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

My Lords, the Government subscribe to NATO's strategy of flexible response, as have successive Governments over recent years. This strategy is designed to prevent the outbreak of war, either nuclear or conventional, between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that preparations for nuclear war have been described by his own Secretary of State for Defence, Mr. John Nott, as essentially lunatic? Will the noble Viscount assure the House that no such lunacy is contemplated in the South Atlantic?

My Lords, I think that the latter part of the noble Lord's supplementary question does not flow from the Question that he asked, but there is no question but that nuclear weapons are not applicable to the current situation in the Falkland Islands area. In relation to all other statements made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, so far as I am aware, they are in accord with my Answer to the noble Lord's Question stating the policy of deterrence.

My Lords, are the Government aware that the doctrine of flexible response is being increasingly questioned by great experts on both sides of the Atlantic?

My Lords, I think that the whole area of defence strategy has always been an area in which experts question other experts. The majority of opinions which successive Governments have accepted are in line with those which this Government and NATO as a whole accept fully.

My Lords, does not the Question reflect the state of mind of the noble Lord?

And, perhaps, my Lords, my state of mind as well. May I ask whether the noble Viscount has noted the movement that is sweeping America for a worldwide nuclear freeze, supported now by 178 members of Congress, and whether Her Majesty's Government will support that movement?

My Lords, I am aware of the reflection of recent peace movement ventures which now is apparent in the United States. I am certainly not aware that 178 members of Congress support what he has claimed. The whole Congress, so far as I am aware, fully supports the policy and continuation of NATO and its deterrent strategy.

My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that the doctrine of flexible response means that in certain circumstances this country could initiate a nuclear war? Will Her Majesty's Government not take better account of the proposals put forward by Mr. Macnamara and his friends in the United States for an agreement that neither of the super-powers shall be responsible for a first strike?

My Lords, the noble Lord's supplementary question assumes that NATO and the Warsaw Pact are in the same position and looking at it from opposite angles. NATO is a defensive pact of free democratic countries while the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries consist of totalitarian régimes that recently again have proved their preparedness to use military force for aggressive purposes. NATO needs a range of options to make clear, as necessary, that no aggressor can get away with it.

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

My Lords, the treaty has not been welcomed by neighbouring countries. It does not seem therefore that this treaty is likely to make any positive contribution to peace in the Horn of Africa.

My Lords, will not the noble Lord the Minister go a little further and say that one of the aims of this pact appears to be to destabilise neighbouring countries in the region such as the Sudan, Somalia and Saudi Arabia? Have the Government noted the recent upsurge of acts of international terrorism perpetrated by Libyan and Ethiopian criminals, such as the bomb outrage in Berlin on March 22nd, the stockpiling in Khartoum of arms and equipment of sabotage of a kind similar to those discovered in Nairobi, and the activities of Ethiopian death squads in Djibouti? What steps do the Government think can be taken by the United Kingdom in collaboration with neighbouring countries of the region to protect the victims of this aggression?

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that there is probably very little doubt but that the real objective of the signatories to this treaty is to destabilise matters in the Horn of Africa, particularly the position of Somalia. So far as Libya is concerned, our relations have improved somewhat since 1980, when Libyans were murdered on the streets of London. This has enabled us to enter into some cautious dialogue with the Libyans. I will go little further than that in regard to that country.

My Lords, since the noble Lord referred to Somalia and since it is one of the poorest countries in the world with its addition of the frightful burden of tragic refugees, could not the noble Lord's Government consider giving more than what even the Daily Telegraph called a "small dole" in the form of aid?

My Lords, I am sure that the facts do not support the suggestion made by the noble Baroness. Last year we provided relief for refugees in Somalia amounting to £3 million, and of course we have been donors towards the European Community aid for Somalia amounting to some £45 million.

My Lords, does the noble Lord really consider that a large sum of money for such distress?

Yes, my Lords.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that there is great anxiety in the region mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury? Is he also aware that the success which we anticipate and which we all pray for in the Falklands will establish our reputation for defence for peace in the world? May I ask that attention should then be increased in this area, which includes Egypt, Somalia, Oman, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia, all of which are threatened by Soviet strategy in that region?

My Lords, I think that the Government should take seriously the question asked by my noble friend Lady Airey, and that is why the Government attach considerable importance to the United States-Somalia defence access agreement, which was concluded in August 1980 and which provides the United States with facilities at Berbera and Mogadishu. So far as the shadowy authority of the Soviet Union is concerned, I would go so far as to say that the Government do not believe that the Soviet Union inspired this treaty. The national preoccupations of the three signatories are quite sufficient to explain the treaty's terms.

My Lords, did not the noble Lord hear his colleague on the Front Bench just say in answer to a previous question that we could not allow aggressors to get away with their activities, and we are not looking at a region in which Ethiopia in par- ticular has been the aggressor over very many years? In addition to the military steps which are being taken by the United States in conjunction with Somalia to build up their strength in opposition to that aggression, would not one of the best ways of resisting it be to ensure that the economies of the neighbouring countries are more stable than they have been in the past? Would not the noble Lord therefore agree to a combined initiative by the West—particularly the EEC—to look again at the volume of aid to Somalia and the Sudan with a view to relieving them of the burden of the large number of refugees to whom they have to play host and to making their economies really stable and flourishing?

My Lords, it is because the Government take seriously the point which has been put to me by the noble Lord that we attach importance to the substantial aid which is given by the European Community to these countries—a matter which is of course kept under review.

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

My Lords, Her Majesty's Government are well aware of the European Parliament's resolution but maintain their view that unilateral action to ban imports of seal products would not be justified. The Commission alone can put forward proposals for new Community legislation. If in response to the European Parliament's resolution the Commission tables proposals for a Community-wide ban on imports of seal products, I can assure your Lordships that the Government will consider them very carefully.

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. I wonder whether he is aware of the tremendous public feeling on this issue, particularly among young people, and of the volume of mail that has been sent to parliamentarians from constituents on this subject? Will he also confirm that there is in progress at present a scientific survey as to the ecological position of hood and harp seals? If that survey should show that the future of these species is indeed in danger, will he consider very seriously imposing a total ban on the import of seal products?

My Lords, regarding the last part of my noble friend's supplementary question, I would refer him to the third sentence of my original Answer. My noble friend will be aware that a study by the Nature Conservancy Council is being undertaken for the European Community. The position of the two species mentioned in the resolution is being reviewed, and the outcome of that review is expected by the end of this month. In reply to my noble friend's first two supplementary questions, the answer is, yes.

My Lords, while the ban has been widely welcomed, will the Minister say something about the consistency of his attitude to the ban on the slaughter of seals around our coasts, having regard to what may be the conflicting claims of conservation on the one hand and the interests of the fishing industry on the other?

My Lords, the position of the Government is that there is no threat to the conservation of seals around our coasts—indeed, we believe that the problem of conservation is in respect of the fish.

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that these particular species are not included in the list of endangered species? If this is so, is it not undesirable to have unilateral action in such a case, especially when the Canadian Government claim that they have investigated the matter and have approved of it because they consider it essential to cull the seals in the interest of preserving fish?

My Lords, I am afraid I cannot confirm that the two species are included in the endangered species list. If I am wrong, I will write to the noble Lord. So far as the Canadian Government's position is concerned, that is a matter for them—we would not wish to add anything to that.

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

The serious problems facing the prison service to which Her Majesty's Chief Inspector has drawn attention are the result of a mismatch between the demands made on the service and the resources available to it. It is the aim of Government policy to correct that mismatch. The steps which the Government are taking to do so are set out in the foreword to the report to which the noble Lord refers in his Question.

My Lords, while recognising that an exchange is more appropriate in the forthcoming debate, may I ask the noble Lord whether, in view of the appalling conditions described in this report, they cannot do something more immediate than building new prisons three years hence? For example, can they carry out the recommendations of this report for extended educational facilities in order to relieve the overcrowding in the cells?

My Lords, as the report has been out barely three weeks, the noble Lord will not expect me to deal in detail with the recommendations within the report. However, I think it is right to say that the Government have on many occasions acknowledged publicly that the prison population is well in excess of available accommodation and we are continuing to encourage the courts to make the fullest possible use of the range of non-custodial alternatives to imprisonment. We are also extending the range of options open to the courts both by our proposals in the Criminal Justice Bill and by the introduction of the partial suspension of sentences.

My Lords, does the noble Lord remember that one of the last acts of the Advisory Council on the Penal System was to make a number of recommendations that would materially have shortened prison sentences, and that one of the first acts of this Government was to abolish that council?

My Lords, nevertheless another of the Government's acts has been to take steps to reduce the length of sentences.

My Lords, would the Minister say what success has followed the publicity in regard to the lowering of sentences and to treating sentences of imprisonment as a last resort? Is the prison population diminishing and, if so, to what extent?

My Lords, it is somewhat early to give a specific reply to the noble and learned Lord. There is some evidence that courts are following the lead given by the Lord Chief Justice towards shorter sentences, and we shall continue to encourage that trend.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that this problem has been growing under successive Governments and that there is a very urgent need for some interim measures? When these are undertaken, in what I hope is the not-too-distant future, will the Prison Officers' Association be taken into full confidence by the Government, since they are the people who share the problem equally with the inmates of the prisons? Could he give the House an assurance that the Prison Officers' Association, who are also facing this despairing situation, will be taken into full confidence by the Government in any action that is contemplated?

My Lords, as to the first part of the noble Lord's question, I am obliged to him, and indeed my right honourable friend, in the foreword to which I have referred, has pointed out that the major problems to which Her Majesty's Chief Inspector refers have been decades in the making and cannot of course be solved overnight. The noble Lord asked about interim measures. I should point out to your Lordships that the Government are spending £34 million on major capital projects at existing establishments, and £22 million on repairs and maintenance in the current financial year. During the 1980s we expect to spend over £350 million on major capital projects and over £150 million on repairs and maintenance. That is, of course, in addition to the cost of the new prisons we are building. I am sure your Lordships will agree that that represents a substantial investment in the future of the prison service. I also readily acknowledge the valuable part played by the Prison Officers' Association in this progress.

My Lords, is there not a substantial difference between the recommendations of the Advisory Council on the Penal System for the reduction across the board in the maximum length of sentences and the policy of the present Government, which is to exhort the courts of their own volition to reduce the length of sentences? This latter approach having now proved to be a failure, should the Government not now go back to read the report of the advisory council?

My Lords, the Government are of course aware of the difference in policies and have taken what they believe to be the right course. They do not believe they should dictate matters of this kind to the courts when the courts are in a better position to make judgments in individual cases.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that in the report referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, the Chief Inspector of Prisons himself has said quite unequivocally that the only solution to the present deplorable position in our prisons is a reduction in the prison population, not by inference the building of more prisons?

My Lords, as I said earlier, I do not think that I ought to reply to specific recommendations made in a report which was published only, I think, 20 days ago. I think my right honourable friend should be given credit, and perhaps your Lordships would agree, not only for having set up this inspectorate but also for ensuring that its reports are published—since he was thereby, as it were, cutting a rod for his own back and had some idea as to who would be using it to beat him.

My Lords, with regard to the use of the word "degrading" in the Question, may I ask whether the improvements to prison buildings will include better toilet facilities, and that the building of the new prisons will result in the business of "slopping out" becoming a thing of the past in the as-near-as-possible future?

My Lords, I recognise the importance of my noble friend's question and I shall give her the answer in writing.

My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether he is aware that shorter sentences in themselves may empty the prisons or reduce the prison population but will not necessarily stop people going back, as the statistics clearly show? Will he not realise, if the department has not already done so, that the important thing when a person comes out of prison, is that he should get the social support which he needs? May I ask what provision is being made for some form of social care after prisoners have finished their prison sentences? At the present moment, as the noble Lord will know, a number of people have qualified as probation officers, but have yet to be employed.

My Lords, the Government are well aware of the importance of the social aspects of offending and I can assure him that these are taken on board. I do not want to pursue that further; it is a little wide of the Question. But since we are dealing with the number of people in prisons, I would think it right to remind your Lordships that the Government are also anxious that police forces should be kept up to the highest strength and that the rate of detection should be as high as possible. Your Lordships will also realise that resources used in this direction call for a greater need for resources in the direction in which the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, wants them to be spent.

My Lords, arising from the replies the Minister has given, may I ask him this: does not the report say that there should be a reduction of 7,000 in the prison population? If a proposal that T made for a wider amnesty is rejected, could there not be an amnesty for selective prisoners reaching the 7,000, many of whom ought not to be in prison at all, as appropriate treatment?

My Lords, as to which prisoners should not be in prison, that is a matter which would have to be investigated case by case. As to the specific figure put in the report, I must again say that I do not wish to anticipate anything my right honourable friend may say when he has had proper time, which he has not yet had, to consider the contents of the report.

My Lords, if the Minister is not able to comment on the report which was published only a few weeks ago, and is equally unable to make use of the report which was published three years ago, would he say what period of delay is natural before any action is taken?

My Lords, the appropriate period of delay is that necessary to digest information and to apply it correctly. I was asked in the Question on the Order Paper about a report which was published 20 days ago. I was not asked about the previous report. If the noble Baroness wishes to put down a Question, I shall be happy to answer it.

My Lords, if the Government are going to recommend shorter prison sentences, will they make sure that the victims of crimes are better compensated?

My Lords, I think that that is a different question.

My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon, my noble friend Lord Belstead will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on the Falkland Islands.

My Lords, I beg to move that the Second Report from the Select Committee on the House of Lords Offices be agreed to.

My Lords, I should like to raise one question on this report. No doubt your Lordships have all read it, but just in case one or two of your Lordships have not read it, paragraph 4 states:

"Photograph of the House in Session.

The Committee considered the provisional arrangements that had been made to photograph the House while in Session and asked the Administration Sub-Committee to finalise the details".

This is a matter which affects the whole House. The whole House is interested in it and, so far as I know, what we shall next hear are the actual details of the occasion.

Surely, the House should know a little more about the intentions behind this particular operation. The decision has been taken and the details of it have been decentralised to the appropriate sub-committee. I suggest that it would be fairer to the general body of Members of this House if we knew in advance some details of the occasion on which it is proposed that the House should be photographed in session. Is it to be a great occasion, is it to be a special occasion or what is it? Is the House to be in Committee or is the House to be sitting?

I think that it would be right for the general information of the House if, when the appropriate sub-committee has considered its proposals in detail, these were notified to the House before the occasion takes place. I suggest that, either in some form of Statement or some form of information through the Library, we should know something more than just this blank statement that a decision has been taken and decentralised to the appropriate sub-committee.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, for bringing this matter to our attention. The proposal of a photograph of the House in session was contained in a previous report from the Offices Committee and the House agreed to it in principle. We are now working on the details and I most certainly undertake that, when the details are finalised, they will undoubtedly be brought to your Lordships' attention, because I imagine that as many of your Lordships as possible would like to be in the photograph. It is for that reason that we are, in fact, trying to have it arranged on two different Thursdays, possibly a few weeks apart, so as to suit the convenience of as many of your Lordships as possible. But I certainly undertake that there will be full publicity before any final details are agreed.

rose to move, That the draft scheme laid before the House on 8th March be approved.

My Lords, all of us will rejoice that the public lending right scheme is about to ascend after two decades of preparation on the ground. I give my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Willis, and his colleagues for their long and successful campaign. One must also congratulate the Minister on evolving a scheme that looks to be both practicable and economical. There were no easy answers even to such basic questions as, What is a book? and, Who is an author? What strikes one as inspired is the decision to reckon the frequency of borrowing by means of a sample of 16 carefully selected libraries rather than to have every library make an individual return. That would have been costly of effort, even in these days of the computer.

Of course, any scheme which attempts to be simple has to make a number of arbitrary judgments which seem to be unfair. It is the attempt to be fair which is responsible for many of the fantastic complications of our tax law, and it is such complications that the Minister has avoided in his public lending scheme. What is important now is that the scheme should be approved without any amendment so that next year the recording of lending can begin, followed by the disbursement of the first of the annual £2 million into the pockets of the deserving authors. May I say that George Orwell perhaps never imagined that his heirs would be the beneficiaries of this in 1984.

But the Minister should of course be thinking of what subsequent improvements can be made to the scheme. The first of these—I was very glad to hear the noble Earl mention it—would be reciprocal arrangements with countries which have, or are now preparing, their own public lending right scheme. We should do very well out of this because British authors write so many very good books which are very much enjoyed abroad.

The other provision which I should like to see, although I recognise that this is very difficult, is reward for the translator. There is inspired translation—the Authorised Version, or Urquhart's Rabelais, or Murray's Euripides—which are great works of art and deserve reward; but there are bread and butter translations whose width is more impressive than their quality and which are perhaps adequately rewarded at the going rate. It is, of course, very difficult to judge which is which. These and other matters are for the future.

Meanwhile, let the authors start to draw their rewards, with the stars enjoying their maximum of £5,000 and the groundlings their pathetic minimum of £5—a contribution made by the use of a mere 100 borrowers because apparently the reward is 5p per borrowing—a kind of "bob a job" basis. And let the Government show some modest generosity by indexing the global sum. This sum of £2 million has already lost quite a lot of its value since it was proposed and this should be restored as quickly as possible.

My Lords, we on these Benches do of course welcome the implementation and introduction of this grant scheme. It is something which noble Lords in all parts of the House have been agreed upon in principle and we are only glad that after rather a long time we should actually be coming somewhere near to fruition. Our free library system in this country is probably one of the great institutions of the world. We all of us benefit from it and it has only been sad that in the past the benefits of this institution have been coupled with possibly a certain amount of injustice to individual authors. However, that is now being remedied and we are all grateful. I would like to join with the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, in his remarks congratulating the elegant simplicity of the statistical base which has been found for making the calculations.

There are only three points which I want to raise with the Government. One of them has already been very largely dealt with by the noble Earl, Lord Avon; the reciprocity with other countries. I am delighted to know that the Minister has committed himself on this matter and that we will see some progress. I must say that when we examine in Hansard the remarks which the Minister made about the great difficulty which is involved, I am not certain that they will stand up to all that much examination. The West German scheme, for instance, although different in some particulars from ours, is there and is known about. I would have thought we could have gone quite a long way already with producing arrangements for a simple reciprocity between the two countries. I hope that bureaucratic considerations will not be allowed to interfere with getting on with what in principle must be a fairly simple job.

There are one or two other small points which I believe can be made. There is the definition of the size of the book and the stipulation that a book must have a certain amount of text in it. I am far from clear why photographers or draughtsmen who may not be at all gifted in the use of the written word should have to produce 24, 32 or whatever number of pages of text to pad out a book which may be extremely valuable in its own right without that textual matter. Although that point cannot be dealt with at this moment, because we do not wish to delay the scheme in any way, it is one that demands looking at again in the interests of justice.

Finally, I am not at all certain why the Government have I ejected the idea put forward to them by the authors that the number of assignees of public lending right should be limited. In fact, I believe the authors put it to them that there should only he a maximum of one assignee. It is the object of everyone concerned in this—the Government and the authors—that there should be the minimum of bureaucracy and that the maximum amount of money should go to the authors themselves. Obviously there will be quite a lot of effort (and therefore money) taken up in the administration of the assignment and payment to assignees. It would have been much better for a greater proportion to go to the authors themselves in their lifetimes or during their time of active work, even if it had been at the expense of not having a maximum of four people to whom the copyright could be assigned. I think that needs looking at again. Nonetheless, this is a very welcome scheme. It redounds credit not only upon those who have been putting it forward over the years but also on the Government for taking it aboard during a period of financial stringency. We are all extremely grateful.

My Lords, it is with real delight that I welcome this document and congratulate the Minister for the Arts and his representative here, the noble Earl, on producing something as economical as this has turned out to be. I first came into this matter halfway through the first Bill which I had to take over from the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi. I was very upset to find that the Bill was fillibustered out in another place. The second time, when the noble Lord, Lord Willis, produced the Bill, my noble friend Lord Kilmarnock made a splendid maiden speech. On that occassion, however, the Bill again failed to get through. Finally, we have reality. It is a moment of great excitement and interest to all of us who have been working on this.

I would like to say only two things in addition to the various comments which have been made by noble Lords who have already spoken—and with all of which I agree. I wonder whether the sum of £5,000 is not rather high as a maximum and whether there will be anything left for the other people? I think that is something we must look at. Secondly, I very much wish to endorse the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, that there should be indexation. If ever there was a case for indexation, this it is. We ought to start from two years ago, or even from five years ago, when the proposal was first put forward with a figure of £2 million—I suppose that would have grown to about £7 million by now. With just these few thoughts, I welcome this scheme and congratulate the Government upon it.

My Lords, I would like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Avon on his introduction to this new scheme. I should also like to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, to the Front Bench; he is a great ornament to and a distinguished member of the Labour Party. I must declare an interest because I have already received my first payment under the German scheme, of £4.23p. I look forward to receiving much more in the longer term. For that reason, I particularly support the principle of reciprocity mentioned by my noble friend Lord Avon and supported by other speakers.

This is an important new right in the cultural field and one that should be pursued in other countries and in other fields. It seems to me that the scheme has been well drawn up. It is both efficient and economical in its administration and it is something that can be widely commended. As the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, hinted, there is a major innovation in this piece of legislation because, so far as I know, it is the first scheme under an Act of Parliament which is specifically based on the statistical technique of sampling.

Sampling is quite a modern statistical technique, although it is the basis of the science of statistics. It was actually introduced as a result of innovations made by Louis Pasteur and by a brewer at the Guinness Brewery who wrote anonymously under the name "Student". In fact, Student's Law is one of the basic principles of statistics. The brewer in question sampled the various barrels of stout to see which of them had "gone off", to avoid the problem of having to taste every barrel of stout. So sampling is a basis of statistics.

It is very interesting to those few of us who sit in your Lordships' House who are not barristers or solicitors, to discover how few modern statistical techniques are used in legislation. For example, the idea that fines levied by the courts should he indexed would appear to be a revolutionary idea to lawyers, whereas it seems an elementary idea to economists and statisticians. I hope, therefore, this piece of legislation, which is immensely welcome in itself, extremely well drafted and extremely efficient, and which embodies a principle of no little importance, will provide a model for other pieces of administrative law which go through your Lordships' House. I hope very much that they will be given as fair a wind as this piece of legislation.

Before I sit down, may I just say that the noble Lord, Lord Willis, who sits over there, is immensely to be congratulated upon this major step forward in the interests of the arts in this country.

My Lords, may I say how very much I appreciate this scheme, which provides for authors a parallel to the performing right scheme which composers have enjoyed for so long. I should like to ask the noble Earl one question. What will be the position for translators of foreign books? I should declare an interest herein that I am in the process of making one myself. Will the right have to be divided between the translator and the author, or what will be the position?

My Lords, I spent last Saturday afternoon at Gatwick Airport waiting for an aeroplane that had been delayed three times. When it eventually arrived five hours late, your Lordships may imagine that it was a heartwarming experience, and I feel rather the same today as I stand up and find that public lending right has at last come before the House in its final form. It has been a very long haul, not only for me, but for my fellow authors, and we are, I am afraid, in danger of being drowned in euphoria about this particular scheme. I do want to join in the general congratulations offered to the Minister for producing an efficient scheme, a scheme which has taken some consideration of the criticisms that authors have put forward, and which I hope will work—in fact, I am sure it will work.

However, I do want to add one or two further points to those already made by other noble Lords. First of all, on the question of reciprocity, as the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, said—and I thank him for his kind remarks about me personally—we are already receiving large sums of money from the German public lending right; British authors are already receiving these. There is a grave danger that unless we do make reciprocal arrangements with the Germans these sums of money will be lost. I welcome the very clear statement that the noble Earl made about this. I should like him to emphasise one point when he replies. Would the Minister be prepared to enter into immediate negotiations with the representatives of the German Federal Government about reciprocity, because my understanding of the situation is that there are no problems that cannot be fairly easily solved? I believe that, if those discussions were to take place, there would be an atmosphere of goodwill and a solution would come up within a very short period of time.

The other point is this question of indexing. Already the original sum put forward has shrunk alarmingly since the scheme was first put forward four or five years ago. It has remained constant throughout all these inflationary years and therefore it is worth a great deal less than it was originally. Authors are not greedy; as I have said several times in the debates on this subject, we only want what is right and fair. Would it not be possible for the Minister to bring before the House at a fairly early time a modest proposal to index-link the sum that is going to be made available in the general pool? I do not think this would particularly embarrass the Government, it certainly would not embarrass the Opposition. It would prevent this becoming a subject of controversy over the next years, with authors agitating for more money. It would seem to me that this would remove a very serious point from controversy.

Having said those things, I want once again to thank the Minister, to thank my noble friends and friends on all sides of the House for the constant support they have given me and my friends over the years on this subject, and to wish this scheme not only a fair wind, but a full sail.

My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, will forgive me. I think there may be one or two other noble Lords who wish to speak on this matter. Perhaps this might be a convenient moment to interrupt the proceedings to take the Statement.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. The Statement is as follows:

"With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a Statement on the Falkland Islands.

"Our objectives remain as already stated to the House. But I should provide an account of developments since the debate last Wednesday. Mr. Haig is continuing in his efforts to persuade the Argentine Government to agree to the implementation of Security Council Resolution No. 502. His mission provides the best hope of achieving a peaceful settlement.

"The position is still delicate, and the House will not expect me to reveal details of the negotiations. We remain grateful to Mr. Haig and shall continue to co-operate fully with his efforts.

"Meanwhile we are stepping up the military, economic and diplomatic pressure on Argentina. Our naval task force is steadily approaching the area of the Falklands, and we are continuing to strengthen its ability to carry out whatever tasks may be required of it.

"I am glad to tell the House that Norway has today joined with the members of the European Community and certain important Commonwealth countries in banning imports from Argentina.

"The 22 marines who were captured in South Georgia and the remaining seven from the Falklands, as well as 13 British scientists evacuated from South Georgia, have arrived safely in Montevideo. I am glad to say that we expect them back in Britain very shortly.

"Fifteen British scientists remain in South Georgia, and we have their well-being and safety very much in mind. The latest report on 18th April confirmed that all were safe and well.

"The three British journalists arrested last week in Argentina are expected to appear before a judge today. The British Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Buenos Aires are keeping us informed of developments.

"Argentina must have no doubts about our resolve to exercise our rights to the full if this should prove necessary. But I can assure the House that we are making every possible effort to get a satisfactory solution to this dispute by peaceful means. The Government will continue to keep the House informed."

My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord, and again we do not expect him necessarily to go into much further detail at this moment. It clearly is still the firm view of all the parties in this country—all the leading parties anyway—that we support the Government in the steps that they are taking, and the remarks that I am about to make, if I may, are not designed in any way to weaken the Government's resolve in this matter, which we support. Clearly, we agree that the Haig mission is at the moment the best hope, but none the less we may have to face the fact that the terms that would be remotely acceptable to the British Government, with their original statements, will be unacceptable to the junta in the Argentine.

I would like to ask the Government to consider whether they have any further steps of an international kind that might be taken. It has been suggested—I think it is important that this suggestion should be taken seriously, although again the Government may not wish to comment without due thinking—that we should ask the United Nations to appoint an administrator without prejudice of any kind to the future. I want to reiterate that there is no weakening of our support for the Government. My own experience in the past, as I mentioned elsewhere, with the United Nations, has not been entirely happy in certain circumstances and that is why I would like to stress that it should be "an administrator". If that should come about a condition must be that we return to the pre-invasion circumstances and the law that prevails, whether it concerns driving on the left, divorce or anything else, is restored to the situation as it was before the aggression. If that does not come off and if the original Haig initiative does not come off, I hope that that would absolve the Americans and the United States any more from trying to be an honest broker in this matter. We welcome this as a posture, but the simple fact is—I hope that this is being made clear—that this is an aggression by an undemocratic country against a loyal ally of the United States backed by a democratic Government.

The British Government over the years have been willing to discuss sovereignty subject always to the wishes of the islanders themselves. I would suggest that it is time that the United States, like Norway, should support us in this matter. There is a great deal at stake. I am not wishing to criticise Mr. Haig or his efforts at the moment, but as we mentioned before and as the noble Lord recognised, it is a question of not only the Falklands but the whole peace of that part of the world—the Antarctic Treaty, South Georgia and so on.

I should like to ask the noble Lord one or two questions. He stated that the 15 scientists, I think it was, or the scientists in South Georgia were still, so far as we knew, all right. Included in that number were the two young women who are out there filming. Are they all right? The noble Lord may not be able to answer that question. Nonetheless, we are concerned in the long run with winter approaching. Will he also make sure that, whatever else happens, we do not weaken the situation in Belize where, because of the threat of this particular problem, there is again the possibility of another aggression which has practically been attempted in the past?

I should like to ask the Government whether they are proposing to publish the British case. I have no doubt that our case in international law is sound: 150 years of occupation and the refusal of the Argentines to go to the Hague Court. Yet there are still too many people in this country who do not know the case. Just because we have debated it and understand it, does not mean that there are not some people who are saying, "What does it really matter?". I think that it is time that the Government put their case and I would ask the noble Baroness also to bear this suggestion in mind.

My Lords, we, too, are grateful to the noble Lord for repeating this Statement which, for reasons which we completely understand, does not add very much to our knowledge. However—and here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton—I believe that the great majority of people in this country feel that there is hardly likely to be any peaceful solution of this dispute unless the Argentine Government accept the legally enforceable decision of the Security Council to withdraw their troops from the Falkland Islands. If they decline to do so for any reason and the occupation goes on, I think that people here generally will begin to wonder what is the use of the United Nations and whether it is even worthwhile continuing our subscription. It is also true that, given the Security Council's legally valid decision and in the regrettable absence of any United Nations machinery for enforcing the decision, we are fully entitled, if necessary and if practicable, to use force ourselves, if only under Article 51 of the charter.

But I also believe that the whole purpose of Mr. Haig's intensive discussions with both sides during the last few days has been to discover, if possible, the broad lines—perhaps the very broad lines—not only of a short-term but also of a long-term solution which would appear to the majority of people here at any rate to be, on the face of it, reasonable. In other words, as I ventured to suggest last Wednesday, a formula which, while, of course, safeguarding the interests of those islanders who might also regard it as reasonable, would nevertheless give some satisfaction to the long held, if legally quite invalid, claim which has resulted, to use the words of the charter, in an undeniable threat to international peace and security. I wonder whether, by any chance, the Government, while naturally not giving us any details of what is going on, would like to comment on this aspect of the existing crisis.

My Lords, I am grateful to both the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, for their response to my right honourable friend's Statement. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, referred to the efforts being made by Mr. Haig and the stance adopted by the United States Government in this matter. Her Majesty's Government accept that, while Mr. Haig is engaged in such very delicate negotiations, the United States Government consider it inappropriate to align themselves with either party although, of course, the United States Government have fully supported Security Council Resolution 502. Let me in saying that immediately go on to refer to the points made by both noble Lords about the United Nations. Here the Government take the view that the implementation of Security Council Resolution 502 should remain the United Nations' first objective. At present Mr. Haig's mission offers the best prospects of this.

I was interested, if I may say so on behalf of the Government, in the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, that in the event of some closer United Nations participation—for instance, the noble Lord suggested to your Lordships' House a United Nations administrator—the situation in the Falkland Islands would have to be the situation as it had pertained before the agression took place. That is both robust and wise advice.

I really do not think that I can add any more to what the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, put forward, both in the debate on 14th April and this afternoon, so far as the United Nations position is concerned, except to repeat that we believe that the implementation of Security Council Resolution 502 should remain the United Nations' first objective.

Let me very quickly reply to the other questions that were asked of me. Miss Buxton and Miss Price—the two English ladies who were in South Georgia—are, according to our information, still in South Georgia. So far as the position of Belize is concerned, let me repeat what has already been said in your Lordships' House—namely, that no decision has yet been taken on a date for withdrawal of British troops. The British garrison is in Belize to deter external aggression against Belize and, if necessary, to defend Belize against aggression. The noble Lord put to me, "Would it not be wise to publish our case?". The noble Lord himself, of course, with all his experience and authority put the case very briefly in your Lordships' debate on 3rd April and I sought to do likewise briefly on 14th April. I should like to take back with me and to pass on to my right honourable friend the more specific recommendation made by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, in this respect.

My Lords, can my noble friend say whether General Haig is still in Buenos Aires? Secondly, is he aware—I think that he is—that the admirable unity of opinion in this country on this grave issue owes an enormous amount to the calm firmness of the leadership of Her Majesty's Government?

My Lords, the information which I had rather less than an hour and a half ago was that Mr. Haig remains in Buenos Aires. I am grateful to my noble friend for what he has said about the stance of the Government and I am sure that my noble friend would join with me in saying that it has been very important that we have received wise and calm advice from all sides in your Lordships' House.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, as the Government have already stated, probably the best hope at the moment lies in the activities of the American Secretary of State, Mr. Haig? I think it would be appropriate from this House, and unquestionably from the other House, if at this stage we say to him and to the American people that we are most grateful for the untiring efforts that they are making in what seems to be an insoluble situation. Is the noble Lord also aware that the alleged statement in the press (I hope that it is alleged and untrue) of the President of Argentina, that there will be no solution to this problem and that his troops will remain there, alive or dead, makes the activity and the work that Mr. Haig is doing almost impossible?

My Lords, on behalf of the Government, I agree with the noble Lord. It is worth reminding your Lordships' House that we are talking in the context of Security Council Resolution 502, which is mandatory, and it is because that mandatory resolution has been flouted—and by "flouted" I mean that on the day following the passing of that resolution the Argentines invaded South Georgia—that the Argentine has been more or less condemned by most countries in the rest of the world and has not been effectively supported in any way by the countries of Latin America.

My Lords, in reference to the request by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, that the general case be actively promulgated, can the noble Lord say whether or not that is practicable in the immediate future, and that the Government would be prepared to release details of the cases in the past when the Government have offered to submit the question at issue to the International Court? The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his illuminating speech last Wednesday, alluded to the breach of international law which is implied by this aggression. I am quite sure that very few people in this country have the vaguest idea of the offer in the past to submit the issue to the International Court.

My Lords, like previous Administrations in government, Her Majesty's Government have always made clear their willingness to negotiate on all aspects of the Falkland Islands dispute. The Argentines have never shown any interest in referring the sovereignty question to the International Court and the fact is that we have not proposed it. That, therefore, is the way in which the question of reference to the International Court stands at the present time. I think I should repeat that what we very strongly feel at the present time as a matter of policy is that the first thing to do is to ensure that Security Council Resolution 502 is implemented.

My Lords, in regard to any statement that is made at the present time, would the Minister not agree, first, that there should be a withdrawal and, secondly, that our preparedness to submit this issue to the International Court would, from a world point of view and from the point of view of the people of this country, be a sign of strength?

My Lords, I certainly take on board what the noble Lord has said, but, as I have already said, the first priority for Her Majesty's Government is implementation of Security Council Resolution 502.

My Lords, is the noble Lord the Minister quite certain that we have never proposed to take this case to the International Court? I had understood long ago that we were willing to do so and that the Argentines were not.

My Lords, my advice is as I replied to the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, a couple of minutes ago.

My Lords, is the Minister aware how warmly many of us have welcomed the statement at the end of the declaration, that all efforts will be made to seek a peaceable settlement of this problem? On a number of occasions the Minister has referred to Resolution 502. Is it not the case that even before that resolution made the demand for the withdrawal of Argentine troops, it asked for a cessation of hostilities? Can the Minister say what has been done to carry out that first demand of Resolution 502? Has any effort been made to secure a truce during the negotiations, with Argentina ending its supply of soldiers and equipment to the Falkland Islands and ourselves halting our fleet while the negotiations take place?

My Lords, as I have already said to your Lordships' House, the House would not expect the Government to give details of the very delicate negotiations in which Mr. Haig is involved at the moment. But I do say that it is the objective of Mr. Haig's mission to ensure that there is a peaceful negotiated settlement to this dispute.

My Lords, I should like to ask my noble friend to clear up a matter because, although he has already made the statement clear, it is so contrary to what I understood in the past that I should like to address him on it. Is it the case that we have never suggested to any Argentine Government that the Falkland Islands dispute should be referred to the International Court?

My Lords, that is the case.

My Lords, is that on the basis that we have never resiled from our legal title or from our sovereignty in the Falkland Islands and, therefore, if the matter was in issue it would be for the Argentinians to take it? In that situation did we indicate that we would be very happy to submit to the jurisdiction of the International Court?

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord is indeed being helpful in asking that question. I confess that I had not thought the matter through as far as that. I should like to make it quite clear that in Her Majesty's Government's view the question of sovereignty is, of course, not in issue.

My Lords, with regard to the islanders themselves, can the noble Lord the Minister make any statement with regard to conditions on the Falkland Islands under this illegal occupation by a fascist country? Secondly, can he give the House an assurance that if, as time goes on and we reach crisis point, there should be any dramatic change in the way in which our fellow Britons are being treated, a report will be made to the House at the earliest possible convenience of the Government?

My Lords, from reports which we have received from those who have returned from the Falkland Islands we have not heard of maltreatment of people upon the Falkland Islands, or, indeed, of the cessation of normal services. But, of course, it is impossible to tell what are the real views of people whose country is occupied by an alien power.

My Lords, has my noble friend any confirmation of the reports that Argentinian troops, or some of them, are hungry and are having to turn to the British people in the Falkland Islands to relieve their hunger?

My Lords, I have understood that from the television transmissions. However, on this point I know no more than my noble friend.

My Lords, would the noble Minister not agree that troops of any country in any circumstances are always hungry?

My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Russians are cynically exploiting the requisitioning of British cruise liners for the task force by rushing in to grab the lion's share of the British cruise trade? In view of Russian support for Argentinian aggression, will the Government seriously consider banning all Russian cruise ships from British ports forthwith?

My Lords, I think that because of the present situation of the very delicate negotiations of Mr. Haig, the House would not expect me to give any forecast of steps which Her Majesty's Government now intend to take.

My Lords, can my noble friend tell us what is Her Majesty's Government's policy towards South Georgia? It seems that the activity in the Falkland Islands will go on for a considerable time, and South Georgia, once recovered for us, must remain British and out of this issue in support of our Antarctic possessions.

My Lords, may I say to my noble friend that the policy of Her Majesty's Government towards South Georgia is precisely the same as the policy of Her Majesty's Government towards the rest of the Falkland Islands.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that in fact the Norwegians have a better claim to South Georgia than the Argentines because they have been whaling there for years? It is quite ludicrous that the Argentines should claim that. May I again ask the noble Lord whether he will seriously consider putting out the case, because the point made by my noble and learned friend Lord Elwyn-Jones is one that has escaped a lot of people. My recollection is that we offered to take our claims to the Antarctic to The Hague court, but I think it is this juridical side that again could be explored more closely. If the Minister, well informed and generally courteous as he is to this House, is not really very well aware of it, it suggests that quite a lot of others of us are not.

My Lords, I shall certainly draw what the noble Lord and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, have said to the attention of my right honourable friend.

My Lords, did I hear the noble Lord say that we had never suggested to the Argentines that the matter should be referred to the International Court? Is is not a fact that in 1948 Mr. Ernest Bevin announced in the House of Commons quite definitely that he had made that suggestion to the Argentine?

My Lords, I was advised before making the Statement to your Lordships this afternoon that the Argentines have never shown any interest in referring the sovereignty question to the International Court, and we have not proposed it.

My Lords, that is quite true. What I understood the noble Lord to say was that we had never suggested it should go to the International Court. The fact that the Argentines turned down that suggestion is another matter.

My Lords, at the risk of belabouring this point too far the words which I have just spoken in answer to Lord Beswick's last question were precisely the same words that I used when I originally answered the noble Lord, Lord Robbins.

My Lords, having with some difficulty restrained myself from asking a question on the Statement on the Falklands, may I draw your Lordships back to the draft Public Lending Right Scheme in which there is a unanimity in the House which is probably greater in fact than the unanimity which appeared to exist on the previous question. I venture to say a few words on the subject because I was the Minister who in 1974–76 had the pleasure and the duty, as Minister for the Arts at that time, of introducing the first Public Lending Right Bill in another place. My noble friend Lord Willis will remember the struggles we had in that earlier period to bring the idea of public lending right round to the position of general acceptability which it has now obtained. In those earlier days the whole idea was strongly resisted and resented in library circles, and it was not easy to get the general acceptance which now exists.

As has been said—and this is welcome—from the beginning this has been an all-party affair. There has been support among all parties for the idea of public lending right. But, equally, the opposition was an all-party affair as well. I may possibly leave the Liberals out of that suggestion. I am not sure whether they joined in the oppositional endeavours towards public lending right. It certainly existed in both the major parties during that period. As the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, said, the opposition were successful in preventing the first Public Lending Right Bill getting on the statute book. It got to a final stage, and indeed in all essences that first Bill was similar to the second Bill which the then Minister, Mr. St. JohnStevas, succeeded in getting on to the statute book.

This draft public lending right scheme follows in essence—there are important changes in detail—from those early endeavours. I therefore join in the general welcome which has been given in an especially hearty fashion, because here is the culmination of something which I had the pleasure of starting in a governmental sense. It is always welcome to see something which you started brought to a conclusion, although, as the noble Minister has said, it is hardly a conclusion; in a way it is a fresh beginning. It is the start of something which we all hope will grow to something of extreme significance.

The other point I would wish to make about public lending right is that the idea of payment for use is something which is widespread in our society. I hope that it will develop and become significant, and that in the course of time it may be spread to the work of other artists. If it is a good thing that writers shall receive a continuing remuneration arising from the sale, or lending or reading of their books, it would be an equally good thing, and equally possible in these days, to make an arrangement whereby painters would also receive a continuing remuneration from the exhibition and sale of their works. This is something to which at some time we shall get around.

Having said that, I only wish to join in the general welcome, to express the hope that the draft lending right scheme will speedily come into effect and that writers will benefit as much by it as we all hope that they have done over the years. I believe it will become an extremely important international development which all of us on all sides in this House will welcome.

My Lords, I should like to express my solidarity with the writers, and briefly congratulate them on reaching this point. I certainly have enjoyed books in the library, and I hope that at some time, as libraries are increasingly lending pictures to the public, the writers may support us in the future too.

My Lords, I have a few questions for the noble Earl about the administration of this scheme, but I think they can now wait until it is in operation. I should like to add my congratulations on the lucid and helpful way in which the noble Earl has explained what is, after all, quite a complex scheme. I should like to confirm the hope that we may have reciprocity. I was once surprised to find in the Peking University Library a book of my own. I trust that we shall have negotiations with the Republic of China as well as with those near at home.

The negotiations have been prolonged. One may take the old proverb and say that the mountain has been in travail, and it has produced, I would not say the proverbial mouse, but something rather less than a giant. But today of all days we might hope that it is a good omen that prolonged negotiations, possibly even in other contexts with which we are more immediately concerned, may result in a happy ending.

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate.

I am particularly grateful for their response, for their kind remarks about my right honourable friend the Minister for the Arts and for their kind remarks about the scheme itself, and I shall endeavour briefly to answer some of the questions put to me.

The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, mentioned the question of assignments. Although an author can assign his rights to up to four people, the registrar will have dealings with only one assignee, in order to minimise the administrative costs. The noble Lord also mentioned photographers having to pad out their books. That came about by the need to define a book, and it was thought that the reference to a number of pages would mean that we should also have to define what was a page. It has generally been felt that the scheme should, in the main, reward the written word, and that is why 32 pages have to be at least half text, so that an illustrator who fulfils that requirement will qualify. The difficulty of phographers should, I suggest, be borne in mind by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, when he thinks of how we shall reimburse the painter as well.

The noble Lords, Lord Ardwick and Lord Somers, drew my attention to the question of translators. They are excluded on the grounds of equity because, where an author remained ineligible during his lifetime, it would, we think, be contentious if, upon his death, his translator was able to register all his works. However, that matter can be looked at in due course when the scheme is in operation.

Several noble Lords referred to the limit of £2 million. That can, of course, be changed with Parliamentary approval, as I said in my opening remarks. There was also some comment about index-linking. The amount available can be adjusted annually by resolution. That would allow for index-linking, and no doubt that consideration will be kept in mind by the Government of the day.

We had quite a discussion about reciprocity, and I can tell the House that the registrar will be ready to begin to study the question of reciprocal arrangements with the appropriate German authorities at an early date. In fact, he is intending at present to go there this year, which shows that we are not just saying words. I assure the House that the other comments that were made will be looked into. As I said in my opening remarks, this is a scheme which we are getting off the ground, and of course we can look at it after it has been going for several years.

moved Amendment No. 1:

After Clause 1, insert the following new clause:

My Lords, the amendment is, as has been explained, a revised version of the amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, moved in Committee. In its revised form, I say at once, it is a significant improvement on the amendment we had before us then, and I congratulate and thank the noble Lord for the effort he has made to meet some of the objections to his amendment, some of them made by me, which in part gave rise to his withdrawing the amendment at that stage. In particular, in its revised form the amendment now makes proper allowance for the fact, raised at the earlier stage, that we now live in a multi-racial society and that other religions treat days other than than Sunday as their holy days. That aspect would be met by the revised amendment. Further, the amendment, by making special provision exempting pharmacists from its ambit, would go a little way towards dealing with the problems of special cases.

Having said that, I fear I am still unable to support the amendment in its present form. As before, I am wholeheartedly in favour of the principle which the amendment enshrines. Of course, nobody would favour the idea of a shopworker—or anybody else, for that matter—being compelled to work on a Sunday if he or she objected to working on that day. (Incidentally, one wonders how many people go to see "Chariots of Fire" on a Sunday.) The same goes for any other day of the week in respect of which such objections might apply for religions other than the Christian religion.

Accepting, as I do, the principle that shopworkers should not be compelled to work on Sundays when they believe they should not on religious grounds, we must then consider two further matters: first, does it necessarily follow that the principle has to be put into some statutory form and, secondly, assuming that it must be put into some statutory form, is the form in which it is proposed to do so, the right and appropriate form in which to do so? In considering the first question, I am far from being convinced that it is necessary to put this important principle into statutory form. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, eloquently put the case for the principle of not having to work on a Sunday when conscience dictates otherwise, but he has not demonstrated that, unless we add his proposed new clause to the Bill, shopworkers who object to working on Sundays on those grounds would actually be required to do so.

Let us consider what is likely to happen. When the Bill comes into force, according to the noble Lord's hypothesis, some shops now required by law to remain closed will decide to open. In those shops, so the hypothesis runs, there are at present working some shopworkers who have sincere and bona fide religious beliefs which require that they shall not work on Sundays. The management of those shops—those which have now decided to open on Sundays—say to their staffs, "As from next week"—or next month or whatever is decided—"we shall be opening on Sundays. That means that all of you who work in our shop will have to work on Sundays, whether or not you like it and whether or not you believe in it". That is the hypothesis on which the amendment is founded. Would it really be like that? I cannot see it happening that way at all.

The most important point surely is this. If the shop worker is not required under the terms of his present employment to work on Sundays, nothing in my Bill will change that. The mere fact that his employer becomes entitled by law to open on Sunday does not change by one iota the terms of employment of the existing employees. In order to get any one of the existing employees to work on a Sunday it would be necessary for the employer to negotiate with the employees either individually or collectively—it might be through their trade union—and include provisions for working on a Sunday.

Any shop worker who objects on either religious or any other grounds to working on Sunday would at that stage be able to resist being made to work on that day. In effect it is already the position legally that no shop worker can be compelled to work on a Sunday under the existing law, except in those shops within the present exemptions. So any change in working hours to bring in Sunday working can be brought about only with the consent of the employees concerned. That means in effect that the employees concerned—those who object to Sunday working on religious grounds—already have to all intents and purposes the benefit which the amendment seeks to confer; namely, the right not to work on Sunday.

Any shop worker within the noble Lord's contemplation as being in need of the protection which the clause would confer need do no more than say to his employer, when Sunday working is to be introduced, "Not me, thank you. I do not agree with it. I am not required to do Sunday working now. You cannot make me do it unless I agree to a change in my working hours. I do not agree. I will stick to my present arrangements, and there is nothing that you can do to make me change my mind." That surely is the reality. The existing employees already enjoy the rights which this clause would seek to confer. It is quite unnecessary both in law and in practice.

Of course, it might he said that employers will bring pressure to bear on their employees to make them work on Sundays whether they like it or not. Perhaps they will—a few of them—but in that case the noble Lord's amendment will not help them any more than does the protection that they already enjoy by means of the terms of their existing employment conditions, to which I have referred. We should bear in mind that the existing employment law would protect shop workers from being unfairly dismissed, and that would, of course, include circumstances where an employer sought to dismiss an employee on the grounds that the employee would not agree to work on a Sunday where in the past he was not required to do so. So I would suggest to the House that the existing law already more than adequately covers what the noble Lord has in mind, and there is no need for the amendment. But even if there were a call for a conscience clause of this kind, we would have most carefully to consider whether the amendment would be the right and appropriate way to achieve it. I apologise for "going on", but this is my only chance.

The amendment would introduce a special kind of privilege for shop workers. Incidentally, I see from the clock that I have spoken for "no" minutes. There are plenty of other workers who work on Sundays: railway workers, those employed in posts and telecommunications, bus drivers, those employed in the leisure industries, and many others. If shop workers are to have a conscience clause by statute in this form, why not train drivers, petrol pump attendants, and all those other workers whose employment is such that working on Sundays arises from time to time? It would put shop workers in an anomalous position. It would put them in a privileged position compared with other workers whose employment involves working on Sundays. I suggest to the House that just because we are allowing shops to open on Sundays it should not mean that the workers need a special protection compared with the other workers whose occupation entails working on Sundays.

The noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Oakridge, has not enlightened the House on how railway workers and telephone workers who have conscientious objections to working on Sundays fare under the present law. We can only speculate as to whether there are problems about Sunday working for those who have religious objections to doing so where they fall within those classes of occupation where already Sunday working is allowed. But since we have heard nothing of the problems that they encounter, is it not reasonable to conclude that there are in fact no problems, or at least so few as not to make it necessary to legislate along the lines of the present amendment in order to provide necessary safeguards? In other words, if shopworkers need this kind of protection, then all workers who might have to work on a Sunday need it, and we need to legislate on these lines in the context of an employment protection Bill, and not in the context of a Bill designed to relax shop opening hours.

In conclusion, let me emphasise once again that I have a great deal of sympathy for the principles which underlie the amendment, and that I am second to none in the desire to see that no shop worker is forced to work on a Sunday, or whatever day it is to which he has a religious objection to working, when he has genuine objections to doing so. Reluctantly, I cannot accept the amendment for the reasons that I have given. I cannot commend the amendment to your Lordships' House, and while accepting the spirit of it, I have to advise your Lordships to reject it. Surely this must be the longest speech ever made in "two minutes"!

My Lords, I should like, very briefly, to support my noble friend. Unfortunately this is the first time that I have been able to do so on what I regard as a very important Bill. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate my noble friend on piloting the Bill through the House. I believe that my noble friend Lady Trumpington has completely and sufficiently covered the point about the conscience clause—certainly from my point of view.

I want to make one other point, about an inaccuracy in the amendment, which would mean that your Lordships could not pass it this afternoon. The amendment refers to area health authorities, but there are no area health authorities. There are district health authorities, as from 1st April, and therefore on that ground alone I could not possibly support the amendment.

My Lords, I rise to seek some clarification from the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, intended, as always, to help her elucidate some of the questions raised, to her benefit or the benefit of others. I think that the amendment is an important one, since, as the noble Lord has said, it seeks to amend the Bill to take into account conscientious objection to working on certain days. It also has important implications for Christians, Jews, and indeed those of other faiths, and one might also have to take into account the sensitivities of ethnic minorities.

As we have been told by the noble Baroness, there has been conducted a poll which indicates a majority of consumers wanting a change to the Shops Acts to give them the freedom which she has already detailed —the freedom to shop whenever they wish. But we know, too, that some consumers are also shopworkers, and whether when they referred in the poll to being consumers they had in mind the effects of the Bill is another thing. They will be involved as a result of the changes in the Bill, if it becomes law.

It has also been pointed out that a significant number of shopworkers are also women, indeed married women. One can imagine some of the conflicts which will arise for women workers with homes and families when they have to weigh the interests of their families and the cooking of the Sunday joint with the demands of their shopkeeper employers. Duty would be entwined with some religious beliefs, and it would be difficult for us to implement that part of the amendment which states:

"Provided that the employer shall be entitled to require reasonable proof of the bona fide nature of that belief".

Such a provision might be quite justified in an amendment of this kind, and it naturally calls into question the need for some kind of appeals procedure in order to arbitrate between the claims of the shop worker wanting to be exempted on grounds of religious belief and the claims of the employer, based on commercial reasons.

I would draw the attention of the noble Baroness to my understanding that in the closed shop legislation there are trade union membership safeguards with an appeals procedure; but I was not quite sure what was the case made by the noble Baroness. On the one hand, I think she accepts the case for some kind of exemption in respect of those with religious beliefs, but, on the other hand, says it is unnecessary because it is already in the legislation. She also says that if the concession was given to shopworkers, then the same kind of concession would be demanded by many other people as well. I was not quite sure what she had in mind when she mentioned, also, that if shopworkers were not obliged to work already on a Sunday they would not be obliged to work on a Sunday if the law were changed. Of course, if nobody works on a Sunday then no one is obliged to do so; but if other people in an establishment have to work on a Sunday, then surely everyone working there would be expected to work in the same way.

My Lords, may I just say to the noble Lord, Lord Bishopston, that he does realise, I hope, that I am in no position to answer any questions. As I pointed out, I was speaking at length because that was my only chance, this being Report stage.

My Lords, I recognise the point being made there by the noble Baroness, but I am trying to be helpful to her by saying that some of us may have questions or doubts in our minds about some of the points she has raised, and it may be helpful to her if she can make known her views on these particular matters.

The other aspect is one which I have raised on previous occasions, and it is that the Bill goes beyond the Shops Acts because those working in banks and post offices, accountants, car park attendants and many others, may also have to work on a Sunday, and may also want to plead religious objection to doing so. Of course, the fact is that if the employer is told by his employees that they have objections to working on a Sunday, then we all know very well that there are 3 million people in the queues (many of them shop-workers, indeed) who would be quite ready to take the place of those who have genuine objections to working on a Sunday. I make these points because it may be that at a later stage the noble Baroness might feel inclined to look at the matter again to see whether some of the anomalies created by the Bill, which inherently is very simple indeed, can be tidied up.

My Lords, I agree completely with what the noble Baroness has said, and I simply cannot understand the alleged contradictions which the noble Lord, Lord Bishopston, professes to see in her exposition. In my judgment the noble Baroness demonstrated completely that either the amendment is superfluous—the grievances of those who object to working on days to which they attribute religious significance are covered already by the law or by custom—or, if that is not the case, then the amendment is entirely inappropriate in this context. If one has a special statute dealing with shops, then clearly one should have a special statute dealing with all forms of occupation in which the participants are asked to work on Sundays. I see no contradiction at all between the two points which the noble Baroness tried to bring out.

On the other hand, I see substantial objections to subsection (2) of the amendment, which singles out chemists as being excluded from the stipulations of subsection (1). If subsection (1) is necessary, then subsection (2) is incomplete and all sorts of occupations ought to be included, which I would humbly submit would transform the Bill in its simple reference. I conclude by saying that all that this Bill does is to create a greater freedom for those who prefer it.

My Lords, I thoroughly agree with my noble friend Lord Robertson of Oakridge about the excellence of the film Chariots of Fire. On the other hand, I must disagree thoroughly with his amendment, for the reasons which the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, has so eloquently given. The noble Lord, Lord Bishopston, suggested that married women would find themselves in a dilemma if this amendment were not passed. May I point out to him that many bus conductors, ticket collectors, booking clerks, possibly airline stewardesses, and certainly nurses, policewomen and hospital doctors are already married women, and they do not seem to find too much of a problem.

My Lords, I of course have the greatest respect for the views of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, on this subject, and I understand fully the purpose of his amendment; but for a number of reasons I would advise your Lordships to consider its implications very carefully indeed before agreeing to accept it. Apart from a reservation about a reference to the Pharmacy and Poisons Act 1933, which has in fact been repealed, the Government have two main reservations about the desirability of including this amendment in my noble friend's Bill.

In the first place, we believe that terms and conditions of work are essentially matters which are best negotiated between employees and employers. After all, these parties are in a far better position than the Government could be to assess the circumstances of their trade, the needs and market position of their own firm and the requirements of the workers in employment there; so intervention would normally be inappropriate. On these grounds we would say to the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, that his amendment would appear to make statutory a provision which it really is up to individual workers to negotiate with their employers, if they feel strongly enough on the subject.

I think your Lordships will agree that, as my noble friend's Bill seeks to bring shops into line with other establishments employing people, it would be rational that shop assistants' conditions of service should, as far as possible, be on the same basis as those of other sections of trade and commerce—and noble Lords all round the House have made this point. In the view of the Government, therefore, the provision of facilities to enable workers, whatever their trade or profession, to observe holy days is best negotiated at the local level. I understand that this is the view also of the Commission for Racial Equality; and, incidentally, your Lordships may be interested to know that the commission have prepared guidance for employers on the issues involved in Moslem religious observance at the workplace.

My second point relates to the practicality of the noble Lord's amendment. I think he will agree that it might often be extremely difficult for an employer to establish whether someone really does hold a conscientious objection on religious grounds and is not simply exploiting a conscience clause for his own convenience. Although I know he said that the employer should have reasonable proof of this conviction, it is very difficult to see what it might be in every case. This has certainly been the experience of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who since 1937 have been responsible for administering the Jewish Tribunal—appointed under the 1950 Act by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary—for inquiring into the conscientious objection of Jewish traders who, by virtue of their registration under the Act by the local authorities, are permitted to trade on Sundays. Unless some machinery were established to which employers and employees could refer dubious cases, I think that the provision would be unworkable and would tie the hands of employers quite unnecessarily.

I hope I have not given the House or the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, the impression that the Government are insensitive to the beliefs of those who try to follow their conscience in regard to any faith. But I really do believe that his amendment goes further than we might wish. As I have said, we think that this is a matter which should be negotiated locally by the parties concerned. We have no reason to believe that Christians and members of other faiths who wish to abstain from work in other trades and professions experience any difficulty, and I hope therefore that the noble Lord will agree to withdraw his amendment.

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, will he accept that he has given some replies to questions that I put to the noble Baroness, to which, for reasons of order, she could not reply? We welcome some of the safeguards to which the noble Lord drew our attention.

My Lords, if this Bill ever sees the light of day as legislation, the real motive power behind it will be fear. Even if they do not want to do so, people will feel compelled to open their shops on Sundays in order to retain their market share. Employees will work on Sundays, not because they want to do so but because they will be afraid of losing their jobs. Fear will be the most important of the motive powers, and this will apply whether this amendment is in the Bill or not. Therefore, I feel quite indifferent.

My Lords, may I ask a question of the noble Lord, Lord Jacques? Would he not agree that, if what he says is correct, it would apply today in Scotland?

No, my Lords. Scotland, I think, is quite different. I believe that the pattern that we are likely to get in this country will be more like that in some of the States of America than that in Scotland. Because of the distribution of population, the concentration of mutiples and department stores is different here from that in Scotland. One can find any number of places that are different—for example, the Falkland Islands.

My Lords, I am grateful to those noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate on my amendment. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, for the detailed and courteous way in which she replied. I think an important principle is involved here. Also I think there is something in what the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, has said in that the extra freedom which will be given to consumers, owners and proprietors of shops will carry a price, and part of the price will fall in the area of job security. No one can tell how my amendment would work out, but I believe it would significantly enhance the job security of those who feel in the way I have described on religious grounds.

On the question of creating a special case for shopworkers, I believe that the shopworkers are in a totally different category from essential workers. As Government speakers have been at pains to say in the debates that we have had on this Bill, they have not brought forward legislation of their own because there is no consensus on this subject and feelings run strongly in both directions. Feelings do not run strongly on whether, for instance, the telephone system should operate on Sundays, and therefore I think there is a distinct difference. I was impressed by what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Elton. I am grateful for the assurances and the other information that he gave, and in the circumstances I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This happens to be by chance the anniversary of the day on which I learned a year ago that I was to become a Member of your Lordships' House, but it is the first time on which I have ventured to introduce a Bill into this Chamber and I hope that I may crave for a little indulgence which might be appropriate for a "new boy" if in so doing perhaps I have failed to carry out all the preliminary work which might have been appropriate to introducing a Bill which brings a rather complex idea before your Lordships. As a member of the Government, one goes into highly complex operations in sounding out all sorts of opinions all over the place and, before introducing a measure one has White Papers or Green Papers and goodness knows what else. None of that has been done and therefore I come before your Lordships with an unargued proposal: this is the first time that your Lordships will have heard anyone say anything in favour of the idea.

It would be unreasonable for me to expect your Lordships immediately to leap up and shout, "Eureka! This is something we have been waiting for all these years! This is just the thing we want!" Therefore, I will spend the first part of my introductory remarks on explaining the nature of the problem which the Bill seeks to solve, and the second part on explaining the Bill itself.

I should like to begin by saying that British broadcasting is among the best in the world and that the licence fee is small in relation to the quality and quantity of information and entertainment which is enjoyed by the viewer and the listener. Nevertheless, now that a full colour licence costs £46, and the figure must rise further if the standard of BBC radio and television is to be maintained and improved, increasing strains are being encountered which must be tackled before they get out of hand. The licence is a permit to install:

"apparatus for the purpose of receiving visual images sent by television from authorised broadcasting stations"—

that is, from the BBC and IBA. That is to say, one must have a licence even if one looks exclusively at programmes financed by advertising.

However, the licence fee is widely regarded as something one pays to look at BBC television. There is substance to this view for, after deductions, all the money goes to finance the corporation. Here lies the crux of the problem. The licence fee bears most hardly on the lower income families and it is precisely these families who look at BBC television least and who therefore resent the licence fee with a bitterness which can be testified to by every Member of Parliament. Members of another House, irrespective of whichever part of the country they come from or whichever party they represent, will tell you that this is something which people whose incomes are not among the largest regard as an imposition. As these Channel Three viewers see it, they are being forced to pay increasing sums for something they do not consume.

The stock answer to the problem is to say, "Cancel the licence fee and transfer the cost to taxation". This is strongly resisted by the BBC, who fear the spectre of Government control. Whether this fear is justified or not is beside the point. The fear is as real in Broadcasting House as is the conviction of commercial television watchers that they are being "conned". These are the two incompatibles, one might say, which this Bill seeks to resolve.

In an endeavour to do something to meet what is seen as being a reasonable complaint without changing fundamentally the licensing system on which we depend, further anomalies have been created by providing for collective licensing for those old folks who live in homes so that they pay a purely nominal fee and one licence is held on behalf of all the people who live in that place. That has only created more bitterness among the majority who live with families or by themselves, because they obviously do not benefit by the collective licence which is available to some others. Therefore the time has come for a radical solution to this problem before evasion of the licence fee—and what is seen as an unjust tax—becomes even more widespread than it is now.

That brings me to the manner in which the Bill seeks to solve the problem which I have just described. The Bill reduces the licence fee to £10 from its present figure of £46—and £5 for black and white television only. May I, before I go on to describe the Bill, insert in parenthesis a word of appreciation to the House of Lords Public Bill Office, whose help in drafting the Bill which I am about to describe has been quite invaluable?

The Bill creates a broadcasting finance board whose chairman and vice-chairman are appointed by the Government. The other members of the board are appointed by the BBC and by the IBA. The board receives the licence fee and all broadcasting advertising revenue. It also receives a Government grant and may receive other monies granted to it by other bodies. Here the Bill is defective. It is my fault and that of no one else. An amendment to the Bill as printed will be required in order to make it clear that the board is entitled to receive a Government grant if the Government so decide.

The Bill takes something from the recommendations of the Pilkington Committee of 1962, for it is the board's main duty to redistribute the money that it receives to the BBC and the IBA. The programme contractors continue to put on programmes as at present but their income arrives from the board via the IBA, which acquires the duty of redistributing its share of the total revenue, as was recommended all those years ago by the Pilkington Committee. The small licence fee will be augmented not only by the total advertising revenue. This is important because the advertising revenue at the moment is subjected to a massive deduction by the Treasury. The TV levy, as it is called, now amounts to £52 million. This is taken out of broadcasting every year by the Treasury and is never seen again. Under this plan, of course, that £52 million will remain in broadcasting, will be part of the revenue of the broadcasting finance board, and will be available to put increasing programmes and meet increasing costs.

I have heard very substantial complaints from BBC sound radio people since their national income was abolished. The licensing fee, is now a television licensing fee. They say that, since they were deprived of a revenue which is specifically their own in relation to sound radio, they have been deprived of reasonable sums needed adequately to run a sound broadcasting system which is of not only a national but a local charater. In the proposal that I place before your Lordships, since the broadcasting finance board will have the right to ask for and receive, a Government grant, all forms of radio and television will have more money to use on programmes. The grant, however, need not necessarily be so large, because of course there is this extra £52 million which is now being taken out of television and which, under this proposal, will remain in.

The BBC will not have to take advertising. This the corporation is thoroughly against. It will no longer have to argue for increases in the licence fee, though it will undoubtedly and quite properly seek to maximise the Government grant, both directly and through its representatives on the board. The commercial radio and television programme companies will be relieved of the direct pressure of advertising interests, which will deal with the IBA on terms which the authority will agree with them.

In sum, this is an attempt—perhaps an imperfect one —which I submit for your Lordships' consideration to solve a problem which has been with us for a long time. By this Bill, the British broadcasting, communications and entertainment media will be given a rational basis on which they will be able to grow and cope with the technical developments which are crowding upon them: satellite, video, cable. Other future developments are coming, and the fundamental basis of broadcasting finance is entirely unsound. This is an attempt to put it on a basis upon which it can survive in future. It is an attempt to ensure that these new developments can be faced and can be benefited from without the broadcasting system in this country losing its popularity, losing its independence or losing its variety and its excellence. It is essential to preserve these things, and it is my hope that your Lordships will will feel that this Bill is an endeavour to do that and at the same time to solve this difficult problem.

I am conscious of the fact that the Bill may need attention in detail. I should be very happy to listen to what your Lordships have to say, but it is my hope that you will feel that the changes which clearly need to be made in the Bill can be made in Committee, and that you will decide that the Bill is worth a Second Reading. I beg to move.

My Lords, the proposal in the Bill is not unlike a proposal that was before the Annan Committee which sat a year or two ago. Its title was dissimilar. It was called the Public Broadcasting Commission and was completely rejected by the Annan Committee. The noble Lord's proposal in this Bill is laudable in the sense that he seeks to reduce the licence fee from its present £46 per year to £10 per year. No one who pays a licence fee will object to that.

However, I am afraid that my conclusion, in looking at this Bill—not in a great deal of detail, because we have not had a great deal of detail—is that not only would it reduce the licence fee from £46 a year to £10 a year, it would considerably reduce the number of programmes that are made, either by the BBC or the IBA. This is at a time when, within a very few months, we are going to have a fourth channel. I am grateful to the noble Lord for explaining the way in which broadcasting—both television and radio—is at present financed. Of course, he is quite right. The BBC's income comes entirely from the licence fee after the collection charge has been made for getting the money through the Post Office or in any other way. He is again right in saying that many people never quite understand that the licence fee covers all the programmes that they see: both BBC and IBA programmes.

What the noble Lord did not explain (and I am sure that this was purely an omission) is that in financing the other side of the coin—that is to say, in financing the independent side—the first charge on the advertising revenue is the making of programmes. Then there is a rental which is payable to the IBA for the transmission of the programmes. At this stage it is absolutely similar to the BBC although the method of raising the money is different. The noble Lord is quite right in saying that there is a charge—he said £52 million but it is much nearer £60 million, I think, and the noble Lord the Minister will probably remind us about that when he replies—which is taken from the industry as an additional rental, an additional charge. After that, from whatever is left the 15 contracting companies can make a profit. Of course, many of them do make quite a good profit; others do not. Some in fact would be better off investing their money in a building society at the current rate of 8·75 per cent. than they would be leaving it in television broadcasting, and certainly in radio. Let us hope all that improves.

Among the proposals in this Bill the noble Lord introduces what he calls the "Broadcasting Finance Board", which would receive the whole of the licence fee of £10—not £46—plus the whole of the advertising revenue, and the Government would immediately lose their first figure of, whatever is it—£52 million or £60 million. The noble Lord then suggests that to make up for any loss in the cost of broadcasting incurred by the BBC or the IBA the Government should pay a sum of money out of the public purse.

Let us try to look in detail at how this would work out. Assuming that the BBC today need a licence fee of £46 per licence-holder, as I personally do—indeed I think it is probably not enough, and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins—they are going to get only £10, so the remaining £36, now obtained from the licence-holder, has to come out of a central fund set up by this Bill. In that sense it can only come partly from the £50 to £60 million that the Government pay or out of advertising revenue. The BBC therefore are being subsidised by money raised from advertising. A lot of people do not object to this at all, but the BBC do. They think that as a result they would lose their independence; and if they wish to retain the same sort of standards as now exist, some of the money to enable them to do that has to come from the independent side of broadcasting. That means they will be losers, because £50 million or £52 million is not going to make up for what the BBC lose. Therefore there will be fewer programmes made.

The House will be aware that both the BBC and the IBA have to cut their cloth according to the amount of material they have, and whether they are making a drama programme, a current affairs programme or whatever it may be, they have to look at the cost before they even start making it. That is why I said at the beginning that, if this system were approved and adopted, it would result in fewer programmes for people to look at and the programmes would not be of the standard we get now. Personally, I would prefer to see more money being spent on broadcasting now, from whatever source it comes, than that there should be a reduction in the number and quality of programmes.

I hope that my noble friend will consider the points I have made and those which other noble Lords will make during the course of this debate. I should like to thank him for introducing this matter. While I always enjoy debates about broadcasting—I do not think we get enough of them—I hope that at the end of the debate the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, will think it worthwhile to withdraw his Bill rather than take it further in this House or in another place.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, began his studiously moderate speech by raising a point of general difficulty which we must all accept exists. The broadcasting licence fee, standing now at £46 and inevitably bound to rise with inflation, I suppose presents very great difficulty to a proportion of the population who are, to put it simply, too poor to contribute such a sum even by the instalment system which has been introduced in recent years. I agree there is a problem which needs a solution, but I submit to your Lordships that this Bill is not the solution.

Let us look at what this means. It means that the BBC's annual income, as I calculate it, would fall by £580 million per year. The independent companies' advertising income is of the order of £645 million a year. What is left when the BBC's income has fallen by £580 million is about £170 million that goes into this new finance committee kitty, and the whole of the £645 million of advertising income of the independent companies also goes into that kitty. So the total income of the finance board would amount to some £815 million, formed by those two elements.

If existing costs remain at the present level, the £815 million will be there to finance an expenditure of £1,410 million, which is the sum total of the existing expenditure of the two broadcasting companies. The net deficit, after allowing for the end of the levy—whether it is £40 million, £50 million, £60 million, but I take it as £50 million—to be met from the Exchequer is £645 million a year. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, forgot to add anything to his Bill to authorise the payment out of taxation of £645 million. This, of course, stems from the fact that the licence fee is to be reduced to £10 not only for those who find it difficult to pay but for the whole community of licence holders.

So let us begin with that position: we are considering a Bill which, when the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, has had time to make this adjustment in order to make it clear that the state makes up the deficit, involves expenditure by the state of £645 million a year. No doubt that will be increasing year by year hereafter; and of course both services will be commercial services, for the BBC will be financed—like independent television—from a kitty which consists both of licence income and advertising income. It is difficult to see ahead what may happen, but both will be financed by advertising even though only one collects the money, as it were, by exhibiting advertisements on its programmes.

Let us assume that the state pays up that vast sum of £645 million. How is it to be distributed? There is to be a finance board, with two members from each of the services and a chairman and deputy chairman appointed by the state. It is a fair bet that the two services will disagree as to the distribution of the kitty—I may be unduly pessimistic, but life has taught me that such will be the result—particularly independent television, which sees money collected by its own advertising organisation being skimmed off, perhaps more than skimmed off, by their competitor, the BBC. But they will disagree about many pounds.

What happens then? In a tie, the chairman will have a second casting vote, but of course there will be an appeal and it will go up to the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State decides the disposal—if the present level of expenditure is maintained—of those many millions of pounds; and, of course, every year, on the assumption of an annual allocation, there will be such an appeal. The Government will inevitably be brought into broadcasting in a way that has hitherto been prevented and has not happened; and they must be, for they will be making up this deficit of £645 million. How can you keep them out? It is inevitable, whatever gentle words are used, that the Government will want a big say in its use and in its sharing between the services.

In other words, this Bill, with its innocent and admirable purpose, will lead inevitably to a very much greater influence over broadcasting by the Government of the day. There are some people who want that. There are one or two today—I am thinking of one, in particular—who attribute all the evils to the media in general, and to broadcasting in particular. I would not go so far as to say that that is the real purpose of the noble Lord. He might have an inkling that way, but I have no direct evidence. I have just a wholesome suspicion. But whether or not he intends that, this means the end of what has proved a satisfactory service—a public service and a commercial service competing with each other—

My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that the Government are already today heavily involved in broadcasting finance? Would he not agree that every year an argument goes on with the BBC as to how much the licence fee should be? Would he not agree that the Government are taking large sums of money out of commercial television? Are not the Government already in it up to the neck?

My Lords, let us look at it. The licence fee used to be considered every five years. It is likely now to be every three years. Yes, my Lords, there is an argument about the size of the licence fee every three years. This Bill ensures a bigger argument every year and a bigger opportunity for control of the licence system as we have known it. Of course it does. This is the beginning of the end of what has proved to be a reasonably satisfactory system. By all means, let us solve the problem of many people who, by reason of poverty, cannot afford the licence. But there are other ways of solving such problems, particularly for a section of the community which probably relies on broadcasting more than any other. There is the problem and let us solve that.

But, for heaven's sake!, do not let us ask the state, even though the amendment is not yet in the Bill, to pay up this vast sum of money of £645 million, and set up a body which, by its very nature, will represent a Government influence over, and a Government pressure on, broadcasting such as we have avoided with great skill in this country. And do not let us think that this is just an innocent aid to the poor. It is a recipe for Government intervention in broadcasting of a kind that we have not seen in this country to date.

My Lords, like other noble Lords who have spoken, I applaud the motives of my noble friend Lord Jenkins in putting forward this Bill, particularly his concentration on the needs of the poorer sections of the community in relation to the licence fee. But I must say that I concur with other noble Lords in hoping that the House will reject this Bill. In my view, it is the wrong Bill at the wrong time, though not necessarily in the wrong place.

I do not want to go over all the arguments again, because they have been admirably covered by the noble Lords, Lord Aylestone and Lord Hill. But the thought of a finance board doling out money in this way fills me with absolute horror, because there is a point that the noble Lord, Lord Hill, did not touch on, but which is very important; that is, that this finance board, composed of a chairman, a deputy chairman and two representatives of each authority—by the way, it will also be another Quango—will inevitably have to make value judgments about our broadcasting.

In other words, each year the BBC will go and say "We are proposing to do so many series. We are proposing to extend here and to do this" and so on, while ITV will go along and say "We are proposing to do even better that that". There will inevitably be fierce arguments and the chairman and the deputy chairman will, in the end, have to take value judgments and say "We think that we should give more money to ITA this year, because they are going to do Brideshead Revisited and less money to the BBC, because they are not" and vice versa. They will have to make value judgments, which such a board is not equipped to do.

Another point that has to be made, apart from the huge Government subsidy which would be necessary, is the fact that there would be less enthusiasm on the part of the independent commercial companies to gather up the advertising, if they knew that a great section of it would be spent on the BBC. So there are so many arguments against this. I hope that my noble friend will withdraw the Bill and that he may come back at another time and give the House an opportunity to debate, in a different way, some possibilities of removing the burden of the licence fee from old age pensioners and from the poorer sections of the community. But what we need for that is something more simple and more direct.

May I beg him, at the same time, not to live under this delusion that I have found other noble Lords and Members of the other place live under, that, somehow, this country is divided into intelligent people who watch the BBC and the great masses who watch the ITV. They are the poorer sections of the community. They have the lumpen diet. They have "Crossroads", "Coronation Street" and so on, and the other people listen to the BBC, or watch the BBC, because it is infinitely superior. Noble Lords ought to know that the ratings do not bear this out at all. It is right across the board. People are very evenly divided in their tastes.

I venture to suggest that I move around just as much as my noble friend who has introduced this Bill, and I have met from time to time, as we all have met, objections from people about the size of the licence fee. But I have never had the licence fee thrust down my throat, because people say, "We only watch commercial television I venture to suggest that not many people have had that. Indeed, the record of commercial television in terms of quality matches the BBC in all respects, especially in recent years. There is no reason to think that people feel this kind of bitterness because they are paying for a BBC service. This is a kind of illusion which has been fostered through Tribune and which has taken on the virtue of a myth. Believe me, my Lords, it does not really exist.

My final point is that to pass this Bill, if it had any chance in the other place, would be once again to throw television and broadcasting into turmoil. We have just been through it all. We have just reallocated the franchises, the licences and so on. We have just agreed on a three-year fee for the BBC licence. Are we now going to throw it all back into the pot, with all the tremendous problems which would arise, simply because the noble Lord quite rightly wants to do something about the high level of the licence fee for poorer people? May I beg him, please, to withdraw the Bill and to come back to us again with a simpler and more straightforward proposal about the licence fee which we can debate?

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, and the noble Lord, Lord Aylestone, will forgive me if I use the term "commercial television" instead of the correct term "independent television", because I want to talk about independence and I think it might be rather confusing if I talk all the time about independent television.

I have tried to put my prejudice, which is in favour of the prevailing system, aside and to look positively at the Bill, first because it is the inspiration of my noble friend and, secondly, because I know that he is as deeply concerned as I am, and as we all are, about value and standards, and in particular about the level of our culture. The Prime Minister chose a dedicated man indeed when he made Hugh Jenkins Minister for the Arts. But I am afraid that I can find little to commend in the Bill. Of course we should all like to find a way of financing the BBC which would be painless, but it could only be done by making the corporation dependent either on advertising or on general taxation, thus concealing the smart inflicted by the licence fee under the deeper pain which we all feel as we pay VAT and our income tax.

But painlessness cannot be the only aim of the exercise. We shrink, and we rightly shrink, from making public service broadcasting dependent on advertising, with all the compromises that that requires, and we recoil before the idea that the BBC should be directly financed by Government. Of course the BBC can never be wholly independent of Government, but it can be—and is— almost entirely independent of Government. That is one of the blessings which we enjoy, and it is envied by people like us in many countries of the world.

Some of us on this side of the House have a special reason for valuing the independence of the BBC. The BBC is not just a theatre, a cinema, a play centre of party games. It is also a great electronic newspaper—not an opinionated one, but a newspaper that provides facts and both analyses and broadcasts opinions. My party has enjoyed for many years the support, though not the uncritical support, of one powerful group of newspapers with a genius for political impact. Nevertheless, the preponderance of the spoken word in Britain is not on the side of Labour, and the BBC, and commercial television, with their fair and balanced presentation, makes the imbalance of the printed word less unacceptable. Of course, all political parties get upset if they think for one moment that the balance has been lost, but that only shows how strong in this country is the idea of balance and how usual is the achievement of balance by independent television and by the BBC. Nobody can complain at this moment, for example, that the electorate has not had full access to the views of Mr. Foot and Mr. Healey on the Falklands crisis.

This tradition of fairness, of balanced public service broadcasting, has been developed under the leadership of Director-Generals like Reith, Haley and Greene, fortified by a number of strong-minded chairmen of governors, and this outlook on how broadcasting should be carried out has, almost unconsciously, been adopted by commercial television. Yet all this developed almost fortuitously out of the original decision to finance the BBC by the product of a licensing system. For although in one sense licence fees are Government money collected by the Post Office and disbursed by the Home Office, with the consent of Parliament, they are money to which the BBC has a clear and uncontested right and can spend in any way the governors decide, within the terms of the charter. If ever that right were diminished, as the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, has pointed out, and the BBC had to depend on the generosity of the Government of the day, then its independence would be in danger. The licence fee is in fact the very palladium of its liberties.

My noble friend seems to be motivated by two generous aspirations: to relieve pensioners of a heavy annual financial burden and to appease some impoverished viewers who are angry at having to pay a licence fee because, they say, they watch only commercial television. This argument does scant justice to the popular appeal of the BBC or the serious programmes of commercial television, as my noble friend Lord Willis pointed out. I do not believe there was an audience which watched "Brideshead" on commercial television simply because it was on commercial television and which would not have looked at Morecambe and Wise in the days when they were on the BBC.

The BBC has shown a remarkable ability to maintain its integrity and to fulfil its prescribed social purpose, which lies in keeping its mass audience. It has roughly 50 per cent. of the total audience, but of course it is not the same 50 per cent. every day. Most viewers commute between the channels. But the BBC has always realised that if it failed to keep its mass audience, then its right to a substantial licence fee would come under challenge—perhaps under valid challenge. Yet my noble friend is proposing a ludicrously small licence fee, the balance of the cost to be made up by a slice of the advertising revenue of commercial television, plus a Government grant. And the money would be dished out by a tripartite board.

On what principles would the share-out be? What profit should be allowed to the programme companies? What should their costs be? And with what assiduity should they continue to canvass advertising? The licence fee will of course have to go up. But is it really a heavy burden for most households in this country today? There is a problem which most of us in this Chamber have when we talk about sums of money. Our ideas of the value of pounds and pence were formed before 1939. For a few of us they were formed before 1914. It is very hard for us all to grasp that £1 in 1938 would buy as much as £17 would buy today. It is very difficult for us to realise that when today we hand a cloakroom attendant a 10p piece we are giving him not two shillings, not even the 6d which was the minimum tip before the war. We are giving him about a penny-three-farthings. If we want to give the pre-war minimum, then we must give 40p, and we might as well make it a 50p coin—which would be only very slightly generous.

The licence fee today is £46. I shudder as I write out the cheque because I find it very hard to realise that this is the equivalent of less than £3 pre-war—less than £3 a year. Of course it is hard on poor families, but they are selective poor families. They manage to find the rental for colour television, or the hire-purchase money. This is a general problem of poverty and not a special one. It is hard on pensioners too, but if we feel that they as a class ought to have colour television because it is a life-enhancing necessity for aging people who cannot get about as they used to do, then we should find a way of subsidising them directly instead of changing the whole system of broadcast finance, as this Bill proposes.

To me, it seems that the proposed new system breaks down at every point. It removes from the programme companies the incentive to earn their own revenues, to decide what their audience targets should be, what expenditures they should undertake and what profits they should try to make. These are essential disciplines well appreciated not only by broadcasters but also by those of us who have run newspapers, too. If the system proposed in the Bill were accepted, it would not be long before the BBC came under pressure to contribute to its keep by also taking advertising. Yet this would not reduce the dependence of both broadcasting systems on Government support because the amount of advertising money, even for television, is limited.

The danger is that if one increases the number of companies taking advertising, one does not increase the amount of advertising revenue which is available. There is a danger too, in the near future, that the increase in the number of channels available will spread broadcasting talent too thinly and the present excellence of our programmes could be diluted. It is essential, in this transitional period in particular, to maintain the existing broadcasting authorities as the custodians of a splendid tradition. I am not suggesting that our television is perfect, that its taste is impeccable and that its politics are always in perfect balance; but there is nothing better anywhere, and we must take care to protect it and preserve it: otherwise, we shall finish up as a small island of public service broadcasting surrounded by a sea of mush.

My Lords, this House takes a very considerable interest in questions of broadcasting policy and I am very much aware of the enormous concentration of experience and authority represented on the short list of speakers for this afternoon. For the enjoyment and illumination of listening to that alone, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, should be congratulated. I welcome the opportunity which he has afforded to the House today for this debate on the important matter of broadcasting finance. I am sorry, however, (particularly, since this is the first occasion on which I have spoken for the Government on broadcasting) that I cannot extend a similar welcome to the proposals in the noble Lord's Bill. I am indeed grateful to him for his explanation of the motivation behind his polite but fundamental assault on the present system of paying for broadcasting in this country—which was not, perhaps, evident from the text of the Bill itself.

The main responsibility of Government, and indeed of Parliament, in relation to broadcasting is to establish the framework and the structure within which television and sound broadcasting services are provided to the general public. At the heart of that structure lie the arrangements which have been devised for the financing of them. It may be for the assistance of the House if I were to summarise briefly what the existing financial arrangements for broadcasting in this country are. The BBC's domestic television and radio services are financed by sums paid to the BBC which are equivalent to the net revenue from the television licence fees. The continuation of these financial arrangements is provided for in the BBC's new Licence and Agreement, which was made last May and which was approved (as it had to be before it could take effect) by a resolution in another place. Last December my right honourable friend the Home Secretary made an order, to which noble Lords have referred, increasing the television licence fees from £34 for colour and £12 for monochrome to £46 and £15 respectively. He made it clear that, in deciding on this increase, his intention was that the fees should not be increased for at least three years and that he is expecting the corporation to live within the revenue which the new fees will produce until the end of the 1984–85 financial year. That at least will provide a respite for those poorer licence-payers to whom the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, so eloquently drew our attention. It is also a step towards avoiding an adjustment of fees on an annual basis, against which, with others, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, complained.

The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, referred to pressure on licences as a source of revenue, and certainly it is a less buoyant source of revenue than it was, as the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, has made clear to your Lordships. We are aware of this and are seeking to reverse that trend. Only last month, my right honourable friend announced the Government's decision in principle to authorise the BBC to provide two television channels of direct broadcasting by satellite. One of these would be financed from the licence fee revenue, augmented perhaps by a supplemental licence fee for the reception of DBS transmissions; the other from revenue obtained from subscriptions from those members of the public wishing to receive the service.

On the independent side, television and local radio services are financed directly or indirectly by revenue obtained from the sale of advertising time in television and local radio programmes by the IBA's ITV, and independent local radio programme contractors. All this is very elementary to your Lordships but it is important to have it on the record in this discussion. The regionally based ITV service is financed directly, while the fourth channel, and in part the Welsh fourth channel, will be financed indirectly from this source of revenue—that is, from money provided by the IBA out of the sums collected from the ITV companies. An important feature of the financial arrangements I have just outlined is that they seek to avoid direct competition between the broadcasting organisations for the same sources of finance. This feature, which was endorsed by the Committee on the Future of Broadcasting chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Annan, has been regarded as important for the preservation of the quality and range of our broadcasting services—services which, I would endorse, are widely regarded both at home and abroad as second to none in the world.

It is against this background, my Lords, that I should now like to comment on the proposals in the noble Lord's Broadcasting Finance Bill. This appears to contemplate that our broadcasting services would continue to be financed by the television licence fee and by advertising. However, it proposes, I would suggest, nothing short of a wholesale dismantling not only of the existing arrangements for broadcasting finance, but also of the framework of independent broadcasting as we know it. In place of the very separate and distinct arrangements which have been made for financing the BBC's services on the one hand and those of the independent sector on the other, the Bill would establsh a Broadcasting Finance Board which would be the recipient of all revenue for broadcasting, both from the licence fee and from radio and television advertising. The board would distribute the money so received to the BBC and the IBA "in such proportions" (and I am now quoting from Clause 3(1) of the noble Lord's Bill) "as the board may determine". The Bill goes on, in Clause 7, to provide that if the BBC or the IBA are aggrieved by any decision of the board (presumably any decision on the allocation of money between them and they could well be frequent), then they may appeal to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whose decision is presumably intended to be final.

My Lords, this is not the occasion to comment on detailed aspects of the Bill and I propose this afternoon to outline only what seem to Government to be the major difficulties with the noble Lord's proposals. But before I do so I think it only right to remind your Lordships that broadcasting finance is hardly a matter which Parliament has ignored, or which it has had no opportunity to consider, over recent years. One of the significant features of the existing arrangements for broadcasting finance which I have described is that they have all been the subject of extensive debate, inside Parliament and outside Parliament, since the publication of the report of the committee under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Annan. Moreover, the financial arrangements for ITV and independent local radio were endorsed, and those for the fourth and Welsh fourth channels determined, by Parliament in the Broadcasting Act 1980, now consolidated in the Broadcasting Act 1981.

The arrangements for financing the BBC have, as I have already mentioned, been continued in the Corporation's new Licence and Agreement. These decisions have followed a period of great uncertainty in the broadcasting world, particularly about finance; indeed with the fourth and Welsh fourth channels due to come on the air later this year, it is fair to say that there remains a degree of uncertainty in the independent sector. I mention this because, even if the noble Lord's proposals commended themselves to your Lordships, we should have to think very hard before embarking on a wholesale dismembering of financial arrangements so recently determined, particularly in view of the further uncertainty which this would be bound to create. The present time, as the noble Lord, Lord Willis, has so lightly said, would not be appropriate for such radical changes even if they were to commend themselves to your Lordships, which I hope they will not.

Turning now to our specific criticisms of the noble Lord's Bill, the first concerns the effect which it would have on the amount and sources of finance available for broadcasting in this country. It will not have escaped your Lordships' attention that the Bill would place a maximum of £10 on the colour television licence and £5 on the monochrome fee. The present levels of £46 and £15 respectively are expected to yield during the current financial year a net revenue of £690 million. Fees of £10 and £5, however, would yield net revenue of little more than £110 million. How, I wondered earlier today, was the difference to be made up. The Bill was silent, but the noble Lord has kindly made good the omission, and it is to be made up by grants, presumably from the Government. That is understandable, because I do not see how advertising revenue could make up the shortfall even if the present limits on the amount of advertising permitted on ITV and independent local radio were increased. If the noble Lord has it in mind, and we do now know that he does, that the shortfall should be made up from direct government grant, I have to say that this idea is acceptable to the Government neither in principle nor in terms of the effect it would have in terms of public expenditure. The noble Lord, Lord Aylestone, made a considerable point of this, and it was eloquently elaborated by the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton.

The objection in principle is that direct government subvention would threaten the editorial independence of the broadcasters. It is for this reason that successive Governments and successive committees of inquiry have set their faces against this means of finance. The noble Lords, Lord Hill, and Lord Ardwick, in particular emphasised this, and I endorse the alarm which they express at this proposal. This House is the traditional defender of the liberties both of the realm and of its citizens, and I would be sorry indeed if the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, were to celebrate what he tells us is the anniversary of his invitation to join it by weakening that important bastion against excessive concentration of power in the hands of politicians. The third possibility, to avoid that, would be that broadcasting finance should actually be reduced by getting on for £600 million a year, and I do not believe that the reduction which this would be bound to entail, either in the quality or the quantity, or in both quality and quantity, in broadcasting would be acceptable either to Parliament or to the general public or indeed to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, and he said he did not intend that.

The second criticism I would make of the Bill is that it would not only have the effect of dismantling the arrangements for financing our broadcasting services, it would also have the effect of dismantling the structure of independent broadcasting as Parliament has recently approved it. The existing independent broadcasting system is founded on a contractual relationship between the IBA and the programme contractors. In return for providing programmes for broadcasting by the IBA and for paying rentals to the authority the programmes contractors have the right to sell advertising time in the programmes they provide. It is very hard to see how this or any other contractual arrangement could exist if the ITV and independent local radio companies had to provide programmes on the basis the noble Lord proposes.

The basis would appear to be as follows. First, the Broadcasting Finance Board would determine a global figure for all the services provided by the IBA. That, I presume, is intended to include all the services provided by both ITV and independent local radio; that much is clear. I also presume, though there is no mention of them in the Bill, that it would also apply to the services provided by the Fourth Channel Company and in part by the Welsh Fourth Channel Authority. All that is to be thrown into the noble Lords' melting pot. I presume, also, that the next stage would be for the IBA to decide what should be the proportions in which this revenue should be distributed between ITV, independent local radio, the fourth channel and the Welsh fourth channel. But that judgement of Solomon would not be the last it has to perform. The third stage would presumably be for the IBA to decide the proper deserts of every independent television and local radio company as well.

What I am saying is that the financial arrangements envisaged in the noble Lord's Bill would simply not be compatible with the existing structure of ITV. It would also, and this is no less an objection, destroy the special relationship which the licence fee system creates between the BBC and the general public. The third, and in the Government's view perhaps the most compelling, argument against the proposals is that which the Annan Committee used against similar proposals which it received. These proposals, for reasons which I believe are still valid today, are not acceptable. They considered that a single body with power to allocate finance to broadcasting organisations would concentrate power over broadcasting in too few hands. I say it although the proposal is that the membership of the board should be appointed by the BBC and the IBA. In addition, it would represent a return to monopoly control of broadcasting when experience has shown that regulated competition is fundamentally healthy. Furthermore, such a body would be bound to increase the risk of political interference with broadcasting. Indeed, the Bill seems positively to invite it by making the decisions of the Broadcasting Finance Board appealable to the Secretary of State. I find it hard to imagine that any decision by the board would not be appealed against by one or other of the broadcasting organisations, if not by both. The noble Lord's Bill gives absolutely no indication as to the criteria which the proposed board should apply in determining the allocation of funds between the BBC and the IBA. Nor does it give any indication of the criteria which the Secretary of State should apply in determining appeals against the board's decisions. I am convinced that the Bill is a recipe for that political interference in broadcasting against which successive Governments have rightly set their faces.

I hope that I shall have persuaded the noble Lord of the dangers and problems which his Bill, if enacted, would create. I am not sure that it was necessary for me so to do, having heard the trenchant series of attacks upon it that preceded my delivery. I hope I can perhaps also persuade him that to cope in so short a measure as this with the huge ramifications of the wholesale changes he proposes is a legislative impossibility. I have listened with great interest and respect to a former chairman of the BBC, a former chairman of the IBA, indeed a former chairman of both, the writer of a famous, and for my part much lamented television serial as well as many other items for broadcasting, and a most distinguished journalist, and from not one of them did I detect one grain of support for the noble Lord's Bill. He has nevertheless provided us with an occasion of edification, but in view of what has been said already I hope your Lordships will not pass this Bill on Second Reading. And, in view of what has been said, I think any pretention of mine to cry,"My bird", as it falls to the ground would be drowned by the cries of other noble Lords who have shown so clearly that it is not acceptable to this House.

My Lords, I am grateful to your Lordships for the attention you have given to this Bill. As has been said, the quality of the contributions stems from their great experience in the media, and I will in a moment refer to some of those contributions. Before I do that I would say that I am perhaps one of the very few people on this side of the House who welcomed the arrival of commercial television in the beginning. I think that most of us on this side of the House are rather late conversions on this. However, the reason why I personally supported the arrival of commercial television was not that I am over-fond of capitalism but that I was at that time working closely, for and with, the British Actors' Equity Association and I saw here the arrival of a separate employer. Actors at that time were working wholly for the BBC as far as television was concerned, and the BBC, as a single employer will do, held them down. The remuneration that they received at the hands of the BBC was very small. Actors began to be paid decent money in television only when an alternative employer arrived on the scene. From that time, television, instead of being a spare-time occupation for an actor, gradually became something central to his economic life. That is the background against which I see the problem.

Also, I have been devoted utterly and absolutely to the notion of the mixed economy so far as the media of communication and entertainment are concerned. I am a very great supporter of state theatre, of the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare. But I do not wish to get rid of the commercial theatre, because I believe that the duality which exists in the theatre, the duality which exists in our television, is its strength. So the Bill begins from the proposition that basically we have our system right, in the sense that the dual control—commercial television competing with the state supported system—is, in my view, fundamentally correct. I think that it is correct in all areas of the media and correct so far as the theatre and television are concerned. I even go so far as to say that I think that it would be correct so far as the press is concerned. One of these days I hope that we shall begin to take that message as far as regards the press, and thereby deal with some of the problems which the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, discerned—if he will forgive me for saying so—in his over press-orientated contribution.

The contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, was exceptionally valuable although he profoundly disagreed with me. He gave a factual contribution in which he told me how much the Government grant would have to be, and I accept his figures absolutely. The Government would have to find something of the order of £600 million in order to maintain television at its present level of excellence. I think that that correctly summarises what he said. I entirely accept that. Indeed, that is why I said at the beginning that an amendment to make that clear would be necessary in the Bill. That slipped out in the course of drafting and, as I said, that was my fault and nobody else's.

Nevertheless, if I may say so, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Hill, led us a little astray. The £600 million to which he refers is already being taken out of the taxpayers' pocket in the licence fee. It is not a new £600 million. The licence fee would be reduced from £46 to £10. It is £600 million gross. It is coming out of the public's pocket, but it is coming out in terms of a licence. The £600 million required by this Bill is not a new £600 million but the same £600 million, but it would be found in terms of a Government grant rather than by means of a licence fee. Therefore, it is not an additional and fresh sum but simply a different way of finding the money. In other words, it is not found by the Government; ultimately, the whole cost of television in one way or another is found by the listener, the viewer or the taxpayer. He pays for it in the licence fee; he pays for it in taxation; he pays for it over the top on what he pays for goods which in turn pay for the advertising. Ultimately, we cannot escape from the fact that the money has to be found. However, although the noble Lord disagrees with my Bill, I personally do not see the sinister overtones which he sees in it. It seems to me to be a method of preserving the independence of television and not one of limiting it in any way. One way or another, these problems must be solved. The continual growth of the licence fee must be dealt with in some way.

I noticed in the contributions of noble Lords that, although they found things to disagree with in the Bill, they were not very free with their alternative proposals. I did not hear anyone say that we should put it all on taxation. If anybody had said that, I should have opposed it very strongly. However, nobody came up with that proposal. In other words, nobody has come up with an alternative. The problem itself would he recognised more freely by my noble friend Lord Willis, for example, if he had ever had any constituents. But he never has had any constituents, and anybody who has had constituents—

My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to interrupt? I have never had any constituents, but I move around the country doing extensive research with ordinary people for the programmes that I write. I think that they are as much constituents as the constituents of any MP.

My Lords, my noble friend and I must disagree on that point. I think that it is the case—and I do not think that anybody would disagree—that one of the constant nags that Members of Parliament receive is complaints about the continual rise in the licence fee. As I made clear at the beginning, I personally do not believe that, in terms of its cost and value, this nagging is justified. But that it is there and that it is a real hardship bending upon many people in the poorer sections of the community, there can be no reasonable doubt.

The contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Aylestone, was equally well informed. I disagree with him on the following point. It does not seem to me that the relationship between the Independent Broadcasting Authority and the programme companies was, in fact, intended in the original Act in the way that it has turned out. That is a relationship which has developed over the years and the Motion that it is some sort of God-given thing which is inherent in the legislation itself is, in my view, wrong. The proposals which were before Annan—although I agree that they were not accepted by Annan—seemed to me to have more substance in them and to be more worthy of further consideration than perhaps the noble Lord led us to believe. This suggestion provides a future basis of broadcasting finance which could cope better with the increasing technicalities of broadcasting, with the new ideas of a fourth channel, cable television and so on, and provide a basis which could cope with it more easily than our present system, which somehow or other must be changed.

Other noble Lords have made useful and interesting contributions, and I agreed with a good deal that they had to say, although I am bound to admit that they fundamentally disagreed with the proposal that I am putting before the House this afternoon. That has often been my experience in life. I often find myself starting things off which somebody else has to finish. This may be one of those occasions—I do not know.

One of the advantages of the system that I am suggesting to your Lordships is that it lifts the direct pressure of advertisers off the backs of the programme companies. As Pilkington pointed out, if that pressure is taken off, the programme companies could continue with the business of making programmes which is their fundamental job and they would not have to spend most of their time raising their own revenue—the revenue would arrive but it would arrive not so directly. So, because the broadcasting finance board is a body which stands between the Government and the broadcasters, it seems to me that, so far from bringing Government directly to bear upon the broadcasters, it lifts it off the broadcasters and it places a barrier between the broadcasters and the Government in the same way as the Arts Council stands as a barrier between the performer, the theatre producer—the entertainment producer—and the Government. The broadcasting finance board brings in that element of an independent body standing between the people who are actually doing the job on the ground and the influence of Government.

So, in many respects I should have thought that the effects of this Bill would be opposite to those which many noble Lords have feared. In the interests of time I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I do not refer directly to all their interesting and valuable contributions. In that I hope I may include the forgiveness of both the Front Benches for not examining in detail the contributions of both Front Bench speakers.

I think that it is time that I reached, on my feet, a conclusion as to what I shall ask your Lordships to do about this Bill. It seems to me that I have a choice. I can, against the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Elton, ask your Lordships to give the Bill a Second Reading and ask noble Lords to make any objections to the Bill, if they have them, or any improvements to the Bill, in the Committee stage by the process of amendment, and at the end produce a Bill which, on Third Reading, your Lordships' House might find acceptable. Alternatively, I could seek the leave of the House to withdraw the Bill.

In making up my mind about this, there is a consideration which should weigh in the balance. As has been said on all sides, we have had—I hope that this is the case; I, myself, think it to be the case—a useful discussion, a discussion which will not leave the matter where it is, but which will take up the problem, because it is a problem that must be solved. In leaning towards not pursuing the matter to a Division, I do so not only because I think that I should be hopelessly defeated if I were to try to do so—I am not entirely sure that I should get sufficient support to mount a Division —but because fundamentally I believe that this is a matter which ought ultimately to be decided by process of Government legislation, perhaps introduced in another place, because it is intimately concerned with money and by tradition your Lordships' House does not concern itself quite so closely with money as does the other place.

For all those reasons—with a little reluctance, but nonetheless with sincere gratitude to your Lordships for the attention that you have given the matter, and in the hope that it will proceed in some form or another in the future—I therefore beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Second Reading.

rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what action they will be taking with regard to the proposals on the Armitage Inquiry into Lorries, People and the Environment.

My Lords, will my noble friend give way for a moment? I apologise for being late, but perhaps we could look at this quotation. I cannot follow it. At page 152, at paragraph 4.2.1 it says that the total amount of heavy lorry traffic would be reduced by allowing heavier lorries. That is the axis of their entire argument, but it assumes that the impedimenta of traffic is static. I do not know how, logically, anyone could accept that. The roads of Britain are bad enough now without anything else. I am sorry that I interrupted, but I wanted to impress that upon my noble friend.

My Lords, my noble friend makes a point with which I shall deal in some of the following figures. It is claimed that two-thirds of the existing 32½ tonners will be replaced by 43,000 heavier lorries, 80 per cent. of which will be 38-tonne and 40-tonne vehicles.

What is the evidence for this? The total carriage of freight by road was 1,525 million tonnes in 1967, and this fell to 1,435 million tonnes in 1977. But the number of heavier lorries increased during that period. Another TRRL Report, SR572, also points out that the actual load factor of lorries over eight tonnes has declined from some 65 per cent. to 50 per cent. over the past 10 years.

The other research laboratory report to which I referred, SR590, on page 22 refers to operators' estimates of the number of vehicles that they may need in their fleet if heavier lorries came into being. It says that there could be a plus or minus of 3 per cent. in fleet numbers and then admits:

"this introduces an element of uncertainty, both in the number of vehicles expected and in the magnitude of the operating cost savings."

That is in the TRRL report. The same report on page 7 says:

"While there are considerable cost savings in carrying more goods on heavier goods vehicles of up to 24 tonnes gross vehicle weight, additional savings from using even heavier vehicles are very much less and the cost per tonne-mile levels out beyond 26 tonnes GVW, implying that savings are small for heavier vehicles."

That was confirmed by evidence given by the National Freight Corporation to Armitage, when they said:

"If the 40 tonner were loaded at less than 90 per cent. of its payload potential, it would cost more to run per tonne-mile than a 32 tonner".

Even if the aspirations of the number of lorries was achieved, what would be the cost? Paragraph 118 of Armitage suggests that there is a danger of us getting this matter out of proportion. It says:

"it would be foolish to sacrifice a large part of the clear economic benefits of lorries for the sake of marginal environmental improvements to which few attached any significant value".

But then it compensated that statement in the final sentence of the same paragraph:

"There must be improvement, both for the sake of the quality of people's lives and because, without it, resentment and hostility towards the lorry will increase and put at risk the economic advantages of the lorry".

The Secretary of State put the position succinctly on 21st January 1981 in the other place, when at column 824 he said:

"The essential question is whether we can get the economic effects of the lorry without paying an environmental price that the public would regard as too high. In other words where does the public interest lie?"

That I suggest, is the important issue which faces us in the debate tonight on this Question.

Paragraph 139 of the report, which I paraphrase, says that the objective must be to reduce substantially the adverse effects of lorries, and reduce the problems caused by lorries in as many as possible of the places which would suffer large deterioration in conditions if nothing further was done. I would ask your Lordships: do the recommendations of the report match up to that statement? It is claimed that the heavier lorry will save the haulage industry some £150 million a year, and help to provide a still more efficient and economical service. But I understand that the user expenditure on road freight per annum in 1979 was £13,500 million—the actual user cost. The £150 million represents 0·1 per cent., and a tenth of a penny in the pound if that was conveyed to the consumers.

Armitage looked then at the various problems. In paragraph 133 it said that these are such places as where conditions will become seriously worse; on roads carrying very heavy traffic; places unlikely to be by-passed before the end of the century. In evidence to Armitage the Department of Transport said that 500 such by-passes will be required. But it stated that the county surveyors challenge this and said at least 600 would be needed. I note that on 5th March this year the Department of Transport press notice stated that 35 new local by-passes at a cost of some £130 million are to be constructed, and in the next four to five years some further 220 towns and villages will benefit from by-passes. I do not believe that the press notice stated the actual cost.

I would ask the Minister: how many towns of 10,000 population or more will not have a by-pass by the end of the century? What about the places with below 10,000 population? Surely they have to be by-passed as well. It is no good looking only at the major roads, because lorries of all sizes go on minor roads as well as major roads. Paragraph 58 of the report stresses:

"roads [will] have to be constructed to higher standards to accommodate lorries"

must be made stronger, and bridges be built higher and stronger, and gradients be reduced; and that lorry traffic adds 15 per cent. on road costs. Paragraph 59 goes on to say that lorries account for over 90 per cent. of the road damage, and that major maintenance work is having to be done on motorways earlier than was anticipated.

My Lords, may I stop the noble Lord again? I have been following, too. Again, this is a marvellous situation. There is no estimate given. We get these estimates of what the lorries will do, but what about the farmland and the number of gallons of milk lost because new roads are cut in new areas? There is no assessment anywhere in this report of the effect on the balance of payments because of agricultural losses through the diversion of these roads. I am glad that the noble Lord has given me the opportunity to get that point on the record.

My Lords, I am certain that what my noble friend has said will be followed by the point that, even if we were able to improve all the main highways with by-passes, there still would be the problem of lorries coming off motorways and on to other roads, into conurbations, warehouses, factories and distribution points, et cetera. This point is emphasised in paragraph 229 of the report. This says that although the M.25 will be useful we must not overstress the importance of the M.25 because 95 per cent. of the lorries coming into London do so because they have business in London, and only 5 per cent. go straight through. Therefore, the M.25 will not avoid the problem of all the lorries coming off there and coming into London.

Paragraph 82 of the report says that the intrusion comes most from lorries using inadequate roads, and that even the heaviest lorries are being used increasingly for delivery to shops. That will be amplified if the heavier lorries are to be used by distribution to shops. Paragraph 112 says:

"Any conclusions about the location of lorry problems are therefore extremely tentative."

Unfortunately, I think there is too little in the report about the possible development of break bulk depots, and of transhipment depots which may be run jointly by industry or even by local authorities in order that we can, if there is an advantage in heavier lorries, avoid the heavy lorries coming on to the inadequate roads about which Armitage reports. There is nothing in the recommendations about this. An independent survey would appear to be required. There is nothing whatever in the Government White Paper.

Paragraph 132 makes a statement that it seems probable that the total of environmental damage done by lorries in the period to the end of the century will grow, but not by the same proportion as the mileage of the heaviest lorries. I would suggest that that is of poor satisfaction to anybody who is suffering inconvenience, and will suffer increased inconvenience.

What will be the effect on bridges? This is dealt with at some length in paragraphs 391 to 400. I have not time to go into great detail, but the consultant engineers, Husband and Company, commissioned by the department, suggest that if bridges are to be strengthened expenditure of some £1,200 million will be required to cover the bridges on the A. roads and also on the minor roads. County engineers do not accept the figures given in the Armitage Report. They say they want far more surveys. British Rail, which is the largest bridge owner, is said to dispute the assumptions on bridge damage contained in the report. It is emphasised that the problem could be more serious if a number of heavy lorries follow each other, no matter what the number of axles. Despite this, Armitage recommends the heavier lorry, and the Government in the White Paper set on one side, I would suggest rather superficially, what could be the effect on bridges. It says that 200 bridges on trunk roads may have to be assessed. I should like to know how they got that figure. What about the minor roads, and all the other roads on which the heavier lorries will go?

What is the effect on underground pipes? There are about 125,000 miles of gas pipes, and 200,000 miles of water mains. The British Gas Corporation expressed to Armitage on the explosions which took place in Manchester in 1977, the view that heavy lorries were the serious cause. The National Water Council, also in evidence to Armitage, said that the impact of road traffic on underground services causes considerable damage and is responsible for a large proportion of sewer and water mains maintenance repair bills. However, what does Armitage say in paragraph 60? It says:

"Lorries probably contribute to damage to [underground] pipes … although there is no evidence that they are the main cause of damage or even a main contributor."

Paragraph 390 says:

"Little is known about the effects of lorries on underground pipes, and it is difficult to say precisely what would be the effects of heavier lorries."

Surprisingly, despite that and without solid evidence, Armitage proceeds, although stating that more research needs to be done on the question.

We find the same lack of evidence with regard to vibration. Paragraph 94 says:

"There is no objective comprehensible evidence on the effects of vibration";

and paragraph 97 speaks of ignorance about the effects of vibration on old buildings. The same is said in paragraph 88:

"There is no usable nationally-based representative series of statistics about lorry noise",

although the Noise Advisory Council has estimated that £1,600 million would be needed to insulate against noise from all traffic, the figure having been based on the Government's own criteria. Is the question of noise to be included in the annual testing of heavy goods vehicles?

The report states there is no research at all on the effect on pavements, verges and road furniture where lorries leave the highway, and paragraph 104 says:

"There is no conclusive evidence about the trends in smoke fumes from individual lorries in recent years."

But despite all those reservations, the recommendation is put forward for 44 tonne lorries, which the Government have rejected in favour of 40.

While I must not delay your Lordships for too long, I must refer to the question of the determination of the number of axles. Armitage points out that the amount of road damage by vehicles depends on weights imposed through the individual axles. However, I find that paragraph 378 states:

"What is known as the fourth power law for determining road damage has been derived from experiments carried out by the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) between 1958 and 1960".

There have been criticisms—I hope the Minister will be able to answer them—that those American tests were carried out at a constant speed of 35 mph on good quality surfaces—flat and straight—and took no account of highway conditions, corners and gradients.

The Government's White Paper makes clear that their determination on the number of axles is based on those AASHO tests. I find that even in the TRRL report to which I referred, SR590, there is

"considerable doubt about the applicability of the fourth power law on certain types of vehicles and road construction. Nevertheless, it has been taken as the best means for calculating the overall damage effects of a changed axle spectrum. There is also uncertainty about the best methods for calculating the effects of heavier lorries on bridges".

Thus, we have not only Armitage expressing doubt about the fourth power law but the TRRL report expressing such doubts. Yet the Government accept it in their White Paper as the justification for heavier lorries.

I wish to emphasise that there are conflicting interests; while the manufacturers of lorries obviously want a quick decision—because they want to know what to do—problems have been put up by other bodies, including local authorities, who suggest that many surveys have yet to be made. Over and above the Government White Paper issued on 1st December, the Government have asked local authorities—certainly they have asked the AMA—for details on six important aspects on which they could not possibly have done detailed work yet. I should like to know whether the Government intend to hold up their final decision until they have received real answers to some of the problems that have been set.

Far too many doubts are expressed in the Armitage Report, and there are far too many issues about which Armitage says there is need for more research and information. Indeed, I should like to know whether the Department of Transport has a section dealing with the environment so that all matters can be considered within that department. If so, may we be told the size of that section? In my view, the Government White Paper does not deal with those doubts and reservations. It deals with a number of them rather superficially and, based on that, my Question asks what action the Government propose to take.

My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, for raising this subject because it is about time the Government responded to the Armitage Report and recommendations and made clear what is their attitude to those recommendations. Indeed, I am not sure why the Government are apparently so hesitant about committing themselves to the Armitage proposals. Perhaps they are backing away from the apparent conflict of interest between those who are part of the environmental lobby and those who wish to see an efficient and integrated transport system in Britain. I should be grateful if, when he replies, the Minister would spell out clearly whether it is the Government's policy to have integration in all sections of the transport industry, for that is the attitude of these Benches, which is based on the urgent need for integration of the interests of both the environment and an efficient transport industry. Of course that means compromise, but it need not necessarily mean confrontation, or in this case inaction, on the part of the Government or an inefficient road transport industry.

As the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, said, the main recommendation in the Armitage Report is to alter the specification of heavy vehicles in line with the EEC. I am really in no position, without the knowledge of Lord Underhill, to question the technical details of that; I can only assume that the report is accurate and that all the evidence put before it is what is available to us today on which to make decisions for a transport policy. I would therefore agree with Sir Arthur Armitage in his statement to the House of Commons Transport Committee on 25th February 1981 when he said:

"There would be a help for both the economy and the environment if you increased the weight but not the size … of lorries … but did not in any way lower safety standards, noise standards or vibration standards."

If that is what the Armitage Report is saying, then we accept it, and we accept the general recommendations contained in the report in the hope that they will reduce the transport and distribution costs of industry and commerce by about £400 million per year—£150 million due to increased carrying capacity and £225 million due to changes in speed limits—without any direct cost to the Government or taxpayer. If those savings can be achieved, that should have a particular impact on the transport of bulk materials, especially foodstuffs, agricultural supplies, produce, fuels and so on, which must be of benefit to the consumer because of the lowering of costs of transport.

As for the technical considerations, I understand that the proposals will result in a lorry which is no bigger in load space than the existing 32·5 tonne lorry; the extra 19 inches in length is included on the basis of enlarging the driver's cab for increased safety and comfort. The increased number of axles and their configuration is, I assume, to make the heavier lorry less damaging to the roads and underground pipes and bridges referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Underhill. I cannot dispute any of that; I am assured by the report that it is correct and, if it is, we accept it. If it can be proved—and perhaps the Government will guide us on it—should we doubt it? If we do not doubt it, then I can see nothing wrong with the proposals.

The reason why we accept the changes is that technically the 40 tonne lorry is no bigger than existing lorries. It is apparently safer and environmentally more acceptable. Nevertheless, it is a very large lorry indeed and the big "if" we have concerns the building of by-passes around towns, villages and any conurbations through which the lorries will be diverted. If the Government say we are not to build the by-passes, then we must oppose the change and ask the Government seriously to reconsider what they are doing in terms of their transport policy, because, without the by-passes yet with the lorries, there will be created a massive confrontation with the environmentalists and indeed with anybody who wants to live a civilised life in this country. Therefore I assume all along that the road-building programme will be integrated in terms of timing with the legislation that is to introduce new and heavier vehicles on to our roads.

I also accept the argument that has been put forward by the road transport lobby that there will be an increase in job security. First, the heavier lorry will keep United Kingdom industry competitive, and, secondly, it will, it is hoped, provide new jobs in the construction industry, in the building of the new by-passes, dual carriageways and motorways which will have to be provided in conjunction with the introduction of new lorries. Thirdly, the heavier lorry will provide certainty and an established home base for the motor vehicle and allied industries for the foreseeable future. Fourthly, it will reduce transport costs for industrial and commercial developments in rural areas. So people living in the country will, in theory, benefit from a decrease in transport costs.

I should like the noble Lord the Minister to answer one question in particular. Will the by-passes be constructed before the specifications become law? I shall be much reassured if he is able to say that that will be the case.

Armitage has also referred to the question of heavy vehicle parking in central parts of towns and cities. We strongly believe that there is a need to separate the requirements of the driver from those of his vehicle during a night's stopover. In each case the requirments are completely different. I feel that this is a matter for local councils. They have a responsibility to their ratepayers to prevent large lorries from parking in the centre of cities or towns where no facilities are available. We must bear in mind that the driver must have an overnight stopover, rather than sleep in his cab, and so there must be some meeting of minds on this question. It is up to the local authorities ot provide lorry parks on the outer rims of cities or towns, and so avoid drivers having to take vehicles into the centre of cities. I do not see how this can be achieved in any other way. If ratepayers find heavy vehicles parked in the centre of towns or cities, they must look at their representation and perhaps change their councillors, or at least form a deputation. This is entirely a local responsibility, not a national one.

The noble Lord, Lord Underhill, quoted many statistics, and I shall add only a couple more. I am sure that he will approve of them. It might be worth mentioning that the capacity of one freight train is the equivalent of 60 heavy lorries. A double-track railway can, I understand, carry the freight equivalent of 1,000 to 2,400 lorries per hour each way. Those figures give some idea of the maximum comparative capacities of road and rail.

The question remains—I have raised this on previous occasions in the House—of how the switch of 40 million tonnes of freight from road to rail can be achieved. Many ideas have been put forward, and I should like the Government to look at an old suggestion which I believe has considerable relevance in an integrated transport system for the future. It is simply that the revenue collected from all road transport and from fuel oil taxes for transport should be pooled to create an integrated road/rail and inland waterway system, operated by a single Government body. Here I take up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Underhill. The motorways were not designed for today's load factors, and it is the overloading of the motorway system that is causing the break-up of the surface, requiring extra expenditure. Yet the extra expenditure is not passed on to the heavy lorry operators.

I believe that there is a good case for a Government body becoming responsible for all main motorways and bypasses, as well as the permanent way of the railways, including all its fixtures and fittings. The railways would then become the operating company and would pay a suitable rent to the Government body. This is not a new idea. In the United States, Amtrack owns all the track and the various operating railroad companies pay rent for the use of the track. I believe that many of the existing problems regarding the financing of British Railways—with the muddle that the Government seem to be in in distinguishing the capital programme from the revenue programme—could be greatly eased if the Government were to consider the idea that, in the same way as they own the roads, they should own the railway track. British Rail would become the operator and would pay rent.

I believe that that would greatly assist in costing the efficiency of the railways in their operations and manning levels, while at the same time it would put them on a more competitive basis with roads used by heavy freight traffic. This parity cannot be achieved until the British Rail electrification programme is further ahead than it is at the moment. I ask the Government to look again at why they appear to be delaying British Rail's electrification programme simply because it would appear that there is a temporary drop in world energy prices.

It may be worth reminding the noble Lord the Minister of something that was said by Sheikh Yamani in a most remarkable speech in London on 31st March this year. He reminded his audience that consumers— that is, consumers in the Western world—

"may be confronted with the unpleasant possibility of all the admirable activities carried out over the past 10 years in the development of new and renewable energy sources coming to a sudden halt. Faced with a gloomy outlook of future energy prices, the economic feasibility of projects under way in those sources could change dramatically. Already many such projects that had been planned for development in the last few years were either abandoned last year or, at best, rescheduled for execution at a later point in the future. Any further drop in the international price of energy will only aggravate this situation".

What Sheikh Yamani was saying was that many of the alternative energy projects—and I include among them rail electrification, or having a proper, efficient rail system in this country by the turn of the century—have been put back or delayed simply because there appears to be no problem with regard to energy; the energy crisis has faded away for a while. This represents a very false sense of security, and I hope that the Government will confirm that they are not suffering from that at the moment.

Finally, I should like to say a few words about the EEC. The EEC proposals are based essentially on the 40-tonne lorry. When agreed, these proposals will become legally applicable for transport purposes within the EEC, which includes this country. If the United Kingdom withdrew from the European Economic Community, the consequences would be detrimental and almost unthinkable. There would be double handling charges at both ports, and there would be different regulations, different standards, and so on. I sincerely hope that the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, will persuade those members of his party who are very enthusiastic about withdrawal from the EEC that that would be quite disastrous in terms of road transport across the continent. There would be no beneficiaries at all, and the costs to the consumer would be far greater. The cost to British industry would be almost catastrophic. I hope that the noble Lord will use his knowledge and influence in this area to effect a change of heart perhaps—or perhaps not, I do not mind, really. But the more people there are who believe that the EEC is really beneficial to this country in terms of jobs, the happier everyone will be.

I believe that the Armitage Report and the requirements in it are designed merely to keep in step with EEC requirements, and we from these Benches fully support them. I look forward to some constructive comments from the noble Lord the Minister when he winds up, so as to help us in our further deliberations on the creation of an integrated transport system, of which the Armitage Report is part.

My Lords, I welcome the Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, on the Armitage Report, though I have to say to him that I do not really agree with his view, despite his persuasiveness and, indeed, despite the help from his noble friend Lord Davies of Leek. I would only say to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, that perhaps he has been absent from Wales too long, and that he has got the wrong end of the stick on this occasion.

I wish to concentrate my remarks on the proposal in the Armitage Report to allow lorries to increase to the standard now prevailing in the Common Market of 44 tonnes from our existing 32, and the consequences this report has on "land take". As a farmer, who must insist on the most economic method of transport from his farm to the consumer or from his supplier to himself, I hope that the Government will allow weights of 44 tonnes—and this despite the fact that I live in a village. I am convinced that heavier lorries will damage my peace no more than the present lighter ones, and it must be a fact that there will be fewer of them as each will carry more. I am sorry to say to the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, to whom I listened very carefully—I hope he will not mind my saying this—that I thought he was adopting a rather Canute-like approach to the problem and the particular figures he took out of the Armitage Report. I think the point about the damage to the environment is the size of the lorry, not the weight, and as I understand it the size will not be increased.

However, I note that one of the suggestions to alleviate the problems of lorries is the building of more roads and bypasses, which was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek—and certainly I can agree with him on this point. Here I must declare an interest, because the proposed M.40 is going to go through the farm that I tenant in Oxford and is going to take 30 acres and approximately a mile and a quarter of the farm, apart from dissecting it.

The problem I should like the Government to consider and, indeed, to answer is that if these new roads are going to be built they should look again at the hardship caused by dividing farms in half. The severance of farms can be ruinous and destroy one's life's work of farm improvement; and the terms of compensation are totally out-of-date, dating back to at least 1968, I think, if not before. In particular, I ask the Government to consult with the Ministry of Agriculture to find out how farming has changed over the last 10 years and how, as a result of these changes, the severance of a farm is so very much more serious than it was in 1968.

Although it may not have reached the Department of the Environment, there has been a very exciting and, I think, admirable revolution in farming techniques and yields since 1968, and this, in particular, on the more difficult, unstable soils that in the 1920s were not even cultivated. If roads dissect farms many of these new techniques, which have enabled these higher yields to be achieved, and greater efficiency, become impossible, so making the farm uneconomic in the 1980s, let alone the 1990s; whereas perhaps a similar dissection in the 1960s or 1970s would not have had half the consequences. To give one very small example, dissecting a rectangular-shaped field into two triangles, particularly on unstable soils, causes disastrous compaction; and it is problems of this sort that I want my noble friend to consider with his department.

Sadly, the terms of compensation operated by my noble friend's officials do not seem to recognise, even, the difference between stable and unstable soils; and certainly I have very grave doubts whether the rules now used—I am not blaming his department; they have to go by the rules—understand the finesse now achieved with the present method of under-drainage of these soils, the difficult ones in particular. There is also the problem of accommodation bridges, the rules for which date back to 1968. I need hardly remind your Lordships what has happened to fuel prices since that date, and the further you have to travel to bring in your corn or your cattle, obviously the more fuel you use. All these points were, I believe, discussed by the Leicht Committee, and I ask the Government when they will take note of them.

There is one other, small point (but perhaps I consider it not small) and that is that, at the moment, compensation is based on the gross margin loss of the land taken. In fact, it should be based on the total return lost from that acreage, as the taking away from the farm of an acreage will not reduce the farmer's fixed costs one iota. I cannot expect a precise answer to these problems from my noble friend tonight, but I hope I will get the answer that he will look at these problems. I hope he will be able to accept tonight that the principle of compensation, particularly to the tenant farmer for severance of his farm by these roads to take these lorries, will be that the farm should be returned to its former efficiency—even, for instance, if it means, on occasions, a completely new layout of, say, the drainage system. Unless this principle is accepted there will be no good will from those who have their livelihoods taken from them for these new roads and lorries, and I fear that cases as shown by that delightful comedy My Father knew Lloyd George will occur more and more often.

My Lords, I, too, welcome the Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, and, indeed, the terms in which it is written. I should perhaps advise your Lordships that I have myself been advised mainly by the CBI on this occasion, and my noble friend on the Front Bench will be surprised to hear that I am giving preference to that advice over the counter-advice given to me by the Isle of Wight, who, on the whole, hate big lorries whatever size they are; but, then, the Isle of Wight has only about half a mile of dual carriageway, so it is really rather different from anywhere else in the country, as I often say to my noble friend.

I was disappointed in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, because with the greatest possible respect to him—and I respect his views, and not only his speeches, normally very much—he seemed to have dug out of the Armitage Report all that he could find that was adverse and paid but little regard to the well-balanced conclusions at the end. We can all find the adverse bits, but there are a lot of good points about the proposals, to which I shall come. But the thing about which I entirely agree with him is the importance of a decision, and I hope my noble friend Lord Bellwin will be able to give us one. I say that for the point which was raised by, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, that above everything else the manufacturers need to know. They are in a state of limbo because they do not know what axle weights are going to be required of them, or when, so that they can make the right sort of vehicles and so that the purchasers know which vehicles to buy.

The importance here, my Lords, above everything else, is our share of the EEC market. I suspect my noble friend Lord Lucas will be referring to these things, so I shall just put it in the mind of my noble friend that a decision is really getting vital, and we would hope to get it as soon as practicable.

Now the question of the EEC which I have mentioned was also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, and he touched on the point, which I think perhaps I might be allowed to emphasise, that the EEC proposals are in the main based on a 40-tonne lorry, and when this is agreed it will be obligatory legally for us to allow in 40-tonne lorries even if we do not have them ourselves. So we shall be at a grave disadvantage: not only will our manufacturers not be building lorries which are being used on the Continent, but also we shall have to let these vehicles in whether or not we like it. That is one of the things that we have to bear. It means, therefore, that the outline programme of the Government, which includes the by-passes to take these vehicles, is going to be necessary anyhow, whether or not we have these vehicles. I would not go as far as the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, and say, "Don't let us have the specifications introduced here until such time as the by-passes are built", because in the nature of things the by-passes are going to take quite a long time to build. There are one or two bypasses which I should have liked to see in the Government programme but which are not there—like that around Tarporley in Cheshire on which we had a lot of discussion when I lived there six or seven years ago. It is not in the programme. We must get on with these things.

I should have thought that we need to make a decision and accept the fact that, as a European nation, even if we do not stay in the Common Market—although I think we shall—we shall need the roads and need to compete with the transport. I agree, although I believe the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, does not agree, with the view that the Armitage package will reduce the transport and distribution costs of industry. My noble friend behind me made the point about increased garage capacity. It seems to me it must be so, unless we find ourselves carrying more; and in the nature of things this is unlikely because the particular saving will be in the transport of bulk materials, especially foodstuffs, and agricultural supplies and produce. Foodstuffs, as I know from my other work, are stabilising because the population is stablised, so, in the nature of things, that large chunk will not change much and bulk materials from heavy industry which do not go on rail will, I should think, stay much the same.

There is every reason to suppose that we will not have extra lorries. Armitage forecast that the total number will drop when the size goes up. Again, as the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, said, the lorry is no bigger in load space. The only extra space is in driver comfort and, therefore, with their extra axles they cause less trouble for roads and bridges. It was bridges that the noble Lord, Lord Underwood, made such a fuss about; and the answer to it is that it will be better for his bridges and not worse.

My Lords, the noble Lord's thesis is correct if one accepts the fourth power law which apparently even Armitage has questioned—and I am referring to the fourth power law which determines the weight on each axle. Even Armitage has expressed some dubiety about this. It is all based on the American experiment.

My Lords, I should not have thought that this was a subject which I read into Armitage. Otherwise, his main recommendations are not as substantiated as I read them to be. Probably that is as much as I should reasonably burden your Lordships with at this stage because a great many important points were made by the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, with whom I agreed except for his (dare I say?) Quango that he was going to set up to manage from the centre all the transport systems in the country. I do not think that that sort of body is likely to work any more than other bodies like it have worked.

My Lords, the noble Lord may have misunderstood. My suggestion was that the Government owned the railway tracks as the Government own the motorways; so that it gave some sort of parity to rail freight. It would be a Government body. That was the main purpose of my argument and not just the setting up of an administrative body.

My Lords, of course, I understand that, but I think that we can leave it as one area in which I do not agree with the noble Lord. In other respects, I agree with him. I hope that my noble friend not only can give an answer today on when he foresees a decision being made, if he cannot give an actual decision, but I hope he will bear in mind that from industry's point of view, not only do we want to know the answer but industry as a whole favours the proposals, hopes very much that they will be brought into being and that the gloomy forebodings of Lord Underhill are not given the priority he would have wished.

My Lords, in joining this debate, I feel that I should declare my interest in the subject matter of the Unstirred Question. It is simply that I am the president of the Institute of Transport Administration. That is the only interest that I have to declare in this matter. It is the Institute whose membership includes road, rail, sea and air administrators who sent a telegram shortly after the publication of the report to the Minister at the time accepting the report as a package and hoping—that was in 1980—that something shortly would come of it. I can understand the modus operandi of the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, tonight. He has put down an Unstarred Question; he has not put down the ordinary kind of Motion for general debate which we might have expected and which both he and I hoped for on a Wednesday. So it is not unnatural that where he has doubts in that long report he should pick out all those points about which he has doubts and ask questions.

The doubts come perhaps from those things of which he is not fully aware, so those which are more readily understandable by us all were not brought out by him. I do not agree with some of the conclusions that he came to in asking that long list of questions and I rather agree with the noble Lord who suggested that he had selected perhaps the worst of Armitage. Some noble Lords may think those are the best points. I think there are some better ones. I think we make a great mistake in picking out particular bits and not treating Armitage, with its 58 recommendations, as a total package. That is the thing; for, whichever way you argue, whatever answer my noble friend will give, it must, I suggest, be prefaced by the words "On balance". There is no right and no wrong in this.

I believe that the report—and this is the first time we have been able to discuss it—demands our congratulations to the chairman and its members. They were, all of them, quite independent of the various lobbies that have emerged so vociferously over the last two years. I think the report is balanced and I believe also—and this is confirmed by my noble friends —that it is not only the transport industry, whether road or rail, but all of industry who generally subscribe to the package and who say, "We have had this independent report; we have talked and talked for years. When are we going to get on and do something about it?"

The noble Lord, Lord Underhill, gave a quotation. If I have it wrong, I ask him to correct me. I believe he quoted from a debate in another place the words, "There must be improvements to the environment". I think I am right. That goes without saying. Notwithstanding any advances in numbers of vehicles and weights of vehicles or whether they are motor cars or not. There are now something over 15 million motor cars licensed on the road and something like 20 million vehicles—a huge increase. How is improvement to the environment going to be met? It is going to be met by industry and the taxpayer in taxes. In particular, it is going to come from the people who use road transport. There has to be a quid pro quo.

The costs of meeting environmental requirements are going to be heavy. There is no practical or technical difficulty in meeting the environmental demands regarding the vehicle or the route. It is how much one is prepared to pay that is the difficulty. For example, a current 32 tonne two by two axle articulated vehicle costs around £35,000 or £40,000. It lasts for something like five years. A tri-axle tractor unit adds something like £5,000. Anti-locking devices on the braking add from £1,500 to £2,000 per vehicle.

The Foden and Leyland so-called quiet vehicles, which have been running for the past two years with the latest development in noise suppression and so on, are going to add ·25 gallons of fuel per mile to the operating cost. That is not an insignificant amount when you think that the average vehicle will only cover six or seven miles to the gallon. All these matters are within our grasp, they have just to be paid for.

In my right honourable friend the Minister's press release of 26th March, when he talked about the new basis for lorry taxation contained in the 1982 Finance Bill, he said—I am going to paraphrase for the sake of time—that first they were determined to get a position where all groups of lorries pay their fair share of the costs of building and maintaining roads. Taken as a whole, lorries cover the costs but the heaviest groups fall short. That is what he said about taxation.

In putting that into effect he is suggesting in October of this year that an average 32-tonne two by two lorry—two axles on the tractor unit and two axles on the trailer unit—currently taxed at £1,651 will go up to £1,820. That is a not inconsiderable increase you will accept, my Lords. Secondly, he goes on to say that moreover it makes sense to recognise that road damage depends on the number of axles over which the weight of the lorry and its load is spread, and there is to be a different rate there. On a gross 32-tonne vehicle on five axles that taxation figure is proposed to drop to £1,350. That is one side of the cost.

The other side of the cost is how much the customer is going to pay. We have had from my noble friend Lord Stanley the typical argument that I would expect from a typical customer. I look at my noble friend not as an operator or supplier, but as a customer. He wants to get his goods, his fertilizers and so on, on to his farm as quickly, expeditiously and as inexpensively as he can. He wants to take his goods to market in exactly the same way.

It is the customer who demands the method, the mode of transport; and it is no good the noble Lord, Lord Stone, shaking his head, because there is no way in a free society that one can control the mode by which people move their goods or themselves. I suggest any other way would be futile. Indeed, I think it goes back to the early 1930s when we had laws which promoted by way of taxation traffic to rail—and I do not want to get into a road/rail argument—and it failed.

People will choose the easiest and most convenient way of moving themselves and their goods. It can be seen in the use of the motor car. There is no denying it and there are no controls that are going to alter that unless one puts in pecuniary controls that make life totally impossible. I believe that there are three main points at issue here in accepting the broad tenor of the Armitage report and that we should move to a heavier vehicle. The first is, as my noble friend Lord Mottistone and the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, pointed out, our commercial motor vehicle building industry has to compete on equal terms with other suppliers. They cannot because they do not know what to build. If they know what to build it, then they can do it. They have to build what I can best describe as a pan-European vehicle, not one for England, another for France and another for somewhere else.

Noble Lords have already pointed out that there are overriding economic advantages to industry, and that means to society at large, by going to the bigger vehicle. If one looks at a heavy vehicle as an extension of a factory, an assembly line, the cheaper those goods can get to the ultimate consumer, the more orders will be obtained and the more jobs will be created. The whole society benefits. There is no doubt about that at all. If we did not have heavier lorries, the environmental disadvantages of today's traffic would not go away. But the increase in the overall weight coupled with all the regulations that are sensible and proper to incorporate at one and the same time covering noise—looking to 1983—axle weights, vibration, braking, steering, and so on, all of which are technically feasible, are literally 12 or 24 months away from being able to be put into practice. They can then bring the environmental advantages that we want.

My noble friend the Minister will no doubt remind us of the road build programmes, the by-pass programmes, and I do not want to go into that. But make no mistake—and the Windsor cordon experiment proved it—if one takes lorries from one area, everybody says "Fine, they are off my doorstep". However, they are going in most cases to appear on somebody else's doorstep. One cannot entirely move that problem away, however many by-passes one builds.

The noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, made a very pertinent point on transhipment depots and parking areas. Some local authorities are absolutely appalling and do not take advantage of the powers that are currently available to them. Others—the Penrith depot is one—are excellent. The co-operation of the local authority, one of the major oil companies, the Department of Transport and the operators in the area is a splendid example of what actually can be done. There are others. There are the lorry routes and the action areas. All these matters are palliatives, not cures. They can never be cures. We need in this island a transport system similar to that which we have. It has to move into the 20th century and it has to move competitively. I believe that Armitage, as a package—some parts are bad and some are good—shows a reasonable balance. I believe it should be accepted and implemented as quickly as possible.

I suppose I could best sum up my feelings by saying to the Government: "What are you going to do?" and reminding them that we have proposals with regard to noise levels, with regard to taxation and fair shares and we have proposals for by-pass programmes. What we must now have for the sake of all industry are firm proposals with regard to the weight question and—of the greatest importance to industry and to the community, and I do not mean the European Community, but the community at large—we must have a date for the implementation of those proposals. Without that—I will finish on the point which my noble friend almost suggested that I should make—we are going to lose the opportunity of shipping our manufactured goods which I do not believe are going to remain static; I believe they will increase and 40 per cent. of them go to Europe anyway. The bulk of them go in standard 40 ft. ISO containers and their capacity has to be maximised. Therefore, they have to go in a lorry capable of carrying the weight. We need that decision and I do ask my noble friend, whatever answers he gives to the questions put by the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, to answer this one please: how much and when?

My Lords, I too welcome the raising of this subject by the noble Lord, Lord Underhill. The Armitage Report and the action that the Government propose to take on it is very important to this country and to the people who live here. We are all concerned about the movement of lorries and the effect they have on our environment. I speak with some feeling, as I live in a house which is more than 200 years old and which lies within 10 feet of a main road in a beautiful and ancient village, which has been in dire need of a by-pass for at least 30 years to my personal knowledge. I speak naturally of my own village of Writtle in the county of Essex. We at last now have a by-pass planned for the year 1985/86 but this is still dependent for its completion on future years' transport supplementary grant.

Lorries thunder past our house daily, so naturally I want to see the Government carry out their promised programme of by-passes to historic towns and villages so that the lorries may proceed without hindrance, more safely, at a higher speed and without endangering people's lives in the places where they live. It seems to me important that the number of lorry movements should be kept to a minimum so that an increase in weight per lorry would be an advantage as long as the weight per axle is limited so as not to increase unduly the wear and tear on the roads and nearby property. I also welcome new regulations to be brought into force, I understand, by 1983 to reduce the maximum noise limit on lorries.

I am glad, too, that the Government are to make new regulations to ensure the provision of the extra axle to reduce individual axle loads on the heaviest lorries, and also that the width of lorries is not to be increased, that the height is to be regulated—I believe for the first time—and that the length of lorries is to be only marginally increased to allow better accommodation for the drivers and thereby reduce their fatigue. I hope, too, that the rear and side guards will be made mandatory as soon as possible, and I welcome the fact that improved braking standards will be required next year. All these increases in safety standards are of vital importance in reducing people's instinctive fear of heavy lorries. I hope they will be shown to increase the safety of lorries in practice.

Most goods in this country travel short distances and we all want to see our local shops, industries and farms supplied with the goods they and we need. It is important that, wherever possible, the long-distance trade should go by train, but it must be realised that most goods travelling by train will also be involved in two road journeys: one at the beginning and another at the end of their travels. Both these journeys will disturb people locally and will also increase the cost of the goods because of the added commercial costs of transfer between the two forms of transport—a cost we, the consumers, will have to pay. I therefore believe that we must accept that many goods will always travel by lorry for our own, the consumer's, convenience.

This Government often say that local government should spend less on revenue and more on capital expenditure. In most services capital expenditure eventually increases revenue expenditure too, as it results in increased running costs: heating, lighting, cleaning, staffing and so on. Highway expenditure alone does not do that to the same extent. A new road will need less maintenance and the only increased expenditure is to cover loan charges. If the Government can therefore increase transport supplementary grants to local authorities, as indeed Essex has done this year—and I am very grateful to them—and allow them to cover both capital and loan charges on the use of that money, they will be encouraging local authorities in capital expenditure which provides employment for the construction industry.

The taxes resulting from the vehicles being taxed on laden rather than unladen weights should in my view go entirely for financing the necessary by-passes of towns and villages. If the Government carry out this policy, it should in a number of ways contribute to our economic recovery. The relaxing of restriction on lorry weights should help industry and commerce to provide our goods at lower prices, and also enable us to compete more effectively in overseas markets. Also, the provision of better roads should help to carry our own goods more effectively, both to us (the consumers) and to our export markets overseas.

I speak with some feeling of the roads through Essex to the haven ports of Harwich, Ipswich and Felixstowe. A few weeks ago I was speaking to industrialists in Birmingham who, to my surprise, shared this interest as their goods from the Midlands vitally need good roads to these haven ports. So that is a national need.

I hope very much that the Government will continue to put forward an integrated policy of providing better roads and sensible but less restricted regulations on lorry weights. The Government's own statement that the package is designed to get safer, quieter and cleaner vehicles on the road as fast as possible, and to take the lorries away from where people live and work, is a policy that I hope the Government will pursue vigorously, to the benefit of this country and of the people who live in it.

My Lords, I want to trespass on the time of the House for just about five minutes, having sat through the debate. I apologise for not having got here in time to put my name down. I want it to be understood that while one is criticising it does not mean that one does not appreciate the amount of work that the Armitage Inquiry and all the people who worked on it did. Nevertheless, I think other points of view ought to be aired. While paying a tribute to Sir Arthur Armitage and the people who are there involved, naturally they would take a point of view that would be on the side of lorry transport—

Why, my Lords?

There is nothing wrong in that because they are experts. There is nothing wrong in taking a point of view that is opposed to what I say—I will certainly give way.

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I just wondered why he said they would "naturally" take that view. There is nothing natural in their taking any one particular view.

My Lords, they have certainly taken a point of view here that I do not like—and that is the end of the argument! I gave way for the noble Lord to ask a question and I have given a fair answer. This is the kind of world in which we live. This is a debating chamber, not a prayer. I happen to remember Beeching and the absolute joy and enthusiasm exhibited for the Beeching Report. I should have liked the Armitage Committee to look into the hundreds and hundreds of miles of railway embankments that could have been made into roads in many areas and be used now for transport. That must be done.

One of the tragedies is that we have "Beechingised" the railways of Britain and that is one of the most dangerous things to do for the strategy of this country. I remember the movement of children from great cities during the last war. If we had not had railway trains in those days, what would it have been like to move millions from Manchester, Liverpool and London? But we gave all that away. I have suggested that part of the defence budget of Britain should be put into transport.

Kipling said "Transport is civilisation", but on reading this report it seems that there is a bit of civilisation that was missed. Paragraph 136 admits that,

"The total volume of emissions from the lorries is likely to increase, though at a slow rate".

Then, paragraph 137 states that:

"The position with vibration is similar".

The noble Baroness talked about her area being shaken. This Palace, where the judges sit, is shuddering every day as the lorries move outside this beautiful building—

My Lords, would the noble Lord allow me to interrupt?

I seem to be upsetting people.

My Lords, I am not at all upset. But, quite apart from the shuddering, would the noble Lord not think that there is a great problem here? If he stood on the pavement edge at the corner of Bridge Street and Parliament Square, as I hope the Minister will be able to say he has done, how long is it before his feet are run over or his legs are broken?

Exactly, my Lords. We are increasing the problem without looking at it in depth. Life at the Archway in London now is a misery. No matter what everyone does, that road will be there for years and years, and the problem of moving valuable property to get a road for the lorries is still very much there.

Let me quickly spike down a couple of other points. On emissions, have we given up the search into the chemical effect of lead poisoning on the child mind? That should have been looked at. They are playing it down now, but lead, in its effect on children, is a serious matter—that should have been looked at in depth. It should have been in the report. Again, how much real work is being done by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory into the throwing up of spray by the heavier lorries with the extra axles? I have used the M.1 when life can be dangerous, and if a windscreen wiper fails it can be serious. Does the noble Lord want me to give way again? I shall need six minutes rather than five.

My Lords, I did not understand why the noble Lord was talking about lead, because I did not think there was any lead in diesel fuel.

My Lords, the diesel fumes are still more poisonous. One should know that. It takes only a slight knowledge of chemistry to understand the reason for the poisoning, but I shall not go into that in any more depth. An estimate of accidents is given. I do not take that. Finally— and your Lordships will probably be pleased that I have said "finally"—this is too expensive for our economy and I am quite sure that the Armitage Report could not go through as it stands.

Before I sit down, I shall quote from the First Report of the Select Committee on the European Communities 1981–82—and I appreciate the work that it did—which states on page ix the opinion of the Committee:

"The Commission argues that a substantial portion of present road traffic should be transferred to combined transport, in order to secure the expected benefits in relief of congestion, improved safety and efficiency".

That means that we should now be looking more seriously than we have done before at the combined use of road, rail and canals. We have thrown away millions and millions of poundsworth of our economy and the effort of our ancestors, which would have been of great use to us today. I sincerely hope that, before we accept this report "on the nod", more attention will be given to many of the realities which the Armitage Report missed.

My Lords, the Government greatly welcome this opportunity to hear the views of the House on this most important subject and, like others, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, for introducing this debate in the way he has done. May I also say that I am grateful to all noble Lords, and to my noble friend Lady Platt, for what I consider to be the really constructive comments that everyone has made. We shall study them very carefully.

I am glad to see that the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, was specifically linked to the Armitage Report. It is a report which is too much stigmatised and too little read and considered. The Armitage inquiry was established by the Government in 1979 to look at the whole range of problems caused by the great growth of lorry traffic. The Armitage inquiry was an independent inquiry, which received a great deal of evidence from organisations and individuals. It produced a full and detailed report. It is not just a report about lorry weights. Far from it: only seven of its 58 recommendations were concerned with lorry weights. Sir Arthur Armitage and his expert assessors, for whose work the Government were very grateful, produced a formidable, comprehensive series of proposals for dealing with the environmental problems caused by lorries and ensuring that we have an efficient freight transport system.

As everyone now knows, the Government issued a White Paper on Lorries, People and the Environment in December 1981 which built on the recommendations of the Armitage inquiry. We have had many representations about the White Paper and we are carefully considering them. We are now reaching the stage where the Government can come to final conclusions. They are certainly determined to do so. There has been too much delay in this matter, over a long period of time, to the detriment of people's quality of life, the environment and British industry and jobs. Without exception, noble Lords who have spoken will be glad to know that we will be making a final announcement very shortly. If your Lordships ask how shortly is "shortly", I would reply that we should need to have another debate on that. But your Lordships who hear me speak from this Dispatch Box, not for the first time, know that if I say "shortly" I mean "shortly".

Of course, this is an extremely contentious, difficult and emotional subject. That is entirely understandable. For all the reasons spelled out so clearly by Armitage, lorries create many problems. We all know that from our own experience. We in this House have a great fund of knowledge about and care for the built environment, historic towns and the countryside. We will have no difficulty in drawing on that to provide eloquent testimony to the effects of lorries.

The fact of the matter is that nobody loves lorries. Whatever we do, we shall never make them desirable objects, though in some parts of the country more lorries would be a welcome sign of more business activity and more jobs. But it is no use merely beating our breasts on the subject. It is no use yearning for a golden age preceding the invention of the internal combustion engine. Most of all, it is no use doing nothing. To do nothing only allows the situation to get worse. The real question is: how can we help to civilise the lorry, improve the quality of life for people who are suffering from its effects, make lorries safer and quieter, and, at the same time, make sure that the country gets an efficient, responsive freight transport system? We shall achieve that only if we approach the subject with cool and careful deliberation.

That is exactly what the Armitage inquiry did. It made many suggestions to improve the environment. We built on that in the White Paper. In a moment, I will list some of the things that we are doing. But that is not the complete story. The White Paper was more than a beginning. It contained very substantial proposals, but we have already gone beyond the White Paper and will be further extending our proposals before making the final announcement to which I referred a moment ago. Our whole approach is based upon a recognition of the seriousness of the problem and a determination—and I do mean a determination—to deal with it. That was Armitage's main message and, if I may say so, no previous Government have taken it.

The first requirement is to take lorry traffic away from the places where people work and live. By-passes, where they are possible, can be the most effective way of doing this. We see our programme of by-passes as an essential part of our strategy for reconciling our dependence on lorry traffic with the need to protect and improve the environment. Already this year we have announced the addition to the trunk road programme of 15 by-passes. More than 120 schemes are now in preparation. Over half of these will have been built or will be under construction by the middle of the decade. By the end of the decade we shall be able to devote even more of the available resources to the few by-passes which will still be required. We should not forget that other schemes for strategic routes, such as the M.25, will also relieve communities of through traffic. Motorways are among our most effective by-passes.

The transport supplementary grant settlement, announced in December, will enable 35 more local authority by-pass schemes to go ahead. My right honourable friend will continue to give favourable treatment to proposals for by-passes by local authorities. The 20 or so trunk road by-passes now under construction, together with the local schemes under construction, will take traffic out of nearly 100 communities, and at least another 120 towns and villages will benefit from schemes to be started in the next two to three years. By any standards that is a substantial achievement. I hope that this will be gratifying to the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, who in particular emphasised this aspect of what we are doing—as, for that matter, did other speakers. I hope they will feel encouraged by it. To answer the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, it is not possible to say how many towns will not be by-passed by the end of the century, but I say again that by the middle of this decade nearly half of all the new schemes started will be by-passes. That illustrates the urgency which the Government attach to this particular aspect of the problem.

Another way to keep lorries away from people is by designating lorry routes or prohibiting lorries from particularly unsuitable roads. Armitage recognised, and we accept, that responsibility for lorry routing must remain with local authorities and that they have the necessary powers. The local authorities themselves agree. Only the local authorities in fact have the local knowledge to do the job properly. But as we all know, the performance of local authorities using the same powers varies greatly. We want to encourage local authorities to do more to control lorries. But lorry control schemes, it has to be said, are not always possible. It is not sensible, for example, merely to transfer lorry nuisance from one group of residents to those living on an alternative route. But, even so, more undoubtedly can be done, and we shall shortly issue a circular which suggests how authorities can take a fresh look at the scope for additional controls in their areas. My right honourable friend will, in addition, be announcing further measures to assist and encourage the use of lorry control schemes.

We are also giving serious consideration to the idea of "lorry action areas" for places exceptionally badly affected by lorry nuisance and unlikely to be helped by methods of diverting traffic. Local authorities will have additional powers and additional financial assistance to carry out local relief measures, such as double glazing or better quality road surfaces.

We are making lorries safer. My noble friend Lady Platt of Writtle and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, referred to this point. Sideguards, to protect pedestrians and cyclists—the most vulnerable road users—will be made compulsory. So will rear under-run guards on lorries, to protect motorists. Better braking standards will be required for all vehicles manufactured after October this year. We are looking into the best way of making compulsory some sort of spray suppression equipment. Everyone who is really concerned about road safety will recognise the contribution that these measures will make to reducing the number of accidents involving lorries. I am happy to say that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents has given our package of proposals its full support.

Lorries are being made quieter. We have already set a reduced noise level of 88 decibels for the heaviest vehicles and this will come into force next year. We are looking beyond that to 1990, when we want to see lorries as quiet as the family cars of 1981. When I said that last time we debated this matter, I noticed one or two smiles around the House. Well, I am saying it again today, so that should be an indication of the confidence which I have. All these standards must be enforced. We are increasing enforcement effort, with more staff and equipment, to deal with overloading and other safety standards. All these measures contribute to a comprehensive, effective attack on the lorry problem.

But Armitage also argued for heavier lorries. One would think from the public and parliamentary reaction that both Armitage and the Government had made no other recommendations, but it is worth going back to what Armitage himself said. There is no question of heavier lorries being in some way a quid pro quo for environmental improvements. On the contrary, to quote Armitage;

"Heavier lorries, even when considered in isolation from the wider changes affecting all lorries, would bring both economic and environmental benefits".

That is the last sentence of the whole Armitage Report. The Government accept the logic of that report. However, we have, I believe, improved on Armitage's weight proposals.

Sir Arthur Armitage himself saw the need to compromise on the EEC proposals so as to fit United Kingdom circumstances. We in turn have seen some need to fit the Armitage proposals rather better to our own circumstances. For that reason, the Government have rejected Armitage's proposals for 44-tonne lorries. We are now considering the reactions to our proposals on weights, as on all the other proposals in the White Paper. I am not able to announce our main decision today. However, there are certain general points about heavier lorries which are valid and which will remain valid, whatever are our final decisions.

Many of our lorries are already designed to carry more weight than the law now allows them. If we allowed them to carry more goods, we could have fewer lorries to carry the same amount of freight. That, as Armitage pointed out, will itself bring environmental advantages. It will also mean a reduction in industry's costs. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, I do not believe that we can just brush this aside—though, knowing him as I do, I doubt whether he does brush it aside. Nevertheless, I attach probably more importance to the point than does the noble Lord. For example, using 38-tonne lorries instead of 32·5-tonne lorries gives savings in transport costs in the range of 5 to 9 per cent. The benefits to industry have been conservatively estimated at £1·5 billion over the next decade. The benefit will be greater if there is further economic growth, as I am sure there will be. We are in no position to reject such economic gains. Areas such as Scotland and Devon and Cornwall, distant from large markets, have most to gain.

My Lords, I hope that some grants will go to the local authorities for all this wonderful work which the Minister is envisaging. I hope a formula will be found to get some money to Scotland, to parts of Wales, which I am accused of having left for a long time, and elsewhere. Can the noble Lord say whether any money will go to the local authorities for this work?

My Lords, I specifically said earlier, in connection with relief and other work, that we do not expect authorities to do it without it costing money and that we are cognisant of that fact. In principle, therefore, I do not quarrel with what the noble Lord says. However, the transport supplementary grant has to be part of the whole scene. There could be big savings for bulk freight, and anyone who is sceptical should simply ask British industry or British shippers—and my noble friend Lord Mottistone made the point, as he so often does, for them. These important benefits will also extend to agriculture, which is a major user of bulk freight. Fertiliser, oil and other goods will be delivered to farms more efficiently. There will also be savings in the cost of moving produce from farms—especially for heavy produce such as sugar beet, potatoes and milk, but also for many other horticultural products where some use could be made of the increased payloads.

I can assure my noble friend Lord Stanley of Alderley, that the Government are fully aware of the problems which farmers may face when agricultural land is taken for new roads. As a first step, we take considerable pains to keep the amount of farmland we take down to the absolute minimum. This factor is always taken into account in the selection of routes and in detail design. Inevitably, we cannot always avoid taking agricultural land. Nor, I am afraid, can we always avoid the particular problem to which my noble friend very properly referred—namely, that of farm severance. We do pay compensation to a farmer who loses his land, and the compensation takes account of any additional loss in the value of his land because it has been severed. I am only too aware that the compensation point is always a controversial question; that is one reason why the amount of compensation is determined independently by the district valuer and why the landowner has a right of appeal to the Land Tribunal. Wherever we can justify doing so, we will on request provide accommodation works, bridges or underpasses for farmers whose land is severed. I hope that we can be as liberal in providing works of this sort as is consistent with the need to protect the public purse.

Having said that, I must acknowledge the point made by my noble friend Lord Stanley of Alderley. I note that the farming community feel that we are not as liberal as we might be—particularly, perhaps, over the standards of work which we provide. I listened very carefully to what my noble friend said on this. I can and do assure him that we will look at his point on compensation. I can tell him that my right honourable friends are looking again at this problem at the moment.

My Lords, if my noble friend will give way for a moment, the real problem that is worrying us mostly is the updating of the terms. If he assures me that that is one of the things at which the Government will be looking, it will make me happy.

My Lords, we want to read very carefully what my noble friend has said. He made his points extremely well and, obviously, with expert knowledge. I can certainly undertake that the last point he made will also be considered.

Heavier lorries will do less damage to the roads. For example, a 38-tonne lorry which will have five axles will do 20 per cent. less damage than the existing 32.5-tonne lorry. The noble Lord, Lord Underhill, referred to this matter. May I say that Armitage critically examined the evidence of research results on road damage? The tests undertaken by the American Association of State Highway Officials to which he referred involved, I understand, lorries running on roads of widely differing strengths. The Transport and Road Research Laboratory have examined the AASHO tests and concluded that they were well designed. Indeed, authorities throughout the world use the fourth power law as giving the best overall indication of the damage done to roads by vehicles.

The noble Lord, Lord Underhill, mentioned his concern about bridges. I will send the noble Lord a technical note by the department describing the effects of heavier lorries. I hope he will see from that that our expert advice is that the great majority of bridges will suffer no more damage than they do now, although some bridges with very long spans will need to be assessed individually. I could go into quite some depth but time is pressing and I believe it would be better if I dealt with that point in the way I have suggested.

New controls on lorry dimensions will be introduced for the first time. There will be a height limit on heavier lorries—the first time we have had a height limit. There will be no increase in the width of the lorry. There will for the first time be a limit on the length of semi-trailers. A small increase of ½ metre in the total length of lorries will improve their turning circles, leaving space for additional noise insulation and sleeper cabs. We shall ensure, as a minimum, that heavier lorries meet all the safety standards of existing lorries. But we shall go beyond that. For instance, from the outset all heavier lorries must have sideguards.

In looking at all these proposals, I would ask the House particularly to bear in mind two important points. The first is the overwhelming importance which lorries now have in the freight system. As the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, rightly said, lorries carry more than 80 per cent. of all inland freight. The noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, asked whether the Government want an integrated transport system. Of course we want to help railways and waterways, which have environmental advantages. We are taking special measures to do so, including much higher taxes on lorries to ensure that they pay their way, and grants to finance new railway and waterway facilities.

Only this month, we announced grants of more than £2 million towards the cost of providing rail handling facilities for industry. This will take 1½ million tonnes of coal and gypsum off the roads, and more than 500 heavy lorry journeys each day will be avoided. More than £500,000 went to a Blue Circle Industries' cement works in Derbyshire, and it means that their coal will now be carried by rail instead of by road, which would have affected Sheffield and villages in the Peak National Park. Nearly £80,000 went to Storey Brothers near Manningtree in Essex (and I am sure that my noble friend Lady Platt of Writtle will be glad to hear that) and this will help to avoid coal being carried by lorry from Coventry—particularly through the narrow roads of Constable Country. Where we can, we are helping industry to take advantage of the benefits of rail freight and keep lorries out of some of our most beautiful countryside. But it is unrealistic to believe that we can turn away from the lorry as the provider of the great majority of our freight. The Government are all in favour of integration if this means efficient, co-ordinated operation—but not if it is an excuse for bureaucratic control and inefficiency. We believe that the transport modes should operate in a framework of fair competition which will encourage efficiency and innovation.

As I come to the end of my remarks, the second point I want to stress is, what would be the consequence of our not going ahead? The consequences of rejecting our proposals would be that matters would get worse, not better; worse for people whose lives are badly affected by lorries, worse for communities, worse for the economy. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lord Lucas of Chilworth, who is always so knowledgeable in this field. He was so right when he referred to the fact that a total package was what was needed, and that is exactly what we have in mind. I endorse his tribute, and the tributes paid by others, to the Armitage Committee, and we shall want to read and consider carefully what my noble friend has said.

I have other points to make and would like to refer to them all, but I think not, in view of the time factor. I hope that noble Lords will excuse me if I do not do so. May I just say something to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek (who is always a delight to listen to, whether he puts his name down before hand or not) on his point about converting railway lines to roads? This has been done in some cases but a general problem with many of the lines which were closed by Beeching is that they serve areas of declining transport need. It would not make economic sense to convert all of them to roads. Nevertheless the noble Lord's point does have merit.

So, my Lords, I ask you to bear with us a little longer to await our further announcement, which will reinforce the great efforts, the unique efforts, which my right honourable friend is making to deal with the too-long neglected problems created by lorries.