 is carried, I cannot call Amendment No. 10.

moved Amendment No. 8:

moved, as an amendment to the amendment, Amendment No. 9:

At end insert ("and of the parent's right to see all the professional reports and other evidence on which the assessment was made.").

My Lords, I should like to give the noble Lord, Lord Renton, my fullest support. Indeed, noble Lords will observe that I have added my name to his amendment. In fact, I much prefer it to my own. Not only is his simpler, but it is also much stronger, because it goes all the way in demanding total access to all information. The noble Lord has already referred to the United States of America where, under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act 1974, which is Public Law 93 to 380, all parents have the right to inspect and review all official records, files and data directly related to their children. I should like to stress that these specifically include psychological tests, health data, family background information and verified reports of serious and recurrent behaviour patterns. So the extreme cases, which are the argument against the case for total access in this country, are not excluded there. I think that there is much truth in the view that once one allows any exceptions, the case is lost. The only satisfactory answer is total freedom of access to any information that a parent requests.

My Lords, I, too, should like briefly to support this amendment because I think that somewhere in this Bill parents must have the right to see documents, otherwise I do not understand how they can possibly be of the real help that they should be to the professionals who apparently (although I do not believe that it is always true) would wish to withhold this information.

I would almost go as far as to say that the parent is of prime importance and, having seen the assessment, would almost become a part of that assessment because, having seen what the professionals said, the parents' comments would be of such vast importance that they could not possibly be ignored. As it is at present written in the Bill—and I appreciate the long amendment that the noble Baroness has tabled—there is a tremendous amount of consultation. We must acknowledge that that is a very good thing and a tremendous improvement. But I do not think that it is quite good enough. I think that there must be a real sight—whatever harm it may do on a few occasions—of the documents as they might pass between professional and professional, as—and this has already been said—is carried out with pretty good success in the United States of America. I think that that is absolutely vital.

There is another area which I should like to mention, which I do not think I mentioned during the Committee stage. It is well known to medical people—certainly to psychiatrists and psychologists—that to leave an element of doubt in anyone's mind is an awful thing to do. You often hear of people who are frightened that they have such and such a disease and a great weight is lifted off their shoulders when they are told even that they have it, and certainly if they do not. I think that, if this weight of professional papers—I do not mean "weight" in any large way, for there may be a very small amount of papers—is not to be on view, there will be a perpetual doubt left in the minds of the parents. I think that must be absolutely wrong; wrong from the parent's point of view and wrong from the point of view of the relationship that there should be between the parent and the authority. I most strongly support this amendment for those reasons.

My Lords, I would support this amendment. I can see that there are two points of view as to whether parents should have any say in this or not, but if, as I strongly believe, they should, I cannot see that it could possibly be fairly done without an amendment of this sort, by which they are allowed to see what goes on. I can see no objection to that. I support the amendment very strongly.

My Lords, I feel that all of us must have been extremely moved by the remarks of my noble friend Lord Renton; obviously he feels most sincerely and deeply on this matter. But I noted that he has a very strong belief in the good practice of doctors, their willingness to be frank, whether or not there is this imposition on the revelations they have to make. I wonder how wise it is for the parents to be enabled to see these documents if this means that the reduction of the frankness in the confidential reports is going to be of disservice to the children themselves. I should be extremely interested to know what my noble friend the Minister has to say on that aspect.

My Lords, I should like to follow what the noble Baroness has just said. While I go along with feeling that the parents ought to have the information, I think we have to recognise that it is not just the general practitioner or the hospital consultant; this is going to be a multi-discipline team making this assessment, and one would feel that they might not always come down 100 per cent. together. I suppose it is like being a member of Her Majesty's Government's Cabinet; you do not agree with all the decisions all of the time, but you go along with them because you are a member of a collective team.

What worries me a little is that it might militate even against the child being assessed. That would cause me considerable anxiety, because they might feel that this is an over-anxious parent who will be, can I say quite sympathetically?, clutching at every straw. I know how difficult this situation is. It might mean that the multi-discipline group may feel that they will be doing the child no good at all by giving that information, if they are thinking of the benefit of the child and taking the child as being of paramount importance. So while I have sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Renton, is saying, if we remember that this is a multi-discipline group and not one particular person, I think we should be able to have greater faith in the findings of the report.

My Lords, what decision is to be made in this case? One can imagine all sorts of anomalies and embarrassments, but surely we should think twice before we take steps to put on the statute book any prescription which undermines the prime responsibility of the parents and their right to know.

My Lords, very briefly, as one who supported this principle at an earlier stage, I would merely say how strongly I support the noble Lord, Lord Renton, on this amendment. There is just one point I should like to make, and I make it as a doctor who has had some involvement in the preparations and presentation of reports of this kind. I accept that with total disclosure of this kind, which I recommend, there is the risk occasionally of a parent being disturbed or distressed by seeing the report. I accept that. But if that is the case, I say so be it. I believe that is the price we must pay for avoiding, not the risk but the absolute certainty, of very severe damage should there be a general feeling that somehow these reports are clouded in secrecy and cannot be seen. I think that is where the balance lies, and it is for that reason that I support the noble Lord, Lord Renton.

My Lords, to have records which are kept secret from parents who have undertaken the responsibility, with all its extra trials and stresses, of bringing up a handicapped child cannot be useful for good relationships between professional people and parents. For too long there have been, sadly, barriers which have sometimes built up between professionals and parents, a "them" and "us" situation. The parents should be part of the team, and this has been mentioned. When a multidiscipline team is involved, I feel more strongly that the parents should be part of this team, and that this will help the child.

Some time ago, I attended a conference organised by doctors at which medical records were discussed, and it was shown how badly some records are kept, others being kept very well. Perhaps the fact that parents were given the right to see these records would bring the standards up. Some doctors felt that patients should have the right to keep their own records. Personally, knowing how some professionals lose records, I think that the records should be duplicated, one for the parents and one for the professional.

So much responsibility over the years has been taken away from parents that they shrug their shoulders and say, "The State will provide". Having read the Committee stage proceedings on this argument, I see that many argued against open access to records on the basis that what was in them might upset the parents. If you have a handicapped child, you have had to get over that in the initial shock and dismay. It is no good hiding anything. You have to pick up the bits and learn to do the best for the child and the whole family. Every bit of information is necessary. Living with disability or handicap needs all the co-operation and teamwork possible.

If there are cases of suspected child abuse or other difficulties, this information can be passed by professionals by other means than by writing it in the record. I feel very strongly that the parents should be part of the multi-discipline team, and therefore support the amendment.

My Lords, I should like to support the main amendment, No. 8, and oppose my noble friend Lord Renton's amendment. We went into this in great detail at Committee stage, and if I remember rightly, despite the noble Baroness's offer to look at it, the amendment was pressed to a Division and was lost at that stage.

My Lords, if my noble friend would allow me, it is quite true that there was a Division on a somewhat similar amendment, but not on this amendment, which indeed was not possible at that stage. Indeed, I voted with the Government at that stage, because of the undertaking which my noble friend had given. Now that I have seen the result of her undertaking, as I said, I am far from satisfied.

Yes, my Lords, but I think we must look at Amendment No. 15 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, because, as I see it, the undertaking was that under Clause 7 she would bring in this amendment that parents could have meetings. I personally am absolutely convinced that, rather than seeing all the professional documents, a meeting with the local authority officials concerned is of far greater value.

My Lords, there is one other point that has not been made in relation to this, and that is the strength of feeling of the voluntary organisations and the associations. We have to remember that those associations and organisations are made up very much of the parents of children who have these special educational needs. We should bear that in mind when considering how we vote on this amendment, which I should like to support.

; My Lords, I should like to support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Renton. Parents would be able to help far more if they had these reports. You can get a far better idea by reading a report than by just listening to the professionals. If one has in any way been associated with anybody who has a child with any kind of disability, as has been said already, one knows that all the help possible is needed for those parents. I am sure that the majority of parents would be helped in this way. Therefore, I fully support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Renton.

My Lords, can the Minister give me some information? The last line of Amendment No. 8 says that the local education authority shall give "their reasons for making" their assessment. If this amendment is carried, it will mean that they will not have to rewrite what the professional reports have stated, otherwise somebody will have to rewrite the reports. We know from experience in this House what happens when people get involved in trying to write an amendment, let alone writing something that becomes part of the law. I therefore support this amendment. I hope that the Minister will realise that most people listening to this debate who have had any experience will find it agreeable if they find a little compassion on the other side of the House.

My Lords, the House will not be surprised to hear that I view with some regret that my noble friend Lord Renton has put down this amendment before the House today. It is true that we did not debate this amendment at the Committee stage, but this amendment is concerned with the whole issue of confidentiality, and there are a number of other amendments before the House on this same principle. We debated that principle at Committee stage and the Committee divided upon it. Because I gave an undertaking that the Government would bring forward an amendment, the Committee did not support the amendment before it.

As my noble friend Lord Digby has rightly said, Amendment No. 15 is the Government's response to this issue, which has been gone into in very considerable detail. This matter was discussed at considerable length in another place, and the issue of confidentiality was discussed and voted upon in your Lordships' House at Committee. My noble friend Lord Renton has already indicated in moving this amendment that he discussed it with a number of doctors, who said to him that if all of their reports were disclosed to parents it could well be in the case of some doctors that important information would not be put into reports. He said he believed that this would only be in a minority of cases. I hope that he would be right about that, because at the end of the day what we all want to do is what is in the best interests of the child.

My guess is—although I accept that this is not something that one can prove, and I recognise the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, who has referred to this, as have other noble Lords—that if this amendment were to be carried it could well be that medical reports would not be such effective documents as they are now because the doctor would know that they were being shown to other people, and probably he would, or might, therefore not put so much into the report as he would otherwise do. That actually defeats the object of the exercise, because the parent still will not know what it was that the doctor really thought.

The Government Amendment No. 15 says instead—because we recognise that parents are anxious to have as much information as possible—that parents would have the opportunity to discuss their statement with one or other of the professionals who have been responsible for it. May I now explain my amendment because I think it would help the debate at this stage? We have drafted an amendment in very precise detail and at some length in order to cover fully what we want to achieve.

Noble Lords will note that local education authorities in serving the draft statement upon parents will also be required to explain their rights to them. Where a parent disagrees with any part of the proposed statement he will have the right within 15 days from service of the draft statement to make representations to the LEA and to request a meeting with an LEA officer. The purpose of such a meeting would be to allow for constructive general discussion about the content of the draft statement.

The meeting may be sufficient to clarify certain issues for the parent, or it will enable the LEA to ascertain the nature of parental concern about any aspects of the assessment. Where the parent disagrees with any part of the assessment of his child, he may within 15 days of his meeting with the LEA officer require the LEA to arrange a further meeting, or meetings, at which to discuss the aspects of the assessment which concern him. The LEA will be under a duty to arrange such meetings as they consider will enable the parent to discuss his concern either with one or more of the professionals who gave their advice on those aspects of the assessment which concern the parent, or with the person, or persons, who in the LEA's judgment can appropriately discuss these matters. It will be necessary for the LEA to exercise judgment in the arrangements of meetings if they are properly to understand the parents' needs and to decide how best to serve their interests.

This exercise of judgment cannot be interpreted as giving the LEAs the discretion to ignore parents' wishes. It is important however that the LEA has some flexibility to arrange a meeting with an appropriate person other than the professional who gave the relevant advice. This is because circumstances may arise where the actual professional concerned is unobtainable, or for some other unavoidable reason—for example, because he is no longer in the LEA's employ or that of the health authority.

The LEA's duty is such that the parent must be enabled to go back to the source of assessment, or as close to the source as possible, and as necessary, to enable effective and competent discussion, which may be of a technical and detailed nature, to take place. I am sure that the House will have noted that where a meeting is arranged with the parent he will have 15 days from the date fixed for the meeting to make representations, or further representations. If more than one meeting has been arranged the period of 15 days will start from the date fixed for the last of these meetings. I hope that those noble Lords who were concerned that 15 days was not sufficient for the making of representations on the statement will agree that parents' interests are fully served under the terms of this amendment.

I suggest that this provides comprehensive rights for parents and allows for their full involvement in the whole process of assessment, and that is why I commend this amendment to your Lordships as introducing a realistic provision into the Bill which I venture to suggest is a great improvement. It will be of particular benefit to the concerned parent and will, I believe, be far better than the approach of giving parents access to professional reports.

The noble Lord, Lord Renton, asked me what advice I have had on that subject. He is right, I have had advice, which indicates that it could well be that some parents getting a professional report would find it difficult to understand what it meant. We can all think of examples of that. There would be some parents who, as the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, said, could be upset by reading the report.

Those are matters about which we could argue at great length, but I do not believe, serious and important though they are, that they are the most important. I believe the most important argument is that if parents and others had the right of direct access to all professional reports, the nature of the professional reports would change, and that would not necessarily be in the best interests of the child.

The noble Baroness, Lady Darcy, said that American experience showed that it worked very well indeed. It is always very difficult to make international comparisons because their law on education is not precisely the same as ours. I must tell her that I am advised that under the Education for All Handicapped Children Act 1975, which is Public Law 94 to 142, parents have a right access to educational records only, and a medical report is not a required part of assessment in the United States. We are not therefore comparing like with like.

The noble Lord, Lord Bernstein, who intervened at the end of the debate, seemed to believe that we should have to rewrite my Amendment No. 8. Probably he has not had the advantage of taking part in all the deliberations on the Bill, otherwise he would know that I was right in saying that my Amendment No.8 was primarily a drafting amendment which makes it absolutely clear that when a LEA decides to make an assessment under Clause 5, it will notify the child's parents in writing of its decision and the reasons for making it. What my noble friend Lord Renton is asking is that the parents shall have the complete professional reports which lay behind the statement, and therefore it is a quite separate issue. What is right is that the parents should have the statement and the reasons for it; that they should have the opportunity, if they are dissatisfied with the statement, to talk to one of the professionals about it, and that is what my Amendment No. 15 does.

I understand very well the strength of feeling in the House and, as the noble Baroness, Lady David, said, the strength of feeling on the matter coming from voluntary organisations, because of course I have received letters on the subject. It is a matter to which we in the department have given a very great deal of thought because we want to try to meet the serious concern that is felt and to do what is in the best interests of the children. We believe the arrangements we are suggesting will give parents the information they need. There is, after all, nothing to prevent a professional giving all this information to parents. He can do so and many will do so, and many could be encouraged to do so. But that is a very different proposition from saying that every professional must give his reports to parents when required. Talk about them, yes, and talk about their concerns; but to oblige them would, I think, lead us into other difficulties that perhaps we do not immediately foresee.

I hope for those reasons that my noble friend Lord Renton will feel that we have met his concerns. I am bound to tell him that if he decides to press his amendment I shall urge my noble friends to vote against it, because I do not believe that what he is suggesting is necessarily in the best interests of the children concerned; and I hope the House will recognise that the Government have gone as far as they can in my amendment in trying to meet the very real concerns of parents.

My Lords, I wish to thank those who have supported my amendment to the amendment of my noble friend Lady Young, and I acknowledge the doubts expressed by two noble Baronesses. It would be a great pity if the decision on this matter depended on a misunderstanding on the part of my noble friend Lady Young and myself of each other's views. She really said that the matter was decided in Committee because the Government won on an amendment which had been moved to Clause 5 by the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy. I voted with the Government on that occasion, not because I thought the matter was being concluded as a matter of principle but because my noble friend Lady Young had given an undertaking to consider the matter further. That being so, I did not think it was right for an amendment to be pressed against her at that stage.

My noble friend made it clear that her undertaking related to Clause 7 rather than to Clause 5. However, she moved an amendment to Clause 5; and in that debate we had said it was important to get this question of right of access correct at the assessment stage, with which Clause 5 deals, as well as at the statement and appeals stage, with which Clause 7 deals. When, later, we came to Clause 7, I shall be moving another amendment to deal with the situation which arises then. As I say, I hope we shall not base our decision on this amendment on a misunderstanding of that kind.

I concede to my noble friend, who obviously has had better advice than I have, a point in regard to the experience in the United States. In view of what she said, I accept that that does not apply to medical reports but to educational reports only, and therefore—assuming the Minister is right, and I have no reason to doubt it—I must withdraw my argument on that part of the case. But the rest of my noble friend's case depends on two things. The first is the advice she has received, which is, naturally, advice given as a result of consultations with the medical profession. I thought the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, himself a doctor, gave a good answer to that part of my noble friend's case. One can well understand the difficulties and embarrassments that could sometimes occur so far as the medical profession is concerned, and I conceded that when moving my amendment.

The other part of the Minister's case was that some parents could not take it, to paraphrase what she said, and that in such cases more harm than good might be done. Again, the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, had the answer. We should not have a feeling in regard to the provisions of the Bill that there will be a cloak of professional secrecy which prevents parents learning the truth about their own unfortunate handicapped children, and that is what we shall be voting on. I regret that I cannot withdraw my amendment, and I think it right that the House should now take a vote on the principle of confidentiality.

moved Amendment No. 12:

My Lords, do I understand the noble Baroness to say that we also are discussing here Amendment No. 15?

No, my Lords; I shall move Amendment No. 15 at the appropriate time.

moved Amendment No. 13:

Page 5, line 20, at end insert ("and the parent may appeal to the Secretary of State").

My Lords, in preparing for the discussion on the amendment, I too, reread the discussion that we had on a similar amendment at the Committee stage. The noble Baroness is quite right in saying that there are two circumstances where the right of appeal might appear to be necessary. As she quite rightly says, the first circumstance is if, after serving notice of assessment under Clause 5, the LEA decides not to proceed, and that would normally be because it has been persuaded by the representations of the parents. Therefore, it is unnecessary to think of a right of appeal for the parents in that case. I then went on to say that if the LEA, having embarked on the assessment, decides for some other reason not to continue it, the parents have the right to ask for an assessment under Clause 9. As the noble Baroness has said both in Committee and now, under Clause 9 the LEA has the opportunity to say that the request for an assessment is unreasonable.

I think that we are all right under Clause 9, because it would be very difficult for the local education authority to say that the parents' request for an assessment was unreasonable when it had itself started the proceedings for the assessment and had decided to stop it. So it could not in any sense be regarded as what lawyers might term as a vexatious appeal. I believe that if the LEA decided to break off the assessment, the parent invoked Clause 9 and asked for it to be continued and the local authority said, "No", then the parents themselves ought to write to the department to indicate their dissatisfaction, because clearly that would be a case where the parents could not be regarded as acting unreasonably. I think that the safeguard is there under Clause 9. The noble Baroness has raised an important point, and I hope she will recognise that, in the light of the way that the procedures would operate, her point would be met.

My Lords, I think I am fairly satisfied with the Minister's reply, and so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 14:

After Clause 5, insert the following new clause:

My Lords, we have had a long debate on the principle of confidentiality, so I shall confine my remarks to speaking quite precisely to this amendment which has been moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth). I should like to say at the outset that I see that the proposed new clause is an attempt to recognise some but not all of the dangers which might arise in some cases if parents were given an absolute right of access to professional reports. I think it is worth asking ourselves what in practical terms would be achieved by this clause which is not achieved by the Government's own amendment to Clause 7, which we shall debate as Amendment No. 15.

In effect the parent will obtain an interview with the professional concerned in the assessment, so there is very little difference here. However, the parent will have a right to see the reports and other items of evidence providing the professional is content that disclosure will not harm the interests of the child or of the parents. However, where professionals have under these circumstances withheld reports the parents are to be told of this fact under the new clause, and I believe that the professional would be placed in a very difficult position. Can we really envisage a system where the parent is told that a doctor has said that information and evidence about the casual factors of a child's handicap should not be passed on to the parent? If anything is likely to worry the parent, I think it is a statement like that, when the presumption of the amendment is that as a rule all information should be passed on, for under those circumstances the parent will immediately want to know precisely what that evidence is.

It is at this stage that one would have to ask oneself: why would the professional choose, under these circumstances, to withhold the evidence from the parents? It could well be, for example, that the father is in fact the child's natural father, and not simply the husband of the woman who is the mother of the child. I think it requires very little imagination to see that professionals would be placed in a very difficult situation with parents also in a difficult situation after these procedures have been undertaken, except, of course, that I think they would harbour a grudge because most parents would have the information and they did not.

There is, I think, a further objection of substance to this cause. I have not argued the case at length previously, but I think it is worth restating that very many parents would not understand a professional's report even if they had access to it. I wonder how many Members of your Lordships' House would in fact understand a detailed medical report and the associated X-rays, blood tests and other diagnostic tests on which the report would be based. Some undoubtedly would; others would not.

Finally, the new clause attempts to deal with notification to the parent of each occasion when someone handles or sees a professional's report. I entirely understand the concern underlying this part of the amendment, but here again I wonder whether we are being realistic. The doctor's report will probably have to go to other professionals in the assessment team and be handled by them and their supporting staff. It is not I hope being seriously suggested that the LEA must write to the parent every time the child's folder moves offices. I think this must be a misunderstanding of what the noble Baroness has in mind, because it would add an enormous administrative burden to the whole procedures.

But what we can do and will undertake to do is to issue guidance about confidentiality, and we shall have powers under Schedule 1 in respect of statements; but I do not think that we can write this kind of proposal on to the face of the Bill. I hope very much that the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth), will be prepared to withdraw this amendment, and that later on I shall have the support of your Lordships when I introduce the Government amendment to Clause 7.

My Lords, the Minister has I think paid more attention to subsections (3) and (5) of the amendment, and to the objections that she has to those —and I can see some grounds for her anxieties there. But I wonder whether, as to the general principle enunciated in subsections (1) and (2), and indeed (4)—because in her amendment, also, the parent can meet one of the professionals to discuss the contents of any report—she feels that her objections to the amendment that was moved in Committee by the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy, have been met in subsections (1) and (2), because it seems to me that we have gone a long way to meet the anxieties that were expressed about one or two possible items being kept back, and which were of course mentioned in the Warnock Report. I wonder whether the Minister could perhaps enlarge a little on that.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, as I hope I indicated in my earlier remarks we have given to parents the right to discuss the statement with one of the professionals involved, so to that extent subsection (4) is met. As far as subsection (1) of this new clause is concerned, I have just moved an amendment to apply the new Government provision to Clause 5 as well as to Clause 7, in order to extend its procedures; so I think that to a certain extent subsection (1) of this new clause is met.

As far as subsection (2) is concerned, that is the one I find great difficulty with because the assumption that parents would have the right of full disclosure except where the professionals said they should not have that right seems to me to make matters worse (if I may put it in those terms) for the parents who are singled out for this particular treatment. So I would find that very difficult to accept. I must say again that because I shall be moving, in Amendment No. 15, what is the Government's response to this issue of confidentiality—which I think puts much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy, wants into an amendment—I hope she will withdraw this amendment.

My Lords, I must apologise to the noble Baroness whom we are all heckling, or some of us are heckling, for returning to the main question of confidentiality. Let us suppose that one is in the position of a professional person earning a sufficient income who happens to have the misfortune of having a child who is apparently mentally handicapped and deserving in some way or other of receiving the special treatment discussed in this Bill. In such a case, if I were in this position, I should myself go to a specialist and ask him what the root of the matter was, and if he said to me, "I am not going to answer your questions on this matter", I should naturally go to someone else. It seems to me that the Government compromise admits the right of a parent to have conversations, but it does not give him the full right which, if he were in a position of sufficient income, he would certainly exercise if he were refused information of the kind that I have referred to.

My Lords, my noble friend Baroness Darcy (de Knayth) has done a valuable service for the House in tabling this amendment and moving it. It does not go so far as the amendment which I moved earlier (which was narrowly defeated by your Lordships) and this is the kind of situation where there is so little difference between the Government and those who would like a little more written into the Bill that we could very well ask my noble friend Lady Young if she would consider this between now and the next stage. There is no party issue or Government issue in this matter. It is something we want to try to get right in the interests of the parents of all concerned. I would have hoped that my noble friend would give such an undertaking because I cannot but think that it would be helpful.

My Lords, I support what my noble friend Lord Renton has said. I hope that my noble friend Lady Darcy will wait. We could have the opportunity of the long Summer Recess to do more research on this subject. It is difficult and I am very worried about Amendment No. 15 of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, where it refers to one professional involved. Handicap and disability passes many different specialities; it crosses borders. One person may be doing a great harm because he may not be able to answer all the questions which the parent wants answered. They may be medical questions which a teacher cannot answer; they may be educational questions which a medical person cannot answer. It is right across the board and, as has been said, it is multi-disciplinary. I hope that my noble friend will leave this until Third Reading.

My Lords, these amendments are about confidentiality. Together with the amendment that my noble friend Lord Renton has put down to Amendment No. 15, they are trying to go part way. In fact, they are liable to make the situation worse. If you are going to show everything, then show it. We have just decided we will not do that. It is going to create grit in the wheels of the relationships of the local authority and the parents. I believe even worse are these half measures, where they have to be told that they are not seeing a report and they say, "Why have I not seen that report?" et cetera.

My Lords, would my noble friend allow me to say that we decided it is relation to Clause 5 which deals with assessments? We have not decided the issue of confidentiality in relation to Clause 7 or even begun to discuss it.

My Lords, by leave of the House, to answer the point which has been made by the noble Lord, Lord Renton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, I recognise that the amendment of Lady Darcy is one in which she has tried to meet some of the Government's concerns. I would be wrong not to say to the House that the Government have considered this matter and have gone through a long consultative period over this amendment, No. 15, which we have put down to meet the anxieties of the House and the other place about the issue of confidentiality. I cannot at this stage undertake to consider the amendment of the noble Baroness. If she presses it, I advise my noble friends to vote against it.

My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend the Minister. She said that she felt that this amendment met some but not all the objections that were raised at Committee. It overcomes nearly all of them. She says that with regard to subsection (3) the parents would know the name of the professional who refused information. But they would still be given the right to discuss this information with the professsional. If one does not reveal the name, we are not gaining anything, because they will all hide behind the cloak of anonymity and refuse to reveal information. She said that parents often would not understand the reports, anyway; but I would point out that parents do not have to see the reports. They only see them if they ask and want to see them. She also felt it was not necessary to have anything in the Bill about controlling the circulation of reports. There are genuine worries about this.

There is an interesting article by Michael Davis, who is an educational psychologist, which appears in the British Psychological Society's bulletin for March of this year. It states that it was common practice, for example, for education officers to receive copies of psychological reports especially when educational placement was being recommended although they were not competent to comment upon professional matters contained in the report. Therefore, they should be in no position to scrutinise them. Mr. Davis wrote that the basic principle should surely be that issues of concern to parents and children should be brought to the attention of only those who will be directly involved in helping them with these issues.

Therefore, it is important. I appreciate that the Government have tried very hard with their amendment to Clause 7. I do not feel that it goes far enough, and I feel that I have compromised as much as I can with this amendment. I am sorry that the noble Baroness cannot offer to meet and discuss this issue to try and come to a compromise a little farther in my direction. I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Renton, that there is very little difference between the Government's amendment and this amendment. Ultimately, probably the noble Lord, Lord Digby, is right. There is no half-way satisfactory solution; we shall have to go all-out for total access. We shall have to go on trying. We have Lord Renton's amendment to come, and we still have Third Reading. Reluctantly, but with hope for the future I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

My Lords, this is probably an appropriate moment to move on to the next business. I beg to move that further consideration on Report be now adjourned.

rose to move, That this House calls upon Her Majesty's Government to reconsider the instructions given by them to the BBC to impose cuts in its external and transcription services.

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Byers, I shall be brief. I should like to suggest, with all deference, that noble Lords are also as brief as possible, as the debate has attracted a great many speakers, which I think is a tribute to its importance. I know, also, that the House is looking forward to the speech of the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary, whose participation in this debate I greatly welcome, and also to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway.

The Government claim that they are giving just over£100 million to the BBC for a capital investment programme. In fact, over half this amount relates to expenditure after March 1985, which will fall in the next Parliament. Actually, the amount to which the Government are committing themselves, and, indeed, to which the Government are able to commit themselves, is under half this sum—about £49½ million—which does little more than restore in part, and two years late, the capital expenditure which the present Government so rashly cut in 1979, and in circumstances that cannot even achieve the original plan.

The BBC is being required, in return, to make a contribution of some £2½ million a year towards this restoration, which the Government have told the corporation it must find by cutting the External Services. The seven foreign language services selected for the chopper have been chosen not by the BBC, but by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and, it appears, chosen in a rather haphazard way, for reasons that are not clear. The small total saving seems out of all proportion to the great amount of harm that will be done to Britain's image overseas.

There appears to be no consistent view and no long-term consideration in the Government's policy. The Turkish service was to have been cut in 1979, if plans had gone ahead, yet a year later the Government went to the BBC and asked them to increase the service by 50 per cent. due to the changed political situation in Turkey. Who can say that the political situation in some of the countries where it is proposed to cut may not also change during the next few years?

Then there is the question of audibility over which the Government have made much play. In fact, closing down the seven language services will do little to improve audibility. It is not true that the BBC cannot be heard abroad; indeed, it has a larger listening audience than any other external service in the world. The problem is one of audibility in several years' time. It is certain that other national broadcasting organisations will not allow the BBC to dispose of the frequencies vacated as the corporation might wish. The likely result will be that the frequencies will be lost to the BBC, which could mean increased interference from foreign sources over which we shall have no control.

In France and Belgium alone the BBC has a total audience of 2¼ million people, with over 500,000 adults listening regularly. Doubt has been cast on these figures, but I can confirm that the source is a leading French market research organisation with quite a large sample of over 4,000. Listeners tune into the BBC to hear broadcasts for three hours a day about Britain, about Anglo-French relations, about community relations and about the rest of the world as seen from London. The BBC has more listeners in France, many of them young listeners, than any other foreign station. The FCO consider, I understand, that the French listeners should, in future, tune into the BBC's World Service in English.

We tend to think that all foreigners understand English and, if they do not, then they should. I believe it is true to say, and it is certainly my experience, that apart from certain diplomatic, academic and leading business sections of the community, the majority of French people do not understand conversational English any more than the majority of people in this country are at home in conversational French. These facts are borne out by a recent survey in an interesting article in a Sunday newspaper last Sunday. The BBC's French service is thus the only mass medium available throughout France to put over the British viewpoint.

This is most important to balance some of the critical comments about law and order in Britain, for example, and the situation in Northern Ireland that have been apearing recently in French national newspapers. The service costs only £295,000 a year, but its influence in maintaining friendship and understanding between Britain and France must be worth every penny of this. This amount is put forward as a saving, based on scrapping the European part of the French service, but the BBC service to francophone Africa is, rightly to be allowed to continue. The two sections, of course, operate as a whole. Material designed for Europe, which is also suitable for Africa, can be broadcast to Africa at no extra cost and vice versa. Thus the French-African service will cost more in future and the real saving overall will be less in proportion.

The London Tourist Board tell me that they strongly support this French language tourist service, which gives listeners up-to-date information on the tourist calendar in Britain. The service has also been of great help in spreading the load by extending the tourist season. I may say that all those who are closely involved with fostering Franco-British relations are much concerned at the decision to cut the French vernacular programme. It seems to be at variance, indeed, with a successful meeting that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary himself had with President Mitterrand yesterday, which we welcome as a further step forward in forging closer contacts and relations with France.

The political situation in Italy, which has the largest Communist Party in Europe, is somewhat volatile, as we know. It is surely important that broadcasts from eastern Europe should be balanced by the voice of democracy, yet this is another service which is to be cut in order to save the paltry sum of £200,000. The Foreign Secretary claims, if he is reported correctly, that,

"only a few enthusiastic sleepwalkers can be listening to the BBC broadcasts in Italian".

The BBC Italian programme is heard from 2200 to 2300 hours, Italian time, and a little later in summer. These are good times for Italians, who tend to go to bed late, like other Mediterranean peoples. The last survey in Italy gave a total audience of over 1 million listeners, of whom 500,000 are regular listeners.

Turning to Spain, the BBC Spanish service transmissions are rebroadcast every day by Radio Gibraltar, which can be heard on the adjacent Spanish mainland. Unhappily, in future, only the Spanish viewpoint on Gibraltar will be heard in Spain by the great majority of Spaniards who cannot speak English. The Horn of Africa is a sensitive area which for the last 20 years has been unsettled. The Somalis rely on the radio as their one source of news, as they are a nomadic people. The BBC Somali section has a good reputation for unbiased news reporting about major events in both Africa and elsewhere. This decision will, no doubt, delight Moscow and her satellites.

In Brazil, out of a total of 115 million people, only about 4 million read the newspapers. The mass media are radio and television. The total audience of the BBC in Portuguese in the cities of Brazil alone, is about 865,000 adults of whom 180,000 are regular listeners. Very few can speak or understand English, and it is naive in the extreme for the Government to suppose that the World Service in English will be an adequate substitute when the Portuguese service is closed down.

The decision to cut these services for such a small annual saving seems to many of us, and not only to those on this side of the House, to be almost incomprehensible. It has been roundly condemned by people all over the world. We must ensure that Britain's voice continues to be heard in these countries in the vernacular in future, and we urge the Government to think again.

My Lords, first let me congratulate the two noble Lords on the shortness of their speeches and the moderate way in which the noble Lord, Lord Byers, introduced his and the moderately moderate way in which the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, introduced his.

Let me begin on a note upon which there will be no disagreement in any quarter of the House: that is, the support and admiration of all of us—and of course I include Her Majesty's Government—for the work of the External Services of the BBC. There is nobody who does not recognise the excellence of what they do. Certainly so far as I am concerned, I believe them to be an important arm of Government foreign policy. Indeed, I think we have got to look at the whole of our defence and foreign policy as one, and external broadcasting has a most important part to play in the influence that Britain can exert throughout the world. So I hope we shall not hear during this debate any suggestion that the Government do not understand this or that they do not appreciate the quality of the External Services. Dare I hope that those few sentences may shorten some of the 35 of your Lordships' speeches which otherwise may be devoted to a proposition upon which we can all agree before anybody says anything about it?

There is another proposition upon which all of us can agree: that the BBC have a remarkable capacity for organising a lobby. The tom-toms of the BBC are powerful indeed. I see in your Lordships' House, sitting on the Cross-Benches, one of the former conductors of the tom-toms, ready, I imagine, to rally to the colours once more. The number of speakers in this debate and the publicity over the Government's proposals are a tribute to the power of that lobby. No doubt much of the material in your Lordships' speeches will derive from the material which has been put out by the BBC. Of course, they are quite entitled to do this. I make no complaint about it.

Perhaps, however, I ought to point out one other fact. The External Services of the BBC are financed entirely by the Government and by the taxpayer. Though the Foreign and Commonwealth Office do not of course exercise any editorial authority over the content of the programmes, it is I think reasonable to suggest that the Foreign Office, the Government and Parliament—I repeat, and Parliament—should make decisions as to the priorities and importance of the various aspects of external broadcasting, a proposition which did not seem to find favour with the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi.

It is for us to decide, within the amount of money that the Government can afford, what the spending priorities should be. It is not for the BBC to decide how best the money we give them should be allocated between the different External Services and between current and capital expenditure. The debate this afternoon centres precisely round these questions.

I must confess that I think the documents which I have seen circulated, entitled The Threat to Broadcasting and Britain's Dwindling Voice, are not perhaps the best examples of the balanced approach which we had been led to expect. Nor by reading the documents could one perhaps have realised that more money is being devoted in real terms to the External Services than hitherto. I shall come later to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Byers.

I must tell your Lordships what the Government's priorities are with regard to external broadcasting. First, we believe that the World Service of the BBC is by far and away the most important. The English language, despite the misgivings of the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, is a worldwide language. It is becoming almost the worldwide language. More and more people are speaking it every year.

It is the World Service in English upon which the reputation of the BBC largely depends. A good many of the letters which I have received appear to think that this service is being cut. Indeed, there is a leading article in the Evening Standard this evening, which says that your Lordships should ram home, even to an obstinate Foreign Office, the profound unwisdom of cutting back the BBC's World Service. But that is precisely what we are not doing. So far from cutting it, we are going to make it possible for many more millions of people to hear it, for the second priority of the Government is to increase the audibility of all the External Services worldwide.

Dare I say it? However excellent the service may be, there is little point in it unless it can be heard. Since I consider myself to have had some experience in the last two or three years of trying to hear the BBC World Service abroad, I must tell your Lordships that I find it very difficult to do so. The reception in many parts of the world is far inferior to that of our principal competitors and much inferior to that of the Voice of America. Indeed, on occasions recently I have found it impossible to get the BBC at all and on numbers of others the reception has been so bad that listening was both difficult and fairly painful. I think therefore that we must, above all, make it possible for the World Service and the vernacular services to be heard.

It would be all too easy to take a decision which would do exactly the opposite and which would not cause the excitement which has been caused by the decision to cut some vernaculars. It would be a decision to go on as we are. Nobody much would know about; because all the vernaculars would still go on and the World Service would still go on. But that would be the wrong decision if you believe, as I believe, that there is no point whatever in broadcasting material which is imperfectly heard, or not heard at all. As the years go on, the World Service of the BBC is going to become increasingly vital, for if English is widely spoken now it is going to be the first or the second language of the free world.

We are, therefore, proposing a programme of capital expenditure, the major purpose of which is to improve audibility. The total cost over the next 10 years, at 1981 survey prices, will be just over £100 million, of which the BBC are being asked to find less than one-quarter by savings, with about half the balance being met by new Government money. The Government, following the advice of the Foreign Affairs Committee in another place, are increasing capital audibility. The only real difference is that the East Africa and Far East relay stations must start later than the committee would like. Priority must be given, alas! to a 500 per cent. increase in expenditure on the modernisation of Bush House, because there has been discovered there blue asbestos, and obviously we cannot allow that to continue.

In his very fair speech, the noble Lord, Lord Byers, called into doubt some of the figures. May I remind him that in 1979 the capital programme for the four years up to 1983–84 was £28·7 million, at 1979 survey prices? At present survey prices, the figure is £52·7 million. Even allowing for the difference of 33 per cent. or thereabouts, between the 1979 and the 1981 survey prices, the noble Lord will, I know, agree that that is a considerably larger figure.

The noble Lord said, my Lords, that the only difference between the Government and the report of the Foreign Affairs Committee was on the rate of capital expenditure and the timing. May I ask him whether that is true? What they said was that you should not cut services in order to pay for capital expenditure.

I am coming to that, my Lords. I apologise to the noble Lord—I have not finished yet.

This programme, by its very nature, will have to extend beyond the current PESC period. The Government recognise this and the need for the BBC to have confidence in the future. But I see no difference between this and the other big capital expenditure programmes which take a period of some years to finish—for example, some of the Central Electricity Generating Board's programmes—and certainly we hope that the BBC and your Lordships will be reassured that this programme will go forward. We have looked on this as a major capital programme rather than as a string of individual spending decisions over the years, and it is approved subject only to the requirement that savings be found from current expenditure.

Let me repeat once more that the real danger to the BBC, the real dwindling voice to which the BBC pamphlet refers, is the threat that it will be pushed so far down the league in terms of audibility that the hours it broadcasts and what it broadcasts become academic. As it is, we intend that it should be heard, and heard clearly, throughout the world in 33 languages including all the major languages of the world, and that it should remain, as it is now, fifth in place in terms of hours of broadcast. If we can increase those hours when we have more money, so much the better.

I come now to the vernaculars and the transcription services. I do not happen to think that it is possible for the External Services or the Foreign Office or the British Council or any of the things that I particularly care about to have an unlimited budget to do everything that they want. I believe it is the duty of the Government, as I said earlier, to assess the correct priorities.

The Government are proposing to spend more money on the External Services, but, even so, we have to look for savings if we are both to improve audibility and to accommodate the introduction of new vernaculars and increases in others which may be desirable in response to changes in the world. We need flexibility. But of course if you look for savings anywhere everyone can always think of reasons why the particular savings that you have in mind are the wrong ones.

I have looked, and shall look, at this very carefully. But first let me take the question of the transcription services. There is no question whatever of the Government seeking to end the transcription services. What we are doing is cutting the subsidies which at present involve the taxpayer in paying up to 70 per cent. of their cost. It is true that there is some educational and scientific matter, but the bulk of the transcription services is the export of music and drama and light entertainment.

I believe that these services are popular, certainly with the broadcasting stations which use them, because they pay so much less than the market rate. I think there must be a real effort on the part of the BBC to sell what they have without subsidies from the Government, particularly in the field of light entertainment. I believe that the BBC can do this, and I am quite sure that the BBC will be prepared to do it. For there is no real reason why light entertainment should be subsidised for other people by the British taxpayer. It seems to me to be a fairly low priority in terms of what we are seeking to do. A 70 per cent. subsidy on some of our other exports would certainly be pretty popular, but I doubt whether it would be justified. I am sure, too, that other organisations could help to finance these services.

As for the choice of the vernaculars, in order to allow the BBC to operate within the increased budget with which it is being provided, we have decided on those that are most suitable for cutting. I would remind your Lordships that in the last two years we have started a service in Pushtu for Afghanistan and increased services in Russian, in Farsi for Pakistan and in Turkish. Nobody seems to have noticed that or to have realised that it costs money.

There must be a continuing adjustment between the various languages in which we broadcast to take account of changing priorities and political considerations. We do not have unlimited resources and we have to behave sensibly. I confess that I have seen some fairly odd letters about our proposals among the 300 or so letters which the Foreign and Commonwealth office have received. For example, I was astonished to read that the BBC think that the Maltese service—which your Lordships may recollect has 35 minutes a week compared to the 24 hours a day of the World Service—is somehow relevant to the forthcoming Maltese election. Nor, I think, can I accept some of the audience figures which are quoted. Even if one assumes the samples to be reliable, it remains an admitted fact that the figures for "total audiences" include people who have listened only once or twice a year to the BBC.

There are other misunderstandings. For example, some thought that we were ending all Portuguese and French services, which of course we are not. Another said that the BBC was "up for grabs". I had one letter from a friend of mine who, to my astonishment (supported by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi), suggested that, if we did not broadcast to the French in French, the British tourist industry would suffer greatly.

I suggest that we really must keep a sense of proportion. I do not, for example, believe that the broadcasting of the BBC in French, Italian and Spanish is required (as some of my correspondents have said and as the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, has said) to stabilise the democratic systems in those countries. The noble Lord said that about Italy and, if I may say so, I find it rather an impertinent suggestion. How should we feel if the French Parliament thought it necessary to broadcast to us in our own language in order to bolster up our democratic institutions?

I think that on the whole we have chosen the right vernaculars, but I must confess to being rather sad about Somali—even though one of our correspondents has produced audience figures which suggest rather larger than a 100 per cent. following among the target population!

So I sum up and ask your Lordships to reflect carefully before you support the proposal before the House. The Government are proposing to spend more money on the External Services of the BBC. The grant in aid has gone up each year since this Government took office. It will continue to do so. From 1983–84 onwards, thanks to the new proposals, the increase will be very substantial—an average of about £6 million increase per year in real terms. I stress, in real terms. The Government have had a good look at the way in which that increased money should be spent.

It is the strength of the BBC that they enjoy editorial freedom. The Government pay the piper but they do not seek to call the tune. On the other hand, they have a responsibility written into the charter of the BBC to prescribe the audience. That is a matter of foreign policy, not of editorial policy, and I have no doubt whatever in my mind that the priorities that I have sought to put before your Lordships this evening are the right ones. They are the World Service of the BBC in English, the audibility of all BBC programmes and as many vernaculars as we can afford—and more particularly those which are in the opinion of the Government most likely to further British interests in the world.

We have, alas! had to make some painful cuts in all the sectors of our national life: in the arts, in education, in our diplomatic representation abroad, which is also an arm of our foreign policy. I had feared that there would have to be net cuts in the provision for the External Services. Instead, we have provided a large amount of new money which we propose to spend in the way which in my judgment is the most sensible. When we can spend more, then let us extend. But let us keep some sense of reality about what has been happening and about what the Government are proposing for the BBC External Services. I suppose you could fairly say that the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Byers is fairly innocuous. He asks the Government to reconsider. My Lords, the Government have considered very carefully. And what actually in practice is the noble Lord asking? He is asking for more money. He is not asking for reassessment of priorities, he is asking for more money. I do not believe that, in the current situation, we can at this moment afford even more money: I must ask your Lordships to be realistic and to reject the proposition.