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

My Lords, the Government's prime concern is that drivers with citizens' band radio equipment in their vehicles should not let it interfere with their concentration while at the wheel. The voluntary code of practice issued by the Government warns drivers against using their equipment in such a way as to impair their ability to drive safely, and I am glad to take the opportunity of re—emphasing this advice today.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for that Answer. Would he be surprised to learn that motorists have been seen using a hand—microphone, driving with one hand, even on motorways, and would he not agree that that is a very dangerous practice? I am sure the noble Earl would agree that it is desirable to avoid offences rather than have to take action. Are any conditions to this effect included in the CB licence, and could arrangements be made in agreement with retailers for printed advice on this and other relevant matters to be given when these sets are sold?

My Lords, I will indeed take note of what the noble Lord has said. We would, of course, advise most strongly against operators making calls while on the move. However, as the noble Lord is aware, it is really too early to predict how far citizens' band radio is likely to be used by drivers, and we will certainly keep a close watch on the situation.

My Lords, would the noble Earl agree that on the same reasoning it is highly dangerous for drivers to smoke because it is extremely difficult to smoke without taking one hand off the wheel, in order to light the cigarette? Could smoking be banned as well?

My Lords, I should not like to enter into a debate with my noble friend on this subject. I have also seen recently shaving done at the wheel, as well as reading newspapers at the wheel.

My Lords, would the noble Earl bear in mind the experience of private pilots in using this sort of equipment for many years, where the presence of a transmit button actually on the controls is very common and gives no trouble?

My Lords, I know that those with experience, and particularly emergency drivers too, would agree with the noble Lord.

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

My Lords, neither receipts nor payments are made on a weekly basis. Moreover, refunds under the agreement of May 1980 are, for the most part, made in the following year. If one looks at actual receipts and payments during the year in question, then the net contribution in 1981 is estimated to be approximately £500 million. The corresponding figure in 1979 was £947 million. Expressed as weekly averages these figures would be somewhat less than £10 million for 1981 and approximately £18 million for 1979.

My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for his reply, can he tell the House whether he expects the figure for 1982 to be further reduced?

My Lords, I think it would be premature to speculate now on the precise amount of the figure for 1982.

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

My Lords, since we came into office the Government have taken a number of steps to help private house—builders. We repealed the Community Land Act; we lowered the rate of development land tax; we have streamlined planning procedures and looked to the releasing of land for development. We are encouraging local authorities and private house—builders to work in partnership to carry out a variety of low—cost home ownership schemes. This year over 100 local authorities are disposing of land under licence to private builders. We are providing extra inner—city money to stimulate low—cost home ownership, with priority for schemes with a high gearing of private to public sector finance. All these factors are contributing to the rise in private housing starts.

My Lords, can my noble friend say how much local authorities have received in capital sums from the sale of houses and land, and what percentage of these receipts are available for reinvestment in new council house projects?

My Lords, in addition to their individual HIP allocations, authorities may use their capital receipts as they wish. The exact amount is not known, but it is at least some £593 million in 1982–83, which is a very considerable sum, and I think should enable authorities to do a great deal in this area.

My Lords, the long list which the Minister has just read out gave the impression that in this country housebuilding is booming. Is he aware that the contrary is the truth, that the construction industry is in an extremely depressed state? Can he say what the position is on the public sector building side? Is he aware that the housing lists are lengthening in England and Wales? Is he aware that in Wales there are 25,000 applications for council houses? Is he aware that it is of no help to the present Government to give a misleading impression that all is well in the building industry when in fact things are extremely bad?

My Lords, in no way did I give a misleading impression. The Question asked what the Government were doing to help private sector building and I gave a list relating to exactly that. I made no observation as to whether the level of housebuilding was satisfactory or otherwise. It was not my intention to do so. But when the noble Lord asks about and stresses his concern at the general level of house building—and that is what he meant when he referred to the public sector, although this Question is specifically directed to the private sector of housing—I must tell him that the other figures which I gave in response to the supplementary asked by my noble friend are also not without significance. There is now the scope for local authorities—perhaps in ways not generally applicable in recent times—to have sufficient monies to do what they want in terms of building, if they decide that that is their priority.

My Lords, will the noble Lord the Minister be good enough to tell the House what was the actual market value of the £593 million worth of public property which they have disposed of?

My Lords, the noble Lord will surely know that I am not in a position to say that. The bulk of it, of course, comes from the sales of council houses and clearly the individual calculations will depend upon many factors such as the original cost, the level of debt that it reduces and so on. Many factors are involved, and the noble Lord knows that I cannot give him that information.

My Lords, reverting to the terms of the original Question, will my noble friend indicate what in real terms is the percentage increase for the third quarter of 1981 as compared with the third quarter of 1980?

My Lords, I do not have that figure readily to hand, but I will gladly write to my noble friend about it. The fact is that there is an upward trend and one would want to see it at a higher level. But we must bear in mind that there has been a big change in the whole housing scene. There is today a much greater emphasis on, for example, renovation and rehabilitation than there was previously. This cannot be left out of the whole debate on housing. The noble Lord opposite referred to the question of waiting lists. I think that that is another debate entirely and one would want to look very carefully at those before coming to conclusions about them.

My Lords, does the Minister not agree that in the original Question his noble friend was distinctly selective in his choice of statistics since he has chosen as his base year 1980, a year in which private housing starts had been drastically reduced as a result of the Government's actions? Would he not have been better employed asking what actions the Government took to reduce private housing starts from 162,000 in the last year of the Labour Government to 102,000 two years later in the first year of this Government? Surely there is little credit to be gained or to be claimed in first causing a problem and then doing something to mitigate its effects?

My Lords, I revert to what I originally said when answering the Question. The fact is that the level of starts has increased, and that must surely be satisfactory or, if not satisfactory, at least encouraging to those who are interested in seeing more private sector building.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that in his reply to the original Question he quite rightly concentrated on the improvement in the private sector? What concerns many of us is that it has been at a massive detriment to the public sector. The figures are as follows. Last year the amount of council—

Order!

My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord would be good enough to ask his question?

My Lords, I was just about to ask my question when I was interrupted. I was asking whether the noble Lord was aware that, while no one would quarrel too much with the improvement in the private sector, the real argument concerns the detriment to the public sector; and for 1980 the grand total of houses built in Great Britain was the lowest since the mid-1920s?

My Lords, the fact that the private sector builds more, or less, is not in any way a matter which makes more, or less, the building of public accommodation. The two are not related except in so far as in the past many local authorities and public bodies held on to land and did not release land, which made it impossible for the private sector to build as they would have liked to do. But the level of public sector building is a matter for the authorities themselves to decide, and that they will do.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, while we are all delighted to hear of any turn upwards anywhere in this Government's record, this particular figure will have to be multiplied by about five times before the Government have any hope of getting to the point where they started?

My Lords, I do not think that that really calls for a reply, but one ought to say in the context of the whole of housing that the position generally is not the same as it was. There is, in fact, a crude surplus of housing as such and one of the great problems that concern those who are involved with this subject relates to many other factors such as the level of housing and the kind of housing that should be built. I think that if local authorities were to concentrate on one- and two-bedroomed units, thereby enabling many who live in three-bedroomed accommodation to go into those units, that too would affect public housing. Many factors are involved.

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

My Lords, the Government's main measures to reduce motor-cycle accidents and casualties are contained in the Transport Act 1981. These are designed to improve the safety of the young and inexperienced rider, who is the most vulnerable, by restricting him to a smaller machine more appropriate to his level of ability and experience, and by encouraging him to take training and pass his test. These measures will come into operation this year.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. Would he agree with the figures that have been issued, which state that during last year 1,163 motor-cyclists were killed on the roads of this country, 581 of them being aged between 16 and 19? If my noble friend agrees with those figures, would he also agree that the conspicuity of the motor-cyclist is one of the most important ways of preventing road accidents which are taking place to a greater level every year? If so, I should like to ask whether the Government can do something about it.

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness that of course the figures are very distressing. I also agree with her that there is little doubt that the conspicuousness of a motor-cyclist, or rather the lack of it, is a major problem. Research by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory suggests that some 78 per cent. of accidents involving motor-cycles also involve another road user, although it is unable to apportion the blame. Work by the TRRL into the relative merits of different conspicuity aids has demonstrated that a pair of special daytime running lamps is significantly more effective than even a single powerful lamp. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport is looking into this situation and he has deferred a final decision to enable the TRRL to carry out further research.

My Lords, would the Minister not agree that alcohol plays a very important role in the causation of accidents involving motor-cyclists, as it does motor-cars, and that research figures by the TRRL show that as many as a quarter to a third of those killed in motor-cycle accidents have taken more than the legal amount of alcohol into their blood stream? Would not one of the contributions that the Government could make towards improving the statistical knowledge of this factor, be to ensure that any person involved in such an accident has a blood test as a matter of routine?

My Lords, I think that the question is slightly wide of the original Question, but I shall certainly look into it and find out the answer.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that there has been an increase from 12 per cent. in 1973 to 30 per cent. in 1981 of those involved in motor-cycle accidents, with acute traumatic injuries, admitted to Stoke Mandeville Hospital Spinal Unit and resulting in permanent paralysis? Would he not think it time to mount a campaign in our schools to educate young people about the horrors and what it really is like to remain paralysed for the rest of one's life?

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her remarks. Of course, as I said originally, we are well aware of this problem. I have not heard of the solution that she has suggested, but I shall make sure that it is looked into.

My Lords, inasmuch as the benefit of the Transport Act 1981 in this respect depends upon the two-part test of the future, with part of the test taken off the highway, can my noble friend tell us what progress has been made in providing sites for this test to be taken off the highway? At the same time, will he assure the House that the Minister of Transport himself will ensure that every- thing possible is done in order to get this test going as soon as possible?

My Lords, the introduction of a two-part test for learner motor-cyclists—the first part of which will examine the candidates' machine-handling abilities—to be taken normally with an authorised training organisation (although there will be limited opportunity to take it with the department) will come into effect on 29th March this year. I am glad to be able to reply to my noble friend that the response has been most encouraging. To date some 260 bodies have expressed a strong interest in conducting Part 1 of the test.

My Lords, has the noble Earl any figures to show how many of the fatalities which the noble Baroness mentioned were learner drivers?

My Lords, I do not have these statistics broken down in that respect.

My Lords, in view of the fact that over three-quarters of motor-cyclist casualities occur as a result of collisions involving cars, as the Minister has just pointed out, and as it transpires that in a high proportion of such cases the driver of the car in question has not noticed the motor-cyclist, will the noble Earl not agree that any legislation which has the indirect effect of making car drivers excessively confident about their own safety and consequently careless of the safety of other road users, is to be utterly deplored?

My Lords, I think that that is a slightly inverted question. I should like to stick to the suggestion that the research into conspicuity which is taking place at the moment is very important, and the Government will do their best in this field.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the police are doing a great deal to help young people before perhaps they even get their licences as regards the maintenance of their cycles, and are also encouraging young people to scramble, which is to be approved of?

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for those remarks; I am sure that it is useful to have brought them to the attention of the House.

My Lords, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, has been trying to ask a question for a long time.

My Lords, will the Minister agree that the training centres for young motor-cyclists provided by local authorities are a great contribution to the safety of road users? If the noble Earl agrees, are the Government prepared to make a special advance to local authorities which have these training centres?

My Lords, as the noble Lord will be aware, this is a new scheme which will take place, beginning in March 1982, and we are monitoring the cost-effectiveness of it.

My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that in France motor-cycles are required to have their headlights on all the time? Would he consider that?—because it seems to be a great help.

My Lords, I am aware of that, as, of course, is the department. It is part of the tests which are taking place at the moment.

My Lords, finally, on this matter of lights being on during the daytime, will the Minister agree that the 150 cc. cycles which are used by the young are unable to carry the daytime running lights, nor indeed are they able to have a light on throughout the daytime? Will my noble friend ask the Motor Cycle Association, which is particularly involved with motor-cycles and the problems that arise therefrom, to set up a study into redesigning the front of the 150 cc. motor-cycles, thus enabling them to carry lights which could be put on during the day?

My Lords, I am gratful to my noble friend Lady Macleod for producing this idea, and I shall certainly have it looked into. It is my under-standing that it will be possible to fit the twin day-time running lamps on new machines so that they light up when the ignition switch is turned on.

My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon my noble friend Lord Mansfield will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on the Size-well pressurised water reactor.

My Lords, I beg to move that the First Report from the Select Committee on House of Lords' Offices be agreed to. I should like to draw special attention to Item 6 in the report headed:

"Stone Cleaning of the Palace of Westminster".

This is not an altogether accurate description of what is in progress. It really is the restoration and renovation of the stonework of the Palace of Westminster, which has deteriorated very badly. At present, the work is in progress in New Palace Yard, as your Lordships no doubt have seen, and is making good progress. It is likely that work will start on the West Front of this building in March, and I am afraid it will cause a certain amount of inconvenience to those of your Lordships who have rooms or who work on that side of the building.

We shall do our utmost to see that that inconvenience is reduced to the absolute minimum, but I am afraid that it will be impossible to avoid it altogether. I am sure that your Lordships will agree that the end is worth the slight inconvenience. I beg to move.

rose to call attention to the recommendations of the Pearson Royal Commission on Civil Liability (Cmnd. 7054–1) and in particular the desirability of beginning its implementation by introducing a basic " no-fault " compensation scheme for road accidents, broadly on the lines of the industrial injuries scheme; and to move for Papers.

My Lords, the principal reply to the noble Lord's speech will be made by my noble friend Lord Bellwin from the Government Front Bench, and I do not want in any way to pre-empt what he will say at the end of the debate. I intervene solely to speak briefly, and I fear somewhat technically, on the lesser part of what the noble Lord said, the subject of damages, and damages, therefore, for tort. However, I wish to begin, before I embark on that duty, by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, on having put down this Motion, which gives the House an opportunity to debate a most important subject, and in particular to congratulate him on the lucid and persuasive speech with which he introduced it. Your Lordships are of course well aware of the personal contribution which the noble Lord himself made to the commission, and we should all thank him for that, perhaps I more than most, both on behalf of the Government and personally.

I wish also to take this opportunity, I hope with the approval of the House, to pay my own tribute to the chairman of the Royal Commission, the late Lord Pearson. Many of your Lordships will recall his quiet determination to get to the bottom of a problem and then find the right solution.

I remember appearing before him as counsel, sitting with him in the Appellate Committee of your Lordships' House, and finally inviting him to undertake this, his last great service to the nation. Apart from his contribution to the judicial work of the House, he will long be remembered for his role as an arbitrator in many great industrial disputes and his work as Chairman of the Law Reform Committee, in which in the sixties and seventies he led a complete modernisation of our law of civil evidence. It was perhaps right that his final major public task was as the chairman of this commission, which was set up during my first term of office as Lord Chancellor, and I think that I can claim that I undertook the major initiative in setting up the commission, in the preparation of the terms of reference, and in the choice of its chairman. Today I simply recall the patient, public-spirited judge, the loyal colleague, and the fine man whose last public task we are discussing as a result of Lord Allen's Motion.

Now to return to the business in hand. There are in the report a number of technical, legal matters relating to damages—not solely in relation to damages in respect of road accidents—for which I am responsible and on which it might be thought incumbent upon me to have my say. It has been thought that I should give some information to your Lordships on how these matters stand. Indeed, your Lordships might be glad to learn that, in so far as some at least of the recommendations on damages are concerned, something is, I hope, actually about to happen.

As your Lordships will appreciate, the general task of the Pearson Commission was monumental. It may be that we drew the terms of reference too widely. Its endeavours covered many fields of activities as, indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Allen, helpfully reminds us from time to time when he raises in your Lordships' House the fate of the report. The difficulty there is that not only does the report cover many fields, but it also affects the work of many different Government departments, and it has not been possible for the Government to treat all the recommendations as a single whole. Consideration has had to be given to the recommendations as they affect each of the departments principally concerned and, as my right honourable friend the Prime Minister explained in a Written Answer in another place on 12th February last, the Government will announce their conclusions on the particular subject when they are ready to do so.

I must now return to my limited task relating to damages. The Pearson Report made 71 recommendations on damages, on which, in 1973, there had already been an important report of the Law Commission. To a considerable extent, the Pearson Commission endorsed or defined the Law Commission's recommendations, and so the Government have had before them a carefully considered scheme. Nevertheless, as those of your Lordships who are familiar with personal injuries litigation will appreciate, the law of damages is itself in a constant state of evolution and has been developed, in the past at least, by the courts and judges rather than by Parliament. Any Government must, therefore, approach the possibility of legislation on damages with some care. We have considered the entire group of recommendations; some are accepted, some are not accepted, and some are still under consideration.

The first thing I have to say is that we cannot accept the recommendations on periodic payments (to which the noble Lord referred) or the modified multiplier. On the first (the issue of periodic payments), I am sorry to say that consultation has met with almost universal hostility, mainly on the grounds that plaintiffs and defendants alike prefer a lump sum. In practice, we have concluded that periodic payments would not be much used and that in consequence the elaborate and costly machinery would not be worthwhile. Similar objections were raised to the modified multi- plier. Consultation showed that the legal profession, who would have had to operate this elaborate formula necessary to determine the amount of damages reflecting the real rate of return which a plaintiff could hope to expect from a lump sum award, were hostile. On reflection, it did not appear to us that minute calculations were appropriate when attempting to provide compensation for a future and essentially unquantifiable loss. Much the same reasoning applies to the Law Commission's proposal for actuarial evidence.

One important recommendation of the report to which active consideration is currently being given, but on which no final decision has yet been taken, is the full off-setting of social security benefits against damages recoverable for personal injuries. The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, referred to that in the context of road accidents, but I think that it was a more general recommendation than that. Personally I would support such a proposal, and personally I would agree with his comment that the original compromise had no logic in it at all, whatever the ultimate truth about it might be. The Government have invited comments in the White Paper on the Industrial Injuries Scheme, which was published last November, and am sure that my noble friend Lord Bellwin will refer to it in some form when he comes to wind up the debate.

I turn to the proposals which the Government intend to accept. I have a vehicle in the Administration of Justice Bill, which I hope to be introducing in a few weeks' time. In that it is proposed to implement the Pearson Report by abolishing the obsolete actions for the loss of services of a domestic servant and the loss of consortium of a wife, as well as damages for loss of expectation of life formulated as a separate claim. It is also intended that when the victim of an accident dies, his claim for income during the so-called " lost years " will die with him and will not enure to the benefit of his estate. This will reverse the decision in Gammell v. Wilson, known to legal practitioners, where the present state of the law has been severely criticised by noble and learned friends on the Cross-Benches.

The Bill will also include a number of the recommendations which will be of particular benefit to plaintiffs. In fatal accident claims the range of possible dependants will be increased and will include grandparents and grandchildren. Benefits from the estate which accrue to the dependants who make the claim will be left out of account in assessing damages. That will of course benefit plaintiffs because they will thereby receive a larger sum by way of award. It is intended to introduce a provision for what I shall call damages for bereavement. In the report they are referred to, I think, under the title " loss of society ", but perhaps my own nomenclature is rather more suitable.

Finally, among a number of other, minor, proposals I should mention that it has been decided to accept the proposal for provisional damages, and again I am using a nomenclature slightly different from that in the report. I think that that was referred to in the report as a proposal for " declaratory judgments ". The point here is that where at the trial of a plaintiff's claim there appears to be a risk, but still an unquantifiable risk—I apologise for the word—of a serious illness or disability occurring in the future, the court will not be bound to make a once-for-all award, as at present, but may, if the plaintiff so applies for it, make a provisional award on the assumption that the feared event will not occur, but giving the plaintiff the right to apply for extra damages if it does.

That is the measure of my present proposals on damages alone, and these will shortly be laid before your Lordships in detail when I introduce the Bill. So I can at least assure the noble Lord, Lord Allen, on my own front, that, far from being forgotten, the recommendations of the late Lord Pearson have been and still are under active consideration, and that we are going ahead to implement important parts of the report in the field of damages.

I cannot conclude my rather jejune remarks on this narrow aspect of the subject without recalling that during part of my practice as a junior counsel I was very largely concerned with this somewhat heartrending litigation, not only in the field of road accidents but very largely also in the field of employers' liability. No one who has had to handle this kind of claim in the courts, whether for the plaintiff or for the defendants -and I was fairly well distributed between the two classes-can fail to realise both the weaknesses and the strengths of the system; both the long delays, which are inevitable in High Court litigation, at least, and the anxieties and neuroses which develop from the suffering of the plaintiff and the rather (may I say) unseemly kind of gamesmanship which inevitably develops in the course of litigation, which is perfectly legitimate but does not really inspire one to a mood of edification; and, above all, the actual pain and suffering which accidents cause, sometimes through the fault of the injured, sometimes through no fault of their own and sometimes partly from fault and partly from other circumstances.

This is a subject which has profound importance to a fluctuating and almost chance-selected portion of the community; and although I have spoken in, I am afraid, the usual clinical and unemotional terms which I hope befits a professional member of the legal profession, I would not like my speech to finish without at any rate asking your Lordships to believe that that is not all I feel about this subject.

My Lords, I am sure your Lord-ships will join in the gratitude which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has expressed to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for enabling us to discuss the Report of the Royal Commission of which he was a distinguished and (as I know from conversations during the progress of the work) most active member. He has today most lucidly explained to us the recommendations of the Royal Commission. May I also join in the expression of gratitude to the late Lord Pearson, who was dear to all his colleagues and whose contribution to the law was, of course, outstanding and historic.

My Lords, we debated the report of the Royal Commission in another place in 1978, not long after it was published. I am bound to confess that the observations of the then Secretary of State were more by way of inviting discussion than throwing a great deal of light and decision-making upon the proceedings. But that is not entirely surprising in view of the complexity and wide range of the subject matter of the commission. It is indeed very appropriate that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, who had more than a big hand in setting up the Royal Commission, has assisted us in our deliberations today, in particular by indicating and, so to speak, giving a preview of what is contemplated by the Government in the field of damages.

The subject matter of the report is, of course, both vast and controversial. That has been apparent from all the comments made upon the report and, indeed, from the debate we had in another place—divisions within parties and across the Floor of the House. The problems with which the report deals are immense. It points to the stark fact that every year in the United Kingdom some 3 million people are injured and about 21,000 people die as a result of injury.

It also highlights the very small benefit that derives to those who litigate, or that is obtained from the amount spent upon litigation. The Royal Commission reported that for a social security payment of £1 only llp is spent on administration, whereas for every £100 recovered as damages or compensation in an action in the courts administrative expenses, including those of insurance companies, lawyers, consultants, engineers, surveyors, doctors, et cetera, add up to £85; that is, 85 to 100 as compared with 11 to 100 for social security benefits. Those are not, I fear, statistics of which a lawyer like myself is necessarily proud: but they are interesting figures.

Of the 3 million injuries, I million occur at work or on the roads; and, as the noble Lord has indicated, each year 7,600 people are killed on the roads and hundreds of thousands injured in accidents involving motor vehicles. As we have heard, a basic recommendation in the report is that those injured in such accidents should get social security benefits at the same rates as those who are injured at work. This is a major change and a major proposal. But it also supports within the changes that are proposed the retention of tort actions. It is the case that the two systems of tort and social security, which have been used to compensate the victims of accidents, have co-existed for a very long time.

The ability to sue the employer for breach of duty or the negligent driver for negligence has been an important function of trade unions. It is one to which they attach importance, not only because of its recruiting value by reason of the work that they do in promoting it, but also because of the provision they are able to make for their members—a matter that was of great importance before the days of legal aid. In some cases of accidents producing major paralysis or blindness, or such grave injuries, very heavy damages indeed can be won, in these days running into tens of thousands of pounds; and the ability to go to the court in such cases and to recover such damages is one which certainly trade unions would seek to maintain and which, indeed, the report itself proposes also to retain.

My Lords, I agree with what has been said, that success in tort actions is of course a chancy business, whether in industrial accident cases or in motoring cases. I remember the agony one had as counsel appearing, for instance, for a widow whose husband had been killed by a fall of rock at the coalface, where there would be a critical issue of fact as to whether there were sufficient pitprops in place in sufficiently close proximity to the coalface. A decision on a question of fact of that kind, turning on extremely difficult points of recollection and points of detail, would determine whether the widow got anything, or far less than there was paid into court. One had agonising experiences in advising a widow in those circumstances whether to take out what the Coal Board paid in or not. My noble and learned friend Lord Edmund-Davies, who was engaged with me in many of these cases, nods his head in approval of what I have said of the problems.

What is proposed by the report, as I understand it, is that industrial injuries provisions for the disabled should, in a major sense, be provided for by social security provisions but that the right to sue should be retained. The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, indicated some of the problems in tort actions. Too few victims are compensated, entitlement is clumsy and the system is slow and expensive to administer. The memories of witnesses at the hearing, which may take place a year or two or more after an accident, about what happened in a fraction of time, sometimes in a fraction of a second, are fickle. Memory is a fickle thing. Mark Twain once said:" When I was a boy, I had a marvellous memory. I could even remember things that never happened!" One's experience in court is that that peculiarity is not confined to children on all occasions. There is the other problem of the bringing of the action at all. It often depends upon factors which have little to do with the claim: the resources of the plaintiff. If he is very poor, he can get legal aid and, if he is very rich, he can afford to take the risk of litigation. But if he is in between, it is a risky business. I share the sense of dissatisfaction about looking at the field as a whole which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has expressed.

My Lords, the report—and we are invited in this debate particularly to consider it—identifies injuries suffered in motor vehicle accidents as of a character which ought to result in the certainty of compensation for the victims. What is proposed as the basic certainty is payment through the social security machinery. And their conclusion is in these terms:

"Provided that some means of financing a scheme without increasing direct public expenditure can be found, we think that the primary element of compensation for injuries caused by motor vehicles should be based on the no-fault principle".

It is here that we run into trouble: the proviso of some means of financing the scheme without increasing public expenditure. The proposal of the Commission was that there should be a levy of one penny a gallon on petrol. That was powerfully and strongly opposed by the motoring lobby. It was said that it would unfairly place equal burdens on the just and the unjust, on the careful and the negligent motorist. The careful motorist is already required to have third-party insurance cover. There was also the objection, which the noble Lord, Lord Allen, mentioned, to hypothecating tax revenue. It would undoubtedly cause serious administrative problems.

Another difficulty in the way of the recommendations is that, not surprisingly, it is proposed that the scheme should cover only future accidents. Past cases would, admittedly, be difficult to cover. Yet there are, unhappily, many of our fellow-citizens still disabled from past road accidents. To establish that a present disablement was caused by an old motor-car accident would not be easy to bring about. There could be a real sense of grievance among those left out of the scheme because they were on the wrong side of the line for the purposes of obtaining benefits on the appointed day. In the debate in another place in 1978, the Secretary of State quoted a statement of the Disablement Income Group which said:

"Introduction of the proposed scheme would establish yet more firmly the erroneous idea that the cause and not the effect of disability is the important criterion, would create invidious comparisons"—

which is what I have been referring to—

"and would use scarce manpower and financial resources in assessing a host of people who have only suffered minor injuries".

So that there was objection of a serious kind to the Royal Commission proposals, as the noble Lord, Lord Allen, has indicated.

My Lords, my own party has not specifically decided upon these issues. Its broad approach is to introduce a comprehensive incomes scheme for all disabled people varying according to the severity of the disablement, meeting the extra expense created by the disability and compensating for the restrictions that the disability might create; but we have not as a party made any decision in detail on what is proposed. I have indicated some of my own personal reactions in what I have said.

The House will be grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for giving an advance notice of what we look forward to receiving, sooner, I hope, rather than later, in the proposals with regard to damages which are an important part of the Royal Commission report. Many of them reflect and support the recommendations made by the Law Commission in their report on personal injury litigation assessment of damages. Some of the proposals are controversial. I am sure there is likely to be general agreement on the need for legislation following the decision in your Lordships' House in the cases of Gammell v. Wilson following Pickett v. British Rail in which noble and learned Lords in the Appellate Committee urged the need to reform the law relating to compensation for personal injury; and I am sure the proposals in this field will be welcomed.

It is not a suitable moment, for there are many speakers to follow, to discuss the detail of the proposals. I share doubts about the proposal for periodical payments. There is a great advantage in finality in these matters. It is interesting that in France, where the alternative of periodical payments or a fixed sum is available, it is rarely that periodical payments are taken in preference to the lump sum. As to the full offsetting of social security payments, that would depend upon what compensating arrangements to the victim of accident would be made to compensate for the loss of the moiety of social security benefits which at the present time the successful plaintiff can still retain. I conclude by again expressing gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for introducing this debate. I apologise for the fact that I may not be able to be present throughout the course of it.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to repeat a Statement which is now being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy. The Statement runs as follows:

"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a Statement about the public inquiry into the application by the Central Electricity Generating Board to build a pressurised water reactor at Sizewell in Suffolk.

"As the House will know, the Government are committed to holding a full and wide-ranging inquiry into the Sizewell application.

"In a Written Answer on 22nd July last year, my predecessor set out the issues which the Government regard as relevant to consideration of this application. My right honourable friend also announced the appointment of Sir Frank Layfield, QC, as inspector to the inquiry.

"I wish to give interested parties the earliest notice of the date of the inquiry. I also wish members of the public and their representatives to have adequate opportunity to study the extensive information and documentation which will be provided. I therefore propose that the main hearing of the public inquiry should begin early in January 1983.

"I have reached this view following recent consultations with those on whom the burden of preparing the principal documentation rests. The chairman of the CEGB has told me that the board expect to publish their Pre-Construction Safety Report at the end of April.

"Dr. Walter Marshall, as chairman of the PWR Task Force, will continue to co-ordinate the efforts of all the parties involved in the preparation of this report and will keep me informed of progress. The CEGB also intend to issue at the end of April a full statement in support of their application.

"The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate of the Health and Safety Executive have told me that they expect to publish a report on safety issues by the end of June.

"There will therefore be an extended period for the study of both CEGB documentation and the NII report.

"Earlier preliminary hearings will be held by the inspector at which those parties that wish to put their views before him on the general arrangements for the conduct of the inquiry and the scope of the evidence can do so at a time well before the main inquiry begins. The main hearing (and at least one of the preliminary hearings) will take place in Suffolk. I hope that arrangements can be made for the main hearing to be held within easy reach of the Sizewell area; an announcement on this will be made soon.

"The Government are convinced that nuclear power has an increasingly important role to play in electricity generation in Britain. Nevertheless, any specific proposal has to be judged on its own merits. The arrangements for the Sizewell inquiry which I have just described will ensure that the CEGB application is thoroughly and properly examined."

My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, for repeating that Statement which has been made in another place. We welcome on this side of the House the appointment of Sir Frank Layfield, QC, as inspector to the inquiry. The policy of the last Labour Government on nuclear energy was to have a continuous programme of nuclear power construction together with the development of the fast breeder reactor, which is essential for self-sufficiency in energy on a long-term basis. But the need for safety is crucial. That cannot be stressed enough.

We welcome the part of the Statement that says:

"any specific proposal has to be judged on its own merits".

On the other hand, there is a strong case for moving to another AGR rather than the PWR. I note that the Select Committee of another place, in their most valuable report for last Session, in paragraph 118 said that the Government should decide to adopt a single thermal reactor type. The committee of another place was also dubious on the claim that the cost advantage of the PWR can be translated to United Kingdom conditions. I must ask the noble Earl whether these matters have been taken into consideration by the Government. Finally, is cost in United Kingdom conditions to be considered in this inquiry as well as the environmental matters?

My Lords, we, too, wish to thank the noble Earl for repeating the Statement given in another place. We also appreciate the delay that is built into moving the inquiry back to January 1983. Can the noble Earl say whether, as the Statement says that it will be a full and wide-ranging inquiry, if it so happens that it appears that the PWR is not a suitable reactor and indeed is not necessary by the time the inquiry is finished, it will not be pursued or continued with?

Secondly, when the Statement goes on to say that the Chairman of the CEGB has told the Minister that the board expect to publish their Pre-construction Safety Report, can the noble Earl define what is meant by that? As I understand it, the CEGB engage or commission consultants to make such a report. If the noble Earl could clarify this it would be very helpful. At the same time, can he say that the consultants' report will be available to the Department of Energy and will be printed in full and available to the general public at the inquiry?

I wonder whether the noble Earl would agree with me that this sentence in the last paragraph of the Statement is a little controversial:

"The Government are convinced that nuclear power has an increasingly important role to play in electricity generation in Britain".

I do not think they are in a position to say this to begin with. The noble Earl will recall that it was only on Monday in this House, when repeating another Statement which concerned the unemployment of 900 families in Invergordon, that he said it was the very cost of nuclear generation that apparently brought the end of the Invergordon complex. I feel the State- ment could be enhanced by removing this rather controversial point at least until the inquiry has been fully completed to the satisfaction of the public and indeed industry as a whole.

My Lords, I should like to thank both noble Lords for their welcome to this Statement and the comments they have made upon it. If I may reply to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, first, there is a great measure of agreement between the two major parties on this matter. The attitude of the Government is this. We want and think it is sensible to develop the option of an economic, safe alternative to our existing gas cooled reactors. The world has more experience of operating the PWR than of operating any other reactor type. It makes sense to ascertain whether we can harness this technology to meet our own requirements. Of course, I am very conscious of the noble Lord's point that that must include safety standards. However, the Government's case is perfectly clear. Each application to build a nuclear power station, wherever it may be, will be treated strictly on its merits. That goes for all these applications. I think the answer to the noble Lord's question is, Yes.

The noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, asked me in effect about the CEGB safety case which, as I told the House when I read the Statement, will be a document which will be produced in April, in plenty of time for the various parties and objectors to consider it before the main part of the inquiry starts in January 1983. This safety case will be a most comprehensive document which will be specifically prepared for the inquiry. It will be the work of a number of consultants and experts who will be engaged for the purpose. As a document in the inquiry it will therefore be available to all interested parties and will, as I have said, be published in full. Therefore, it will be open to objectors —or anybody else for that matter—to make what they like of it.

My Lords, I have a couple of specific questions about the inquiry. Can the Government yet tell us whether there will be expert assessors on the engineering and nuclear side sitting with Sir Frank Layfield? If so, are the Government in a position to announce who they will be? That question is not of course intended to be in any way derogatory to the inspector of the inquiry. My second question is about the admissibility of evidence at the inquiry. Will it be permitted to raise the question whether a pressurised water reactor is in fact the best type to use as opposed to an advanced gas-cooled reactor? Thirdly, will evidence based on matters concerning the accident at Three Mile island in the United States be admitted, bearing in mind that this is the only major accident which has ever happened to a pressurised water reactor and therefore the only one relevant to the inquiry?

My Lords, the answer to the noble Lord's questions, basically speaking, is "yes". The arrangements for the inquiry are primarily for the inspector. I am not in a position to announce any names this afternoon, but those kinds of details will be released as soon as possible. Regarding the rules under which the inquiry will conduct itself and the admissibility of evidence, the rules have in fact been made by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, after consultation with the Council on Tribunals, and were laid before Parliament on 6th January; so this is what you might call a fresh matter.

My Lords, will the Government consider, as my noble friend on the Front Bench said, that safety considerations must be pre-eminent? Will they recall that in the last three years in the United States there have been two accidents each of which might have resulted in 50,000 deaths and that, according to the most authoritative evidence, those disasters were avoided only by pure good fortune and human skill could do nothing more to avert them? Will the Government consider that the problem of disposing of nuclear waste is yet entirely unresolved?

My Lords, the Government entirely agree with the noble Lord that safety and everything that goes with it is a matter which commands and deserves the greatest attention, and I have no doubt that, when my right honourable friend is guided by the report of the inspector before he makes any final determinations upon this matter, he will pay such regard. I think I must remind the noble Lord that, whatever our fears—and I think they are, as persons, justifiable fears—may be so far as the nuclear industry is concerned, at any rate in this country, the industry has a safety record second to none.

My Lords, the time would appear to have arrived when we should leave a subject which perhaps itself one day could lead to questions of civil liability and compensation for personal injury and return to our debate on that very topic, so ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale.

Perhaps I should say at the outset that my noble friends on these Benches would wish to join with the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor in the tribute he has paid to the achievements and the memory of the late Lord Pearson. I hope the noble and learned Lord will not take it amiss if I say that perhaps those tributes would be underlined if we were now to carry into effect some of the recommendations of the commission of which Lord Pearson was so distinguished a chairman. In that connection, I should like to say to the noble and learned Lord how glad we were to hear the news of the measures which are to be introduced and the steps which are to be taken, particularly with regard to damages and questions of that kind. We would like to assure the noble and learned Lord that, when those measures arrive here, they will have our support—though that is not to say that my noble friend Lord Wigoder may not try to improve the measures when they finally arrive.

I should say, too, that my noble friends on these Benches and, I have no doubt, our noble allies on another Bench are wholly in support of the endeavours made by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, to carry into effect some of the important recommendations of the Pearson Commission. Certainly I would wish to thank the noble Lord for the opportunity he has given to your Lordships' House to debate this important matter. It seems to us that the Pearson Report has languished in a pigeon-hole for perhaps too long, and therefore it is encouraging to learn from the noble and learned Lord that steps are being taken. Of course, I acknowledge that other things have happened in the meantime, but it is encouraging to hear as a result of that report other things are going on.

The noble Lord focused his remarks almost wholly on one very important question —important from the point of seriousness and also numerically important, having regard to the number of people involved. He focused his efforts on the question of road accidents and the importance of bringing in a basic "no-fault" compensation scheme. We wholly support him in those efforts. He explained his case very fully and very clearly, and it is not necessary for me to add to it, save to say that, as a lay person, one cannot fail to be struck by the frequency with which we have to witness in the courts the perhaps embarrassing and sometimes distressing occurrence of a son having to sue his father or a mother having to sue her daughter, and so on, in order to establish which particular insurance company has to pay certain damages at the end of the day.

That is the kind of result which undoubetdly arises from the present state of the law. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord would forgive me, as a lay person, if I say that the law as it now is on this general question of responsibility for the consequences of road accidents has tended to result in pressures on the courts that from time to time have resulted in the courts tending to take decisions which I think have sometimes been wrong in fact and occasionally even wrong in law. In other words, when somebody has been seriously injured, I think there is a clear incentive to the courts to try to find that some responsibility for the injury lies with a person who has behind him an insurance company and the funds that that insurance company controls, rather than to find that the responsibility is with the poor pedestrian for whom nobody is going to pay at all unless the motorist is found to be responsible at the end of the day. I just drop that pebble into the pond, if I may so describe this august gathering, in the hope that it may perhaps create one or two ripples. 1 would merely stress the need to do something about this very complicated question of responsibility for damages in the case of road accidents. It is comparatively urgent, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for drawing it to our attention.

In addition, I should like to broaden the subject a little and perhaps talk very briefly about other matters upon which the Pearson Commission focused attention—matters such as birth damage to children, brain-damaged children and the tragedy of the occasional vaccine-damaged child and all the controversy which over the years has surrounded that subject. I think I may say that this is particularly topical at the moment. We happen in certain parts of Britain at the moment to be in the midst of a whooping cough epidemic. Whooping cough is a disease which in the case of adults and older children is on the whole comparatively trivial. Unfortunately, it is a disease which can have quite catastrophic effects on babies and infants. It can lead to serious bronchitis and bronchiectasis and to even more severe disease in later life, and in infants it can lead to pneumonia and death. Therefore, the professional view has always been that immunisation with the pertussis vaccine against whooping cough is desirable, particularly for the very young. Once the child has grown a little older it is not so important, because then the disease in itself is not quite so important.

But there is no doubt at all that all the controversy about the occasional occurrence of brain damage, as a result of pertussis vaccination, has had quite a seriously adverse effect on the numbers of mothers who bring their babies to be immunised, not only against diphtheria and other serious and important diseases, but against whooping cough. I am bound to say that when one talks about vaccine damage, the average mother does not greatly discriminate between one vaccine and another, and the controversy over this subject has tended almost to bring into disrepute vaccination and immunisation as a whole. It is a fact that in the Greater Manchester area, in which I am in close contact with what is happening medically, we now have quite a serious whooping cough epidemic and not unrelated to that is the fact that the level of immunisation against whooping cough among children in the Greater Manchester area is now considerably less than 30 per cent.

I am not for a moment saying, and would not dream of saying, that the existence of compensation for vaccine damage would itself prevent vaccine damage from occurring. But what I am saying is that the fact that no compensation was available, or, at least, that there were serious arguments about who was responsible for paying compensation—if compensation was necessary—resulted in so much publicity and discussion of this subject, in a way which was highly emotive, that parents were frightened of the idea of vaccination and immunisation altogether; and some of them, indeed, avoided immunisation against diphtheria and things of that kind.

I acknowledge that Governments have taken steps to make sure that compensation is provided through the Family Fund, which I think is administered by the Joseph Rowntree Trust, and through other measures. Similarly, of course, steps have been taken to provide compensation for brain-damaged children in one way or another. But that part of the Pearson Report, which deals with these very complex matters, needs looking at just as urgently as do the matters to which the noble Lord, Lord Allen, has directed our attention so clearly today.

When I turn to the report on vaccine damage, and look at chapter 25 of volume 1 of the report, I find that it says this:

"The problem of establishing causation with certainty in any individual case may well be difficult".

This is at the heart of this very matter. But it does not greatly matter to the person who is damaged what the actual cause has been, just as in the case of industrial accidents it does not greatly matter. But it is rather tragic that the chap who loses his leg at work may get all kinds of privileges and compensation, as may the same chap if he loses his leg on the way to work or on the way back from work, but if he is unfortunate enough to lose his leg in the garden before he goes to work the present state of the law is such that he may receive almost nothing. That is not fair.

I freely acknowledge that life is not fair, and if we once embark on trying to make everything wholly fair we shall set along a very complicated course indeed. So I acknowledge what is said in the report, that the problem of establishing causation with certainty is difficult. But the report goes on to say:

"The overriding need is that, where there is serious damage, there should be prompt recognition that some form of compensation should be payable. We do not think it is right to try to distinguish one severely disabled child from another, and to produce a situation where two children have the same needs, but one is compensated and the other is not".

The more detailed recommendations of the commission are given in Part VII and I shall not go into those. But I would say that steps have been taken in regard to children who are brain-damaged from birth injury and so on, and in relation to this whole question of vaccine damage. But there are other matters in that whole area which arise from this report and which ought to be looked at on a continuing basis and not just occasionally, when there is some kind of national tragedy which brings the matter on to the front pages of our papers. This question of vaccine damage is, in many ways, parallel and very similar to the kind of cases to which the noble Lord, Lord Allen, referred that occur on the roads, where the result is the same for the individual, but the position of the individual in relation to compensation varies as a result of factors with which the individual himself is almost wholly unconnected.

I think that I have said enough. I should merely like to say, once again, that we are very grateful indeed to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for bringing this matter forward. We are also grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for encouraging us to believe that things are still happening, and that the report of the late Lord Pearson is not going to languish forever in a pigeon-hole, but will genuinely be looked at and acted upon from time to time by Government. If that happens as a result of this debate, we on this Bench will indeed be very grateful not only to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, but to everybody else in your Lordships' House.

My Lords, not only do I wish to echo the thanks of the whole House to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for having introduced this topic, but I want to say how personally delighted I am to be associated once more, in a very humble way indeed, in supporting him in the work that he is doing. We have so far listened to people who are all extremely expert in their own fields. We now come down to basics. I claim no expertise of any kind, but I am anxious to get things done and in order to do that one has to restrict the scope of one's speech and the area where one wants something to happen. Where I want something to happen is in this field of no-fault compensation, because that lies at the heart of the matter and results in a situation which—at the risk of repeating something that has already been said by other speakers—I want to demonstrate is something which your Lordships would not wish to tolerate a moment longer than it need continue, once your Lordships have brought your minds to consider the matter.

We must admit that this desire to put the blame on somebody else's shoulders goes very deep indeed in the British character. I imagine that all of us here have had motor-car accidents of some kind or other during the course of our lives, and in all those accidents there is, curiously, one common factor. All of them, I dare say, without exception have been the fault of the other man. Indeed, if one rings up a friend, when one hears that he has been involved in a motor-car accident, to ask how he is, the first thing he does is to describe in detail the circumstances of the accident, to show beyond any measure of doubt that it was the other blithering idiot who was to blame and that no blame at all can be attached to him. Then, if one is fortunate, he will go on to tell you whether he has suffered any injury himself and whether the car has been damaged.

So it is something which is deeply rooted in our thinking and feeling, and it will be a very difficult act, and a very difficult political act, for us to move from finding fault to a no-fault system. That is what I want to direct my few remarks to, because I want to satisfy your Lordships that the present system results in great injustice, huge waste of resources and very painful delays.

First, as to the injustice, it has been made clear already that the practical question is not who is blameworthy, but whom you can prove is blameworthy. For that you need good witnesses with long memories, with strong nerves and with a recollection of what was happening as it was happening and not with a recollection of what had happened after the accident drew their attention to it. You also need to collect the names and addresses of these witnesses at a time when you arc at the least distressed, at a time when you are possibly in pain, at a time when you are possibly occupying a bed in an ambulance and being carried off to hospital. So whether you are going to get the names and addresses of the witnesses is enormously chancy. And the witnesses will know that in due course they will have to face a hostile counsel who will endeavour to demonstrate that their memory is at the least confused, if not inaccurate, that they will have to appear in a public witness box, that they will have to do so possibly two, three or four years later and that all this inconvenience will possibly be rewarded in heaven but nowhere else. So it is not going to be easy to get witnesses who satisfy the requirement of being able to prove fault in a road accident.

The facts are as have been indicated. I rely on an Oxford study—in the late 1960s, I think—that only 45 per cent. of those seriously injured succeed in recovering any damages at all. I am not talking about full damages. I am talking about any damages whatsoever. That is a system which surely we do not want to tolerate a moment longer than we need.

As to the huge waste which I have indicated, the figures as given to us by the Front Bench are even stronger than those which I myself had seen: that approximately one-half of the common pool reaches the victim while the other half is consumed in the process of fault finding and to a small extent in administration. That cost is something like five times as heavy, in proportion, as the cost involved in the industrial injuries scheme or in the criminal injuries scheme. It is a very high price indeed to pay for the satisfaction of seeing the name of somebody else recorded as the blameworthy person years after anybody is at all interested in the matter.

The reason why I refer to painful delays is because we know that these claims are settled, on average, in the seond year, that one-quarter of them are settled in the third and fourth years and that the victim has to make do, somehow or other, in the meantime, living with uncertainty, hardship and the other things which have been referred to. It is not surprising that it is generally known, I understand, as the forensic lottery—this system of trying to recover damages for the injury you have sustained in the way that every civilised society wants; namely, the alleviation of suffering by an individual through the contribution of his friends, neighbours and the rest of society as quickly as may be.

The no-fault system, once we can adjust our minds to accepting it, gets over virtually all these problems. It can be related to need. It can be paid from time to time, either in a series of lump sums, towards which the Government, I understand from the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, are moving, or in periodical payments. It is quick: it is cheap to administer. It is very difficult indeed to think of arguments against, but in case they are mentioned later in the debate may I anticipate them by dealing with the two which most frequently come forward.

The first is that this kind of no-fault system would lead to a reduction in the deterrence of accidents on the road and the deterrence of had driving. All I can say about that is that the present system clearly fails wholly to do that. One only has to look at the number of deaths and people maimed on the roads every year to realise that one cannot claim any success in that sense. But more particularly the present system fails because the negligent driver pays exactly the same as the careful driver—to wit, nothing. It is the insurance company which pays, because we are talking about bodily injury and about compulsory insurance for every authorised driver. So there is no difference whatsoever whether the accident arises through huge negligence or through great care. The insurance company pays.

But the insurance company does not pay in relation to anyone's negligence. It pays wholly in relation to the amount of the damage. The matters which are of a deterrent value would continue under a no-fault system just as they exist at the moment; namely, the desire of every individual for self-preservation and, to a lesser extent, the desire to avoid criminal prosecution, police prosecution. So I do not think that there is anything substantial whatever in the claim that this system would result in a reduction, in a lessening of the deterrent value.

Then it may be said that it would result in more cost, through more claims being settled. Yes, of course it would result in more claims being settled. That is its purpose. What society wants is that those who suffer accidents of this kind should be helped by their fellow men, by a common pool. That is what it is all about. It is no credit to us to he able to say that something like one-half of those injured never get anything for their injuries. That is no credit to the method we have or to the kind of society we paint ourselves to be. The figures indicated that twice the number of accidents could be alleviated at the same cost. I have yet to be persuaded that there is anything whatever in the fear that costs would rise, or would rise in any substantial way so as to make one carefully consider introducing a no-fault scheme.

I am supported in that view by the chairman of the Justice Committee which sat on this very topic and reported that there would be no additional cost what ever. I am also supported by the knowledge that in several American states their experience—and in the States they use the insurance companies and not a social security system—is that insurance premiums have been reduced, that the number of victims receiving help has been doubled and that no additional cost at all has been involved. Therefore, I hope we shall accept the need for a no-fault system to cover the loss, damage, agony and so on suffered by the victims of car accidents and will not get bogged down with different ways in which one can achieve that purpose.

Of course, there are various methods. Of course it can be done mainly by relying on the expertise of the insurance companies. Of course it can he done mainly as a state service. I believe that the debates we have had in this House on insurance companies and the need to protect policyholders in this field through the Department of Trade show that there is probably a need to move more in the direction of regarding all this as a state service. Nevertheless, whichever way it is done, it can be done once we are determined and are satisfied that the present chancy unreliable state of affairs should cease.

It is not even that we need to adopt a new view. It is merely that we need to extend an existing view. The " no fault " principle, as your Lordships will recollect, applies to industrial injuries, to sickness benefits paid to those who suffer in car accidents, and to supplementary benefits paid to families of criminals serving prison sentences. It is the insurance companies who pay for damages to a car, irrespective of the degree of the driver's negligence, and it is they who pay out a personal accident policy irrespective of how the accident arose. We merely need to extend the principle to bodily injury from road accidents, as many other countries do with great success. In my view, we would then be nine-tenths of the way towards a just, humane and efficient method of alleviating suffering resulting from road accidents.

My Lords, may I also be allowed to associated myself with the expressions of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for his speech, which concentrated the mind wonder- fully and served as such a useful and objective exposition of the case for the implementation of the scheme that it enables one to marshal some of the concepts on the other side of the argument. Before I attempt to do that, may I also be allowed to associate myself with the tributes which have been paid to the late Lord Pearson, before whom I appeared on many occasions as a member of the Bar.

I assure your Lordships that it is not out of any want of humanity on my part; it is not because I entertain misconceptions about the question of defects in this type of litigation that I seek to suggest to your Lordships that it is not desirable that this noble scheme for road accidents should be implemented. There are, I would respectfully suggest for your Lordships' consideration, three independent reasons why it is not appropriate that this scheme should be implemented. In the first place, as an abstract concept of justice, to equate the position of the blameworthy driver with his innocent victim as regards the payment of or entitlement to compensation may not appeal to all of your Lordships.

Secondly, there is the cost. The cost of removing from the courts—and this is what it is—into the realms of social security, in the form of a extended welfare state, this type of question is going to be very considerable. Figures of £66 million per annum within five years have been mentioned, rising to £90 million per annum after 40 years; and that, as I understand it, excludes the cost of the extra civil servants who are to administer the scheme. I know not whether these estimates take account of inflationary pressures, but your Lordships will probably agree that all estimates these days require very substantial upward revision before they become reality. I will adopt if I may, with the utmost respect (and I could have put it ne'er so well), the way in which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, dealt with this very delicate subject. It does pose the problems as he posed the problems, and the solutions are not easy to trick out of the trees. There are real problems about this question of costs. Thirdly, and lastly—

My Lords, before the noble Lord moves on to the question of cost, may I ask him to give us his views on the nature of those costs? He talked about £60 million of additional costs. Who would be the recipient of those costs?

My Lords, perhaps I may deal with that in due course, but, briefly, I took the figures from another noble Lord who spoke. The cost as stated in the report itself—and I am open to correction because I do not have the paragraph number in mind—was £24 million per annum after five years, rising to £54 million per annum after 40 years, excluding the cost of the civil servants. Those were the figures I was going to use until I heard the other figures mentioned. I based the figures that I would have used, of £24 million and £54 million, on the basis used in the report and on no other basis.

My Lords, may I make it clear and remove the doubt, that the figures I quoted were figures including administration, and they were figures based on 1977 prices.

My Lords, I am very much obliged. The two figures marry with that qualification. The most important reason for not implementing this scheme is not the question of cost, to which the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, just referred, which is basically dependent on a political concept—as to whether one treats this as a welfare state matter or whether one does not. It is this: that in view of the intended reforms which have just been announced by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, if one adds to those intended reforms three very simple reforms, one has a viable and wholly sufficient alternative. There is no necessity whatsoever in these circumstances to enter into this scheme of "no-fault" road accidents.

The alternative is provided in this way. Take the case of children: you introduce a simple reform which presumes that a child of 12 is incapable of contributory negligence. Secondly, take the case of the anachronistic defence of act of God: abolish it, and in such situations reverse the burden of proof, making the driver in such circumstances—such as a bee-sting or an attack of epilepsy at the wheel or something of that sort—disprove negligence. Thirdly, at the moment in the case where there are two drivers, they both collide, both die; there are no witnesses, no extrinsic evidence; the estates of neither recover. Alter that in those circumstances; the estates of both recover. If you were to tack those three concepts, which could be implemented in a very simple, short statute, on to the substantial intended reforms to which my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor has previously adverted, there would, in my respectful submission, be no necessity for the introduction of this scheme.

Furthermore, if one were to do this it would comply with the spirit of the European Convention; that is Annex 9 to this report. But there I am not advocating that one should adopt the convention. There are two reasons for that. One is because the convention itself leaves open many matters for implementation, and, secondly, the terms of the convention could well give rise to serious litigation owing to their want of precision from the point of view of the English approach to jurisprudence. In these the general principle would be that it would always be open to the driver to show that the accident or the injury was wholly or partly caused by the victim, save in the case of a child of 12 where the presumption against contributory negligence operates and is binding. As regards these submissions, they reflect the work which has gone on for some 10 years now on the committee of the Society of Conservative Lawyers under the chairmanship of my learned friend Mr. Michael Ogden, QC, and it is to him that I am indebted for these concepts. I put them forward as worthy, no more, of your Lordships' consideration.

With your Lordships' leave, may I pass to another aspect of this report which is included in the first sentence in the form of a question. There is in Chapter 31 of this report a reference to hazardous activities and exceptional risks. I would most earnestly submit to your Lordships that the recommendations of the report as regards this should not be implemented, for these reasons, which are totally different reasons from the reasons I have sought to put before your Lordships in relation to the objections to the no-fault scheme for road accidents.

The reasons why I suggest that the Chapter 31 recommendations should not be implemented are these, because they relate to the difficulties of definition. In the first place you have to modify the concept of the strict no-fault liability in order to relate it to the activity carried on when the injury was occasioned. This involves, first of all, hazardous employments; secondly, activities within hazardous employments. But it goes further than that, because you need then to have a further category which all but belies definition, which is the circumstances in which the activity is carried on.

May I illustrate. Deep sea fishing is a hazardous employment. It involves carrying on a certain activity on deck. The employee slips on a wet deck in a force eight gale. Is he to be compensated on the same basis as if this happened in flat calm? In Paragraph 1666 of this report the commission recognised these difficulties of definition, and I would earnestly submit to your Lordships that, however carefully the implementing statutes were to be drawn, they would give rise to endless litigation, the sort of spate of litigation that some of us remember which ensued under the old Workmen's Compensation Acts. Therefore, with respect, my Lords, for these reasons on these two disparate aspects I would respectfully submit that the recommendations should not be implemented.

My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for allowing us to discuss this important matter today. We have been grateful to him before. We remember the debate he introduced on product liability, which is covered by this report. I shall never forget the closing words of his speech, when he said that never would he be able to forget, would never allow himself to forget, the picture of those thalidomide children. It is that pertinacity in regard to keeping all aspects of the Pearson Report alive that our admiration goes unstintingly to the noble Lord today.

I feel that anyone who is a practitioner in the law would regard litigation as being a lottery. Indeed the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, described it as a forensic lottery. May I say that anybody who has been engaged in running-down cases would regard it in somewhat more extreme form, as almost an enterprise of Russian roulette? I say that advisedly because of the matters that have been spoken of in this debate in regard to the sheer difficulty years afterwards of getting the evidence together and relying upon it being accurate. Of course, there is the difficulty of the poor victim of the accident, who, as a rule, is not in a fit state to gather witnesses from around him. Usually the driver of the vehicle is in a rather better state to try to secure witnesses, or to forget the names and addresses of those he did gather together but who did not speak in a complimentary way about the manner in which he had driven. So I do not think anybody is going to quarrel with the idea that we ought to look, as indeed Pearson did, at the justification for keeping the system that we have had up till now, which goes back literally to the horse and carriage days. The pity is—and I know Lord Allen has said this that we are again debating this matter without any firm decision being taken, so far as I can see, nearly four years after Pearson has reported.

It is no quarrel with the report to say that the recommendations in regard to a no-fault scheme need not necessarily be followed merely because one disagrees with the present unsatisfactory state of running-down cases and the present state of the law. Indeed, I ought to make it clear to your Lordships that Pearson did not recommend doing away with tort. Pearson in fact recommends that tort should be kept alive. Indeed, in severe cases where sufficient damages would not be paid under the scheme the tort remedy is still available.

However, I pause to ask this. Quite apart from the expense, which is obviously a very material matter, is it really a proper scheme for us in justice to support wholeheartedly? It is all very well to sentimentalise—I can do that with all your Lordships, and do it very sincerely—with those who suffer injury through no fault of their own or through ordinary human error. But I wonder how your Lordships would really appreciate the justice of a scheme in the following circumstances—a scheme backed by taxation in one form or another, which means that every one of us is contributing to it. If a man who is normally in full possession of his senses becomes recklessly drunk and rolls across the road in front of a motor vehicle thereby causing himself extreme injury, is it right or is it just that out of this scheme that has been spoken of he should, at the expense of the state, get compensation for his loss of earnings and other things such as are mentioned in the report? I wonder?

It so happens that the noble Lord who preceded me did himself an injustice. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, whose speeches we are always delighted to listen to, gave us an alternative scheme which he said, and I say this obviously in all seriousness and with great respect, he owed to a group of Conservative lawyers. It was typical of him to pay tribute to the source of his inspiration. But in 1932 Lord Danesfort introduced a Bill called the Road Traffic (Compensation for Accidents) Bill which had this as its precise policy—namely, to reverse the burden of proof. That was the basis of that Bill. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships that it received Government support, but with your Lordships usual independence it did not receive the support of the majority in Parliament. It was adumbrated in 1932. The Law Society, of which I am a very proud and privileged member, delivered, before this report came out, a memorandum—I am not sure whether they would hold the same view now—in which they suggested the very idea that the noble Lord was just talking to us about.

My Lords, I would wholly accept that I do not know that in the 10 years that the committee has been working on this matter they borrowed ideas from the sources that the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has mentioned, and others besides. I certainly would not on any political plane claim any pride from one party against another.

My Lords, obviously nobody is interested in who should have the credit for an idea: we are merely interested in the idea itself. I was not talking politically. I was merely saying that there must be some soundness in the idea because it has not just emerged from the 10 years' deliberation of a group of lawyers. It has in fact emerged from the Law Society in its own memorandum quite a little while ago before the Pearson Report, and, as I have said, I conjure up the memory of the brave Lord Danesfort who put his Bill before the House in 1932.

It is a fact that if we were to look at the principle of strict liability, which is the way that I would prefer to put it, and say that in regard to every motor vehicle accident the presumption is that the driver of the vehicle is responsible for the injuries sustained and the damage sustained by the victim; and we then say that quite obviously that strict liability can be altered in regard to a percentage from 100 to nil, then if the motorist manages to prove that the victim was in some way contributorily negligent we would get rid of the whole question of a number of cases in which you have to bring witnesses from all over the place; because quite obviously this is a pretty simple issue to decide and will only be taken up where quite clearly there is a case for showing that the pedestrian, the motor-cyclist or the pedal cyclist or whoever it was contributed to the blame for the accident. It was absolutely correctly said, and 1 entirely agreed with the noble Lord when he said it, that this would be a matter that could easily be dealt with by a very short piece of legislation. I agree with the noble Lord—and again as he knows this has been put forward previously—that a young child should be exempt from the question of contributory negligence. We have all been thinking of somewhere around the age of 12 as the noble Lord mentioned. I should like to pass from this field to the question of damages, and I do so very briefly.

I think that we were all very indebted to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for giving us some cheer and saying that some parts of the Pearson Report were going to find their way into a Bill before long. I feel that I must say the following as an English lawyer and I know that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor realised this while he was speaking. Most of the positive reforms that the noble and learned Lord mentioned are borrowed—and I say this with diffidence—from Scots law as it now stands. It is quite remarkable, and I find myself saying this with some diffidence and some jealousy, that very often when we look at Scots law we find that there is so much that we ourselves can borrow from it. I hope that it is a mutual transaction going backwards and forwards over the border. May it continue in the same amity that it always has done.

There were some things that I wanted to say about what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor mentioned in regard to the possibility of amending the law of damages in this context. Quite obviously I think that all of us would welcome the abolition of the causes of action that he mentioned: the loss of expectation of life as a separate entity in the claim; fatal accidents and the loss of services and the loss of consortium. The increase in the range of dependants that the noble and learned Lord mentioned is in fact, unless he is going to limit it in his Bill—I think he mentioned grandchildren and so on—directly borrowed from what is Scots law at this moment and so, indeed, is the introduction of an award for loss of society.

What I did not hear the noble and learned Lord mention, and I would be so grateful if he would have this at all events under consideration, is the recommendation in regard to disregard of benefits from the estate where at present our law is that when you look at the question of dependency you see what the dependent in fact receives by way of benefit from the estate of the deceased. It does seem a grave injustice. Scots law does not allow it and I would hope very much that that too would be a matter—

My Lords, I should like to reassure the noble Lord in this respect. I have a fairly full note of what at any rate I intended to say and what I thought I did say. Benefits from the estate which accrue to the dependants who make the claim will be left out of account in assessing damages and that, of course, will increase the award.

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble and learned Lord. I only apologise for the fact that, although I was concentrating very hard on every word of his speech, I missed one valuable sentence. I am so glad that I have been put in receipt of this knowledge now, and I am grateful to him.

The only other matter I wish to raise is this. If we are really to treat reports of Royal Commissions, of the value of Pearson—a report, if I may say so, in regard to the question of no-fault schemes being inspired by the late Lord Chief Justice, Lord Parker, who regarded it as a matter of grave and urgent importance that this should be looked at urgently—in the way in which Pearson has been treated, then I quote what I believe has been said in this House before by others: it is a complete discouragement to everybody who give up of their time to serve on Royal Commissions.

In the past we have relied—I am sure that we shall have to rely in the future—on those public men of worth, skill and experience who are prepared to sit on these commissions and give of their time, energy, thought and expertise. They will not do it if they find that the result of their labours is purely and simply to see that now and again one of the members of the commission has to bring forward to Parliament the fact that the recommendations have been neglected, are not being acted upon or that no decision upon them is being taken.

Whatever else may be the result of this debate, I hope it will mean that, one way or the other, the question of no-fault schemes, and our law of tort in regard to negligence and in regard to road traffic cases, will he looked at definitively and a decision firmly made on policy. I hope that the contributions in this debate will help the Government make up their minds.

My Lords, like everybody else who has spoken this afternoon, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for giving us the opportunity to debate the report of this Royal Commission. But I must confess, like the last speaker, to a certain surprise that it should have been left to him, a Cross-Bencher, to bring this matter to the Floor of the House.

After all, it is nearly 10 years since the commission was set up and it is nearly four years since it reported. Like the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, one would have expected a weighty and carefully considered report like this, prepared by such eminent prople, to have resulted in Government action by now, or, failing that, a debate or a discussion initiated by Government.

The delay and lack of interest would perhaps be excusable if we were dealing with an unimportant matter or one of very little interest to the general public. But neither is true, and in particular there seems to be evidence that a vast number of people are suffering under the present arrangements for attempting to obtain compensation to which they are entitled.

My reason for saying this is that just over two years ago there was a woman in Dorset, Mrs. Marilyn Salkeld, who was involved in a road accident in which she was seriously injured. As she began to recover she also began to understand the enormous difficulty of obtaining proper compensation, even though in her case fault was admitted by the other car driver and liability not denied by the opposing insurance company. She was immensely frustrated by this and, to her credit, realised that there must be many others in a similar situation. She therefore made her concern public and announced her intention of setting up an association which she called the National Association of Compensation Claimants. This was as recently as September 1981.

Up to the start of this year—in other words, in only three to four months—this association has received no fewer than 4,687 letters from victims of accidents complaining of the difficulties of obtaining proper compensation. One can fairly assume that this number must be only the tip of the iceberg. The association has not been enormously well publicised and I doubt whether any of your Lordships has ever heard of it before. As this will also be true of people outside, only a tiny fraction of those with a problem could have written in.

It is very interesting to see the common strand which runs through the letters in the association's files. Some of them are from people who are still uncompensated 10 years after their accident. Clearly, relying on the law of tort produces difficult problems for innocent people. They, of course—the victims of the accident have the onus of proving negligence, and, with the present unrealistic legal aid financial limits, many accident victims go uncompensated simply because they do not have the financial resources to enable them to fight through the courts. Further, many claimants appear to have gained the impression that some insurance companies seem to use delay as a tactic, because they calculate that the longer they take in effecting settlement, the more they may be able to beat down the claimant and the longer they will be able to hang on to their interest-earning money.

Nor, I am afraid I must tell the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, do solicitors escape unscathed. Many victims find that solicitors are unfamiliar with personal injury claims and that even those who do know about them talk about them in terms which the complainants find incomprehensible. There are numerous complaints of claims being handled in a dilatory fashion. Of course, what happens is that many claimants, particularly the older ones, just give up because they find it all too complicated. To introduce the principle of no-fault compensation would, on the face of it, eliminate their problems and make it so much easier for them.

But it may be that the sort of far-reaching reform which is suggested, or the other reforms which have been suggested by other noble Lords, would take a long time to implement, even if agreed. If that is so, those who are concerned with this report should look not only to the future but also to the present. Surely the Government, through the Ministry of Consumer Affairs and professional associations such as the British Insurance Association and the Law Society, should take account of the very obvious dissatisfaction and evidence of mishandling of claims, and attempt to improve matters even under the present system. I suspect that very few of your Lordships have had accidents of the kind about which we are talking today, but I guess that even if you were to have them, the chances are that you would be capable of working your way through the maze in which adequate compensation is the prize. But there are thousands of elderly people, less educated people, people less capable than your Lordships who find themselves caught up in this tangled web through no fault of their own and whose lives are wholly blighted as a result. I think that they are entitled to look to the Government and Parliament for help.

My Lords, I should like to join with all other noble Lords who have paid tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for having given the House an opportunity to debate this subject. I do not altogether take the view of the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, who has just sat clown, that it should be somebody other than the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, who should have introduced this debate long since.

The fact of the matter is that the whole subject is of immense complication. Indeed, there are very many subjects involved. The report is one of over 500 pages. Other countries are involved in discussions. But what the noble Lord, Lord Allen, has done so succinctly, with such precision and such economy of language, is to focus the attention of the House on one particular subject which he thinks—and I would agree with him—could be dealt with separately, and dealt with very soon.

We have heard from the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, that some of the aspects of damages are to be introduced quite soon—in fact, within a month or two. But I personally do not think that I can add very much to what the noble Lord, Lord Allen, has said, supplemented by the noble Lord, Lord Diamond; and I do not propose to make the speech that I was about to make because it would do no more than repeat what those noble Lords have already said. But I should like to comment on one or two what might be called rather peripheral points.

Attention has been drawn—I think it was by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones—to the point made in paragraph 998 of the report which says:

"Changes in the tort system alone would not be enough, since they could not ensure compensation for everyone injured by a motor vehicle",

and then goes on:

"Provided that some means of financing a scheme without increasing direct public expenditure can be found, we think that the primary element of compensation for injuries caused by motor vehicles should be based on the no-fault principle".

I think it is fair to say that the commission did find a means by which no extra burden of expenditure would be placed on the Exchequer. The system that they proposed was that the administration of the scheme should be in the hands of the Department of Health and Social Security, largely because the scheme would be in essence an extension of the industrial injuries scheme. But the Department of Health and Social Security would not have to pay for the scheme; they would administer it. As the report itself makes clear, what they had in mind was that the scheme should be funded through a levy of a penny on petrol prices, and that that money should be paid into the national insurance fund and should be simply, so to speak, laundered by the Department of Health and Social Security, who would pay it out. So I think that the proviso that the commission themselves made has been fully met in that matter.

Not everybody will be entirely happy about the scheme being run by the Civil Service. Indeed, at a time when the Government are seeking to reduce the numbers of civil servants, the Government may plead in aid that policy as a good reason for postponing dealing with this recommendation, or at any rate not accepting this part of the recommendations. But presumably they will be reducing the numbers in the Department of Health and Social Security, among other departments, and it would be quite possible to use some of those who are reduced in that department, or transferred from other departments, to do this work, and of course they would not be paid by the Government. They would still be civil servants, but the money would come not from taxation but from the petrol levy. I am really saying this to anticipate what my noble friend may try to aver from the Front Bench. I really do not think that that would be a good answer.

There is one point that I am not certain has been raised so far, and that is the alternative that was rather briefly mentioned in the commission's report. The alternative to no-fault insurance, no-fault compensation, was strict liability. The late Sir Graham Page introduced a Private Member's Bill in 1975 to impose strict liability backed by a form of compulsory insurance on motor users, and I suppose in the climate of those days it might have got through, given time. The proposals had the support, I might add, of the majority of the Bar Council. What the commission said about it was:

"Strict liability improves the victim's chances of obtaining compensation".

But they considered that it would place an unfair financial burden on motorists.

They did not expand this view, but no doubt they felt that an innocent motorist would stand to lose his no-claim bonus and possibly pay a higher basic premium as well as—and this is quite an important point—incurring at least a slur on his reputation. I do not think that the extract that is given in the report from Justice's memorandum of evidence has been quoted yet, but it is worth quoting in this whole context. What Justice said in paragraph 988 was:

"Some …accidents will happen because the victim has not been quite careful enough for his own safety. Others will happen because someone else has not been quite careful enough for the safety of other people. Yet others will happen because someone has deliberately chosen to take an unwarranted risk. But many will happen despite the fact that everyone concerned has taken as much care as any reasonable person would, in the circumstances, have expected him to take. Not every accident is directly 'caused' by anyone's 'fault'."

Most people would feel that it would be wrong to impose a strict liability on someone who is wholly guiltless in causing the accident. I would support entirely that the no-fault policy would be vastly superior to the strict liability one.

May I ask my noble friend on the Front Bench this question. The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, referred to experience in other countries. Obviously the experience in those other countries was the experience up to just before the writing of the report, which is really quite a long time ago now. I wonder whether the noble Lord could give this House the experience that has occurred since then in other countries, and give us some indication of that, because it would be valuable to the House in making up their minds on this matter?

When we are talking of other countries, there is the question of accidents to visitors to this country, which I do not think has been mentioned yet. The recommendation of the commission, as I understood it, was that what the scheme is supposed to be covering is accidents taking place in this country. Therefore, it would cover accidents to visitors in this country, and it would enable those visitors, those injured people, when they return to their own country to go on receiving benefits although they were no longer in this country. But it would not cover accidents to British people while they are abroad. I do not know what my noble friend's view is on that matter, but it is something which is always likely to cause some controversy.

The noble Lord, Lord Allen, proposes that we should make a start on no-fault compensation for injuries in motor vehicle accidents on the lines of the industrial injuries scheme. The immediately preceding section in the report deals with the industrial injuries scheme. I have perhaps a rather suspicious mind, but it seemed to me that one possible reason for postponing action on the no-fault scheme would be that it would be alleged that it would be necessary to amend the industrial injuries scheme before we got on to the no-fault scheme.

The connection between the two is of course close. The basic benefit would be the same, but there is really nothing in the amendments suggested to the industrial injuries scheme that would require to be made before the no-fault scheme for motor vehicle accidents was introduced. Therefore, I hope that this will not be alleged, because if and when the industrial injuries scheme is amended obviously it will be possible to amend the no-fault accident scheme as well.

The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, made a valid point when he was talking about the entitlement of somebody who has contributed very considerably and, probably mainly, to an accident through his own misconduct.

Some members of the commission thought there should be an exclusion clause applicable to those who suffer injury through their own misconduct in the course of or leading up to the accident, and the suggestion was that the Secretary of State should be given discretion to intervene and withdraw or deny the benefit. But as I understood it, that was to be limited only to criminal acts. I had some sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, in thinking that that should go a little further and that misbehaviour which plainly was responsible for the accident should also possibly be taken into account, but I am not sure that I got the noble Lord right.

The noble Lord got me completely right, my Lords, and I am obliged to him for mentioning the point. However, does he realise into what area he is now drifting if every time somebody thought that conduct which was irresponsible or wrong had to go to the Secretary of State before a decision could be reached? Are we not walking into the same multitude of disputes that we are trying to avoid?

My Lords, I think I am correct in saying that in all these cases there will be, or should have been, a report to the police. Many matters in this sphere may come to the Secretary of State's department, but it does not necessarily follow that he need do more than look at the papers at the end and I should not have thought it would be a very great burden, but perhaps my noble friend Lord Bellwin has further information to quantify the number of cases that might arise.

I hope I have not detained your Lordships too long. What I—and I think this applies to most noble Lords, judging from the debate—would like to see is legislation in this field, and the sooner we have it the better. The objectives of that legislation should be to ensure that as high a proportion as possible of innocent victims of road accidents should receive compensation on a fair and intelligible basis, preferably in line with the industrial injuries scheme; secondly, that as high a proportion as possible of awards should go to the victims as distinct from administration; and thirdly, that the various schemes of help for victims—the National Health Service, the industrial injuries scheme, the tort system and the new no-fault scheme—should be dovetailed so as to avoid either gaps or overlapping. The noble Lord, Lord Allen, referred to the complementary nature he envisaged for the no-fault scheme. Several noble Lords have spoken as if they thought the new scheme would largely supplant rather than supplement the tort scheme, but I am sure that is not the intention. I warmly support the Motion and hope the Government will accept it.

My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, rightly says that the strict liability concept does not help very much here, may I ask him whether that is not because that concept is of the strict liability of a supplier of a defective product? Even if one presupposes that most road accidents are caused by defective vehicles, which probably is not true anyway, the plaintiff still has the formidable task of proving that it was a defect in a vehicle which caused the accident.

I do not think that is the intention, my Lords. The report deals with defective products and we have already debated that matter in this House. But that is an entirely separate matter from road accidents and I think it better that we keep them separate.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Allen, for his courage in moving a Motion which I regard as of the highest importance, and I support noble Lords who have urged that the Government should bring in an early Bill to carry through the reforms which the Pearson Report puts forward. I believe it is self-evidently true that the defects of the law of tort should be remedied and that a no-negligence compensation system should be introduced. I believe it is pre-eminently desirable that £41 million—or more if it be required—should be found to give proper compensation to the victims of road accidents.

I am not qualified to follow noble Lords in the legal arguments which they have deployed. Instead, I wish to draw attention, and perhaps widen the debate, to the horrifying significance of the information about road accidents which the Pearson Report gives us: 7,600 people killed on the roads every year and 400,000, a huge army, injured, 80,000 of them seriously injured. Let me try to put those figures into true perspective.

In 1979, British Rail had a serious accident. A sleeping car was, by error, locked at night. It caught fire and 11 passengers were burnt to death. The accident created a great stir in the public press, national and local, and the details were on radio and TV. It is still talked of today. It was the most serious accident, with the greatest loss of life, which British Rail had had for more than five years.

But in 1979, 1980, 1981 and in the first 19 days of 1982, 20 people have been killed every day in accidents on the roads, and on two days a week the number is 23. Those facts should fill every thinking man with indignant horror. They mean that accidents on the roads are by far our gravest social problem, graver than alcohol, tobacco, slums or prostitution. They cause a sum of economic loss to the nation and of human suffering to its citizens which no one can estimate.

The purpose of the Pearson Report was to help the victims of road accidents, to avoid injustice, to lighten the burden which falls upon them from death or mutilation. But incomparably the most important thing that can be done to help the victims of road accidents is to reduce the number of the accidents, and I believe that to that end the Government could do very much that they have not done. I speak from a knowledge which was detailed long ago.

During the war I had the privilege of being Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of War Transport. In that capacity I was the chairman of a Ministry committee on road safety. It was a highly expert committee, with a representative of the motor manufacturers who became my friend and who desired as ardently as I did that our report should lead to practical results. As well as the representative of the motor manufacturers, there were representatives of the AA and the RAC, spokesmen for motor-cyclists and for pedestrians, a traffic expert from the GLC, and other people with intimate knowledge of the subject, including in particular two chief constables. One of the chief constables was from Lancashire and he had achieved very notable results in reducing the number of accidents on the roads in his area.

The committee sat at monthly intervals for four years, and in the end it produced what I regarded—it was not my work, it was the work of all the experts—as a masterly report, with between 160 and 170 proposals for separate measures which would reduce the death and mutilation on the roads. I want to refer to a few of those proposals. The first was that the Government should indulge in much greater public education about the danger of road accidents—consistent, thorough, sustained propaganda. The Services departments spend millions a year advertising for recruits for the armed forces. I believe that the Government should spend millions a year advertising to save the lives of the country's citizens, advertising in the national and local press, on the radio services, and on national and local TV. The secret of success in advertising is tedious repetition, saying the same thing again and again, until people are subconsciously aware of what is said.

I believe that the message to be advertised to all our citizens is not only one of caution, caution by the drivers, but much more it is to give the drivers a sense of their duty to consider the other users of the road. It is to teach the other users of the road that they must understand the problems of the driver. It is stated in the Pearson Report that a good driver makes nine mistakes every five minutes. What does a bad driver do?—and there are bad drivers. There is a small minority of drivers who consistently drive too fast, who care nothing for the other users of the road, and I hope that the Government will not be afraid of harassing such drivers. They deserve to be harassed. In fact, it is in their own interests that they should be harassed, for harassment is the only hope of bringing about improvement in their conduct.

Such propaganda, and the other measures that I shall propose, are in the interests of all drivers, good and bad. I should like to cite a personal example. My driving days were ended by a drunken young man who hit my car at 40 miles an hour as I was crossing the north side of Sloane Square from west to east. He was very drunk. My car was a total write-off. Had he been a split second earlier, he would probably have ended my days. The loss of my car was a serious misfortune, but for him the accident was a grave disaster. He spent the night in the police station, he was so drunk. His car lay in Sloane Square until the following day, when it was carted away by a lorry with a crane on it. The police never revealed to me what were the subsequent penalties that he endured.

To avoid such an experience is the major interest of every one who drives a car, and that is why I believe that what I put forward is in the true interests of motorists themselves. The advertising that I have suggested should be directed to the motorist, the motor-cyclist, the pedal cyclist, the pedestrian, and the parents of young children. It should be skilfully adapted to each of those groups. It should, I believe, be supplemented by much more stringent conditions for the granting of licences to those who wish to drive.

In particular, the candidate for a licence to drive should undergo a course of serious education in the ethics of road driving. I believe that the Government should spend a lot of money making an elaborate and a moving film depicting a young man who, by dangerous driving, under the influence of drink or otherwise, kills a child. The film should show the agony of the parents and the guilt of the young man which he will carry with him through his life to his grave. It should make a deep impression on every candidate who wants to drive.

I believe that the Government should try to deal with the major causes of road accidents. Drunkenness, of which I have spoken, is perhaps the most lamentable of them all. Far too large a proportion of fatal accidents, in particular those that occur after 10 p.m., are due to drunken driving. Propaganda here can help. It can give the driver a proper sense of his guilt. It can make him understand that he is guilty of a crime, that he is quite as much a murderer as a bandit who plans a killing, who stalks his victim, and then does him in. He is quite as much a murderer because when he drinks he knows that it may make him drive dangerously. Yet he drinks. Then he goes out and the tragedy occurs.

But I believe that more than propaganda is required. Withdrawal of a driving licence, not for six months but for life, would have a great effect. I believe there should also be the imposition by the courts of long terms of imprisonment for dangerous driving which leads to needless death. In general, I do not believe in punishment as a deterrent to misdemeanor, but I believe a few sentences of 10 or 15 years' imprisonment for drivers would produce a magical effect on those who now drink and drive.

Another major cause of road accidents is vehicle defect. I have no recent figures or evidence, but an illustration from long ago, when I understood the subject extremely well, will illustrate my point. In my last year as a Member of another place the chief constable of my constituency, Derby, carried out a check on the lorries which passed through the city. He found that 60 per cent. of them had some defect, and that 25 per cent. were so defective that he would not allow the drivers to proceed upon their journeys until they had been to a garage for repairs. One in every four lorries was in such a dangerous condition that it might easily produce a fatal mistake.

The ministerial wartime committee of which I have spoken proposed a bold and comprehensive remedy for this condition—a remedy which was then in working order in a number of the states of the United States of America. Those stages had special publicly-owned garages with tools and equipment which enabled them to test the safety of a vehicle in three minutes—steering, brakes, clutch and all the rest. The driver was obliged to take in his vehicle once a quarter, four times a year, to have a test. He paid 50 cents, then two shillings, and in three minutes he could safely drive away. I believe that such a system here would amply repay the cost. I do not go further in recalling the measures which we proposed in our wartime report, but I believe the Government could do worse than take out that report and consider the measures one by one.

The Pearson Report deals with the problem of accidents on the roads, of death and mutilation, in terms of monetary compensation, but the real cost of a road accident to the victim is not measured in terms of cash. It is measured in terms of a ruined life, in grief and human suffering, and in family tragedy. I have had friends whose wives were killed by careless young men and whose whole existence was disrupted; whose young children, rendered motherless, suffered what they could not bear to see. I believe that it is in terms of human suffering and family tragedy that the Government should think about this problem, and I hope they will use the opportunity of this debate to make the decision that they will in fact take drastic measures to reduce the grave scandal of death and mutilation on our roads.

My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, himself a distinguished member of the Pearson Royal Commission, on having made this debate possible today; and I join in the admiration of the lucid way in which he introduced it. I myself see much in favour of the proposal to introduce a no-fault compensation scheme, but I also see some drawbacks in the particular proposal in the commission's report. Some of these have been mentioned by previous speakers, so I shall merely touch on one or two later. But I am seeking to take part in this debate because I strongly support the conclusion of the commission, on page 367 of the report, in its Summary of conclusions, that

"considerable simplification of the highly complicated social security system is desirable".

I welcome the consideration of proposals for reform as a further step towards equality among severely disabled people. I propose to address my remarks to the effects of such proposals on disablement in our community. Noble Lords will know of my role during the recent International Year of Disabled People. Compensation, services and support at present depend largely on the cause of disability. In many cases disablement is a result of road accidents. Under the present system of civil liability in tort (or, in Scotland, delict) compensation is normally paid only when it is proved that someone is at fault, and then it is usually the insurers who make the payment.

I believe we should consider all this in a wider context. There are other disabled people whose disability comes from other causes. What they receive in money or in kind depends on the cause; for example, war disablement, industrial injury or, in recent years, criminal injury compensation and vaccine damage compensation. These last two are small in comparison with the other schemes, and are designed for special circumstances. There are many accidents in the home, as the report indicates. They are not even within the scope of the Royal Commission report. Then, disablement is also caused by illness—for example, multiple sclerosis—or people are disabled from birth.

For these categories there was before 1970 no provision in the national insurance system. Non-contributory benefits, however, have been introduced since 1970. Before that, very few of the categories I have just mentioned of severely disabled people could qualify for financial help other than supplementary benefit or its predecessor, national assistance—and they, of course, were subject to a test of means. The reason for this, your Lordships will recall, was that the national insurance system introduced after the war worked on the principle of compensation for the absence or loss of employment. The essence of it was employment. Someone who had been severely disabled from birth or early youth did not qualify on a contractual basis under the national insurance scheme and did not enter the scheme. That is changing. Much has been done in the last 10 years.

May I illustrate the position as it was in 1970 by giving four examples. These are four men, all with virtually the same disability; all paralysed but having the limited use of one arm. All are living at home but unable to do normal jobs. The first man was disabled in the war and was receiving a 100 per cent. disability pension, the amount of which varies with the rank when disabled. There are also special medical and transport arrangements for that category. The second man was injured at work and received a special industrial injuries pension under the industrial injuries scheme. The third was disabled by a road accident which was determined by a court to have been somebody's fault. He, therefore, received compensation. The fourth was disabled as a child after an accident which was officially nobody's fault. For him, there was no compensation, pension or benefit for his disability. These are simple illustrations. Your Lordships will be able to imagine other categories of disabled persons also.

For about 20 years after the war, the war disabled received priority for reasons which are easily understandable. It was from the mid-1960s that other categories of disabled were brought to the attention of Parliament and changes were made. It was in the 1970s that the process started of extending benefits to other severely disabled people. Examples of non-contributory benefits that were brought in in the 1970s are the invalidity pension (which is about half the value of the contributory invalidity pension); the same pension for married women—this is for the disabled housewife; because most wives did not, and still do not insure separately from their husbands and therefore if a housewife had an illness which caused her to be severely handicapped she did not have any special provision. There is the attendance allowance (which is to cover another, able-bodied person performing nursing services in the home for a disabled person); and the mobility allowance as regards transport.

These are a few of the non-contributory benefits which have been introduced to meet gaps in the system. There are conditions applying to each, including medical tests where appropriate. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Pearson Commission has pointed out that the largest single source of compensation for injury and bereavement is the social security system. This is as regards both money payments and services and facilities in kind. Their suggestion is that the system of tort (or delict in Scotland) should be directly related to their suggested scheme for no-fault compensation. In this way double compensation would be avoided; and I should like to emphasise that the commission has suggested that the two should both continue, because some speeches today may have given the impression that the commission suggested that no-fault compensation should replace tort.

I believe that the social security system now has become so complicated that simplification is necessary —and the new benefits have been partially the cause of this. To many the whole system has now become so complicated and seems so irrational owing to the miscellaneous conditions attaching to social security benefits, including those unrelated to disability for which many disabled people hope also to qualify.

Some of the gaps which have existed in our social security system have been filled or partially filled by the piecemeal introduction during the last 10 years of new forms of financial help; and I have given some as examples. The resulting complex web of pensions and allowances needs thorough rationalisation and simplification. In this I agree with the Royal Commission's Report.

The Government have made clear that they are considering the concept of a general disablement benefit which would not depend on the cause of the impairment or on national insurance contributory status. That may be on the distant horizon. Nonetheless, the Government have indicated that that is their aim. That is an aim which many voluntary organisations have been advocating. I myself can see many difficulties on the way. The present Government have also indicated the distant aim of bringing in a tax credit system. A Green Paper on the subject was published eight years ago. This again may be a distant prospect, but I ask my noble friend to encourage the Government to take steps towards rationalisation with an eventual framework in mind, perhaps a tax credit scheme, perhaps something that they have decided would be better. This may be 10 years or 20 years off but we should not close the option of such a system while we make step-by-step reforms to parts of the social security system.

I advocate this because it would mean a great reduction in bureaucracy. It would mean reducing the profusion of payments in both directions between individuals and the public purse which exists at present.

Regarding the financing of a no-fault compensation scheme, I do not have time to comment on the suggestion that it should be done from a levy on petrol. I am not persuaded of that, but I understand the reasons for it. Regarding the criticisms made about costs of such a scheme, I would say that if this were done as part of a general reform, the amount saved in cutting out bureaucracy would probably be much greater than the cost of any additional administration that had to be paid for in a no-fault scheme. I was impressed by the figure which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, gave: that 85 per cent. of the money received in compensation under the tort system went on legal fees, expenses and other administration.

I think there may be other ways of achieving a scheme of the kind which the commission has in mind and some of these have been suggested today. I am not competent to comment upon them. I am not legally qualified, nor have I the experience of cases or courts. I should like to say that I was pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, referred to Scots law and had clearly taken the trouble to go into the provisions there. I hope that the Government will seriously consider reform whether on the basis of a no-fault compensation scheme or by other means. The aim, I suggest, should be to move towards equality of treatment for severely disabled people depending upon their condition—that is to say, their state of mobility or their dependence upon other people or upon special equipment—and not simply upon the cause of their disability such as war, illness or different kinds of accident.

My Lords, may I join in the thanks and congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for opening the debate on this massive and important report. I hope that he feels gratified by the large number of very informative speeches that have been made by noble Lords. It is my intention to concentrate mainly on the proposal for the no-fault road scheme. I must say that I was concerned—and other noble Lords may be concerned—that the commission was inhibited by the terms of reference that were given to it. The commission made clear in the opening paragraph of the introduction that it was confined to consider the position of five categories only; and in respect of the 3 million injuries resulting in death or four or more days' incapacity each year, some 1.4 million or 45 per cent. of all those injured at the moment, most get no compensation. About 1 million of these cases are outside the terms of reference. That is a very important figure which I hope we shall keep in mind.

As the commission state in paragraph 3 of the introduction, this did not permit them to give consideration to a comprehensive scheme dealing with all injuries, still less a universal scheme to cover all capacities. I was very pleased to note the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, in this connection. I was also pleased that the commission did not feel constrained by its terms of reference in the consideration that it gave to the special solution for severely handicapped children and bringing in appropriate recommendations. The terms of reference did not include that, but they were not constrained by that. Most noble Lords will be grateful that they considered that matter.

I regard this restriction of the terms of reference as most unfortunate. As my noble and learned friend Lord Elwyn-Jones said, my own party have still not made a final decision on the recommendations of the Pearson Report. However, we should be most unhappy if the adoption of a separate scheme for road injuries, as proposed by the commission, should inhibit the introduction of a comprehensive scheme for all disabled persons, which we regard as so essential. In 1968 the Disablement Income Group and a number of other organisations expressed the view that all disabled people should be covered by a scheme, whether they are born disabled or disabled as a result of accidents, either at home or at work. We should be very unhappy if the introduction of a partial scheme now inhibited the possible introduction of a fully comprehensive scheme.

The commission made out a very strong case concerning those who suffer injuries from motor accidents and are at present left out of compensation for various reasons. A number of noble Lords have added details and facts. The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, introduced figures in his speech which show the size of the problem. The commission point out that, after excluding those who are injured while at work, there are still nearly 300,000 persons who suffer injuries from the road who are not covered at the present moment. The commission emphasise that road injury cannot be avoided by anyone who enjoys normal mobility and makes the point that one quarter of those involved in injuries from road accidents—and, one third of those who are killed—are pedestrians. Children and elderly pedestrians are particularly vulnerable. We must keep these matters in mind. Another piece of information is that road injuries are more likely than most other accidental injuries to be severe. I noted from the commission's own personal injury survey—and they are to be congratulated on conducting a personal survey of this kind—that injuries from road accidents cause a longer than average incapacity for work.

The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, and others joined in the general criticism by the commission of the reliance on the present system of tort. I will not go into those details. It seems from the speeches that most noble Lords were in general agreement with that criticism. My noble and learned friend Lord Elwyn-Jones mentioned the costs of administering the present tort system. In addition to the point made that what are called operating costs are about 85 per cent. of the value of compensation payments, it was put another way: that the operating costs are 45 per cent. of the combined total of compensation payments and operating costs.

Despite these facts, is this sufficient justification for singling out some 300,000 persons for special attention but leaving 1 million persons who suffer from injuries out of consideration altogether because they were excluded from the terms of reference given to the Royal Commission? The commission rejected, as has been said, the view put forward by some witnesses that there should be strict liability for motor injuries. The comments of the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, were very helpful in this direction, as were the examples given by my noble friend Lord Mishcon. I share the view of the commission that this would place an unfair financial burden on motorists, and also share the view of the two motoring organisations, who say that this would impose heavy burdens and penalise the innocent driver. In our anxiety to do something about road accidents, we should not find ourselves penalising innocent individuals.

The commission support the continuation of tort despite their proposal for the special road scheme. For myself, I support that view and I note that the two motoring organisations, the AA and the RAC, also support that line. I must again emphasise, as did my noble and learned friend Lord Elwyn-Jones, that, although the Labour Party have not yet considered all the implications of the Pearson Report, we believe that it is absolutely essential that there should be a comprehensive scheme for all disabled persons. We may have to progress with a phased programme in that direction, but it is the aim.

A number of noble Lords indicated today that they support the commission's proposals for a no-fault injuries scheme. Other noble Lords may be inclined to support it because from the commission's proposals there will be no burden whatever falling upon the Exchequer. So far as I can recall, no noble Lord dealt in detail with the actual scheme. I do not want to be unfair to the commission or be ultra-critical of their plans, but there are some points that I wish to make generally on the main no-fault scheme if it should be considered desirable to proceed with it.

The commission considered quite a number of alternatives but eventually came down in favour of the cost of being met solely by the owners or drivers of motor vehicles. It suggested that this should be initially by a 1p per gallon levy. As has been mentioned, this figure may be out of date now because of the difference of prices. The commission also recommend that injuries involving motor vehicles sustained on the way to work or from work should in future be included in the industrial injuries scheme. This is a proposal which I am happy to say we support.

The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, outlined that sickness benefit for those at work injured in road accidents is at present met from the National Insurance Fund. This totals approximately £36 million a year. The commission propose that in future this should be met by the proposed no-fault road scheme. This means transferring a charge to the motorist which is at present borne by all employers and all employees, with a contribution from the Exchequer.

The costs of the no-fault scheme were given as being £64 million after five years and £90 million after 40 years for the basic scheme and costs of administration. It is also explained by the commission that if in addition to this all the benefits at present paid in connection with road accidents from the National Insurance Fund were transferred to the no-fault road scheme—which is what is proposed—the costs would then be £90 million after five years and £125 million after 40 years. In other words, the commission's proposal would already take the penny per gallon of levy, which may itself be out of date, 40 per cent. above. Therefore I think we have already seen there can be a substantial increase in the levy by that proposal. I would ask, if a no-fault scheme is considered desirable—and this would apply where there are no legal responsibilities on motorists—is it equitable that the motorists should be the only ones called upon to pay the cost of the scheme, and also to pay some of the costs at present borne by the national insurance fund? A number of noble Lords seemed to be putting similar views on that matter.

The answer by the commission is that although there may be a case for contributions to be made from general taxation on the grounds of community responsibility, they see no logical justification—those were their approximate words—for imposing on a special group, that is the employers and employees, the cost of injuries caused by another special group, the motorists. That ignores the fact that in many cases, as the commission explains, the motorist is not at all to blame for the injury and has no legal responsibility except that he happens to have a motor-car. Far be it from me, as a layman, to criticise the legal profession, and I know it is suggested that most members of the Bar Council favour this type of scheme, but one could take this argument to such an extent that all sorts of things could be charged to individuals who happen to possess certain things or to pursue their lives in a certain direction.

This seems even more to reinforce the need for a comprehensive scheme to take in all categories of the disabled; and I should like to emphasise the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, that it is important, in any scheme dealing with the disabled and those with disabilities, that we should consider benefits from the point of view of the effects of the disability and not from the causes. I have not read the whole of the report but I have read the 18 chapters which apply to the position I am dealing with, and it seems to me that the commission are dealing with this matter from the causes of disability rather than the effects.

My Lords, may I intervene? If the scheme follows the industrial injuries scheme, surely that is not so, because that scheme is related to the effects?

My Lords, if we are dealing with the effects, then of course we would be looking at a comprehensive scheme, and that is what I am talking about. Despite the intention of the commission to place the whole cost of such a scheme on motorists, we find in Chapter 5, and also very helpfully set out in detail in Annex 4, details of a number of non-contributory benefits which have been introduced in the last decade. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, outlined some of those and therefore I shall not repeat them.

The commission also pointed out a number of other departures from the principle of contribution and where payments are made from general taxation. This, of course, is in line with what we have been repeatedly told from the Government Front Bench in various debates last year—that no longer can benefits be related to contributions. That no longer applies. I recognise that strict adherence to the contribution principle does exclude a number of special groups.

My last point concerns a levy on petrol. We may call it a levy but it is in effect a tax, and it entails the acceptance of the principle of hypothecation. The Treasury and successive Governments have refused to hypothecate any tax or part of a tax for any particular purpose, and that is what would be done if this charge is put on the motorists. This is the argument that successive Governments have used against the motoring and road haulage bodies who have tried to claim that a huge surplus occurs from the amount they pay in motor tax which is not spent on road maintenance and construction. It is always argued that this is a tax to general revenue and is not to be earmarked for any particular purpose. Yet in this one case this is being proposed, because a levy, in my view, is a tax. It is not only wrong in principle but it could be the thin end of the wedge and could lead to other similar things. Therefore, in conclusion, I believe that the commission are to be thanked for an immense and valuable task, but I think they were constrained by the terms of reference. My personal view is that any no-fault scheme that is to be introduced should not be made the sole responsibility of motorists, but should be met by the general community. I should like to express concern that any partial scheme, if it would inhibit a general comprehensive scheme for the disabled, is one that should be looked at with great care.

My Lords, may I begin by saying that I, too, endorse what has been said by others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for bringing forward this matter today. We do indeed owe him a debt of gratitude for that. May I also thank my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor for his important and helpful contribution. I am very grateful to him.

It is fitting, so soon after the conclusion of a year in which special attention has been focused on the needs of disabled people, that we should have the opportunity to address our minds to the report of the Pearson Commission, which had its origins in the thalidomide problems. Some measure of the breadth of the field of consideration, and the extent of the commission's painstaking research, can be gauged from the list of their 188 recommendations. Many concern fundamental and far-reaching issues, which are still under consideration by the Government. My noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor has explained the position in relation to those recommendations which fall within his responsibility.

I hope the noble Lord, Lord Noel-Baker, will forgive me if I do not dwell tonight on the road safety issues which he raised. These are important points which 1 know my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport will wish to consider, but this evening in response to the debate I would like to concentrate on the recommendations on compensation for the victims of road accidents. In doing so, may I remind noble Lords that the discussion is not about the construction of a scheme to provide compensation where none is available at present. It is about the provision of additional benefits, on top of existing rights to sue for damages, on the basis of a driver's negligence; and on top of any entitlement to the benefits provided under the social security schemes.

As the commission pointed out, preferential, no-fault benefits are already available for two categories of injured persons—those injured at work, and those injured while serving in the Forces.Pearson recommended that the same benefits should be available for industrial and for road injuries. The analogy with the industrial injuries scheme is apt. Both types of injury can be related to a readily indentifiable incident. There is therefore much common ground

As my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor said, our proposals for the reform of the industrial injuries scheme were published in a White Paper last November. This scheme's most important benefit is disablement benefits. It is based on the assessment of the disablement which results from a loss of faculty caused by an industrial accident or disease. It has no counterpart in the main national insurance scheme, and can be paid in addition to the benefits of that scheme, just as it can he paid in addition to wages or salary. As noble Lords well know, and as the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, reminded us, there are other, everyday risks in life, which can cause accidents and lead to disablement. There are accidents in the home, which are far greater in number than those on the road, and those occurring in sporting or leisure pursuits.

Any extension of preferential benefits to one category must inevitably lead to questions. For example, why is provision made for one group of injured people, and not for others? Why should the cause of disablement determine how much benefit is payable? Is not the loss of a finger, for example, just as disabling, in itself whether it is caused by an accident at work, on the road or at home? These are the very points emphasised by the organisations who represent the interests of the disabled.

In 1980, the Government published a discussion document, following a comprehensive review of the industrial injuries scheme prompted by the Pearson Report, and sought views and comments on how the scheme could be improved. A foreword explained that the lack of available resources, prevents any improvements, unless they are achieved by offsetting changes elsewhere in the scheme. In the majority of the responses from organisations and individuals to the Government's invitation to comment on the options for change presented in the discussion document there were two distinctive threads. One supported the view that preferential benefits should not be given where there is already a national insurance benefit which compensates for a similar, but non-industrial, contingency. The other pressed the Government to redirect the scheme's resources from minor disabilities towards the seriously disabled.

I have already mentioned the White Paper on the reform of the industrial injuries scheme, which flowed from this consultative period. In Chapter 1, there is a summary of the reactions to the discussion document, containing quotations from some of the respondents. One is from the Disability Alliance. It was, of course, concerned with the preferential benefits of the industrial injuries scheme, but it is just as relevant to the whole concept of preferential benefits. I quote:

"the distribution of preferential compensation through the industrial injuries scheme, on the basis of place and cause of disability, when the majority of people having the burden of severe disablement in our society are excluded, offends principles of social justice".

Pearson argued that the proposed road injuries scheme would provide compensation for all people injured by motor vehicles, compared with the 25 per cent. who now receive tort compensation. It would also eliminate the element of chance which applies to such actions, particularly in the case of road accidents, but it could provide no benefit for past cases. It should provide speedier compensation, and be very much less expensive to administer. The levy on petrol, which as the noble Lord, Lord Allen, and others reminded us, was to pay for the scheme, would ensure that the cost of compensation would fall on those who cause the injuries—that is, the motoring public. Adding to the objections to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, and the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, referred, I would submit that the special levy would not be sensible. It would quickly become lost in the much larger motor fuel duty, and annual increases would have to be measured in hundredths of a penny per gallon. If desired, the scheme could be financed notionally from motor fuel and other duties, in the same way as other public costs caused by motorists.

But whether financed by levy or not, the scheme would increase public expenditure. I regret that I do not have available an up-to-date figure as to the public expenditure cost of the Pearson proposals, but it is clear enough that it would be considerable. Pearson recommended that commuting accidents should be covered by the industrial injuries scheme. The White Paper on the reform of that scheme has rejected that proposal. If those accidents were included in a road traffic scheme, public expenditure costs would increase still more. Staff costs have been estimated to he of the order of 1,000—including 200 doctors. This, in itself, would be a source of great difficulty, not least at a time when the Government are trying to reduce the size of the Civil Service.

A programme of consultation with outside bodies on the road traffic scheme has been completed. The TUC, TGWU, Police Federation, Cycling Council, Pedestrians' Association, British Road Passenger Transport Confederation, Freight Transport Association and Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders all support the scheme. But bodies representing the disabled, the motoring associations, the British Motorcyclists' Federation, and the Road Haulage Association, are opposed—the organisations for the disabled pressing strongly for priority for general relief for the severely disabled.

My noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway, in a most interesting speech, referred among other things to alternatives to the Pearson scheme. One alternative would be to change the law of liability for injuries resulting from road accidents, so as to enable more people to obtain compensation, and to provide that the extra cost should fall on insurance premiums. But this approach would be counter to the Royal Commission's fundamental strategy of shifting the burden of compensation from the tort system to the state. It would increase insurance premiums, and, therefore, costs all round, and would be opposed by the motoring public. These were, of course, points made by the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, with which I agree.

All contributors to the debate today have expressed their concern for the welfare of all disabled people, whatever the cause of their disablement. It is a concern which Her Majesty's Government fully share. Our aim is, as my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy said, to provide a coherent benefit system to help all disabled people. We will take into full account the many thoughtful ideas which noble Lords have put forward today, but I must frankly say that the achievement of the Government's aims cannot disregard the availability of the necessary resources. I am also bound to say that, subject to a thorough reading of what has been said in the debate today, it is not clear to the Government that the attainment of these aims would be helped by introducing a further preferential, no-fault benefit aimed at a special section of the public on whatever basis it was financed.

The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, and my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, referred to the offsetting of social security benefits against damages awards. Pearson recommended that there should be an offset, so that a double benefit should not be paid for a single accident. In the White Paper on the reform of the industrial injuries scheme, which has been mentioned, the Government have announced their intention to amend the Law Reform (Personal Injuries) Act 1948, so that the full offset proposed by Pearson should operate, instead of the partial offset which has obtained since 1948. This was not, however, a topic which was mentioned in the discussion document which led up to the White Paper, so the Government have asked for public comments on that proposal by 31st March.

My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy referred to Pearson's recommendation that the social security scheme should be simplified. I gladly tell him that the Government entirely agree. The White Paper, which I have already mentioned, proposes to remove those industrial injuries benefits which duplicate others and the result will be three benefits instead of the present eight. My noble friend Lord Drumalbyn asked whether we have more up-to-date information about foreign schemes. I am informed that at the present time we do not, but I should want to look into that point and, indeed, to answer one or two other specific questions which he put to me, about which I want to write to him.

As has been said by every speaker today, the noble Lord, Lord Allen, has rendered an important service by initiating this debate. I assure him that his ever-thoughtful comments, and those of other noble Lords who have contributed to a most interesting discussion, will be carefully studied by Her Majesty's Government in their efforts to ensure that scarce resources are used to the best effect for the benefit of disabled people. The Government are seized of both the importance and the urgency of the matter. What my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor said surely indicated that and I gladly confirm it.

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I wonder whether he would be kind enough to address himself to the abundant evidence which the Pearson Commission had, that the present state of the law in regard to road accidents is unsatisfactory? Is it the Government's conclusion that all that evidence should be ignored to the extent that the law is to remain the same?

My Lords, I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, should deduce from what I have said that that is the Government's attitude. As I have tried to indicate, apparently not successfully to the noble Lord, we are concerned about all aspects of the Pearson Report. Because we do not at the moment agree with everything that is contained within it, since we find that it is not possible immediately to deal with all aspects of it, this does not mean that the Government disagree with the report. Should there be any particular point relating to the matter which the noble Lord has raised which we ought to consider further then, as with all the other observations which have been made, I gladly confirm that we shall study it very carefully.

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask him two questions. He spoke of the increase in public expenditure. Does the noble Lord appreciate, with the intensity which it deserves, the fact that public expenditure would put right what is now a very grave social injustice to people who suffer great hardship? Secondly, does the noble Lord realise that the outstandingly important financial fact is that road accidents are reliably estimated to cost the nation not less than £1,000 million a year and that the reduction of that enormous sum should be a prime objective of Government policy?

My Lords, if by taking any action on the Pearson Report or, for that matter, on any other report one could reduce road accidents in the way that the noble Lord and everybody else would like, that would be another matter. I can only say to the noble Lord that we appreciate the importance of action, but always there are those who have to take decisions as to drawing balances, and at present it is the Government who have to take those decisions.

My Lords, I will detain your Lordships for only a few moments. It has been an interesting debate. At least we have had some reaction from the Government, which we are very glad to hear. I am not sure that I have taken in everything that the noble Lord, Lord Bellwin, said. He did go at quite a rate. I look forward to reading in Hansard both his speech and the other speeches which have been made. I gained the impression that in some respects the noble Lord's officials had not quite understood what the commission was after. This must be our own fault in drafting. If, however, there is any help which I or any of my colleagues on the commission can give to the noble Lord's officials, they have only to ask.

As has been pointed out, there are a number of aspects of the report upon which we have had hardly time to touch. May I mention a small point on the figures. Those which I have used and those which other noble Lords have used regarding accidents have differed. I have used Great Britain figures. Other noble Lords have, I think, used United Kingdom figures. The 45 per cent. of seriously injured cases to which the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, referred where compensation was forthcoming, as shown by an Oxford study, is in our view a little high. It depends on how you define what is meant by "seriously injured".

I am not going to comment on all the points which have been raised. We looked with great care at reversal of burden of proof and strict liability and came to the conclusions set out in the report. I heard with no surprise what the noble Lord, Lord Bellwin, had to say on public expenditure, but some of us are innocent enough to think that the right thing to do is to look at the demands on the national economy as a whole. If by a small addition to the public sector you save a lot of commitments elsewhere, then it is worth thinking about.

Naturally, I am very conscious of the point to which the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, devoted such attention: that restrictions were placed upon our terms of reference and that we do not want to go in for anything which will prejudice the position of the disabled as a whole. But one has to be very careful not to let the best be the enemy of the good. Although it was outside our terms of reference, we were certainly very conscious of that question when we made our recommendations. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, on getting better information out of the motoring organisations than I have been able to get. The correspondence which I had with the AA in particular made me wonder whether they had really hoisted in what the report was about. Their comment that putting a bit of a burden on petrol means that the good driver is subsidising the bad driver really makes one wonder how they think that insurance premiums are calculated. However, this is not the moment to pursue that point further.

I heard with great interest what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said about the decisions of Government concerning various aspects of assessing damages, and in particular learnt of those which the Government are proposing to adopt and those which they are still thinking about. I was personally sorry, but not a bit surprised, to learn that they had rejected the idea of payment by periodical payments. We on the commission heard a great deal about people preferring lump sums. One can understand this. But it also seemed to us that this was not doing what tort expects one to do. Before the accident the individuals did not have lump sums. They had a regular income. We thought the right course was to ensure that after the accident they continued to have a regular income. As realisation of the value of periodical payments comes to be appreciated in this inflationary world, opinion will slowly change, but I know that it is going to take a long time.

There has been very general agreement that the present position is not satisfactory, that there are gaps to be filled and that there are needs to be met. The rather startling information which my noble friend Lord Chitnis produced underlines that point very well. I said right at the beginning that we were all very conscious that this was an extremely difficult and complicated matter, that there were various objections and difficulties to be got over and that we may well not have got it all right. I am sure that we did not. However, having endured five years of evidence-taking and discussion, I confess that I came to the same view and still hold to the same view which was reached, after all, by two judges, two barristers and two solicitors on the commission: that something on the lines of what we were proposing is more fitting to the needs which have been established than the system which we have at the moment. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.

My Lords, I understand that no amendments have been set down to this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript amendment or to speak in Committee. Therefore, unless any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the order of commitment be discharged.

rose to ask Her Majesty's Government why the new evidence on the ex-prisoners of war deducted pay does not warrant the necessity for an independent inquiry.

My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Kimberley, for having put down this Question. It raises certain very important questions of principle, and we on this side of the House, together with many of your Lordships in all parts of the House, would regard this entirely as a non-party matter.

The Question is a modest one in the sense that it asks for the setting up of an inquiry. I think there is quite adequate justification for this in the light of the evidence that has been produced by the noble Earl, and also that to which he has referred today in the course of his speech. It would appear that a study has been made, as he indicated, based on research in the Public Record Office and in the Ministry of Defence Library, and by examination of actual pay records, and this in fact brings out matters of an important nature which were either omitted from the Ministry of Defence report of 31st October 1980 or provide additions to it.

This is a matter of some importance. When Members of Parliament, whether in another place or here, are presented with a Government report purporting to set out the facts, the House is entitled to rely upon those; they are entitled to assume that the Ministry concerned with the production of the report is endeavouring to inform Members of Parliament of the results of their own best endeavours to ascertain the real facts, and I find it somewhat alarming that this report of 31st October 1980 should be markedly different in very important respects from the study that has been undertaken. It was even more disturbing to find that there were considerable differences, and these differences were themselves admitted by the Ministry of Defence, and that, notwithstanding that, an uncorrected copy of the working group's report was furnished to Members of Parliament.

This raises very considerable questions of principle. I spent the last 30 years of my professional life investigating cases of alleged fraud. I am not saying that fraud has taken place in this case. However, I am saying that on the basis of my examination of the documents there is a prima facie case for an independent investigation into what actually transpired. I would be most surprised if the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, who always approaches questions of this kind with a very open and fair mind, would be party to anything that endeavoured to stand upon a document which has been shown to have very important omissions from it and which in many respects has been proved to be incorrect. I would have hoped that the noble Viscount would be among the first to agree that the only thing to do in the circumstances would be to have an independent inquiry to ascertain the facts.

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will allow me to make a very quick interruption to say that the document written by the unofficial committee mentioned by the noble Earl on the errors and omissions from the working group's report is their views on the situation. I shall comment both in my speech and to the noble Earl on what our views are in relation to their assertions about the working group report.

My Lords, the House will wait to listen with very great interest to what the noble Viscount has to say. As the noble Earl, Lord Kimberley, said, these are events that took place a long time ago but they are of very considerable importance to the individuals involved, most of whom were "taken into the bag", as the saying went, without any blame attaching to themselves. It is one of the unfortunate hazards of war and I do not think that anyone would query the courage and indeed the endurance of the great bulk of the prisoners of war who were so adversely affected.

Whatever the noble Viscount has to say in reply, I do not think he can deny that there must be a very considerable number of cases in which money which ought to have been refunded to the individuals concerned was not so refunded and that the money, of course, ultimately found its way directly or indirectly into the Treasury itself. I am not casting any aspersions on the Administrations of any particular party. All Governments in the past, whether they be of my own political persuasion or whether they be that of the party opposite, have, to some extent, been remiss in not giving their urgent attention to this matter. So I make no party point on this at all.

But when one realises, as indeed I as a serving member of the forces throughout the war well realise, the rates of pay that officers and other ranks received in those days compared with the rates which they are now paid, even taking into account a rising standard of life and the impact of inflation, one must say that a refusal to countenance any examination of these past incidents seems to me to be rather churlish.

I well remember that when I was in France I was astonished to find that my own pay as a major in the forces at that time was surpassed to a very considerable extent by the pay of a technical sergeant in the United States Army. We were the poor people of the allied armies at that time. The hardship to those returning after being prisoners of war must have been very considerable and some redress ought to take place.

I realise that there are priorities in public expenditure—there certainly are. There are very great priorities even in times of crisis, and we on this side of the House on a different tack altogether are prepared to give the Government advice as to where some of the depressing demands for money ought to go. But this entirely begs the point that this was a responsibility which it is honourable to discharge. It is a responsibility in honour relating to a past commitment which has not in every respect been carried out, and it ought to be carried out.

Her Majesty's Government have decided from time to time and enunciated as a principle that they will do everything to aid the armed forces, and that they will do everything to provide for defence. There have been real and substantial rises in the pay of our armed forces here in peace time and in the case of Ireland, of course, in a state of near war. There have been very substantial increases indeed. The circumstances in those days were not the same. I would therefore have thought that the really correct thing for the Government to do would be for the moment to say, "Well, there has been a conflict as to what the facts really arc but we have an open mind about it. We are quite willing to consent that an independent body should examine all the documents without having the Treasury breathing down their necks the whole time and they should be able to give us the results of their examination". That is all that the Question really asks for. In my view it is the minimum that the Government can do, and I sincerely hope that they will take this evening what most of your Lordships, I am quite sure, believe is the only honourable course for them to take.

My Lords, the noble Earl is surely to be congratulated not only for introducing this subject so well this evening, but for his long-drawn-out and persistent campaigning on this very distressing issue. The noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, described the opposition to the Government on this point as non-party. I think that as the debate goes on it will be seen also to be all-party, because certainly from the Liberal Benches the noble Earl has our support. He may have noted that our party Leader has already raised this issue in another place. I also enjoyed the references of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, to his meagre pay as a major in France. How enviable he seems to me, who at the beginning of the war in France was paid in the ranks, I think, 1s. 9d. a day.

But the issue tonight is a very much simpler one than it appears from the detailed study of the figures and facts of pay. It is simple when we see, for example, as the noble Lord said, that justice was done to those who were prisoners in Japan but not to those who were prisoners in Germany and Italy. That is a very good indication that justice was not done to those in Germany and Italy. We remember, too, that the British Government at one stage in the war tried to renegotiate the amount deducted from officers' pay, and to renegotiate it downwards because it was plainly not working well. That is the only explanation that we can have of that. They failed in that, but it showed I think that even the British Government during the war were thoroughly dissatisfied with the arrangements for the deduction of pay. Then, as the noble Lord said, on this issue indisputably British prisoners of war were treated worse than those of other allied Governments, and almost certainly worse than the German prisoners of war in this country. So when we think on these matters I do not think that it is necessary to go into great detail or statistics to show that an injustice was done.

We all keenly await the reply of the Minister. In a way, I think it is a pity that custom prevents his intervening a little earlier in the debate. To some extent we are debating in the dark. He may get up and tell us that the Government acknowledge that injustice has been done and have decided to make restitution, though the intervention that he made in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, did not markedly raise my hopes on this point; or he may say that injustice was done and that there should be an inquiry; or he may argue that injustice was done but unfortunately, owing to the long lapse of time and the lack of records, it is not practicable to make restitution; or he may argue that it was some other Government's fault. We do not know. However, the one thing that he cannot argue successfully is that a grave injustice was not done. That he cannot argue. We await with great interest the reply from the Government.

Perhaps I may be allowed to add something to the statement of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce. I think that this independent inquiry should also cover two categories of other ranks. This is not an officers-only issue. There are two other categories involved. There is the category of protected persons under the Geneva conventions. These are medical personnel of the RAMC and the equivalent branches of the other Services. They were not given work pay, as were other ranks; they had their pay deducted like officers—the same procedure was adopted.

My Lords, and refunded.

My Lords, the Minister has said "and refunded". I am grateful to him. Perhaps he will elaborate on this, because I have here a suggestion that—and not all by any means failed to get refunds—there is evidence, which I would be glad to send to the Minister, that some of these protected personnel did not get the refunds. Perhaps he could deal with this point.

There is a second category of other ranks as well—those who were prisoners in Italy. I am informed that they, too, were not given work pay; they were given pocket money, and deductions were made in the United Kingdom. My information is that none of this was refunded. Perhaps the Minister could comment on that when he comes to reply.

In the absence of an indication as to the line which the Minister will take, it is difficult to elaborate on the excellent presentations made by the noble Earl and by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce. I would end by echoing the point made by the noble Lord. The fact of the passage of time does not eradicate injustice; it is never too late to make redress. I shall listen with great keenness to what the Minister has to say, and, if necessary, we must persist in the representations that we are making to the Government.

My Lords, contrary to the usual practice of declaring an interest when a matter like this is debated in your Lordships' House, I should like this evening firmly to declare no personal interest. My husband was a prisoner of war from May 1940 until January 1942, but during that time he was for a considerable period of time wounded and in hospital, and later on he was escaping or else in punishment in solitary confinement and, therefore, had very little possibility of spending lager marks. I never heard him speak about lager marks and, as your Lordships know, in his case we can no longer tell.

But this does not mean that I do not strongly support the excellent speech of my noble friend Lord Kimberley and other noble Lords from the other Benches who have spoken so eloquently this evening, and the very convincing arguments which have been put forward, and the very detailed research which has been prepared by many ex-prisoners of war. I have studied these reports and it appears that those who suffered the longest imprisonment had the most to lose. Reliable figures show that at least one-third of all British prisoners of war were taken prisoner before October 1941, in the various battles that took place during that time.

If, as is very strongly claimed, only part of the value of the lager marks was settled to British prisoners of war on their return and repatriation, in contrast to those prisoners who were from the allied countries and the then Dominions and who were frequently in the same European camps as the British officers, then surely there is only one way in which we can fairly solve this problem. As, due to the nature of the problem, it is impossible to submit this matter to the Ombudsman—as has already been mentioned—I suggest that an independent inquiry should be set up. Ex-prisoners of war have said that they will accept the findings of such an inquiry after evidence has been taken. Surely this in itself proves confidence in the fairness and the justice which will be done by such an inquiry. Therefore, I ask for an impartial public inquiry into this matter.

My Lords, the House has already expressed its gratitude to the noble Earl, Lord Kimberley, for initiating this debate. I can only express the hope that many thousands of individuals may benefit from his initiative. I suppose the Government would argue that the Statute of Limitations should apply to this particular situation. I know how troublesome ancient wrongs are to Governments, but the people who have been wronged are still alive. They were young when they were released from imprisonment, they faced life with enthusiasm and hope; they are now getting old. Any assistance that they can be given at this stage in their life, recognising the service that they have performed for their country, even in servitude, can only bring credit to the Government of the day.

The noble Earl has in fact pointed out that the whole business of administration of this particular policy is in a state of total confusion. The prisoners of the Japanese, the Germans and the Italians have all been differently treated. This is surely an administrative nonsense that could be corrected. The noble Earl also mentioned figures which, to be honest, I did not quite understand, but they seemed so small by the normal statistics of defence as hardly to be significant. Perhaps the noble Viscount who is about to reply to the debate could give some sort of indication as to what the Government consider this would cost the Exchequer, if a favourable finding were found by a committee of inquiry. It cannot be difficult to estimate. He must have been briefed to know what it would cost the Government if these ancient mistakes were corrected.

I do not want to bring in the question of self-interest, but the one aspect of the present Government's policy which I wholly support is their support for the British armed forces. They, I believe, are the key to our future survival as a democratic society. I should have thought that the benefits that the Government could achieve by generosity in this minuscule matter would be of enormous value to the morale of the armed forces, and perhaps even to the standing of the present Government. These are my own personal views, but I am also speaking on behalf of the party which I represent, the Social Democrats. I hope that the response to the request for a committee of inquiry will be favourable.

My Lords, I am afraid that I am somewhat of a " Johnny-come-lately " so far as this debate this evening is concerned. The reason is that for the last two Octobers I have been out of the country, and those were the months in which the working group report and the parliamentary Answers and the original Questions of my old friend Lord Shinwell and the noble Earl, Lord Kimberley, were raised. However, I did come in with a supplementary on 3rd December last, to a Question asked by the noble Earl. When I was declaring my interest, I noticed—I read it in Hansard the next day; I cannot hear interruptions because I am so deaf—some barracking by Members of the Government Front Bench. However, that does not matter.

As a result of that intervention of mine, I got an answer from the noble Viscount. I asked what reassurance he could give to those who, like myself, had been prisoners that there had not been any skulduggery. The noble Viscount replied that I should refer to the parliamentary reply and to the working group report. So, always being prompt to take any advice that the noble Viscount gives, I hied me to the Library and I photostated both documents. I then read, learnt, and inwardly digested the documents. I regret to have to inform the noble Viscount that, instead of allaying my fears, that only heightened my suspicions and, as a result, prompted me to take part in this debate today.

My intervention after the noble Earl's Question was reported in the press. I started to receive letters from those whom I had long forgotten existed. They showed that there was a feeling, which I admit I had never bothered myself thinking about, that there had been a miscarriage of justice. May I quote from one letter. It says:

"I see from today's Daily Telegraph that you got little satisfaction from the Government over PoWs' pay. I trust you will keep on at the Government. If the report correctly quotes Lord Trenchard it appears he is avoiding the principle concerned. It is not a question of injustice to individuals: it should be decided whether or not the questionable action of Civil Servants in appropriating the money which had been deducted from the pay of officer PoWs was correct or incorrect. If the latter, then means must be found to rectify the error".

It goes on to say:

"Why does the Government not use the £5 million which was a recent windfall from HMS " Edinburgh "—that money was taken from a designated War Grant: to what better use could it be put?"

My next encounter was with an ex-Chief of the Defence Staff who had also seen that report. He told me that his brother-in-law, recently deceased, was taken prisoner at St. Valery with the 51st Highlanders. He had been on at him for many years about how so many of those prisoners with him had this sense of being badly let down—put it that way—and it had been simmering for some time.

I then got in touch with officers who I still remembered who had been prisoners with me, the ones who had not been as fortunate as I was, and had not got away. They were of course carted off into Germany, so they had experience in both areas that we are talking about today. They seemed generally to feel very strongly that a group injustice had been inflicted on them by the civil servants. But I must confess that their main attitude—and I am just summarising—was, " Well, what is the use of flogging a dead horse?"

If your Lordships will excuse me, I ask to be permitted to quote from my own experiences, emphasising the point where they reflect on deductions and other-wise. The dates are of some interest when it comes to working out what payment there was. I was winged and put in the bag in North Africa on 6th June 1942. After a variety of transit camps in North Africa, I was flown from Benghazi to Barce in Italy, and then to my first camp at a place called Bari. This was a notorious one. I gave written evidence at the end of the war at the war crimes trial of its commandant, Capitano Somervilla. Needless to say, at that camp we received nothing—practically no food, and of course no Red Cross parcels.

At the end of July I went to what was then termed a senior officers' camp, where the lowest thing that moved was a temporary major—me. It was at a place called Veano in the foothills of the Apennines. I was there issued with a paper, and I have it here. If I may be permitted to read it to you, it is headed:

"Campo di Concentramento per prigioniere di guerra, numero 29".

Then it is called a, "Libretto dei Conti Personali —"personal accounts, No. 162. In there is the record of the total I received during the whole of the two years I was out of circulation. That amounts to eight months, and it does not bear the slightest resemblance to what was deducted. I photostated it yesterday, and I have sent a copy to the noble Viscount. It is not a very good photostat. I received only three months' pay then, and there was a gap. On paper—not what one received in cash to buy toothpaste or whatever—I received 1,300 lire a month.

As I say, that was on paper, so this is the question: when were the deductions started in England? Was it from 6th June or the end of July? Those first entries were made in Italian. Later on they were in English. I cannot remember why that should have been the case; perhaps the very efficient interpreter, Tenente Dente, came on the scene and he was very good at English. Perhaps he took over at that point. The interesting aspect is what the deductions were. For example, we had what were called "Arrears"; we had what were called Unione militari; and of course we had what was called "Mensa" on the Italian part or "PMC" on the other part.

Be that as it may, the cash issue was between 100 and 200 lire a month, or that was the total altogether. I presumed of course that no deductions were made in my pay for the following year; that is, after I escaped. The Special Forces in Italy dropped in a wireless operator, and so on, in the spring of 1944, so I presumed I was on somebody else's books. But, then, thinking back on it, it was clear that the Special Forces were so secretive that they even refused to let my family know that I was still alive. That information I got through my brother-in-law, whom the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, knows well. He was not allowed to let my family know that I was still alive. The point I am making is simple. Do noble Lords think that if they could do that, they would have let the civil servants arranging our pay know when to stop making deductions, or indeed to make deductions? I think it is most unlikely. I am only saying about that book that it proves that very little was actually given to prisoners in those circumstances. There were of course hundreds like me, and therefore it does not fit in. For how long were the deductions made? We do not know.

In view of what I have said, I wish briefly to comment on a few points made by the working group. First, I knew nothing before capture about the deduction of pay. Ignorance of orders is, of course, no excuse, but equally, I maintain, it cannot be an excuse for the Government to say that they could not have got to the people taken at Dunkirk.

"Transfer home of credits" is the next heading. That information, according to the working group, seems to have been agreed in 1943. All I can say about that is that by the time it got to Italy we were no longer there. As for "Goods purchased with camp money", I have already said that in some camps in Italy there was nothing to be purchased. In others, the situation improved and in our camp it improved noticeably after the battle of El Alamein, when we got Red Cross parcels regularly instead of spasmodically, as had previously been the case.

As for "General Information for PoWs", that is made a lot of, but that could not have got to Italy in time because it was promulgated in 1943, and that was when Italy packed up and the prisoners there were carted to Germany, escaped or were shot. Then the heading "Credit refunded"—according to my book I had 973 lire in credit. When I got back, I took my book to Cox and King's and I do not know whether or not they credited me; all I know is that the lady behind the counter wrote something down, gave me the hook hack and that was that. After two years away, at the then present rate of exchange that would have represented about £13, but I do not know whether we even got that.

Concerning the leaflet issued to prisoners of war on liberation, as I liberated myself I presume I have no cause to complain about that, but hundreds like me got no information. I do not know what happened about it, but everyone I talked to—those who were taken from my camp in Italy to Germany—said they did not know anything about it, but as I am talking about only two or three people, I cannot be dogmatic.

As for "Communal funds", I know nothing of those either, except to say that reading the working group report I find it the most illogical piece of whitewashing it has ever been my misfortune to read.

The fact remains that officer prisoners of war in Germany had a considerable sum of money deducted from their pay, in addition to income tax—which was what one might call the only public funds taken—on the hypothetical basis that they received regular camp money from their enemy captors, which in many cases they did not receive or, if they did receive it, they did not receive it regularly, and what they got had to be disposed of at a most unrealistic rate of exchange.

The fact remains that the Treasury civil servants in the departments concerned were responsible for ensuring that British officer prisoners of war were the only ones so treated, compared with the Americans and the forces of the Dominions and the allies. The fact also remains that this Government, through their parliamentary answers and the working group report, are perpetuating one of the most blatant cover-ups in the history of the war, the sort of thing the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, has been investigating during his professional life.

I will tell the Minister what happened and I shall be happy for him to prove me wrong. First, we in Italy had up to two-thirds of our pay deducted from the day we were captured until the day we reported back, whether or not we received anything, and in my case it was eight months out of two years. Secondly, the Treasury civil servants who were "infiltrated" into the service departments concerned gave our wrongly deducted pay to the Treasury—unlike what happend to the Dominion and other forces. That said, my erstwhile mates and brethren in exile who still survive generally react by saying, "No use crying over spilt milk" or, "There is no point in flogging a dead horse", and that was my response until I read this report. That typical British reaction should be no excuse for not having an independent inquiry, especially after the fiasco of the working group's report.

My Lords, I was lucky enough never to have been taken prisoner of war, so when I was asked by the noble Earl, Lord Kimberley, to talk on this matter, I contacted a certain Captain Watson of the Royal Marines, who happened to have been taken prisoner in Crete and was in Germany. He, telling me a similar story to that related by the noble Lord, Lord Clifford, said he was paid what were called Lagermarks which were deducted from his pay, and he said they were no use to him because, in the camps where he was, there was practically nothing to buy. The sort of things he was meant to buy with that money were, he said, portraits of Hitler, and he did not particularly want to purchase those.

I wish merely to emphasise what has happened and what has been said by other speakers. I agree very much with the noble Lords, Lord Bruce of Donington and Lord Mayhew, that this really is an all-party matter. We have heard how the British prisoners of war, British officers, in Japanese camps have had their deductions refunded. Why have those who were in the Italian and German camps not had their deductions refunded? Apparently all the allies have made refunds to their officers—the Americans, the French, and so on.

Then we hear the quite incredible story that the Treasury, which has deducted money from our officers, has never paid it to the Germans and the Italians, but has kept it. I find that to be a very shabby story, and I hope that when the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, replies he will give us an assurance—I am afraid that I am saying words that perhaps ought to be said more quietly—that he will not be pushed around by the Treasury mandarins.

Another thing is being said by some of my prisoner of war friends. It is that the Treasury mandarins and the Ministry of Defence mandarins, for whom I have no particular regard—I served in the Ministry of Defence at the end of my service—are just waiting for our generation to die out, and then it will not be necessary to refund the money. That is not the kind of thing that should happen to officers of the Services, and I am sure that it is in no way what the Government would wish to happen. I believe that there should be an independent inquiry into everything, which would satisfy everybody.

My Lords, I wish briefly to add a few remarks in response to requests from naval friends of mine who also were "in the bag" and who have given me substantially the same story as we have already heard from my noble friend Lord Kimberley and other noble Lords who have spoken. There are only two points that I feel come out of this. First, it seems quite clear that money was withheld ostensibly, or rather in fact, in order to hand it over to the captive powers at a later stage in accordance with the Geneva Convention, and, secondly, the money was not in fact paid to those powers and was not paid to the people from whom it was withheld in the first instance.

By way of example I would mention that a man who was then a young naval officer tells me that he was on £400 a year for his four years of imprisonment, which meant that he should have received £1,600, and £500 was withheld. That is not a very large sum of money, but it gives your Lordships an idea of the scale involved, and at that time it was quite a considerable amount in proportionate terms. It is also a sum of money that had not been paid to the Germans, by whom he was largely imprisoned. So surely it must come to him, and the matter seems to me quite straightforward.

If I understood him aright, I was very distressed by what my noble friend the Minister said in his intervention during the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington. If I understood aright, what he said implied that he was going to produce a counter-argument to the arguments that the group of officers have produced to the working party. I hope that my noble friend is not going to do that because that would lead to a tit-for-tat situation, which would be rather childish of the Government. Perhaps I may say to my noble friend that this matter is better tackled by facing it head on and saying that there are many unanswered aspects to the case and that the only really just, sensible and, if I may say so, honourable thing to do is to set up an independent inquiry body that does not consist of a group of civil servants who, for what- ever reason, are apparently trying to justify the action of their predecessors of 35 years ago.

It seems to me that the case for an independent inqury is in everyone's best interests. It is in the best interests of the civil servants themselves, because it is they who are suspect. I hate to suggest that my noble friend should be suspect when he has finished speaking, but if he does not come very clean, then I am afraid that he will be suspect. But it is the civil servants who are suspect, and it is in their best interests that an independent inquiry should clear them. Surely there is not much doubt about the basic facts—that money has been withheld and not paid to the people for whom it was originally intended. I hope that my noble friend will give us a clear answer which we can appreciate and understand, and which we can feel has given fair and decent treatment to all concerned.

My Lords, in supporting my noble friend in all that he said in his speech in opening the debate, I wish to make one point that has not been mentioned. It concerns the repayment of pay deducted from officer PoWs during the years from 1939 to 1945. Here I must declare an interest, since my husband was one of the many thousands of prisoners captive in Germany at that time. Furthermore, he was one of the repatriated PoWs in October 1943—the first exchange between Great Britain and Germany of the sick and wounded, including Members of your Lordships' House. The repatriation took place via Sweden, and included members of all three services. They were landed at the port of Leith in Scotland, having crossed the North Sea from Gothenburg. Those prisoners were then dispersed to hospitals throughout the country and were eventually sent on leave—that is, those who could be moved.

Then there were the usual administrative instructions, but there was no mention of pay or repayments of deductions of pay then or thereafter. The war was still on and of course there was no thought of repayment until hostilities ceased. When Germany finally collapsed completely there was still no mention of these money matters. In fact, my husband was then in the War Office and he asked whether anything was being done about repayment to the officers. The answer given was that nothing could be done as the books were closed. Finally, before I sit down, I should like to add that there is still massive evidence in support of their claims.

My Lords, I must apologise for not putting down my name on the list of speakers, but I was doubtful whether I could get away from a committee meeting. Unfortunately, I got away, but I shall not detain your Lordships for long. I want to support the noble Earl in this matter, which I think is of great importance because it involves such an obvious injustice. I was in bomber command, and I suppose that this situation applies to the members of bomber command who were taken prisoner. I must say that I agree with my noble friend who spoke earlier about the difficulty of trying to cover every point without first hearing the Minister's views. I know that it might be against the practice of the House, but it would be much more sensible if we first had an outline from the Minister, and then we could raise some of the points.

Some of the points that have been raised previously need answering. For example, it has been said that an order was clearly promulgated which showed that if people were taken prisoner deductions would be made from their pay in respect of the money that they spent in the camp. I was probably briefed for operations one hundred times and nothing of the kind was ever mentioned at all. We were told that it was our duty to escape, and it was easier to escape if you had not been caught. You were told to get away, to do your duty. There was never any mention of pay being taken away from you if you were locked out—not an iota of it.

Then, other arguments have been put. The principle was accepted by the public and ex-prisoners, apparently, that they should be in roughly the same financial position as those who had not been taken prisoner—that was one of the War Office arguments, I understand —and then, again, that such refunds would be unfair to those who had not been taken prisoner. The War Office (I know the Minister would never do it) actually had the cheek to use the phrase "unfair to the men who continued fighting". To start with, certainly one would have to admit that the people in Stalag Luft III continued fighting. The other thing, of course, is that nobody is going to grudge a POW the miserable pay piled up while he was living in a miserable camp.

Like many other officers here present, I finished the war having spent every penny of my pay and anything else I could get hold of, and I had an overdraft at the bank as well. It was an enormous privilege for me to be able to spend that money in those years; and the poor devils who were locked up for three, four or however many years it was would have given anything for the privilege to be that age and able to spend the money on the things that young men spent it on at that time when they could. So I think that these arguments do not hold water. There is no question but that the survivors in Bomber Command, certainly, would think it only right and proper that their comrades who were taken prisoner should get at least some recompense for the miserable time that they spent and the years of their youth that they lost in prison camps.

Then, the method of procedure in fact adopted was quite extraordinary. As I understand it the Government collected the pay and put it in a kitty, and it was all ready to pay to the German Government—I am talking about the German Government—after the war for the kindnesses our people had received. Then they found that they did not have to pay it, so they said, "Ah! This is simply splendid. We will keep it. It would just be wasted if we gave it to these fellows who were in the prison camps, and no doubt they received great value for it". It is rather like a banker who holds moneys on behalf of people to pay a debt and who, when he finds that that debt does not need to be paid, says, "I will set this money against losses incurred by other people". This appears to me to be wholly and completely dishonest.

I think the Minister should well reconsider it. He is sitting there studying his brief, which tells him to resist everything, and so on and so forth, and he is being a good little Minister; but I think he should be a noble Lord instead and really consider it. Because I can tell your Lordships for one thing that, though I do not know about the Army funds, the RAF Benevolent Fund and the Polish Airmen's Benevolent Fund could do with the money. It is at this time that a lot of these people are very hard up, having retired and having to meet their expenses in times of inflation, especially. There are certainly many cases in which extra money could be properly employed, as some reward for the services of these people about whom the Government are being rather niggardly.

But the association who have brought this matter forward are not asking for the money to be paid back to individuals; they are asking for an inquiry. I really do not think the Minister can possibly refuse it; and if the Government have an inquiry I have no doubt what they will find that there should be a substantial contribution to these benevolent funds, and that all the services should benefit.

My Lords, I have listened with care to this debate, and I know that my noble friend who has asked this Question is himself still deeply concerned about this matter. Listening to the debate I can only echo the words of Lord Mayhew, if I may, that to some extent it has been a debate in the dark. If I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, I did in fact explore whether Standing Orders would allow me to speak after the noble Earl, so that Members taking part in the debate could first hear the Government's views on this vexed and difficult subject. The Standing Orders do not allow that.

I have no intention to be "a good little Minister" (or whatever his phrase was), or of reading my brief. Every word that I shall read was dictated, after pretty exhaustive study, by myself. I wish things were as straightforward as my noble friend Lord Mottistone suggested they should be. I want to say this finally, before I get into the answers that I have in the main prepared from examining the detailed correspondence. Above all else, I am not in the business of raising expectations about which it is my belief and the Government's belief nothing can be done. I believe that to be a thoroughly inhuman thing to do.

As I mentioned when I answered the noble Earl's Starred Question recently, I come new to this subject. Indeed, I have now read the working group report; the document which his unofficial committee sent to the Ministry entitled Errors and Omissions; the minutes of the meeting with my honourable friend the Under-Secretary of State for Defence Procurement on 12th May, 1981; a transcript of the BBC "Checkpoint" programme; the correspondence from and about Captain Bracken's claim, which is mentioned by the noble Earl's unofficial committee; a fairly large cross-section of the letters which the Ministry has received since August 1980, which I insisted on reading myself; and a large number of the unfortunately too few relevant older documents that are still available.

I am clear that my colleagues and the Ministry of Defence as a whole have taken the allegations very seriously indeed. My own background, including my own wartime service in the regiment whose last- ditch stand at Calais played such a major part in the safe evacuation of the bulk of the British Expeditionary Force, gives me a bit of understanding and sympathy for this issue. I have spoken with personal friends who were captured at Calais; and I have spoken with Lord Campbell of Alloway, who intervened in the debate on the recent Starred Question. I find it very distressing that officers should themselves feel distressed.

The main theme of my reply in the time available to me without detaining your Lordships too long will be not to argue the detail about such things as who issued which document in the war at what time, or indeed other points where the surviving records are inadequate and thus allow for inevitable continuing debate. I do not accept all the statements about the accuracy of the working group report which the noble Earl's committee have made, and I should like particularly to refute the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, that there is any question of Government fraud. The working group report was placed in the Libraries of both Houses on 31st October, at the time that my predecessor made his Statement, so there is no question of our receiving the comments on Errors and Omissions of the working group report and then placing it; it was placed before.

I accept that we have not as yet gone in detail into all the matters which the unofficial committee have raised on the point, and I am going to make a suggestion to the noble Earl towards the end of my reply which will indicate that we are prepared to respond in detail to the latest document and to the points which he has made. I thank him for being kind enough to send me two days ago the latest document and commentary on the position which he and his unofficial committee have put together. For reasons which I think will become clear as I proceed, I do not believe that the points which are raised in that document alter the correctness of the Government's decision in this matter. I am prepared to accept that the diligent research of some of the members of the committee may well alter or amplify some of the more detailed points made in the working group's report, but I do not believe that they alter either what could be done or what should be done.

The House knows the sequence of this matter, since its sudden rise to public attention in August 1980. The Committee of Inquiry set up by the then Secretary of State reported on 31st October and the working group report was placed in the Libraries on the same day. Further representation from the noble Earl's voluntary committee and some further letters from prisoners in general then occurred and there were Questions and Answers in both Houses. However, I think I have briefly to comment on the background which has been mentioned in the debate, because the interpretation of that background reflects some of the points which I believe have caused a misunderstanding among some officers.

It is perfectly true that Article 23 of the Geneva Convention 1929 provided for combatant officer prisoners of war to receive pay from the detaining power at the same rates as officers of corresponding ranks in the armed forces of that power. The theory under this article was that, when there was a peace settlement, Germany would claim reimbursement for the sum paid to the officer prisoners. At an early stage in the war, reciprocal arrangements were reached with the German and Italian Governments in respect of the amounts to be paid by the captors. In order to avoid double payment—and this was the purpose of the deductions; not to have money to pay to Germany at some stage—corresponding adjustments were made to the United Kingdom pay accounts of British prisoners of war held in enemy camps. These varied according to rank but averaged—and this may be different from what the noble Earl's unofficial committee have alleged— one-fifth of total pay—and that is gross pay—for prisoners in Germany and a little over one-third for prisoners in Italy. Again this is gross pay. While I admit that figures during the debate on this Question have been mentioned in terms of net pay, I find it hard to believe that the deductions for tax across the average officer in those circumstances can account for that difference. But I am prepared to look at those amounts. I have personally asked for these figures rank by rank in the case of the RAF where the records are more complete. I have looked at the percentages which have been discovered.

The prisoners of war in Italian hands were credited with an additional ration allowance, because—and I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Clifford, would know this better than I—the Italians charged them for food. It is clear that some of the prisoners who have written to us find these points about the Geneva Convention important and they have suggested that the deductions made in the United Kingdom should have been passed to the German or Italian Governments; and, if they were not so passed, it has been argued in this debate, they should have been returned to the prisoners themselves. It has been claimed that the residue of monies not refunded should not have been appropriated by the Treasury.

The Government cannot accept this view. In the case of the Italian Government, there was a peace settlement and, by mutual agreement, a waiver of the debts between the Governments was agreed. In the general atmosphere of unconditional surrender and, may I remind the House, the partition of Germany, there was no settlement with Germany. Since there was not, each side in effect carried its own prisoner of war costs. This had no effect on individuals since the United Kingdom Government agreed to settle the accounts of all its own personnel according to their policy in relation to prisoners. The facts are that the Air Ministry but not, apparently, the other service departments recorded the prisoner of war pay deductions in a special suspense account. These totalled some £646,000. In the end there remained a balance of some £116,000, after all payments had been made. This sum, not required by the policy (which I will come to in a moment) in relation to prisoners was, in accordance with Government accounting regulations, credited to the Exchequer special receipts. Ministers then were not pushed around by the Treasury, and I assure your Lordships that I am not being pushed around by the Treasury now.

I cannot see that, in the circumstances in relation to the peace settlements or the unconditional surrender of Germany, the prisoners per se have any claim on the residue of these funds; although this is, of course, quite a separate matter from the belief of some of them that the policy which resulted in this residue was, in their view, wrong. If I may return at this point to the policy adopted at the time, it is clear that before the end of the war the Government appreciated that the administration of the practice agreed in accordance with the Geneva Convention was being carried out in a very variable way. Plans were therefore drawn up to give officers the opportunity at the end of the war to claim back those monies which, for one reason or another, they had not received, as well as accumulated credits, or savings, as they were sometimes called. It was clearly decided not to reimburse all money deducted from the pay of officers held captive in Italy and Germany.

The principle adopted was that officer prisoners of war should not be left financially in a better position than officers generally. We still have copies of a number of the minutes of an inter-departmental committee which considered all these matters in great detail not only under the Coalition Government but under the Labour Government after the war. Taken out of context, some memos from officials and even from Ministers may today appear mean; but I do not believe that the policy decisions taken by Ministers were in any way intended to be mean.

My Lords, will the noble Viscount clarify a point? I think he said that, in the case of the RAF, the sum of £640,000 was kept in suspense and that, after payments were made, there was something like £140,000 left. What payments were made? Were these payments back to individual officers?

My Lords, I will come to that point a little later on. The noble Earl's unofficial committee have made the point that the exchange rates used for the calculations and the final reconciliation in sterling were unfortunate for them. They have also made the point—and clearly it was made at the time—that camp money could buy little and was of little value. All I can say is that it is clear that both those subjects were fully debated at the time and the exchange rates used in calculating both the deductions and the refunds, which were the same in both cases, were in my view prima facie not unfair. They were based indeed on the provisions flowing from the Geneva Convention and in both cases used the exchange rate of the currencies at the outbreak of war. It was also known that the prices in Italian camps were exorbitant.

The House knows that a different policy decision was applied to prisoners of war of the Japanese because very few payments had been made by their captors, who were not party to the Geneva Convention, and mainly in view of the conditions in the camps it was decided at the end of the war that all deductions from prisoners' pay should be refunded to their accounts. The deductions from prisoners' accounts in the European countries were properly authorised by the three services and promulgated. I am aware of the limited meaning of that. The prisoners have said—and I can understand it —that they did not know of the arrangements. I personally can think of nothing more academic to their situation at that time, but certainly there is evidence—and I have seen it in letters—that some of the prisoners did know, and the camp leaders should have known. I can well understand this information being regarded as pretty unimportant by both prisoners and even some camp leaders at that time and in those circumstances. However, there is evidence that detailed plans were drawn up before the end of the war to provide for the adjustment of officers' accounts on a basis which assumed that the records would not be available in many cases and so relied to a large extent on statements by the prisoner of war himself, taken in the context of the reports of the camp leaders. Were these plans put into operation in every case?

At this stage we really clearly cannot know—and no committee of inquiry can know either—but it is clear from the residue of contemporary evidence that adjustments to accounts were substantial and widespread. Where there is surviving evidence of payment to individuals in certain Admiralty accounting ledgers which have not been destroyed, and some letters still in the hands of individuals, prisoner of war refunds are shown in nearly every case. May I make a point to the noble Earl, the significance of which he knows, that the Admiralty ledgers were not the pay accounts of individuals.

The noble Earl's unofficial committee has suggested that the dispersal for refunds of some £500,000—and this is the point which the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, intervened about—in the case of the RAF is too big to be real. This is what the unofficial committee suggested. May I point out that that means that his initial statement that all errors alleged by the working group were in favour of the official point of view is not correct?

It may be that some of this dispersal of over £500,000 was made on behalf of Dominion Governments. This is a point which the noble Earl's committee have made to me. But, even if this were the case, the refunds in the case of the RAF, taking account of the numbers of Dominion officers concerned, must have been widespread and substantial. While the Army records are very sparse—there is less record in the Army case than anywhere else—there is evidence of refunds being made.

Now, my Lords, there is little evidence of disquiet at the end of the war, which you may well consider is not surprising in the atmosphere of victory and of getting home and away from the appalling experience which many of the prisoners had suffered. But, as I shall make clear in a moment, the matter did not end as a result of one interview at the prisoners reception camps or an earlier interview. There was activity for several years after the war and, in spite of this, there do not appear to have been many complaints in those years, and, after 1950, there appear to have been almost no continuing claims until recently.

There was controversy over the Government decision that refunds in respect of payments made into the Stalag Luft III Community Fund should be limited to escape expenses and the Reichsmark residue, but this was carefully considered at the time and the final decision was taken at Cabinet level. The appropriate correspondence was between the then Secretary of State for Air, Lord Stansgate, the then Secretary of State for War, Mr. Lawson, and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Dalton.

The fundamental point which, in my view, we have to address is whether there was opportunity for all concerned, including the prisoners, during the two Administrations at that time, to complain against the policy decisions made, and for those Administrations, who were in a far better position than we are to judge, to amend or change the policies.

It has been suggested to a degree that this whole matter was concealed or hushed up. I find it very hard to accept that this could have been the case. Decisions, as I have said, were taken at Cabinet level and much activity started in 1945 and continued. The pamphlet which was prepared, and has been mentioned in this debate, referred to the entitlements of prisoners in relation to pay and was issued to returning prisoners. We cannot claim that every single returning prisoner received one, but in my view it is likely.

The voluntary committee itself has referred in its document to a monograph on Army prisoners of war written by Colonel H. D. Phillimore (later Lord Justice Phillimore), who served in the Prisoner of War Directorate of the War Office, in support of their contention that arrangements broke down. I have studied this document, and while it makes clear that the Army plans for handling prisoners on release in Germany did not work according to plan, his picture is certainly not one of complete chaos. Furthermore, he states that a copy of the pamphlet designed to let each prisoner know the arrangements for his reception and dealing, among other things, with pay matters, was handed to each man as soon as possible after release, and as I read it, at the latest at the reception camps in this country. He also states that a RAPC officer and staff were attached to each camp to deal with pay matters. Furthermore, the wording of the pamphlet makes it clear that the resolution of matters affecting officers' accounts would take place after their leave and when they arrived at their new unit. It should be remembered that at that time the war with Japan was still in progress.

Then there were Questions in Parliament. More important, there was a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General in March 1947 which not only provides evidence that substantial refunds were indeed made, but indicates that the issues were open to public scrutiny. That report was the subject of scrutiny by the Public Accounts Committee in April 1947, the report of which indicates at considerable length the degree of care with which the Government at the time had approached the subject.

It mentions among other things the arrangements to depend on the claims of individuals and the corroboration of camp leaders. I have alerted the Library in relation to these two documents and would commend that noble Lords interested in this subject should read them in full.

My Lords, could the noble Lord give way on that point? He has referred to two meetings; one of the Cabinet and another a departmental official meeting at which these decisions were taken of which we are so critical. Will he also have copies of those documents placed in the Library?

My Lords, I will consider the noble Lord's request. The summary that I am given is drawn from a very large number of documents. Certainly the two which summarise the situation will be placed in the Library.

My noble friend Lord Kimberley's committee have themselves referred to the fact that the officer responsible for accounts in Stalag Luft III was seconded to the Air Ministry to help sort things out. All these things indicate that the Governments of the time were not trying to hide their policies or their actions; nor could they have done. I must therefore say to the noble Earl that I cannot accept the explanation of the voluntary committee that the reason this matter received publicity only in 1980, after three decades of virtual silence, stems from the release of new papers. It is clear that the matter was dealt with in the normal way for a democracy, albeit initially still at war at the time.

It is for these reasons that I do not believe that the new evidence put forward by the noble Earl's committee alters in any way the conclusions reached by the Government over a year ago, that pay deductions were properly authorised at the time and that arrangements were made to make the necessary adjustments to the officers' accounts at the end of the war. It is evident that adjustments were made on a widespread scale, that a conscious decision was taken after the war, which was publicly known, to refund all the deductions for the prisoners of the Japanese and that this was deliberately not extended to prisoners of the Germans and the Italians.

My Lords, would my noble friend give way for one moment? While accepting everything he has said, that the War Office tried to do their best for the prisoners, how can he account for the fact that in September or October 1980 the Ministry of Defence had over 2,000 applications from prisoners of war, saying they had not been refunded? Even allowing for 15 per cent. of them to be wrong, it still makes nearly 2,000 prisoners who said they did not have any money.

My Lords, as I mentioned earlier, I have in fact asked for a significant cross-section of those letters and I have read them. I have to tell my noble friend that the majority—and without looking at every one I cannot tell whether it is a very large majority, but I fancy it is, certainly on my sample —of those letters merely say that as a result of an article in the Daily Telegraph in August 1980 they saw that there was the possibility of a claim for refunds. They say they were made prisoner at such-and-such a time at such-and-such a camp, and they ask if we would please record their names should any disbursements be made.

I have stated, and I have to tell your Lordships, that at the time there was no widespread feeling on this matter, and although I will in a moment say that I recognise that there are today a significant number of prisoners who feel very strongly about this matter, I am not convinced that this mushrooming affair, which started in the media, represents a claim by many thousands of aggrieved people.

My Lords, if the question were to be re-opened, as the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, and others have suggested, how could it be done? At the time it was possible to get an approximation based on the evidence of the prisoners themselves and of camp leaders. Today, while it may be possible to work out how much pay was deducted after the individual's period of imprisonment was known, we have, in the great majority of cases, no means of telling how much was deducted in the United Kingdom, how much was refunded to individuals after the war, how much was paid or credited to them during the war, and how many credits were repatriated mainly during the last months of the war. We have no individual pay accounts.

Letters that I have read make quite clear that the average prisoner has no recollection on which he himself would rely on these matters. Any payments would therefore have to be arbitrary and entirely unrelated to the need or the entitlement of the individual, But I regard those thoughts as hypothetical conjecture, as I do not believe a case has been made out for this Government to re-open the question. We have every respect for the integrity of those who have been raising these points, but I do not believe that there is useful purpose in pursuing them further, although I am prepared to see the noble Earl and members of his committee in order to go into the detailed points they have raised in more detail, or to give a written response to the document that he has sent to me. I will, if I may, discuss that with him.

In looking at the letters—here I am repeating myself due to the noble Earl's intervention—I do not believe that they indicate a generally held sense of injustice. Clearly the Daily Telegraph report in August 1980 and other publicity have triggered large numbers of prisoners to write to the Ministry of Defence. I am, however, aware that a substantial number of prisoners do feel hard done by. If there had at the time been a widespread sense of injustice I feel that both during the period of the Coalition Government and during the post-war Labour Government, strong representations would have been made. I have referred to the fact that these subjects were clearly under public scrutiny with both the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Public Accounts Committee inquiry. Furthermore, if there had been a feeling that the Labour Administration after the war had not been sympathetic to points raised, the Churchill Administration returned to office in 1951. If the known decisions of the two previous Administrations had been regarded as unjust, or if failure of administration had not been made good, I am sure the people at the time would have taken steps to change the policy.

There is no evidence of any such actions, complaints or pressure. In the circumstances, the present Government do not accept that a further inquiry is useful: nor can it see any practical method of ascertaining where there were cases of poor implementation of that policy. I do not claim that the policy was perfect in every individual case—few policies are—but I do claim that the time for complaints and rectification was during the three Administrations that I have mentioned. However, I would like to talk to the noble Earl and, as I have indicated, we shall certainly be prepared to discuss the detail further. But I must make clear that I can see no way in which this will alter the conclusions of the Government or lead them to challenge the decisions made and allowed to stand during the time of these Administrations when judgment could be properly made.

My honourable friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces made a Statement on 25th November 1981 in relation to cases of particular hardship. He did not mention in that statement, when a small concession in relation to hospital priority was given, the immense work of the charities that goes on. If I may say so, as a vice-president of the RAF Benevolent Fund and with some knowledge of regimental and army charities, I believe that the question of looking into the cases of those who have fallen on hard times because they were prisoners, or were wounded, or for other reasons is being, and has been, considered sympathetically by the appropriate Government departments and by these great charities.

I am sorry that I cannot be more helpful, but I do not believe it would be right to raise expectations without justification, and for it to be felt that payments might be made for which, I have to say to your Lordships, I cannot see any basis in the records which I know to be available or in the systems which we know were put into operation a very long time ago.