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

My Lords, the British Waterways Board's report for 1980 mentioned, in paragraph 39, that a study commissioned by the board in 1979 reported favourably on the prospects for commercial traffic on the River Severn. However, no report or proposals for improving the Severn have been submitted to my right honourable friend.

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for that reply. Are the Government aware of the growing interest of people of all opinions in the importance of these inland waterways, particularly the Severn area, which is in a river basin at the corner of a great industrial area of Britain? Secondly, are the Government cognisant of the fact that the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries commented in 1978 on the hauteur and indifferent manner in which the Government appear to see the Waterways Board's analysis of its balance sheets, social benefit not being taken into account? Finally, would he agree that the co-ordination of this river work is of great importance, and that the social benefit would help to create employment and lessen some of the overcrowding on our roads? Once again, we should then see happy little ships trudging up and down the historic River Severn.

My Lords, I am entirely sympathetic with the noble Lord and with the charming picture that he paints. We are looking at a development on the Sheffield and South Yorkshire navigation improvement scheme, which is going ahead at present. I believe that this will be an important factor in assessing the demand for waterborne freight in the future.

My Lords, can my noble friend say whether, in regard to Sheffield and South Yorkshire waterway, there is full trade union co-operation with the Waterways Board? There was a scheme some years ago for what are called BACAT ships, which could have gone across the North Sea to join the European waterways system, and this was frustrated by trade union opposition at the time.

My Lords, I am not aware of any opposition of that kind. But if my noble friend can give me any evidence I will, of course, follow it up.

My Lords, are the Government aware that there is a strong interest among commercial undertakers, who are wishing to use the River Severn? In supporting my noble friend, may I ask whether the Government would agree that it is highly desirable that the commercial interests plying the waterways should be encouraged, especially in regard to the River Severn?

My Lords, I agree entirely with the noble Baroness. In the report to which the noble Lord, Lord Davies, referred the words are as follows:

"The Board will co-operate with the riparian local authorities, commercial and other bodies to grasp opportunities as they arise".

My Lords, would the noble Lord look to see how much further up the Severn this could be pressed? Would it not be a good thing, with all the interest in industrial archaeology and the origins of the industrial revolution at Ironbridge, and with all the traffic that went downriver from Ironbridge to Bristol and to the rest of the world, to see whether the Severn could be improved right up to the original places at Ironbridge, where all this happened?

My Lords, I should not like with a map to illustrate this to the House. But the report says:

"With a view to ships of 2,000 tons deadweight reaching Gloucester, and vessels up to 1,500 tons reaching Worcester",

which is halfway there.

My Lords, is the picture which the noble Lord painted consistent with the building of a Severn barrage or not?

My Lords, we are going upriver. I think that that is downstream.

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

My Lords, activity is above the levels of the spring of last year and, as the Bank of England's Quarterly Bulletin states,

"The likely prospect is for a modest rise of output in the rest of this year and continuing next year".

The Government, and the majority of outside forecasts, support this view.

My Lords, if the noble Lord would read my Question, he will see that I was referring not to spring but to last autumn. May I ask him two questions arising from the Quarterly Bulletin of the Bank of England? Does he agree with the two following quotations from the review? I can assure him—and I am sure he will accept this—that I am not in any way distorting the meaning, although I have to extract. The first is:

"Since last autumn, however, there appears to have been no increase, although the effect of exceptionally harsh weather around the turn of the year obscured the position. Surveys continue to suggest little early rise in production".

Secondly—and, to me, most importantly—does the noble Lord agree with this extract from the bulletin:

"The weakening of commodity prices is seriously worsening the income and payments position of many developing countries. This, in turn, is tending to reduce their demand for imports from the advanced countries and is thus one of the elements contributing to the general weakness in prospect"?

My Lords, if I may say so with respect, the noble Lord omitted a crucial word from the first quotation which he read. According to my account, it says:

"there appears to have been no further increase",

which is a crucial difference. The important point is that there was a hesitation in the recovery during the winter, partly due to the bad weather, partly due to other causes, but since then the rise in output has resumed. This is why I also read the quotation from the Quarterly Bulletin to which the noble Lord referred, which says:

"The likely prospect is for a modest rise of output in the rest of this year".

This is what we do believe to be the position. In fact, in the three months to May—the May figures were not available when the Quarterly Bulletin was written—manufacturing output increased by 1·7 per cent. compared with the corresponding three months in the previous year.

So far as the noble Lord's second question is concerned—the effect of weakening commodity prices on the economy of the developing countries—I agree that this is a serious matter. Weakening commodity prices are a reflection of recession. As we recover from the recession, and particularly as the United States recovers from the recession, one would expect to see a strengthening in commodity prices, to the benefit of the third world.

My Lords, while noting that the noble Lord appears to agree with the extracts which my noble friend has given from the Bank review, may I ask whether he is now in a position to answer the second part of my noble friend's Question as to what action Her Majesty's Government are taking towards increasing production?

Yes, my Lords. While I do not dissent from what was said in the Bank of England's Quarterly Review, I did bring out the point that it is not a complete story and that since the review was written things have improved. So far as the second half of the noble Lord's Question is concerned, the Government are following a responsible fiscal and monetary policy which will lay the right foundation for a long-term expansion in output and employment. But a heavy responsibility rests also on both sides of industry.

My Lords, may I express my admiration to the noble Lord for his capacity for selecting favourable percentage figures. While I accept that there was an increase over a previous fall last year—something of the order of 1·9 per cent.—is it not also true that, compared with the period when the Government took office, manufacturing production has fallen by 5·6 per cent?

My Lords, the fall in manufacturing production since the Government took office is due to two major factors: first, the world recession and, secondly, the loss of competitiveness in British industry, built up over a long period of time, due to wage increases greatly exceeding the increase in productivity.

My Lords; is the noble Lord aware that some of us are becoming increasingly alarmed by the frequency with which the noble Lord claps his telescope to his blind eye and sees a false dawn on some remote horizon, a dawn which is not seen by the CBI, the City, the bankers, the economists or anybody else? May I suggest very humbly—

No!

Then may I ask the noble Lord whether he will try the other eye and see things as they really are?

My Lords, I was not aware that clapping telescopes to blind eyes was a traditonal way of seeing the dawn. In fact, I would have commended to the noble Lord the use of both of his eyes.

My Lords, since the noble Lord says that so much of our trouble is due to wage increases, could he give us any idea of the amount of money which was borrowed over the last 12 months simply to pay the interest on money which had previously been borrowed and not for putting into new equipment?

My Lords, I am always grateful to the noble Lord for his drawing attention to the profligacy of Governments over a very long period of time in spending much more money then they raise in revenue, thereby producing a large public sector borrowing requirement. As the noble Lord will remember, it has been part of the Government's policy to reduce the public sector borrowing requirement.

My Lords, would not the noble Lord agree that I was not talking about the public sector? Although the present Administration do have to borrow in order to pay the interest on the money which has already been borrowed, I am referring to the private sector. Is it not a fact that too much of the money that is borrowed from the banks does not go into new equipment but simply goes towards paying the interest on money already borrowed?

My Lords, if the noble Lord is talking about the private sector, then the answer to him is that interest rates are unduly high, due in large measure to the tendency of Governments all over the world to spend too much money, which means that they have to borrow too much money.

My Lords, will the noble Lord accept that I did not omit the word "further" from the quotation which I gave? When the Bank says that there has been no further increase since the autumn it is referring to a rise of three-quarters per cent. during the second half of last year. I did quote the full quotation from the Bank's report. But may I ask him in particular to address himself to the second part of the second quotation which I gave, concerning commodity prices? Will the noble Lord note that the Bank reinforces the argument which has come constantly from these Benches: that the weakening of commodity prices and the worsening of the income and payments position of developing countries is in turn tending to reduce their demand for imports from advanced countries? This is the essence—

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, must ask a question, and ask it briefly, and not make a statement at Question Time.

My Lords, if I misheard the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, I am sorry; but, so far as commodity prices are concerned, I dealt with that matter very fully in my reply to his supplementary question.

My Lords, can the noble Lord the Minister say, as he said that interest rates are unduly high, whether the Government or the Bank of England have any plans in mind for reducing them this week?

My Lords, interest rates have been coming down. They have fallen by something like three to four percentage points from the peak. We hope that as borrowing is restrained the fall in interest rates will continue.

Yes, my Lords, but that does not answer my question. My question was whether the Government or the Bank of England were proposing to reduce interest rates this week, as has been suggested is likely to be the case in many organs of the press.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, is wise enough to know that no Minister would ever answer a question of that kind.

My Lords, in view of the—

My Lords, we have now spent 10 minutes on this Question and I think it would be the wish of the House to move on to the next.

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

No, my Lords. We do not believe that the cost of restoring direct BBC broadcasts in Spanish to Spain, which were only one hour a day when they were ended last year, would be justified in relation to the other pressing calls on the limited resources available to finance the BBC External Services.

My Lords, in thanking the noble Lord the Minister for that reply, may I ask him whether he read The Economist for 26th June, in which their Spanish correspondent wrote—and I quote:

"The Argentine Junta invaded the Spanish media far more successfully than it did the Falkland Islands"?

Is the noble Lord aware that the Spanish media carried stories accusing the British of using bacteriological warfare, which we were completely unable to rebut directly in the Spanish language? Is he further aware that news appearing in the Argentine media was considered by some experienced correspondents to be more balanced than that circulated in Spain? In these circumstances, does he not agree that the Government's abolition of direct broadcasting to Spain did the country a great disservice?

My Lords, the bias in Spanish public opinion in favour of Argentina was, for many reasons, predictable. I understand why the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, asks his supplementary question, but noble Lords should know that our embassy in Madrid took every practical step to ensure that the Spanish Government were aware of the true facts. So far as the people of Spain were concerned, since direct broadcasts in Spanish were discontinued at the end of 1981 the BBC has introduced a recorded service for rebroadcasting by local radio stations. During the Falkland Islands crisis the BBC supplied numerous current affairs reports on tape which were used on major Spanish networks.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord the Minister if it is not true that the British Embassy in Madrid has asked for these Spanish service broadcasts to be reinstated?

My Lords, I read countless telegrams from embassies all round the world and, honestly, I cannot remember whether the answer to that question is yes or no. The answer from Her Majesty's Government is this: there are priorities which have to be looked at in allocating the available money to the BBC External Services. Since the cuts were made in October last year—that is to say, the cuts in current expenditure, because in real terms more money is being spent on the BBC World Service because of the additional money being spent on increasing audibility—we have increased BBC External Services broadcasting to Poland, to Latin America, and to the Falkland Islands. That is where we believe the priorities lie at the moment.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord the Minister what would be the cost of restoring the Spanish language service?

My Lords, we have saved £230,000 by ending it, but the rebroadcasting to which I referred in my first supplementary answer is costing some £82,000.

My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether the tapes to which he referred will be an on-going affair, or is it just a temporary means?

On-going, my Lords.

My Lords, in view of the fact that talks about the future of Gibraltar are likely to be resumed, is it not essential that the Spanish people should have an opportunity of listening to the British case in Spanish? Were we not particularly lucky in this case in having Gibraltar and a station there to relay our messages to those people in that part of Spain where there is the greatest and most immediate interest in the subject?

My Lords, of course this is important, and here again I give the same reply as that which I gave to the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock. I do not agree with the premise with which the noble Lord asks his supplementary question, but the House should be aware that a BBC survey of their former one hour a day service showed that, of a sample of 3,000 people questioned, 27 listened daily and 39 listened weekly. The BBC worked that out as being about 500,000 people listening to the one hour service each week. There are really other ways of getting across the message that we want to get across to the people of Spain on any particular issue. There are also other priorities, and I have sought to identify them in the answer I gave to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi.

My Lords, is the noble Lord the Minister aware that the figure he gave of a 3,000 sample is a very large sample indeed? If extrapolated, it makes around 400,000 listeners. That is just as large as the Gallup Polls on which the Government continually rely in this country.

No; my Lords, the BBC worked it out as being 500,000 listeners—rather a better result than the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, calculated.

My Lords—

My Lords, does the noble Lord the Minister recollect that it is about eight months since this subject was debated very seriously in your Lordships' House? In that debate, noble Lords from all parts of the House warned the Government of the very serious consequences of any cuts in the vernacular services, and in particular in the services in Spanish. Is it not ironical that so soon after that debate we should now have cause to regret those cuts and to be suffering from them? May I ask the noble Lord specifically whether he recollects writing on 1st June this year to Mr. Waller, an honourable Member of another place, to say that when the Government decided to end the services last year, this was on the basis that their audiences were limited and were not influential? Is the noble Lord aware that the audiences included the King of Spain and the Leader of the Opposition, regularly? From the figures he has given your Lordships' House, they included more people in Spain than those who listen to Radio 3 in Britain. Finally, may I ask the noble Lord—

My Lords, we have now spent 21 minutes on Questions. Will the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, ask just a short question?

My Lords, does the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, not agree that if the Spanish vernacular service goes, the Spaniards would not listen to the BBC's programmes in English but will listen to the vernacular services put out by the Cubans and by the Soviet Union?

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, said that the Government must surely regret this. Of course, we would like to hear the BBC speaking to every single part of the world 24 hours a day, but this is not possible and this is recognised by the BBC themselves. One has to look at the priorities. When one considers that broadcasts to Poland have been increased by 5½ hours a week since last autumn and those to Latin America by l0½ hours a week, and that the special broadcasts to the Falkland Islands have been started, then I believe we have our priorities right. I hestitate to say that the next priority on the list will be Spain. What about Afghanistan? One has to look to see where the money is going to do the most good. So far as that is concerned, the noble Lord put to me the perfectly fair point, which contradicts a letter I wrote, suggesting that very influential people were listening to the vernacular services. I believe they probably listen also to the 24-hour-a-day World Service of the BBC.

My Lords, may I suggest that we now take the question of the noble Lord, Lord Annan, who has been trying to get in for a long time, and that we then move on to the next Question.

My Lords, the noble Lord said that there are many who understand and who are interested in broadcasting problems who sympathise with him in his desire to establish priorities and who think that he has those priorities right. Would he not agree that, if we have to make a choice, it is more important to keep going the services in English on the World Service, which are listened to by many people abroad, than to try to cover every single country in its own language?

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, who on this occasion brings his experience to say that he thinks that in what is a very difficult matter we are doing the best we can at the present time.

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

My Lords, member states are required to adopt a uniform electoral procedure only if it is unanimously recommended by the Council of Ministers. Consideration is currently being given by the Council to proposals which have been recommended by the European Parliament.

Yes, my Lords. But is the noble Lord aware that my Question is not addressed to the Council of Ministers but to Her Majesty's Government? Will he give the assurance that Her Majesty's Government, like other Governments concerned, will stand by their commitment in the Treaty of Rome to use a common system?

My Lords, the obligation in fact arises from a decision of the Council made in September 1976, and until a uniform system is agreed in the manner which I stated, there is no obligation which we can fulfil.

My Lords, does not my noble friend think that the loose phraseology in the Question itself blurs the message behind it—"some form of proportional representation"? Is he aware that many people would object very much to a system which has passed the test of time and proved to be effective being replaced by something as loose as that? People who want a change really ought to make up their minds what they want before starting to try to replace something which has proved to be right with something that is almost unidentified.

My Lords, I had attempted to give a similar answer without criticising the terms of the Question, but I must say I find myself in sympathy with my noble friend.

My Lords, can the Government say whether they have any real objection here and now to the proposal for proportional representation put up recently by the European Parliament?

My Lords, the consideration of that proposal is with the Council of Ministers, and in fact is with a body of experts who have so far met three times.

My Lords, will the noble Lord at least think very carefully before he allows six different forms of proportional representation to be dignified by the name of a common system?

Yes, my Lords.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the last system used was completely idiotic and seriously distorted the political balance of the European Parliament, to the advantage of the Conservative Party? May I ask the noble Lord to give a plain answer to my Question? If the other Governments agree, are Her Majesty's Government going to stand by their commitment in the Treaty of Rome to accept a common system?

My Lords, it is the habit of this Government, as, I hope, of other Governments, to honour their obligations under treaty; but the obligation is to do something when it is agreed by all the nations, and we are a very long way from that. It is 5½ years since the obligation was constructed for the Parliament to make a suggestion before it came to the Council at all. So we are not moving very fast. It is not just the Government.

My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m. my noble friend the Leader of the House will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement which is to be made in another place on security. This will be followed by my noble friend Lord Elton who will repeat a Statement on bomb incidents in London.

It may also be for the convenience of your Lordships if I announce that it seems very likely indeed that the Report stage of the Criminal Justice Bill will not be completed tomorrow, Wednesday, 21st July. In this event the Report stage will be continued this Friday, 23rd July. The six Motions standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Trefgarne currently on the Order Paper for Friday would then be taken during the course of next week.

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.

moved Amendment No. 1:

Page 1, line 16, at end insert ("; or

(c) proposals for the assumption by the Assembly, in respect of Northern Ireland, of functions performed by local authorities in other parts of the United Kingdom.").

I rise with a slightly ambivalent attitude because I feel that, were local government authority to be devolved, as it were, upon administrative authority—to be devolved upon the Assembly—there would be no possibility of having devolved Government at a later date. But, having said that, I have a great deal of sympathy with my noble friend in asking for this authority to be put into the Bill, subject maybe to a special order in council, because I am afraid that I am pessimistic about the hope that devolved government will arise. Therefore, I am equally against another session at a later date when it will be seen that, while the Assembly may survive, it is not surviving as a devolved government, and we shall then have to go through some other legislative process in order to carry out some form of addition to democracy within Northern Ireland. That is my ambivalence.

I have been a local councillor in county councils where probably no problems arose in the way in which people have referred to them. I was chairman of Fermanagh County Council for 12 years and I thought that my experience might be of some interest to the Committee. Local councils do have problems and have always had problems. When I took over as chairman of the Fermanagh County Council it was a united council and because we had united five small rural councils we arrived at a situation where we had a six-year housing waiting list. At the end of 12 years we had reduced that to one year. We were building at the same rate as people were coming on to the housing list.

People speak about discrimination. Discrimination is bound to occur where there is a shortage of a particular facility which is wanted. The only cure is to provide enough of the facility. However, we did not begin by standing on the hustings and saying that we were going to abolish this, or were going to reconcile this or that. We set about building houses. That was the basic problem of local government. In my county we had amalgamated the whole lot and so we had no problem in setting about building enough houses for the people.

I also had another slight problem, which I mention to give your Lordships an idea about what happens in local councils, because my noble friend Lord Moyola will probably have something to say at a later date about the number of people who are proposed for Parliament. We found it very difficult to get enough people of ability. On one occasion there was a question of proposing a grant to the Armagh Observatory for a planetarium. In the local council I took a great deal of trouble to explain exactly what a planetarium was and I said: "The great thing about this planetarium is that it will be the only one in the whole of Ireland and we shall lead the whole of Ireland". At the next meeting one of my members came along to me and said, "You let me down a bagful. Look at this", and he showed me a cutting from the Irish Times saying:

"New crematorium to be built in Belfast"!

so your Lordships will realise that there are problems.

However, the problem of local government—and I speak especially from the Fermanagh point of view—in 1921 was that the local government of Fermanagh refused to accept the authority of Stormont and kept on sending its minutes and demands for money to Dublin. It was only when the money did not come that it realised that it came from Stormont. We are in such a period of mythology about the past that it is worthwhile quoting from the minutes of 14th February 1936 of the Fermanagh County Council. The first business was proposed by the chairman, who happened to be my father, seconded by Mr. Johnny MacLachlin, and it was that a motion of condolence to be sent to King Edward VIII on the passing of King George V. It was passed by the council standing unanimously. Significantly enough, the next business proposed by Johnny MacLachlin, a republican nationalist or whatever he was, seconded by a very strong Unionist, was that a vote of condolence be sent to Eamon De Valéra on the untimely passing of his son.

In the present state it is unthinkable that that sort of thing could get through in local government. That is how far we have deteriorated in the last 12 years. If we have an Assembly of the size proposed, I believe that there is quite a chance that that sort of relationship can be established. But do not let anyone think—as has been said—that the relationship between ourselves and the Opposition (and I am a unionist absolutely) was in an aggressive or non-friendly atmosphere. It was not that way at all. That must be put right and we must convince people—especially in the Northern Ireland Office—that there was an extremely friendly relationship over a very large area and that this will return.

But an election is destined for October. That will be followed by a further election for the lower House—the House of Commons—18 months later. That election will be an endorsement or a contradiction. It may establish the validity of those people who are elected to the Assembly; more probably, it will destroy their validity, so that any room for compromise that they may have will be completely and absolutely destroyed. That is the basis of my opposition to this.

I believe that the only way in which to move is to have a general election here, followed immediately by a political initiative, and then it would have some hope because it would have at least four years in which to operate. But I am quite convinced that, if the Assembly cannot have powers devolved upon it, some other method will have to be found. Therefore, I believe that some way should be found within this Bill to enable the Secretary of State, as it were, in extremis, to be able to devolve administrative powers—not legislative and executive powers—on that Assembly.

It has been very interesting to hear the views of the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, with his very wide experience. As I said on Second Reading, I believe that 60 years ago much closer harmonisation of the customs, laws and institutions of Northern Ireland with those of the rest of the United Kingdom would have been good for Northern Ireland and good for the United Kingdom as a whole. Despite the wrong turning taken by the Province—or, to be more accurate, foisted upon the Province at that time—I think that it would still be good for Northern Ireland if greater harmonisation were aimed at, even at this late stage in which we find ourselves today.

Apart from other considerations, I think that it would make the Province less inward-looking than it tends to be. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that most of the people of Ulster would welcome, or at any rate accept, such moves; or at the very least that they could be fairly easily persuaded to accept them. Fortunately, this amendment is drafted in such a way as to obviate reliance upon such guesswork or circumstantial evidence, because, unless 70 per cent. of the Assembly were to vote in favour of the Assembly taking over local government functions, or unless such smaller percentage as the Secretary of State believed to represent a wide cross-community support so voted, and unless, in addition, both Houses of Parliament agreed, by passing the relevant orders, the Assembly could not involve itself in local government matters. Surely these are safeguards enough.

Finally, I think it is worth mentioning that this amendment would go some way, albeit by a circuitous route, to help the Government fulfil the promises made in their 1979 election manifesto.

I have listened with great interest to the views of my two noble friends and the views of the noble Lord, Lord Monson, as to whether the Assembly should be able to assume functions which are performed by local government in Great Britain. However, I must remind the Committee that this is, of course, rather a separate issue from the question of whether more powers should be granted to the existing local councils in Northern Ireland, and we must make that distinction clear in our minds.

As I explained on Second Reading, the Bill is designed to form a framework within which the Assembly's main initial task will be to see whether it wishes to formulate proposals for full or partial devolution. I think that it will be a considerable task and will be quite enough work for the Assembly to be going on with in its own right. To suggest that it might also formulate proposals for the assumption of responsibilities exercised by local authorities in Great Britain would surely be a diversion from this critical task. An even bigger diversion would be the actual transfer of these responsibilities to the Assembly before there was the establishment of a Northern Ireland administration, because, as we all know, it is in the act of trying to make such an establishment that it will be seen whether the necessary cross-community support can be achieved. As we stated in paragraphs 38 to 44 of the White Paper, it is for the Assembly to recommend to the Secretary of State what form any devolved administration would take and how devolved powers should be exercised. For this purpose, the Bill complements the Constitution Act 1973, in that it allows for the devolution of executive and legislative powers in respect of the transferred matters which are there defined.

In shorthand, the transferred matters are broadly matters now conducted by the various Northern Ireland departments. The Government believe that the best solution to the problems in Northern Ireland is a devolved administration acceptable to both sides of the community and to be responsible to a locally elected Assembly.

I know that my noble friend Lord Ellenborough complained that we were treating Northern Ireland as if it were at arm's length by comparison with Scotland and Wales. He was echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Monson, when the noble Lord sought much closer harmonisation with procedures in Great Britain. But if the noble Lords will do me the kindness of referring back to my attempts to explain this difficulty at Second Reading, they will see that the great difficulty is that in our democratic system politics depend on party, and party structures in Northern Ireland are wholly different from party structures in Great Britain and do not even exchange power at the same time as they do as the result of British general elections. There is no conceivable scenario where one could have a Labour Secretary of State for Scotland during the tenure of office of a Conservative Prime Minister in Britain.

The noble Lord, Lord Monson, said that he thought that many people in Northern Ireland would be happier with closer harmonisation with the system of local government in Great Britain. Some unionists would be happier, but no nationalists would be, and unionists would hardly be likely to be happy if we were proposing that nationalists could have much closer harmonisation with a system of local government that pertains in the Irish Republic. This is simply to state the facts of life as we find them in Northern Ireland.

It therefore seems to us incumbent on the people of Northern Ireland and their representatives to try to work out within our broad framework—which is, of course, a unionist framework—what forms of accommodation to the nationalist and unionist divide, the Catholic or Protestant divide, or the majority or minority divide, according to how you define it, would be most appropriate in order to get away from these fundamental and largely irreconcilable differences, and for some input into the bread and butter issues to be made by the people of the Province.

It is therefore for the Assembly, once a devolved administration has been established, to consider the points made by the three noble Lords who have spoken. It would be possible for them to consider whether the assumption by the Assembly of some or all local authority-type powers would be desirable. It would of course be perfectly free to do this once it had assumed devolved powers, because local government is a transferred matter.

It is not quite so simple as that, because it might be that the Assembly would make decisions about local powers which involved electoral changes or habits, and electoral changes are not a transferred matter, so the Assembly would have to come to the British Government and the British Parliament with its proposals; and those proposals might need legislative changes which are outside the scope of the present Bill. But the whole tenor of this policy is to be as flexible as possible and as adaptive as possible to the peculiar and special circumstances that we find in Northern Ireland. Certainly I, for one, would not wish to discourage the Assembly from looking at the points that the noble Lords have made.

We have considered carefully the arguments for a single tier of regional government comparable with that of a regional council in Great Britain. The noble Lord, Lord Monson, from the Cross-Benches strayed into the domestic arguments or domestic issues of the Conservative Party. I would remind the noble Lord that the manifesto to which he drew my attention uses the phrase, "in the absence of devolved government". Indeed, at an earlier stage in opposition, my late and much missed right honourable friend Mr. Airey Neave suggested that a regional council might be a form of intermediary stage before a fully devolved government.

But, having looked at the matter most carefully, we remain of the view that in fact the thing to aim for is the restoration of devolved government, in that it holds out the best prospects for peace and stability in Northern Ireland. It also seems to us only honourable that, after nearly ten years of direct rule, we should at least offer the chance to the people of Northern Ireland and their elected representatives to take back a form of government which was by no means wholly to be criticised—there were many excellences in the Stormont system—and which, after all, constitutes the political folk memory of the Province, if I may put it that way. We can all go back to 1921 and say that this or that aspect of the settlement was desirable or undesirable, but the fact of the matter is that, for over 50 years, Northern Ireland experienced a form of government which it seems to us only our duty at least to offer back to them.

In this view we are strengthened by the fact that devolved government is the preferred option of the major Northern Ireland political parties. It is clear to us that, in terms of broad cross-community support, which the Bill has made it quite clear is a sine qua non of any stable system in Northern Ireland, a devolutionary system is more acceptable than the setting up of a super-regional council. In view of these remarks, which are only statements of the realities of Northern Ireland, I hope that my noble friend will not seek to press his amendment.

I wonder whether the noble Earl would be patient with us, because I recall in the Second Reading debate that he made a great deal of the forthcoming Committee stage. Indeed at col. 953 he talked of how important it was for the House to have a proper opportunity to consider the details of the Bill in Committee, and said that he would allow sufficient time for that preparation to be made. It seems to me that he has not fully replied to the support of this amendment, which is concerned about the totally unsatisfactory condition of local government at present in Northern Ireland.

It is well understood that since 1972, when the Macrory reforms came into operation, there have been 26 district councils, which replaced a larger number of urban and rural district councils. They have mostly quite minor functions, but there are no longer any county or county boroughs above them, and Stormont has gone. Indeed, ever since the introduction of these district councils they have been in a kind of limbo because the dissolution of Stormont in effect decapitated the whole structure, or hierarchy, of local government.

Therefore, all the major functions for which local government in this country is responsible, including planning, health, education, roads and housing in varying degrees, have in Ireland no elected authority to answer to the voters. I do not doubt that one group who are well satisfied with that arrangement are the civil servants who are quietly, in a sense, usurping the functions of democratically elected councillors.

The point I cannot understand about what the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, said is that Clause 1 of this Bill makes provision for complete or partial transfer of a whole range of functions. He said that, if these were completely transferred, then, in effect, you would also transfer with them the substance of local government authority and supervision. But suppose this new Assembly, daunted by the task of taking back all of these powers or the greater part of them, could turn its attention instead to some more modest and manageable set of functions to do with the local government administration. Instead of trying to create in one act of magic a kind of mini-Westminster at Belfast, this at least is an option.

I want to put strongly to the noble Earl that what is proposed in these amendments subtracts nothing from the Bill. They indeed add something for the Assembly, which is that they add a choice, an additional option to those available under Clause 1, for the Assembly to turn its attention to a useful, manageable range of functions which could be conducted from Belfast, subject to exactly the same checking mechanism of the approval of the Secretary of State and of both Houses of Parliament.

May I therefore ask the noble Earl, in considering this, does he not agree that, if the Assembly, for some months or a year or two fails to take advantage of the opportunities we are providing of taking over these large functions, we shall be left with a wholly unsatisfactory arrangement for local government in the whole of the Six Counties?

I should first like to approach the matter before us from the point of view of remarks made about local councillors in Northern Ireland. I should like also, as a member of the Macrory Committee, which reviewed local government in Northern Ireland, to put forward a point of view expressed by that committee in reply to some remarks that have already been made. As far as local government representatives are concerned, at present in Northern Ireland, there are many committed, dedicated persons in local government in Northern Ireland anxious to do a particular job. Many of them have the qualities, the capabilities, and the intelligence, if that is what is required, to aspire to be members of the Assembly or even to be Members of Parliament. Indeed, I think some could play an adequate part in this House.

However, the matters concerning the present role of local government in Northern Ireland, as has been said, largely arise because of the decapitation of the system by the removal of the Stormont Administration. Many of those local government representatives are now playing a very important role in statutory bodies such as the Housing Executive and others in connection with Northern Ireland, and are playing that role across the community divide in Northern Ireland. The amendment refers to the,

"functions performed by local authorities in other parts of the United Kingdom",

and that was adequately dealt with by the Minister. However, because the Macrory Report has been mentioned, I wish to give some indication of what that report indicated. The noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, went into the history of local government in Northern Ireland. There has been a history of examinations, reviews and inquiries into the operation of local government in Northern Ireland, and the Macrory Report was established as a major review of local government there. I agree that it was established some 12 years ago. The late Lord Faulkner, then Mr. Brian Faulkner, the Minister of Development, in setting up that major review—I happened to be a member of that body—said on the very day it was established:

"I want today to put the Government's priorities before you to give perspective to the work ahead of you. Briefly, they are houses, jobs and political stability. In wishing you well in your deliberations, I would like to give you one or two guidelines. Remember that this is Ulster, for better as well as for worse. It is not England, though we are an integral part of the United Kingdom. It is not the Irish Republic, though we are geographically and climatically a part of Ireland".

He went on to deal with the population and the rate of evaluation and so on, putting those subjects in perspective, and added:

"Obviously, beyond the criteria mentioned and the additional requirements to ensure proper public control at the centre and reasonable local involvement at the grass roots level, our Regional Parliament can clearly cover the first point. As to the people having their say in their own locality, I am asking you to explore and evaluate the various possibilities and traditions in local government".

In disagreeing with the amendment, I must say from this Bench that I do not think it would contribute one iota at this stage to resolving the problems of jobs, housing or political stability in Northern Ireland. That major review, though it was 12 years ago, indicated that two levels are required in Northern Ireland; an elected regional government as proposed in the Bill, an Assembly, and the present arrangement of the 26 elected district councils.

The proposal in the Bill would not in any way impair the future work of local authorities because I believe that the Assembly, if it can be got under way—with its proposals for devolving power and rolling devolution—will be able to examine the role and functions of local government. And if it so happens that the Assembly can agree on further powers to be given to the local authorities, those powers can be properly put forward in the form of a proposal to be adopted by both Houses of Parliament. Therefore, from these Benches—because of the history of local government in Northern Ireland and because of its present functioning—I do not believe the amendment would contribute one iota to resolving the position, and therefore we cannot support it; and I say that particularly as one coming from Northern Ireland.

I wish to associate myself—and I think I can persuade my fellow Members on this Bench to agree—with what the noble Lord, Lord Blease, said. The Macrory Report did some- thing which very much had to be done at the time. It may well be that local government now could be introduced and that it would be much better than it was before; but I think a great many people would be totally suspicious of it, which would be introducing a complication at this stage which, as Lord Blease said, would have no effect whatever on the success or otherwise of the Assembly. Therefore, we shall support the Government, if the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, as I think he means to, resists the amendment.

I have two questions to put to the Minister, and I am grateful to him for explaining the subtleties of the Conservative election manifesto. If devolution fails to get off the ground as a result of lack of support for the devolution proposals, may I ask the noble Earl to say whether the proposals in the manifesto will then be implemented as a second best, as it were?

Secondly, when he says that the whole of the Nationalist population would oppose the restoration of local government—as indeed the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, intimated—may I ask whether he would not agree (and would not Lord Donaldson agree?) that the safeguards in Clauses 1 and 2 of the Bill—that is, the 70 per cent. provisions, the necessity for the Secretary of State to give a guarantee of widespread support and the necessity for Parliament to approve the making of any such order—would be a safeguard against that happening?

Going in reverse order, perhaps I may take first the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Monson. The central problem in Northern Ireland, as he is aware, is how, given the composition of the populations in Northern Ireland and the reflection of that composition in political terms, do you get the necessary cross-community support for any proposals? The fact of the matter is that there is a greater chance of getting cross-community support within a structure of devolved government than there is outside it. I do not like having to say to the Committee that noble Lords must take my word for anything, but most people who know Northern Ireland would acknowledge that that is the case.

The noble Lord, Lord Monson, also asked what would happen if powers were not devolved, either in whole or partially, as the Bill suggests they might be. As I tried to make clear on Second Reading, direct rule is not affected by the Bill unless the Assembly makes proposals which are accepted by the Government and Parliament of the United Kingdom; so the direct rule which has been called everyone's second best option would of course continue in those circumstances. I see this Bill as a kind of Direct Rule (Improvement) Bill. It seems to me to be only right that within a system of direct rule, which is satisfactory in many ways and unsatisfactory in others, there should be at least the chance for people to take back the form of government which they have experienced, and they do not have experience of the forms of government suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross, in quite the same way.

Coming to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, with great respect to him, he did not take part in the Second Reading debate, and the points he raised were somewhat Second Reading points. They cut at the issue of why Northern Ireland is not governable along the same lines as the rest of the United Kingdom. That argument was followed in considerable depth and detail on Second Reading by many noble Lords in all parts of the House, and I think it would be wearisome for the Committee if I tried to point out what seem to me to be the obvious facts of life about Northern Ireland at this stage.

However, I have some comfort for the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross. Because the Government have designed the Bill to be as flexible as possible, so that the Assembly would have considerable flexibilities in what it could propose to the Government and Parliament of the United Kingdom, and considerable flexibilities as to on what it might seek cross-community support, there is no reason why greater powers for local government could not be discussed by the Assembly. I simply think it more appropriate for the Assembly to come forward to us with proposals, rather than for us to impose on it proposals which it might be impossible for it to wear.

Finally I should like to thank the noble Lords, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge and Lord Blease, for their support. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, would acquit me of any disrespect in this regard if I thank in particular the noble Lord, Lord Blease, who has the experience which arises from coming from Northern Ireland, as well as the experience of having served on the Macrory Commission.

I should like to say, briefly, that from these Benches we support what has been said by the noble Lords, Lord Blease and Lord Donaldson, in support of the Government. We oppose the amendment.

I do not want to detain your Lordships prior to a very important Statement being repeated, but I would say that there are tremendous anomalies here. For instance, if on a housing estate there is in the road a hole filled with litter, that is for central Government, and therefore Westminster, to deal with. If the hole is in the pavement, that is for the Housing Executive to deal with, and if there is a hole in both the road and the pavement, then there is an argument.

I realise that your Lordships wish fairly soon to hear two important Statements, but perhaps the Committee will bear with me if I say a few words in thanking noble Lords, who have taken part in the debate on the amendment. I was very interested in the remarks of my noble friend Lord Brookeborough, who speaks with very great experience; his recollections of local government in Northern Ireland were most interesting. I should like to say more, but what I find extraordinary is that my noble friend Lord Gowrie calls this a Direct Rule (Improvement) Bill. Surely my amendment would merely improve the situation. He said that my proposal in the amendment was a diversion. I would call it a preliminary step, an additional option.

He will keep on talking about the two communities, with their separate identities. We all know about that. But if they are not going to become more involved in the United Kingdom as a whole, Ulster might as well give up. I think that I should be going quite against the mood of the Committee if I were to take the matter any further. Therefore, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

This seems to be an appropriate moment after 3.30. I beg to move that the House do now resume.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. The Statement is as follows:

"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a brief Statement on a security matter.

"On 15th July Geoffrey Arthur Prime was charged with an offence under Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1911. Mr. Prime joined the staff of Government Communications Headquarters in 1968 after service in the Royal Air Force, and resigned in September 1977. He has not been employed in the public service since that time.

Any charge under Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act is of course serious and must give rise to concern. The House will understand, however, that until trial proceedings are completed I cannot, for obvious reasons, make any Statement or answer questions on this case or on related matters.

"Any Security issues that arise will be referred as necessary to the Security Commission in accordance with the arrangements described to the House by my predecessors on 23rd January 1964 (col. 1271) and on 10th May 1965 (col. 33).

"The House will naturally be concerned to know whether any other persons are likely to be charged in this connection. Absolute certainty is never possible in these flatters. I can only say that, if evidence against other persons were to emerge, it would be referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions who, after consultation with my right honourable and learned friend the Attorney-General, would consider whether to bring charges.

"Until the outcome of the proceedings is known, there is nothing that I can add to what I have said". My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal for repeating to us the Prime Minister's Statement. While I fully understand that matters relating to, or impinging upon, the proceedings against the man named in the Prime Minister's Statement cannot be pursued before the proceedings have been concluded, may I ask whether the noble Baroness is able to make a statement on the considerable reports which appeared in the SundayTimes, and other newspapers, last weekend relating to the alleged concern among current and former employees at Government Communications Headquarters in Cheltenham about security conditions there? There is, I believe, considerable concern about this matter in the country.

Of course it may be that the reports have no foundation. However, does the noble Baroness agree with what was said in the document issued by the Government in May? It was entitled, Statement on the Recommendations of the Security Commission, and stated:

"any vulnerability to access by hostile intelligence services of material stored in computers or word processors could be a major disaster to this country, and in particular to the efficacy of those involved in secret intelligence work".

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement. Clearly this is a serious matter, perhaps a very serious matter, and it is obvious that unless it is satisfactorily cleared up—and fairly soon—it might seriously affect our relations with the United States. However, it is now sub judice, and I quite understand that the Government cannot say anything more about it at the present stage. There is only one question that I should like to ask. I gather that until the trial proceedings have been completed, no further statements can be made or questions answered, but can the noble Baroness tell us when the trial proceedings are likely to be completed? Can she say in particular whether they are likely to be completed before the beginning of the Summer Recess?

My Lords, I should like to thank both the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, and the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, for the way that they have received the Statement. With regard to the two questions that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, asked me, I would say that I think it is not wise to comment on newspaper reports that have appeared on this case. But I should like to say that if any former employee has specific evidence of inadequate security, he should of course draw it to the attention of GCHQ.

With regard to the noble and learned Lord's second point, about computer security, the fact is that in its recent report, The Security Procedures and Practices in the Public Service, the Security Commission stated that it was impressed by the thoroughness of the physical security precautions taken to deny unauthorised access to computer installations and to prevent the use of terminals by unauthorised persons. The commission nonetheless considered that the potential threat to security posed by electronic information processing needed evaluating at a senior level. That recommendation has been implemented.

I cannot answer the second question of the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn. At this point I do not have any information about it.

My Lords, will not the noble Baroness agree that there is a great danger of this country becoming extremely complacent about its security? I have in mind, for example, the fact that not long ago investigative journalists were prosecuted at the Old Bailey—I am referring to the New Statesman case—for revealing the insecurity and the unsatisfactory nature of some of our security services. It seems to me that investigative journalists in this country are in far greater danger of being prosecuted than are people engaged in espionage.

My Lords, I should like to assure the whole House that the Government are in no way complacent about security matters. Indeed, it is only last May that the White Paper on the Security Commission was published, and the Government have accepted all its recommendations.

My Lords, are the Government aware that this extremely delicate institution has been the subject of considerable investigation by the BBC, in particular by "Panorama" and that many people, including myself, were really scandalised by a "Panorama" broadcast some months ago which gave a great deal of information about the institution, its whereabouts and the people who worked there? Will the Government also recall that a book was written by Phillip Agee, an American communist, who has since been expelled from this country, who came over here especially in order to throw light—very desirable from the Soviet point of view—upon the workings of these institutions? And would it not be desirable to pass legislation to prevent books and other publications, including those by organisations other than the media, going into this sort of thing in real detail, to the detriment of national security?

My Lords, I think this is a matter upon which I would not wish to comment at all at this stage. I think that what is important is that we have recently had the White Paper on the Security Commission. Other matters, and other publications by private individuals, or indeed programmes from the BBC, are not matters on which I should like to comment at this time.

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 Home Secretary. The Statement is as follows:

"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a Statement.

"I regret to have to inform the House that two bombs have exploded in London today.

"At 10.43 this morning in Hyde Park a bomb concealed in a car exploded as a mounted squadron of The Queen's Household Cavalry were passing on their way to guard duty. The latest information I have is that three soldiers were killed and a further number were injured, two of them very seriously. The explosion was large and created damage over a significant area. In all 22 people, including soldiers, were taken in ambulances to three hospitals. I understand that some more people were injured but not seriously enough to require hospital treatment. Several horses were killed directly or have had to be destroyed.

"Just before 1 p.m. a further bomb exploded under the bandstand south of the zoo in Regent's Park. The band of the Royal Green Jackets were playing at the time. The latest information I have is that six people were killed and 25 injured.

"I understand that the Provisional IRA have in a telephone call to the BBC in Belfast admitted responsibility for the explosion in Hyde Park.

"I know that I can speak for the whole House in expressing the deepest sympathy for the relatives of the victims of these despicable attacks."

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

My Lords, the House is deeply grateful to the noble Lord the Minister for repeating a Statement made in another place. We on these Benches join in expressing our revulsion at these cowardly and barbaric acts, which give a new and obscene twist to modern terrorism. There is no language strong enough to use in their condemnation. May we, too, express our deepest sympathy with the families of those who have lost their lives and with those who have suffered injury; as well, indeed, as expressing our gratitude and admiration for the courage and the competence of those who have taken part in rescue operations. May I also register our anxious hope that those who have perpetrated these deeds will soon be brought to answer for their outrages.

My Lords, I have four short questions to ask of the noble Lord the Minister. First, is there any information at this stage as to whether either or both the bombs concerned were detonated by remote control? Secondly, is it the case, as has indeed been reported on the wireless, that unexploded bombs have been found; and, if this is the case, has it been possible to dismantle them with a view to forensic examination? Thirdly, so far as the danger of car bombs is concerned, is the Minister satisfied that everything possible is done by vigorous and restrictive supervision of parking to protect the most obvious military targets in the London area? Lastly, whereas up to today there had been a lull of some nine months since the last series of similar outrages, is the Minister satisfied that everything possible is done and will be done to ensure the active co-operation and the commitment of the public at large to their most sensitive vigilance in so far as reporting any suspicious circumstance is concerned? Is there not a case for a further substantial campaign for public education?

My Lords, we, too, should like to thank the noble Lord the Minister for repeating this Statement about these tragic events. I am sure I speak for all my noble friends in recording shock, horror and sorrow: shock that such things can happen in this day and age, involving all those who live or work in London more or less closely; horror that men can seek to advance their ends by inflicting such suffering on their fellows, and horror that anyone should be so filled with hatred as to deceive himself that such action can be anything but counter-productive; and sorrow—profound sorrow—at the deaths and the injuries. We certainly join in extending our most sincere sympathy to those who have suffered, and to their relatives and friends. This is not a time for party politics. Security measures must once again be urgently reviewed, and I am sure they will be so reviewed. I think I can to advantage add no more.

My Lords, I am grateful to the two noble Lords for their reception of this Statement. Your Lordships will understand that I have little further information that I can give at this stage, though it would seem from common sense clear that some sort of remote control was necessary for the explosions to take place. I would not wish to give away anything about defensive measures being taken, but I heartily endorse the acute need for the public to be aware of the necessity to spot anything suspicious, and not to be shy or think it is not a matter with which to trouble the police. If they see anything which makes them doubt, then they should report it.

My Lords, I feel it would be inappropriate, coming from Northern Ireland and dealing with Northern Ireland matters today, if I did not express (and while I cannot claim to be a representative of Northern Ireland, I know I represent the views of the people of Northern Ireland) our absolute horror at what has happened. I would say to the Government, bearing in mind the words of the Minister of Defence, Mr. Collins, in which he expressed the view that it was unreasonable to expect security cooperation if there was not political co-operation, that they must pursue the terrorists in Dublin to the absolute maximum. But, my Lords, the people who have been killed have been in our Province and have defended us, so we feel very strongly about it indeed.

My Lords, I think civilised people of every religion and in every country in the world will see that these deeds are not merely criminal but wicked.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he would not agree that this is the second attack on British servicemen in London within a relatively short space of time, and that this demonstrates the need for the various measures which have been taken by the present and previous Governments to deal with the situation, particularly the Prevention of Terrorism Act? May I ask the noble Lord whether he would agree that, although we have all, I think, been seriously concerned about developments in the last few days, this demonstrates the real peril so far as the people of this country are concerned, and, indeed, the need to support the police in the measures that they are taking to deal with it?

My Lords, I entirely agree with the noble Lord that we need a framework of law within which the police force can, with the vigilant support of the public, counteract this despicable conduct.

moved Amendment No. 3:

Page 2, line 30, after (" unless ") insert ("(a)").

I make no complaint that the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, mildly rebuked me for not taking part in the Second Reading debate. I should have apologised to the Committee that I was unable to be present that day. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ellenborough, for drawing my attention to this Bill, which I admit would otherwise perhaps have escaped my notice. I must ask the indulgence of the Committee because I have no special qualifications in this matter. But I have applied myself to reading in Hansard the proceedings in this House and in the other place.

I am struck that many of those who have the most extensive knowledge, the most direct experience, of politics in Ulster are among the most sceptical about the merits of this Bill and I fear about the prospects of that success which we all wish the Government if it goes ahead in this form. The delicate matter that this Bill for one reason or another departs from the apparent intention of the Conservative Party, as expressed in its election manifesto in 1979, reinforces the general arguments for a referendum among the population who will be affected.

I must tell the Committee that, speaking personally—and directly to the Social Democratic Benches—I should be much happier if there were an amendment down to support a time limit of one year or up to three years to this ingenious constitutional experiment such as was moved by the Social Democrats in the other place. From reading over the debates and other background material, it is clear that there is a great deal of debate and argument about the precise state of public opinion in Northern Ireland on this and on other matters.

No one seems to doubt that the political leaders from Ulster and the media are almost unanimous in their opposition to this Bill. I would say that this unpromising circumstance need not be fatal to ultimate success if sufficient support for this Bill and its implementation can be enlisted and demonstrated from ordinary people. I must say, as a Londoner unfamiliar with the Irish scene, that, when I come to look at opinion polls, I find them very difficult indeed to understand. Their findings are often contradictory and ambiguous. I believe the reason is partly that people—especially Irish people—sometimes mean different things by the same words when embodied in these electoral polling questions.

I have been agreeably astonished to discover that we are not faced in Northern Ireland—as is widely popularly imagined over here—simply by two completely monolithic and polarised blocks to be characterised as Protestants and Catholics. Some Catholics support, or seem to vote for in referenda, the continuation of direct rule which they support sometimes even more fervently than some Protestants, though clearly for slightly different reasons.

It is all very well for the noble Earl and other Ministers to dismiss direct rule as everybody's second choice: it keeps on coming back to me that there might be a preference for an outcome that is tolerated by a large number of people rather than for one which is regarded with abhorrence by a significant proportion of the population. You find in these expressions of public opinion that so-called Protestants, even card-carrying unionists, are divided, some of them believing in complete integration, others in a whole range of different forms of devolution, whether administrative, executive, legislative or some form of power sharing. Even those who favour legislative devolution disagree about its purposes and likely outcome. May unionists will support legislative devolution because they think they are interposing a stronger barrier against a united Ireland, while others might support a Belfast parliament as a stepping-stone to further constitutional arrangements with Eire.

In the Second Reading debate (at column 944 of Hansard) the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, quoted a hopeful poinion poll from the Irish Times as showing that three out of four in the Province favour this Bill. The noble Baroness—quite rightly—contrasted this constructive attitude of the populace compared with the less constructive attitude of Northern Ireland's political leaders. This idea of a referendum gives us an opportunity to educate the politicians. If a referendum would show that larger numbers of ordinary people, real people were interested in these kinds of developments and shared the aspirations of the noble Earl and the other Ministers, then it might have an influence on the rather unalluring attitudes expressed by at least some of the elected representatives of Northern Ireland in the other place. It seems to me that, when this Bill moves forward and when progress becomes difficult under Clause 1 regarding the assumption of powers, there might be a stronger perseverance and determination to succeed if the people were given an opportunity to declare their commitment for this attempt in a referendum.

I would say, on the example of the EEC referendum, which is a good one to reconsider, that that experience suggested to me two lessons. In the first place, it showed that in a campaign of two or three weeks it was possible to get a grand debate going in the press and the media and at public meetings. That was educational and helpful in many ways. Secondly, I may say that the favourable vote for the EEC has led even opponents of that outcome such as myself to stay with the commitment, even when the going in Brussels has got as rough as some of us predicted at that time. It shares a sense of perseverance and commitment that might make all the difference to the success of this measure.

On Third Reading in another place, at col. 831, the Secretary of State acknowledged sadly that there was no great support for it. Yet in our Second Reading here the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, said that for all the opposition by party leaders and the media—and I quote from col. 952—on the question of Northern Ireland,

"people are queueing up to get into the Assembly."

I welcome that indication of enthusiasm for this measure and I urge the noble Earl to consider the merits of a referendum. I should like a referendum before the Bill comes into operation, because if a referendum demonstrated that this ingenious experiment had widespread support, then it seems to me it would encourage many people to overcome their doubts of a kind that were expressed by, among others, the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, and the noble Lords, Lord O'Neill of the Maine and Lord Moyola, during our Second Reading Debate.

So I would say to the Minister: if he believes there is a new readiness to participate in constructive progress, a referendum could draw these new elements of which he speaks into the arena on the side of the Bill. It seems to me we might then be more hopeful that the resulting campaign of education by referendum would make some impact on the still, I fear, confused and bewildered thinking in Northern Ireland and of our compatriots, our fellow countrymen in Northern Ireland, whose true interests are united by far more than divides them.

It may well be that other noble Lords wish to come in on this issue of a referendum, and therefore I shall not make any references to that before your Lordships have said whatever you wish to say. I would intervene at this point only to try to clear up what I believe is a deep and critical misapprehension in the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross. I think the noble Lord is of the view that the Government are putting forward, as it were, a novel and ingenious constitutional solution or proposal to try to solve political problems in Northern Ireland. It is not quite like that. As I said on Second Reading—and the noble Lord who has again, with respect to him, made a Second Reading point, must therefore forgive me if I repeat my Second Reading point—all policy in respect of Northern Ireland must ground itself in the realities of Northern Ireland, its history and demography. That means considerable humility and modest expectation for policy. We are not here unveiling the Mark IV or Mark V model for a solution to the Northern Ireland issue; we are offering the people of Northern Ireand themselves the opportunity of devising political structures to cope with the demands and the realities of their situation, and to cope—this is equally important—with the demands and the realities of the sovereign Parliament at Westminster.

I did not dismiss direct rule. My betting, for what it is worth, is that for the foreseeable future direct rule in whole or in part will remain the form of government for Northern Ireland. When I talked about it being a second-best solution, that was not dismissive. In a society as polarised politically as Northern Ireland, for everybody to have a second best is a considerable commendation of the system. It is simply that the Government feel that after 10 years of direct rule some of the disadvantages of direct rule which I felt obliged to spell out at Second Reading should be made clear, and that the people of Northern Ireland and their representatives should have a chance to return to a form of government of which they have experience and which in some ways was seen to have suited them.

Really, that is all that we are doing. We are putting on offer a set of proposals to the people of Northern Ireland which they can take up or refuse, as may be. If, to quote the words of the noble Lord, this is regarded "with abhorrence" by them, then of course they will not take up the offer. Nevertheless, in making the offer we do have the valuable secondary effect of creating simultaneously a focus for some legitimate political activity in Northern Ireland, which focus has been denied to the people for nearly 10 years. The noble Lord must get the essentials of the policy right before he condemns the details.

If we had more time available I should like to try to defend my noble friend Lord Harris of High Cross against some of the noble Earl's strictures because, whatever he says, I contend there are some quite novel features in the Bill we have before us. However, I do not want to waste too much of the Committee's time, and therefore I simply want to say that I gladly support the noble Lord, Lord Ellenborough, in his desire that the Ulster people should be allowed the same choice as the Scots and the Welsh people in shaping their own destiny. After all, to deny them that choice is surely effectivelytreatingthem rather like second-class citizens; it suggests they are too immature to be able to decide their own future.

My only reservation about this amendment is that I believe the noble Lord, Lord Ellenborough, should have gone further, and that the amendment should have been so drawn as to ensure that the referendum takes place before the Assembly is set up, at the very substantial cost to the taxpayer of three-quarters of a million poinds, and not afterwards. Furthermore, I believe the referendum should have been phrased in such a way as to ask the Northern Ireland electorate to list all the five or six well-known options for the future of the Province in order of preference—for example, total integration, continuation of direct rule, devolution, absorption into the Irish Republic and so on.

As full integration appears to be the second choice of most people, according to public opinion polls—and, of course, I accept my noble friend's strictures on opinion polls; naturally one cannot rely on them totally—it seems to me quite possible that full integration would have come out on top under this system. If I may stick out my neck and quote figures, since others have done so, let us remember that full integration, harmonisation, appears to be acceptable at least, if not necessarily welcome, to no less than 74 per cent. of the population. Of course, it will be argued that the holding of a referendum would delay matters for a few extra months: but what of it? Why the seemingly unnecessary haste?

In this connection I do not believe that I can have been the only member of either House of Parliament, or indeed the only member of the general public, if a letter published in yesterday's Daily Telegraph is any guide, to have been taken aback—I put it no stronger than that—by a statement said to have been made by the Secretary of State last Wednesday, which was reported in last Thursday's Times. The Secretary of State is alleged to have told the press that elections to the new 78-seat Assembly will take place on 20th October—not will hopefully take place, or will with luck take place, but will take place.

Admittedly, this Bill has passed all its stages in the House of Commons, notwithstanding that some of the stages were truncated, but at the time when this statement was alleged to have been made the Bill had received only its Second Reading in your Lordships' House. We are not a rubber-stamp and there is no guarantee, nor should there ever be any guarantee, that the will of the Government will automatically be done. We have a duty to scrutinise and occasionally to reject. I do not suppose for a moment that we shall reject on this occasion, but, theoretically, we have the power to do so. I realise that this sort of thing has occasionally happened before under both Conservative and Labour Administrations, but that does not make it any more desirable. Having got that off my chest, I welcome the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Ellenborough.

Unlike my predecessors, I shall not make a Second Reading speech. This is becoming a very long debate, and it is going over exactly the same ground as we went over on Second Reading. I am opposed to a referendum at this moment, because, until the parties have got together in an Assembly and have laid down the terms under which that Assembly can operate, the people have no idea what they are voting about. If they succeed—and we are all a little doubtful that they will, but we think it is worth trying—in finding a modus vivendi by which the different parties in Northern Ireland can run an Assembly in a limited way, then, if you have a referendum, you will get an enormous majority for further devolution. On those grounds, and in order to hurry things up, I hope that the Government will reject this amendment.

I should like to add my voice to that of the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, and say that I, too, am opposed to the idea of a referendum. A referendum is very much the same as another election, and in Northern Ireland we already have far too many elections. We have an election to another place, we are to have an election to an Assembly, we have local government elections and we have the constitutional referendum. Every single one of them always puts up the temperature. Sooner or later, every single one of them degenerates into a sort of sectarian slanging match. It does nothing for the peace of the place and is of very little benefit to anyone, added to which every extra form of election is an additional burden on the police and army, from the security point of view. So for that reason alone, I would be very much against another referendum added to the list of elections. But surely to goodness, once there has been an election to the Assembly, it will be absolutely plain to the electorate why they are electing representatives, and it does not seem to me that one needs to have it rubber-stamped yet again after the Assembly has reached a decision.

Lastly, I am bound to say that a referendum would probably confuse the issue even more, because, whether we like this Bill or not, nobody will get out of it all the things he wants, or anywhere near all the things he wants. The result may very well be that a great many of those people who are somewhat dissatisfied will simply not bother to turn up for the referendum and, in the end, we shall simply have achieved an answer that is a lemon. So, for those various reasons, I hope that the noble Earl will resist the amendment.

Before my noble friend rises, may I say that the whole point of having a referendum is that it will be held, not before the Assembly elections, but possibly a couple of years afterwards. When the Assembly elections are held, the question of devolution proposals will not be uppermost in the minds of Northern Ireland electors. It is only a year or two later, when concrete devolution proposals are being put forward, that that will be the case. That is why there should, surely, be a chance for the Northern Ireland electorate to express their opinion at the time when devolution proposals are forthcoming. I think my noble friend Lord Gowrie, has said, once or twice, that he does not expect any devolution proposals for a long time. Obviously, he has no idea of how long, but he does not expect them for another two or three years. So I cannot see the objection to having a referendum in that case. I should have thought it was absolutely vital. It would be a gross disservice to the people of Ulster not to have a referendum at the time when concrete devolution proposals are put forward.

Perhaps I may respond very briefly, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, referred to something that I said on Second Reading. When I was talking about the opposite situations of the people's wish for this Assembly, which was contradicted by the political parties, I said that in order to illustrate my great trust in the good sense of the people of Northern Ireland who wished to give this a try. So far as referenda are concerned, so much depends on how the question is phrased. That goes for any referenda which have ever been held. Again, I do not entirely agree with the principle of referenda within our political system. In a way it constitutes a vote of confidence in a certain policy, and I agreed with the Minister when he said that, in this instance, a vote of confidence would be demonstrated by the fact that the candidates would present themselves for election to the Assembly.

I have to confess to being a little puzzled by the point at issue here, though I know it is strongly felt. It was certainly the subject of much discussion in another place. Leaving aside the practical issues and anxieties connected with holding a referendum on this kind of issue in Northern Ireland—and my noble friend Lord Moyola, with all the weight of a previous distinguished Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, has itemised those—and leaving aside any philosophic objections or anxieties about referenda, in general, which the noble Baroness has just outlined, I still do not quite see why we should need a referendum on this issue.

The Assembly, which has the task of producing devolution proposals, will be elected by the people of Northern Ireland and will, therefore, be broadly representative of their views. As the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, reminded us, that is the way by which we can count the heads, count the opinions, and count the weight of support for any proposals. It therefore, surely, must be that the main justification for holding a referendum would be to assist a Parliament at Westminster which, at the end of the day, has to decide whether to accept any proposals for devolution in that decision. But Parliament will know which parties, and which Assembly members, are in favour of these proposals and will be able to take that into account perfectly well, when deciding whether the cross-community support is sufficiently widespread for it to accede to any proposals that are made. So I cannot follow the noble Lord, Lord Monson, in suggesting that, in some way, the people of Northern Ireland are being denied any choice over their destiny.

Straying back into remarks that I made in the previous debate, the criticism of direct rule—which, as the Committee will know, I very much defend and very much support—is that they do not have much choice over their own destiny now. We are therefore proposing that at least some choice should be offered to them.

The noble Earl will, I am sure, agree that they are not being offered the same choice as the people of Scotland and Wales.

Yes, but where the noble Lord and I have to agree to differ is over whether there is any correspondence between the situation facing Scotland and Wales and the situation facing Northern Ireland. That is an irrevocable difference between us. At the simplest level, a very large percentage of the people of Scotland and Wales do not vote for politicians who do not acknowledge the sovereignty of the United Kingdom. That is the particular pickle that we are in in Northern Ireland.

It could not have been better put than it was by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State when he said that if there was not a problem in Northern Ireland there would not be a problem. It may lack something in Ciceronian eloquence but it certainly puts its thumb on the button of the issue. Of course, the Committee in your Lordships' House would not be having to suffer proposals from successive Governments of a somewhat novel feature in connection with Northern Ireland if there were not novel features about Northern Ireland. That is our difficulty. Therefore, it comes back to the simple issue that we are looking for mechanisms by which cross-community support could be negotiated—not imposed by the British Government or the British Parliament but negotiated by the electorate and their representatives in Northern Ireland.

I hope that this amendment will not be pressed to a Division. It would, with respect to the noble Lords who propose it, be an eccentric move. It would, in a sense, be a way of saying, "Here is an election. The election provides an Assembly. The Assembly makes proposals to the sovereign Government and Parliament and we must now have another election about the election". The people of Northern Ireland are not fools. They are a highly developed political race, if I may put it that way. They have lived with this problem for a great many years. They are acutely aware of all its ramifications. They know perfectly well what this election is about. I think that the proposal is, in a curious way, somewhat insulting to them and I hope that it will be resisted.

moved Amendment No. 4:

Page 2, leave out lines 32 to 34.

As I have suggested in previous debates on amendments, the essence of the proposals being put forward by the Government is that there can be no question of any devolution order being made unless and until Parliament has satisfied itself that the provisions of that order would be likely to command widespread acceptance throughout the community. That is, quite simply, the ultimate test for any devolution proposals. To remove this provision now, as the noble Lord, Lord Monson, seeks to do in his amendment, would therefore remove a very important safeguard not only for the whole principle upon which the Bill rests, but in particular for the minority community. In theory, it would allow for the possibility of a devolution order being made, even though its provisions did not command cross-community support. I cannot stress too strongly that the 70 per cent. is only a trigger mechanism which ensures that a proposal is debated at Westminster. The Secretary of State is obliged to lay before Parliament an order or a proposal for an order which commands 70 per cent. support. It means that the order must be debated by Parliament. It has no greater signifiance than that.

Given the experience in Northern Ireland, as I have recently argued, it is our firm view that only broad cross-community support, and arrangements which achieve that support, can provide stable, lasting or effective institutions. Surely this principle has been at the heart of the attitude of Parliament as a whole towards Northern Ireland's political affairs since direct rule was initiated. Direct rule—which, as I explained earlier, continues until and unless full devolution proposals are made—depends upon this principle, That principle will surely weigh very heavily with any future Government or Parliament.

We therefore believed that it was quite right for the Bill to be absolutely clear on that point. That is why we put down a Government amendment in another place, so that there was no ambiguity between the issue of the 70 per cent. and the issue of the cross-community support. The noble Lord, Lord Monson, would restore the ambiguity which, perhaps culpably, we originally had in the Bill. We have greatly improved the Bill, I think, and made it much clearer. I hope the noble Lord will find it in his heart to agree with us that, whether or not he likes the provision, it is at least quite easily understood in its present form.

I do not disagree with a word which the noble Earl says about the desirability of having widespread cross-community support: I intend to come back to this point much more strongly on Amendment No. 7. I think that the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, may not have read my amendment fully. I am not suggesting that we leave out the entire subsection. If this amendment were carried, Clause 2(2) would still read:

"(2) No recommendation shall be made to Her Majesty to make an order under subsection (1) above unless each House of Parliament has passed a resolution approving a draft of the order."

Those words would still remain within the Bill, and I am not suggesting for a moment that they should be deleted. The amendment would just delete the extra three lines, which are just a flowery enlargement of that subsection and which appear to be without precedent so far as I can ascertain. It is that which I cannot understand, and perhaps the noble Earl can explain why those words appear in his Bill and not in most other statutes.

The noble Lord, Lord Monson, used a metaphor about these "flowery" lines. In fact these lines—far from being flowery—really outline the nettle which it is necessary for the people of Northern Ireland to grasp if they are to devolve the power.

I do not want to go back to the last amendment, but a lot of these flowery provisions would be quite unnecessary if only a referendum was to take place. If one has a referendum, then one can quite easily gauge cross-community support by breaking down and monitoring various parts and regions of Northern Ireland. That is what was done at the time of the Scottish referendum, when there was a breakdown of such places as the Lothian region, Grampian, Strathclyde and so on. In a referendum, it would be perfectly easy to see whether or not cross-community support was forthcoming.

I suppose the real reason for the insertion of these three lines is that the Government suspect that, in the absence of their appearance in the Bill, each House of Parliament would not take the trouble to study the order in question and would be voting in a vacuum, as it were. However, I do not want to make too great an issue of this; there was no point of principle involved—it was a genuine probing amendment and, with that, I beg to withdraw the amendment.

I wanted to raise two points for the sake of clarity. They concern the question of committees which the Assembly will set up. It is quite often forgotten that when the Parliament of Northern Ireland and the Government of Northern Ireland was first set up, matters of interference in everyday affairs was of a very limited extent. It was quite easy to define the areas of responsibility. For instance, the Ministry of Agriculture was to do with the agriculture of Northern Ireland. As time has gone on, and especially during the war, more and more of the work of various Ministries, especially the Ministry of Agriculture, has been carried out as agents for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

Such has been the good relationship, and such has been the outstanding ability of the civil servants in those departments, that the civil servants and the Government at Westminster have made the maximum use of these civil servants with their particular expertise—not only on Northern Ireland but also on other matters. They have in fact been given access and are commanded to come to Cabinet sub-committees of civil servants. The relationship between the Government of Northern Ireland on that level and the Government of the United Kingdom has been quite outstanding. Half of the achievements of the Government of Northern Ireland, which are outstanding, has been entirely due to the good relationships which exist on that.

I am extremely worried that if we get Assembly committees, whether it is before devolution or after devolution, which poke their noses into matters which are not really their affair by statute and by reason, but which have become the affair of the department by reason of custom, we shall end up by having a rift between the Government in the United Kingdom and the Government at Stormont. Perhaps I can take as one example a matter I am hoping to raise with my noble friend on Thursday, which is the question of EEC policy towards feedingstuffs. Technically, that is no affair of the Department of Agriculture in Northern Ireland, yet by reason of custom they have acted as agents, and this has become a very important part of the Government of Northern Ireland. I would like an assurance from my noble friend the Minister in that regard.

The next point I should like to raise concerns the question of the relationship between Northern Ireland and Dublin. We have not had an opportunity in this House to discuss the White Paper which laid it out. I believe we could discuss it under the amendment to the Act at a later date, but perhaps the Com- mittee will allow me to raise it now, because the Assembly could establish a committee to deal with relations with Dublin. Therefore it seems to me to be relevant.

Of late, certain of our politicians and people of public note have been maintaining that on them falls the mantle of Craig and Castle. They have said that they will not go down to Dublin to meet Members of the Irish Government. But on 21st January 1922, just after Mr. Winston Churchill took over as chairman of the Cabinet sub-committee on the devolution of power to the whole of Ireland, North and South, he records that the first meeting between Craig and Collins took place. Thereafter in that book, which is the volume IV of Martin Gilbert's book, frequent meetings by Craig and Collins occur. More than that, recorded in the book is that Sir James Craig, or Lord Craigavon, went to the border, where he was met by the IRA and was escorted down to meet Eamon De Valéra. So there is no reason why Ulstermen in their own position should not go down to Dublin. I venture to say that if one examines the records at that point, they show that, almost without fail, the Ulstermen won that particular battle.

There are also the myths that the Northern Ireland Government were stiff-necked and utterly refused to have anything to do with the Government in the South. In my father's diary for 23rd February 1949, it is of interest to read, as I did just the other day, that,

"I understand McBride has requested the British Government to arrange a meeting with myself. It was turned down by the British Government without reference to me."

My point about that is the mythology which has grown up and the injustice of suggesting that the Northern Ireland Government were not prepared to meet the Irish Republic. The facts are that, constitutionally, the British Government for many years entirely refused to allow that to occur. The first meeting of Governments on that level was in fact on the ship going to Ottawa for the Ottawa Conference, of which my father was a member. It is equally interesting to read a letter describing how the members of the Irish Government vied with each other to sit at my father's table. There are so many myths, but what I am saying is that the more we are appealed to and lectured to that we must reconcile and go down to the Dublin, the more difficult it becomes for people to do so.

This is a complete reaction to 10 years of being told that we did not do what in fact we were doing. If one looks at the record of the Foyle fisheries, of the Erne drainage and of the railways and electricity, an enormous va-et-vient went on between Dublin. My noble friend Lord Moyola, who is not here, and who led a Government who passed more reform legislation than any other Government in the world in the shortest space of time possible, established extremely good relations with his opposite number. This went on time and again. So I do appeal on this matter that there should be no pushing and lecturing, because really an enormous amount did occur.

The noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, has raised very important matters concerning the operation and functioning of the proposed Assembly. I should like to raise a question with the Minister about the facilities available to members of the Assem- bly. In the event of establishment of the Assembly, there will in my view be several stages in the process of evolving devolution. The three stages I see are the conciliation and advisory stage, the partial devolution stage and then the full devolution stage, should that happen.

Concerning the Assembly chairman, the presiding officer, the chairmen of the different committees and the membership of the Assembly, they will have, as I understand from the Bill, an administrative staff that will be financed to carry on the normal administrative work of the Assembly. There is the question of inquiries into departments, the drafting of proposals, the sort of legislative framework in which they are supposed to operate. They will be required to study this in some detail at different stages.

The Civil Service will be working directly to Ministers, and in my view there would sometimes be a question of loyalty to the Minister or confidentiality as regards the Minister, and there is the question of confidentiality of discussions taking place within the Assembly. I think it important that there should be some sort of independent specialist advice available to the Assembly. The question I am putting to the Minister is, do the financial arrangements for the Assembly provide for the setting up of some form of consultancy, either full-time on secondment or part-time, to provide professional economic advice and legal advice on such matters as the EEC, and relationships with Parliament, and general protocol? I think it very important that that facility should be known at this stage in the evolution of the Assembly, before a general election for the Assembly.

Unless other noble Lords wish to speak, perhaps while it is fresh in my mind I may answer the point made to me by the noble Lord, Lord Blease. I hope he will forgive me if I do not get it entirely right, because we are, of course, dealing with the future and I do not have, as it were, an exact model in my mind to which I can refer. Obviously it is in the interests of the Government to provide the funds for the committee system and the Assembly to work effectively. While the committees have no formal powers to summon Ministers or officials, or to have access as of right to departmental papers—and there are obvious reasons for this; constitutionally, Ministers are accountable to your Lordships' House or to another place and they really cannot be accountable to anyone else—though there are no such formal powers, we have made it very clear that Ministers will want to be as helpful as possible to the committees in every respect, and that would presumably involve their having the information necessary to do their job. We in our turn will be looking to the committees and to their officers for guidance, and it would be a waste of time and the guidance would be imperfect if the raw material for debate and scrutiny were not made available. I can assure the noble Lord that our hearts are pure in intention, and if, as things grow up, there are shown to be blockages in the system we would seek to try to put things right. The Assembly committees are, of course, serviced by the Assembly itself, and obviously it would be open to the Assembly to seek outside or specialist advice within its overall budget and its cash limit.

My noble friend Lord Brookeborough, who has, of course, direct experience of working in a parliamentary system in Northern Ireland, as well as in your Lordships' House, raised, I thought, some extraordinarily interesting points. I should rather like to digest them. My advice is that it would be open to the Assembly to establish a committee on relations with the Republic should it wish to do so, but of course that would be for the Assembly to decide. My broad feeling is that if you leave the North of Ireland to make its arrangements with the Republic it inevitably does so on a mutually satisfactory basis. If you try to suggest that North/South arrangements are to be imposed on Northern Ireland people get agitated and excited, dark deeds are whispered of and suspected, and not much of practical value takes place. That does not mean, of course, that the United Kingdom as a whole must not or should not conduct its own arrangements with the Republic of Ireland itself.

I can say to my noble friend that the arrangements whereby a Northern Ireland department acts as the agent of a United Kingdom department are not subject to Clause 4(1)(a); that is to say, they are not within the ambit of the Assembly committees. The agency functions in question are, therefore, not in the devolved sphere. I hope I have answered the principal points of substance that have been put to me, but, if any noble Lord wishes to say anything further on clause stand part of course, he is very welcome to do so.

May I ask the noble Earl this? In the previous Executive, matters of agriculture were answered by the Minister for Agriculture, even where they were agency matters. Is that going to be the same? Perhaps my noble friend would look at it and let me know.

I will look at it. My instinct is to say, yes, but I will make quite sure and write to my noble friend.

May I ask the Minister a question on one point, regarding the actual power of the relevant chairmen of the committees once devolved? What power and what influence will they have in relation to, say, overseas investors? Will they be in a position to negotiate orders from foreign Ministers, or again will they be in a position to negotiate with the relevant departments of the EEC Commission? Will they be in a position to influence funding from the Regional and Social Funds? What I do not quite understand is what they will be responsible for, when they take over their responsibilities once their departments have been devolved, in the foreign international field.

Obviously members of what is an Assembly within a region of the United Kingdom are circumscribed in the amount of foreign policy they can conduct. That is not a transferred matter. But the noble Baroness, as did my noble friend Lord Brooke-borough, puts her finger on an interesting point which is the practical day to day negotiations within the EEC of a devolved Ministry. As I shall be explaining to your Lordships on, I think, Thursday, when we have the appropriations debate, we are, in fact, setting up a rather different structure for Northern Ireland in terms of the Industrial Development Board and the appointment of its chairman and chief executive. These are answerable to the Minister and would be answerable to a devolved Minister—if I may use that shorthand. But in practice most of the nitty-gritty of the day-to-day negotiations will probably be taken by the chief executive and the chairman of the Industrial Development Board. However, that does not preclude, of course, a Minister acting in the interests of his department—obviously that would be foolish. On the other hand, as I have said, where the committee or the devolved body is acting on an agency basis for the other Ministries in the United Kingdom, it is not in the devolved sphere. Therefore, I think that it is likely, in practice, that some grey areas will arise. I would only say that we cannot really construct a perfect model without a wind tunnel, and the wind tunnel will be the operation and growth of this institution itself.

moved Amendment No. 6:

Page 4, line 45, after ("command") insert ("and is not likely in the foreseeable future to command").

Clause 5 which the Government, of course, hope will never have to be put into effect, provides for the dissolution of the Assembly and for the revocation of any devolution orders which may be made. Clause 5(3), which the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Monson, seeks to alter, deals with the revocation of devolution orders themselves. It may be of assistance to the Committee if I briefly say what it does. If it appears to Her Majesty, after taking into account any relevant proceedings in the Assembly, that the continued operation of a devolution order does not command "widespread acceptance" throughout the community, then such an order can be revoked. This provides a safeguard in the event that the initial agreement, or series of agreements, leading to devolution, is not sustained and in the event that the package loses the necessary support of the Assembly. The Committee will notice that the provision also embodies the essential principle of "widespread acceptability" to which I spoke at an earlier stage this afternoon and which must underline the continuance of any devolution agreement.

I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Monson, has, as it were, come forward with open arms to try to meet us. As a critic of devolution, he is nevertheless trying to prevent with this amendment the revocation of a devolution order simply because its continued operation does not command widespread acceptance throughout the community at one particular moment. But, should the noble Lord's amendment be accepted by the Committee, I think that we should have the danger of over-hasty revocation owing to temporary difficulties. This would be impossible since an order could only be made under Clause 5(3) if there appeared to be no hope that the situation would improve in the foreseeable future. Obviously the Government would be very reluctant to see the provisions in this clause used; they are fail-safe provisions. So the idea that the Government would be trigger-happy to use them is a misplaced one.

Perhaps I could reassure the Committee that we do not have any intention of over-hasty use, and I would remind the Committee that revocation would, in any case, involve a resolution of both Houses of Parliament after careful consideration by the Government of all the circumstances as they existed at the time. I honestly do not think that the amendment is necessary. I think that we have the necessary flexibility to get people to cool off or think again and only to use such provisions as exist in Clause 5 if it is quite clear that there is no hope of reconstituting the order. Therefore, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Monson, will not press his amendment.

Of course, I am grateful to the noble Earl for his explanation and for his assurance that the Government would not contemplate over-hasty action under Clause 5(3). I do not feel particularly strongly about this—why should I—not being an enthusiast for the Assembly. I was merely trying to ensure that, if it did come into being, it would work properly without great expense to the taxpayer, and so on.

But if the Government do not intend to act over-hastily, is there any harm in putting it into the Bill in the way in which I have suggested? I merely think that my words would spell out what the Government say their intentions will be. Evidentally it is a matter of fine judgment. In an earlier clause they spelt out their intentions very precisely—notably, in Clause 2(2). Here, apparently, they do not feel the necessity to do so. However, as I have said, I do not feel very strongly about it and, if no other Member of the Committee has anything to say, all I can do is beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 7:

After Clause 5, insert the following new clause:

I tend to dissent from the noble Lord, Lord Monson, in his lengthy peregrination around the world seeking qualified majorities. But I, with great respect, suggest to the Committee that this is a good idea for letting sleeping dogs lie. There is not any parity between the Parliament of the United Kingdom and the Assembly. The Assembly is acting in the difficult and particular circumstances of Northern Ireland, and therefore, the whole argument about widespread consent throughout the community is highly relevant to the day-to-day proceedings of the Assembly.

The United Kingdom Parliament is dealing with a massive central constitutional issue; namely, should it, or should it not, expel a part of the Kingdom from the Kingdom? That is the sort of issue which comes up once perhaps every generation, perhaps even less frequently. It was raised the last time in 1922. The population movements about which the noble Lord, Lord Monson, spoke, though dramatic, are dramatic in the glacier-like sense that they only occur remarkably slowly. The possibility of a Roman Catholic majority in the North certainly does not arise, so far as my understanding of it is concerned, until about 2020, if not later. A great deal will have flowed down that glacier by the year 2020 before the existing 1973 Act is even triggered off. By that time the whole question of the relationship between the Republic and the United Kingdom may well have undergone several permutations and changes.

I would have thought that it was most unwise at this particular juncture, in a Bill dealing essentially with the problems of the local jurisdiction of the Province and not with United Kingdom-wide provision, to start initiating what amounts to a major constitutional change in the United Kingdom. After all, the Assembly has been on the statute book for nine years—that is not a big innovation—but to change the conditions upon which it might be conceivable to consider the expulsion of a part of the United Kingdom from the United Kingdom would in itself be a major constitutional change. I hope, therefore, that the Committee, having considered the peregrinations of the noble Lord, Lord Monson, will leave them on the table and not accept the amendment.

I put my name to this amendment because from the beginning when the Northern Ireland Government accepted the question of a referendum it has always worried me exactly what it means. Is it point 1 per cent? Is it point 0·1 per cent? When in time do the United Kingdom Government consider that the point has arrived on figures at which Northern Ireland should in fact be expelled? I felt that this was a useful probing amendment to find out the views of the Government.

I think we are due for a referendum. I think there may be a referendum either next year or the year after. Therefore, this might be the last chance we should have to discuss it. I am not meaning that at that referendum there will be any change in the wish of the people of Northern Ireland, but it raises the question which I raised with the noble Earl before on the question of the guarantee. The noble Earl answered me before when I asked what does the guarantee mean. It was said that a lot of people in Northern Ireland felt that so long as the people of Northern Ireland wished to remain part of the United Kingdom they may do so—then in brackets, in a very soft voice, "We feel, we hear, and we hope it won't be long before you wish to go out". I do not feel, ever since that guarantee has been made, that sufficient importance has been attached to the unity of the United Kingdom to give us a feeling of confidence that we are being governed, and will be governed, in a way which could persuade the people of Northern Ireland in regard to a referendum.

I believe that the Government must come out and show their attachment to the unity of the United Kingdom—not to Northern Ireland—and make it clear that this is their duty. If that were done, in my opinion the politicians who would be elected to this Assembly would have much more confidence in dealing with the various subjects, especially of external affairs, which it is hoped they will deal with in a way that has not been done before. Then I believe that the elected members will have much more room to manoeuvre from the rigid manifestoes on which they are going to be elected at present, if my guess is right. It is for that reason that I put my name down to this amendment.

I should like a fuller reply from the noble Earl. There have been various acts by the Government which confirm, in the view of people in Northern Ireland, that no step is being taken in Government which would in any way bind Northern Ireland any closer. Rather the opposite. The fact that Harland and Wolff were not brought into British Shipbuilders was a matter which will make people consider that this was in preparation for an eventual assumption of unity. There was also Short Brothers and Harland. All of these facts, where they are not done separately, confirm the view which I hold, that the guarantee that we could remain part of the United Kingdom so long as we wished was not warm enough and did not pay enough tribute to the importance—and I believe it is of strategic importance and of importance to the strength of this country and the defence of this country—of Northern Ireland's remaining British.

May I deal with the point put a few moments ago by my noble friend Lord Brooke-borough. He will know that I tried to answer him at an earlier stage at Second Reading on this issue; namely, that the Government did not show enough enthusiasm for the continued unity of the Kingdom in this context, and he was critical for that reason. It is not that the Government are not enthusiastic. As individuals, or as members of a particular political party, we can of course express our enthusiasm as vigorously as my noblefriend expresses it. But there is an inconsistency surely in resting your policy, as successive British Governments have done, on the principle of self-determination in this issue, and then, as it were, trying to load the question in such a way that goes against the principles of self-determination.

Successive British Governments have consistently said that it must be for the people of Northern Ireland themselves to decide what their constitutional position should be. Perhaps I may briefly be subjective—after all, when my noble friend uses phrases like "warmth" or "insufficient warmth", they are indicators of subjective emotions, so perhaps I may be subjective for a moment—to point out that I have said on many occasions that, in my view, the realities of Northern Ireland (indeed, the realities of Ireland as a whole, of the whole island) are such that neither of these two fundamentally divided communities is ever likely to prevail over the other. One can see no evidence of a pure majority situation prevailing or of the minority changing their aspiration or their particular ties with the Irish Republic. Therefore, we have constantly tried to point out to people that the thing to do is to make accommodations across this fundamental and fore-seeably—nothing is permanent in human life—irreconcilable divide and get on with the job of making that beautiful part of the Kingdom a better place in which to live and work. May I reserve my warmth therefore very strongly for that principle?

As for the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Monson, they really do two things. They propose, first, that border polls would require a 70 per cent. majority. That would, in our judgment, be quite inappropriate because a border poll is of an altogether different character from any test to determine whether the Assembly's proposals for devolution should be submitted to Parliament or the Secretary of State. As I tried to explain earlier, the purpose of the 70 per cent. test in Clause 1(4) is to provide a guide—it is no more than that—to the level of acceptability required if arrangement for devolved government are to enjoy support across the community. It does not in any way guarantee that any proposals will automatically be put into effect, though it does, as I explained, guarantee that any proposal should be debated in Parliament.

The fundamental tenet of our approach, as I have explained several times this afternoon, is that no system of government which does not command cross-community support can be safe, stable or durable and that this therefore is much more important than the percentage figure indicated as being a broad and possible guide. The provision contained in Section 1 of the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973 is essentially different in that it is what I believe constitutionalists and lawyers call the sine qua non, to which I would more slangly refer as the bottom line—that without which there can be no change in Northern Ireland's constitutional status as an integral part of the United Kingdom—but I shall return to that at the end of my remarks.

On the second amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Monson, seeks to make any change in the constitutional status of the Province arising from a border poll subject to each House of Parliament satisfying itself that the change is likely to be widely accepted throughout the community. I understand the purpose of the suggestion and I have considerable sympathy with it, but I cannot accept it, not least because it appears in the Bill in a very different context.

The central principle of Section 1 of the 1973 Act—which of course provides the framework within which everything else is set—must be that of the bottom line, of majority acceptance, and this is where the answer to the two amendments really comes together. The bottom line—the bedrock of the Northern Ireland issue—is its constitutional position within the United Kingdom, and I believe it has been accepted by both communities that a straight majority should decide this issue. It would certainly also seem to me that if we amended the Constitution Act 1973 in the way suggested in this Bill at this time, we should certainly open wounds and anxieties which would be quite out of keeping with our modest desire to offer the people of Northern Ireland a chance to take back greater powers and responsibilities for their own affairs. My noble friend Lard Vaizey, if the Committee remembers his speech, as I am sure noble Lords will, made that point very well.

In respect of the 1973 Act, I can give the noble Lord, Lord Monson, some comfort. All that that Act says is that you cannot have a change without a majority—a straight majority, admittedly—in a border poll. Parliament would of course have to consent to any change, and again my noble friend Lord Vaizey sensibly picked up the issue here; that possibly in the very different or changed circumstances which might obtain at the time, Parliament would take another view. All I am really saying, therefore, is that on the big, central, sine qua non, bedrock, bottom line issue, the Constitution Act 1973 should remain our guide, that it has been widely accepted and that it would be a muddle and a disruption to these modest proposals if it were introduced in this particular way into the framework of what we are proposing.

Some ingenious arguments have been advanced to explain why sauce for the goose cannot under any circumstances be sauce for the gander. The Government, the official Opposition and the other parties on the Opposition Benches seem to be leaning over backwards to ensure fair play for nationalists—not Catholics qua Catholics, mind you, but nationalists—and while I do not object to that, all I ask is that there should be some fair play and some reassurance for unionists too, and I mean unionists with a small "u". I do not think there is sufficient evidence that this ranks as highly as it should in the mind of the Government at the moment.

I am glad the noble Earl said he had some sympathy with the second leg of my amendment. Before deciding what to do, I should like to ask him what he envisages would happen if there were a 50·1 per cent. vote in favour of taking the Province out of the United Kingdom, with one entire community being against it. Secondly, does he realise that, as I interpret the 1973 Act, the Province could not be handed over to another country? Indeed, I believe that in international law that would be impossible. All that could happen would be that the Province could be given its independence. May I ask the noble Earl to answer those two points before we go any further?

I am not sure that I understood the purport of the second question, but I understood the first very well, and I did try to answer it. The essential point is that the provision in the Act is, as it were, a negative one. The Act says that you cannot have any change without a majority in a border poll. I think, as I said earlier, that my noble friend Lord Vaizey put his finger on it. The situation in Northern Ireland, were you in 49–51 per cent. territory, with all the uncertainties that that might involve, would be so changed, it seems to me, that Parliament would be looking at totally different circumstances from any circumstances that now foreseeably obtain. I also tried to give a personal judgment of how unlikely I thought that would be. But I cannot really be drawn—as no Minister can be drawn—on notional situations.

I would say that the 1973 Constitution Act is firmly in the consciousness of the people of Northern Ireland. There has been no great pressure to change it. It has been widely accepted. A poll based upon it has already been held, and, as my noble friend Lord Brookeborough reminded us, another poll will no doubt be held fairly soon. If the situation were to be rearranged in this particular connection in the Bill, it would enormously obscure what we are trying to do and would tend to make people needlessly anxious about our attempted action. I hope that having thought about what I have said, in particular the point that the proposal is what might be called a negative provision, the noble Lord will see that his fears are misplaced, that we are not trying evenly to apply sauce for geese and ganders, and that he will withdraw the amendment.

I should like to thank my noble friend for his explanation, which was certainly helpful. However, I really cannot see why the advocacy of the importance of the unity of the United Kingdom prevents what I call warmth in approach and what he might describe as a subjective approach. Surely irrespective of colour, creed or anything else and whatever the figures in the religious divide, the Government will want to ensure that people will wish to remain part of the United Kingdom. It is my belief—unlike what my noble friend says—that at present there is a growing non-unionist population which is Roman Catholic and which is anti-Dublin in a very large way. Those people are only hoping that the unity of the United Kingdom will remain and that the Government will in fact be positive. I am trying to ensure that the election of members is based on a confidence in the unity of the United Kingdom. It is the rigidity with which they are to be elected that worries me.

I was interested in the noble Earl's remarks about the danger to what is an extremely difficult operation. With our fingers crossed we are all hoping that at last a workable agreement will be reached in Northern Ireland, though we are all very sceptical about the likelihood. To endanger agreement by not letting sleeping dogs lie, (as the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, described it), seems to be absolutely dangerous at this stage.

Will the noble Lord give way? I actually accepted what my noble friend had said. I took up merely the one point on which I thought his response was unsatisfactory.

I am very glad to hear it.

I hate to satisfy—

Oh, oh!

Or rather, not to satisfy my noble friend or any other Member of the Committee. I felt a little guilty that perhaps at the end of a rather exhausting Second Reading speech I had not answered him as fully as I might have done. I believe that, when he reads Hansard, he will see that this time I have answered his point very fully. I do not think that I have anything to add at the moment.

I am grateful to the noble Earl for his explanation. I cannot remember his precise words about the negative provision, but I think that the difference in my view is to the tune of about 5 per cent.—not much more than that. I am not totally wedded to the first leg of my amendment; that is to say, the 70 per cent. idea. It might be over-rigid and perhaps unnecessary, too, and it might make things difficult if, in the event of a tie, an almost split vote, the best solution were thought to be minor border adjustments, which in such a case would almost certainly be the best solution. However, I still feel very strongly that the second part of my amendment is unexceptionable; I do not see how anybody could take offence over it. In a sense it merely reinforces what the noble Earl has said—that Parliament would be required to approve any such order. The amendment simply spells it out in black and white, as is done elsewhere in the Bill. Therefore I reserve the right possibly to come back on that leg of my amendment at the next stage, and with that remark I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

moved Amendment No. 8:

After Clause 5, insert the following new clause:

I hope that the noble Earl will resist the amendment. It seems to me exactly the same as the last amendment, except that it is in reverse. Stirring things up over the percentage of the border poll will annoy one side, and altering the situation as proposed in the amendment will annoy the other side. Since we are trying to avoid annoyance and trying to get people to work together, I think that it would be absolute madness to accept the amendment.

I hate to oppose my noble friend, but at a time such as this, when conditions in Ireland are extremely uncertain, it would be very unwise to remove the disqualification. After all, we do not allow non-British citizens to sit in Parliament. I cannot see why it should be necessary to allow non-Irish citizens to sit in the Irish Parliament. In view of the extremely disruptive elements that there are in both Ireland and, I regret to say, our own country, what is proposed would be a very unwise step.

I should like to support the amendment moved by the noble Lord; not that I expect to see it carried, but I think it would be a rather sad state of affairs if, when someone came up with a generous, forward-looking idea of that kind, everyone began getting very pompous and frowning at it. So I am supporting the noble Lord in a mood of anti-pomposity.

I think we are all agreed, knowing the way the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, has carried out his duties in your Lordships' House, that he has sought at all times to be a bridge-builder and to promote understanding so far as Northern Ireland, Ireland and the United Kingdom are concerned; and I know that, with every best motive in the world, Lord Hylton has put this proposition forward to promote some form of understanding. Really, I am not certain what principle is being argued here. Anyone who examines the Northern Ireland Assembly Disqualification Act will find that there are large numbers of officers and persons holding positions who are disqualified under it. Indeed, under this Act a person holding an office under a wages council can be disqualified in respect of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

While I totally agree that we should keep to the matter of principle, I think it would be foolish to ignore the fact that the matter has arisen largely over a situation or an issue which has been created by one person. The noble Lord has already said that there are two persons in Northern Ireland who are members of the Senate of the Irish Republic. The person who has probably been most headlined and has been the subject of many editorials and other articles concerning this matter has a notable record of speaking and appearing on platforms on behalf of the Northern Ireland people particularly in matters of security, terrorism and other things; and he has a contribution to make in connection with the affairs of Northern Ireland.

I am sure that the person involved would be most anxious to do what is right in the best interests of the people of Northern Ireland. I believe that he has a choice to make. He has a choice concerning the jobs, the happiness, the homes and the wellbeing of the people of Ireland. If he considers that these interests can be best served in the Senate of the Irish Republic, then that is his choice. If he considers that this initiative in Northern Ireland is breaking the log-jam in politics in Northern Ireland, and if he considers that the Assembly can do something for the wellbeing and the betterment of the people of Northern Ireland, then that is his choice. I feel that within the Northern Ireland Assembly Disqualification Act he has the opportunity to excercise that choice. He can stand for the Northern Ireland Assembly; and if he is elected, he can then choose to either continue his role in the Senate or take a seat within the Assembly. It is Clause 4 of the Bill which sets that out.

I would hope that this amendment set down by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, will be viewed in the light of being an attempt to promote understanding in connection with this matter, but I do not think that the issue that arises from it should be allowed to interfere or in any way to hinder the choice of the Northern Ireland people in connection with the initiatives which have already been promoted in this Bill.

I should like to support what my noble friend Lord Blease has said. I should like to ask the Minister to look sympathetically at the quandary of these two individuals. They took up their places in the Irish Senate before this initiative by the Government was really under way, and I think they did it with very much in mind the issue which is also in the mind of the Government, I think: to harmonise the two Irish traditions and the two identities, and, indeed, the two allegiances. I think they may well have had this in the front of their minds when they did this.

So, as my noble friend has said, they can present themselves for election. If the electors choose them, it will be very much up to them to decide what is the higher priority. They may well decide that the priority lies in the job that they have to do in the Northern Ireland Assembly. But with it in mind that this seems to be a matter which is crucial in the eyes of the SDLP — indeed, the future of the Assembly is enormously important to us all—I hope the Minister will look at this matter sympathetically and try to find some way to help these two individuals in their quandary.

I can certainly assure the noble Baroness and the whole Committee that I have great sympathy with the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and with the very moderate way in which he moved this amendment, which seeks to widen the numbers of those who are eligible for membership of the Assembly.

The effect of repealing Section 1(1)(e) of the Northern Ireland Disqualification Act 1975, as the noble Lord would have us do, would be to permit members of the legislatures of countries and territories outside the Commonwealth to be members of the Northern Ireland Assembly. As the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, has explained, the purpose of this amendment is to enable members of each House of the Irish Parliament to become members of the Northern Ireland Assembly. I understand the concern, in the context of Northern Ireland, which he expressed when he moved the amendment, though I must say to him that I also share the anxieties very succinctly and very well expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Blease, from the Labour Benches, and by the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, on behalf of the Social Democrats, as well as by his own noble friend Lord Somers.

The position on standing for election to the Northern Ireland Assembly is that each candidate cannot be validly nominated unless he or she has consented to the nomination. In giving this consent the candidate must state that he or she is aware of the provisions of the Northern Ireland Disqualification Act 1975, and that to his or her knowledge and belief he or she is not disqualified from membership of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Once an election has taken place, it is open to any person who believes that a member is disqualified from taking his seat to lodge an election petition. If the petition were to be upheld, the member would be unseated and there would have to be a by-election.

There have been suggestions that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State could in some way remove or waive the grounds of disqualification which affect Mr. Mallon, who has been mentioned, by exercising the power contained in Section 3(3) of the Northern Ireland Assembly Act 1973. Section 3(3)(b) provides the Secretary of State with power by order to make provision for the circumstances in which a disqualification imposed by Section 3 of that Act, or any disqualification imposed by the 1975 disqualification Act, may be disregarded. That power cannot be exercised, however, so as to remove any disqualification imposed by the 1975 Act in all circumstances.

Such a provision in an order made under Section 3 of the 1973 Act would be outside the ordinary meaning of the words which give the Secretary of State the power. It would also amount to the repeal of a provision (by the back door, so to speak) in the 1975 Act, and in the absence of words in the enabling provision which expressly authorise the amendment or omission of provisions from primary legislation, it is ultra vires, I am advised, to include such provisions in subordinate legislation.

The effect therefore of the provision in Section 3 of the Northern Ireland Assembly Act 1973, if exercised, would be to allow the Assembly, by order, to waive any disqualification arising under the Northern Ireland Disqualification Act 1975 where the grounds of disqualification have been removed and the Assembly believes it proper to make such an order. Thus, in ordinary language, the purpose is to enable an honest mistake to be put right without the Assembly Member concerned having to resign his seat. That waiver or enabling provision does not get us over this quandary and hurdle.

I well understand the difficulties which Mr. Mallon's membership of the Irish Senate raises. It is not a simple problem and may I say (I hope with understanding for Mr. Mallon's position) that I agree wholly with what the noble Lord, Lord Blease, said from the Labour Benches, that Mr. Mallon himself must judge where his best interests lie. I know him and I have a great respect for him and I, for one, hope that he will conclude that they would be best served by seeking membership of the Northern Ireland Assembly, but I share the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Blease, that he must make his choice. As I have explained, that membership would be incompatible with membership of the Senate in the Republic of Ireland under the law.

A word about the law. The law on disqualification is highly complex and, again, with the noble Lord, Lord Blease, I accept that it is not altogether satisfactory. There are inconsistences. For instance, the episcopally-ordained clergy of the Churches of England, Scotland and Ireland are disqualified but similar clergy of the Church of Wales are not disqualified. The clergy of the Church of Ireland are disqualified even though that Church was disestablished as long ago as 1869. Clergy of the Non-conformist Churches are not disqualified. So this is not altogether any where a satisfactory position.

There is currently a review of the criteria for disqualification from the House of Commons and I understand that a report on that will go to my right honourable friend the Lord President of the Council later in the year. Although disqualification criteria for the Northern Ireland Assembly are not wholly identical with those for another place, there is a close link between the two, and I am convinced that the outcome of the review will have implications for disqualification criteria for the Northern Ireland Assembly.

I believe that the right course is to await that report and to consider at that point whether any of the provisions of the Northern Ireland Assembly Disqualification Act 1975, including Section 1(1)(e), require amendment. I have thought carefully about this extremely sensitive and difficult issue and have concluded that that would be the right way to proceed. In the light of what I have said after this careful consideration and in the light of the great sensitivities over this issue at this time, to which the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, and others directed our attention, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, will acknowledge that I have gone sufficiently far towards him to acknowledge the dilemma and that he will not feel constrained to press his amendment.

I thought that it was important that your Lordships should have the opportunity to discuss this question of disqualification in your usual careful and unpompous way. I am grateful particularly to the noble Earl for his very detailed, careful and full reply. I was interested to hear him say that he thought that the disqualification criteria were not 100 per cent. satisfactory in all respects. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Blease, that the principle being argued by me was inter-parliamentary co-operation. We have plenty of experience of that in this House, particularly as between this House and Brussels, the European Parliament. We see a fair amount of co-operation between this House and the other place and we hope very much that there will be a great deal of co-operation between Westminster and the Northern Ireland Assembly.

I, myself—and I am sure I speak for most people—want to see a great deal of co-operation between the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Parliament in Dublin. I do not intend to press this amendment. I appreciate everything that has been said about the great delicacy of the matter and realise that time is relatively short. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

I wonder whether the noble Earl will explain why the Government are so adamantly set on an Assembly based on the constituency boundaries of the 12 parliamentary seats which are in process of being phased out. Surely, the Boundary Commission recommendations for the 17 new constituencies in Northern Ireland are now finalised and in the hands of the Government or the Secretary of State and only await the requisite order being laid before each House. Would it not be desirable if the Assembly constituencies were made identical with the parliamentary constituencies—whether with 85 seats, as many honourable Members in another place would like, or 51 or 68 seats as the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, would prefer? Can the noble Earl explain why we should not have an Assembly based on the new parliamentary constituencies?

The short answer is that the Boundary Commissioners have not fully reported to us. As I said in my Second Reading speech, we feel that the need for political movement in Northern Ireland is very pressing in respect of security issues and the economy; and there is a wide expectation, as I also said, that this election will and should take place. Therefore, it seemed to us better to get on with it, particularly as the point with which the noble Lord is concerned is essentially involved with the Westminster Parliament and legislature and the—in my view—justifiable increase in the number of seats for Northern Ireland, rather than with the more limited role of this Assembly.

I am grateful to the noble Earl for explaining that the Boundary Commission's recommendations are not finalised. Can he tell us how close to finalisation they are? Is it that some boundaries have been agreed upon and that there are a few out-standing? How far have we proceeded?

Any parliamentarian—even a non-elected one—who pronounced on the ways of the Boundary Commissioners, would get himself into hot water very quickly. So I must resist the noble Lord, Lord Monson, trying to draw me on that. I understand that they are not very far off completion; but I know no more than that.

Is it not also a fact that there are separate commissions for Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England, and the custom and practice is for all the commissions to be presented to Parliament at the same time?

What will the position be after the first election, when the second election is due to be held, presumably in 1986? Will it still be based on the old 12 constituency system, or will the constituencies be adapted to take into account the new parliamentary constituencies?

As the noble Lord knows from my remarks, the system is designed to be as flexible as possible. Obviously, the Government will wish to take the views of the Assembly into account in coming to a view about that.

rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 17th May be approved.

My Lords, I well remember in 1971 in another place on the Opposition Front Bench being involved with the parent Act, and indeed on behalf of my colleagues in that place giving the Act a cautious welcome. We all appreciated that the Act was very much a stop-gap measure and it had been put together rather hastily to deal with a situation that few people had foreseen was likely to develop. The interpretation given to certain statutory provisions by this House in its judicial capacity turned out to be rather harsher than certain people had anticipated, and I make no criticism whatsoever of that decision.

It is however rather surprising that now, some 11 years after the event, we are still some distance away from having permanent legislation on this matter. I do not say that in a spirit of carping criticism. As the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, has said, it is a matter that is certainly not free from a number of conflicts. The Rothschild Commission reported in this matter, I believe in June 1978, and came out firmly against legitimising the very practices that were condemned by this House in 1970.

Another problem is the fact that the only bodies that are entitled to have the benefit of this legislation are those bodies that were in operation in 1971, and I understand that six of the original seven are still in operation. Having said that, in the eyes of many it is of course utterly laudable that these bodies should be allowed to continue. I understand that the Spastics Society derives annually a benefit of the order of £800,000 from these enterprises. On the other side of the coin, again, it is a matter of disquiet for some that only a fairly small percentage of the sums that are collected from the public at large end up with the various charitable organisations. The net figure, I understand, is just over 8½ per cent. That is topped up again by gifts from the societies concerned to make it 15 per cent. It is still a fairly small percentage of the totality of monies that are paid.

There are many other matters that could be referred to, and I have no doubt that the Government have them all in mind, in regard to the eventual structure that they will propose. We on these Benches, however, should be grateful to the noble Lord if he is able to give some indication of the type of structure that the Government have in mind; and we should be even more grateful to him if he were able to say that this is the last occasion on which either House of Parliament will be called upon to give this matter a temporary extension for a period of 12 months.

My Lords, I am nost grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, for his remarks on the situation as we now understand it, because I think it has added to the views your Lordships will hold about this existing unsatisfactory situation. Unfortunately, I cannot satisfy him to the extent that he would wish. He is of course aware that the discussion document which was circulated on 30th March of this year is in process of consideration by those organisations I have mentioned. I think it would be unwise, and indeed improper, for me to say anything which would prejudice or pre-empt any comments being made, or indeed the future decision of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary in this regard. All I can say is that due consideration is now being given and the Government have this matter under review. I hope, with that, that your Lordships may be willing to approve this order.

My Lords, may I ask one question? Is it within the scope of the review to phase out this method of raising money altogether, or is main the purpose of the review to make permanent these renewable concessions to those who engaged in this activity earlier on? I ask that question because at the time there were some criticisms of this method of raising money for worthy and noble objects. As my noble friend said a moment ago, large sums of money are collected under this system, not all of which by any means reach the destination for which they may be intended. I wonder whether, without asking the noble Lord to commit himself in any way, I could ask whether this review is a comprehensive one; that is to say, getting rid of this altogether.

My Lords, I have taken advice on this matter while the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, has been speaking and I understand the options are indeed open in this regard. I cannot qualify that by saying that the Government are going to recast the entire situation, but I can assure the noble Lord that any change will require primary legislation if we are to depart from the annual review which we have had each year and the re-enactment of an expiring law.

rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 28th June be approved.

My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord for explaining those orders, and on this side of the House we support them. I have only one or two short general questions to put to the Minister. As regards the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux, I endorse everything he said about its importance and the service it renders to agriculture. In the Commonwealth we are particularly conscious these days of the importance of encouraging Commonwealth countries to develop their agriculture in a productive manner. No contribution would be greater in certain Commonwealth countries, particularly in Africa, than a well-organised agriculture; and if this body can make its contribution in that direction then it will have done a good job of work.

For the record, can the Minister say a further word about the bureaux? Is every Commonwealth country represented on it? Were they all parties to the agreement? This is something which we require to know. The exemptions granted to the new organisation are very substantial, as we see from Part If of the order, but I think that these are comparable to those afforded to similar bodies which are established in this country. Can the Minister also say how many individuals will benefit from the immunities? A very large number of people—not only embassies but other international bodies in London—benefit from these immunities. Can the Minister say how many more will be added to the list as a result of these two orders? This is something in which the general public is always interested.

May I also ask the same question about UNIDO? How many people will be involved here and be granted immunity as a result of the order? There is no clear indication when the order will come into operation. It seems from the second paragraph on page 2 that UNIDO has not complied with Section 37 of the Convention. Can the Minister say how significant this is, and is there a prospect that it will comply fairly soon? As UNIDO is to become one of the specified agencies of the United Nations, it seems that the 1974 order will not be applicable to it and thus the facilities of this order are not new, but need to be continued. Again, UNIDO is involved with industrial development promotion and with co-ordinating such activities. These are very important and desirable, having regard to the needs of developing countries. The Brandt Report, which we have debated in this House so many times, reminds us of that. Can the Minister say what number of countries have ratified the Convention and how many more are required to bring it into effect?

Finally, as I understand it—and perhaps the Minister can confirm this—the Government's present contribution is mandatory, but will be voluntary in future. What precisely does this mean? Will it ensure that there will be no reduction in their contribution due to the needs of UNIDO? I should be most grateful if the noble Lord could assist us on that, because it is a point of sonic significance. Those are, briefly, the questions that I wish to put to the noble Lord, and if he can give a reply I am sure that the House would be grateful.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord also to confirm on the first draft order that, under paragraph 10(1)(a) on page 2,

"a motor traffic offence committed by a representative or in the case of damage caused by a vehicle belonging to or driven by him"

is excluded from the immunity? Is this a standard form for this category of immunity? I believe that there are several categories of immunity—the full immunity attaching to diplomatic and similar staffs, and something of a lower category attaching to other organisations, of which, presumably, this is one.

There is no doubt that, in general, the number of people covered by immunities is growing. The amount of liquor being consumed tax-free in various institutions in this country is also growing. Some people with immunities disregard all traffic laws and cannot be proceeded against for breaking them. They do almost anything they like and nobody can touch them. The amount of consumable goods going into the institutions concerned seems to be out of all proportion to the quantity that people could consume for their own purposes. One wonders what happens to the rest. Altogether, there is a bit of a squalid side to all these immunities and we ought to look with some care at extending them.

I know that this is the courtesy that we extend to representatives of other countries coming to do their work here. But I am sure the noble Lord will agree that things happen among those who enjoy these immunities, which can be deeply resented by members of the community. What with diplomatic and other immunities and duty-free shops, it is a very unlucky person who has to pay the full price for his drink. I hope that the noble Lord will be able to assure us that this is a very modest extension of immunities, that it is in a category which restricts the possibility of abuse, and that we can welcome this as an addition to the courtesy that we extend to other organisations coming to reside and do their work among us.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, and to the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, for their reaction to the two orders. If I may first answer the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, who asked me for a little more detail about the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux, particularly how many Commonwealth countries are members, I can tell him that 28 countries are members of the bureaux. Apart from the headquarters at Farnham Royal, there are 10 bureaux concerned with documentary services located at research institutes or university departments in the United Kingdom. Three institutes concerned with identification services and taxonomic research are also located in the United Kingdom, and there is the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control, with its headquarters in Trinidad and outstations in various parts of the world.

The Ministry of Agriculture provides 30 per cent. of the contribution income to the bureaux, with a supplementary contribution of 6 per cent. being made by the Agricultural Research Council, in recognition of the special value of the bureaux' services to them. We believe—and the noble Lord made it quite clear that he believes, too—that the United Kingdom benefits considerably from the presence of these bureaux here in the United Kingdom. The noble Lord asked me how the staff of the bureaux would benefit from this order and how many there are. The bureaux employ a total of approximately 400 staff in this country. Almost all are United Kingdom citizens or permanent residents. Although they will cease to pay tax on their salaries to the Inland Revenue, they will pay a similar amount of tax direct to the bureaux.

The noble Lord asked me the same question about UNIDO. The fact of the matter is that UNIDO has no office at all in this country. The immunities and privileges which we are talking about in this order are granted, first, to cover any conferences or seminar which UNIDO might wish to hold in the United Kingdom; and, secondly, to allow for the possible opening of a branch office here. The noble Lord also asked me when the UNIDO order would, in fact, come into effect. I am advised that it comes into effect when ratification of the new constitution occurs. The states which we hope are going to ratify—and 80 are needed—will then, of course, agree on a new constitution, and I believe it is at that moment that the new order will come into effect. The fact of the matter is that so far only 75 states have ratified.

I must be perfectly open with the noble Lord and say that it does not yet include the United Kingdom. The fact of the matter is that we are waiting for the United States to ratify. The United States is due to bear something like one-quarter of the contributions towards UNIDO, and it is most important to be assured that the United States is going to ratify before we do so. But I can assure the noble Lord that we intend to ratify the new constitution. The exact timing of our ratification is, as I say, not finally decided, but I am advised that it is likely to be effected by the beginning of next year.

I am very much obliged to the noble Lord for that helpful reply. May I ask him whether it is the case, then, that our ratification is dependent upon the United States ratification, the reason being that Her Majesty's Government do not think that the organisation would be viable unless the United States ratified it because of the size of the United States' international contribution?

My Lords, that is almost the position, but may I put it like this. I have not said that our ratification is absolutely dependent on the United States. What I am saying is that we have been in close touch to see what the Uhited States intends to do. The reason is that because of the very large percentage of the budget of UNIDO which falls to the United States, it is important to be assured of the intentions of the United States. Again, I am not saying that UNIDO would not be viable without that contribution, but if the United States did not make that 25 per cent. contribution, somebody else would have to. This is an added reason as to why we are so anxious to be assured of the intentions of the United States. In case, however, I have given a wrong impression, I should like to repeat that I am advised that it is likely that our ratification will be able to be affected by the beginning of next year.

My Lords, is that because we think that the United States will have ratified by then?

That is so. May I finally turn to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby. Immunity of representatives from legal process is restricted to acts done in their official capacity and does not extend to private acts. In addition, there is no immunity in respect of motor traffic accidents or offences, even where it could be argued that the driving was in the exercise of functions as a representative. The immunity in regard to official acts, unlike the other privileges accorded to representatives, persists even after the representative has ceased to be a representative. This is necessary in order to enable him to carry out his duties as the representative of a foreign state without fear of harassment.

I hope that I have answered sufficiently the questions which were put to me on these two orders, and again I beg to move that the first of the two orders be agreed to.

My Lords, I beg to move the second order standing in my name.

My Lords, I beg to move that the Aviation Security Fund (Amendment) Regulations 1982, a draft of which was laid before your Lordships on 29th June of this year, be approved. They have been considered by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments which has not drawn the attention of your Lordships' House to any particular and special points.

Your Lordships may recall that the Government reimburse out of the Aviation Security Fund the costs incurred at airports in searching passengers and their baggage. The fund is financed by a levy which was temporarily reduced, from 1st March this year, from £1·50 per passenger to £1·10. The levy was set to revert to £1·50 on 1st September this year, but these amendment regulations will extend the reduction for a further seven months up to the end of March 1983.

We are able to make these regulations because the fund continues to have a surplus, despite the initial reduction in the levy from March until August of this year. The extension of the reduction will be very welcome to airlines, which of course recover the levy from their passengers, through fares. They would much rather, we believe, have the surplus run down quickly than see it held in the fund and used as a means of moderating any increases in the levy in the years ahead. We anticipate that the extension of the reduction will run the surplus down to the level of about £½ million by the end of the year.

I must say at this point that we did expect that the surplus would be substantially reduced by the initial reduction in the levy. The reasons why we have adjusted our previous forecasts are described in the background paper which has been placed in the Library of your Lordships' House. The paper sets out our current forecasts and gives some details of relevant wage awards, manning levels and so forth. I do not propose to summarise these details in my remarks this evening, but I would wish to comment on the general improvement in the finances of the fund since March 1980.

Two principal factors have been responsible for this. The first factor is the Government's success in bringing down the rate of inflation. The falling level of wage settlements has been of great benefit to the fund because staff costs account for the greater part of its budget. The second factor is that airports and airlines, with the encouragement and assistance of the Department of Trade, have been able to achieve economies and make improvements in the way security measures are implemented. The centralisation of searching at Terminal 3 at Heathrow and in the international lounge at Gatwick has brought considerable savings to the fund. Less dramatic improvements have been made at a number of other airports, and attention is currently being given to several smaller airports where the cost of security per passenger at present works out rather high.

All of us might argue that the levy rate should have been calculated more accurately in the past and that the surplus should not have arisen. But the fact, unfortunately, is that that surplus has arisen. I hope your Lordships will agree that the important thing is that it should now be run down quickly and that extending the present reduction of 40p in the levy rate up to March 1983 is a sensible and at the same time a convenient way of so doing.

Finally, I should mention that apart from extending the reduction, the draft regulations also bring up to date the definition of an aerodrome. They also reduce the rate of interest payable on late levy contributions by 2 per cent., in line with the general fall in interest rates. That is all I wish to say this evening. My Lords, I beg to move.

My Lords, may I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, for explaining this order. May I also thank him for his courtesy in placing a copy of the memorandum of explanation in the Library. I am sure that all airline passengers will welcome the fact that the reduced levy is to be extended for a further seven months, but one must ask why in fact this has occurred.

The noble Lord himself indicated that the Government might have been more accurate in making their calculations about what the future rate of levy needed to be to keep the fund with a reasonable surplus. It certainly seems that it is not really because the rate of inflation has come down that the fund surplus has increased, but because the Government did not anticipate that the various measures which they have taken would succeed in bringing down the rate of inflation. It would appear that the Government had lack of faith in themselves, in that they anticipated that inflation would go on at a much higher rate than in fact it has done over the past few months.

One would hope that the major reason for the extension of the reduced charge is because there is increased efficiency at the various airports. It is the duty of your Lordships' House to keep the Government continually on their toes to ensure that the security operation is carried out effectively and efficiently. Indeed, from the paper placed in the Library we learn with some pleasure that the number of security staff at Gatwick has been reduced by 32 and at Heathrow by 91, with smaller reductions in the number of staff at other airports. I know it is always a matter of concern to all air passengers when they see a great number of security staff hanging around the security search area with apparently very little to do at a particular point in time. One feels very much that this may be because it is not as efficiently organised as it should be. Therefore one is continually concerned that there is more efficient operation of the service. The noble Lord mentioned the centralised search area in Terminal 3 and it is plain that this is one of the reasons for the reduction in the number of staff at Heathrow.

Another area of concern must be the question of the allocation of costs. There are many items in the costs which one would freely accept should be allocated to the costs of the administration of the security arrangements. The costs include such items as searching, detection equipment, security training, administration and so on. Item 4 covers police, and one questions to what extent the cost of employment of the police in these matters should be a charge on the fund and to what extent it should be a charge on the taxpayer in general.

It must be a matter of judgment as to how much of that cost should fall on the one head and how much of it should fall on the other head. In this particular case, one is concerned to see that an over-large amount of that particular cost is not allocated to the costs of this particular fund. I hope that the noble Lord will be able to assure your Lordships that he is satisfied about the allocation of costs in that area. As I said at the beginning, in general one must welcome the fact that the reduced charge will continue for a further period of seven months.

My Lords, I was grateful to have a copy of the background paper and to have had an opportunity of studying it before tonight. We have been here before on various occasions and, as the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, said, these amendment regulations extend up to the end of March next year the 40p reduction in the levy, from £1·50 to £1·10. The existing regulations would have ended the reduction in 1982.

The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, mentioned the changes in what had been left in the fund, if I can put it that way. Obviously, any reduction in the levy is to be supported, but looking at this background paper I trust that the revised estimates will prove to be more accurate than the past ones were. I would like to ask the noble Lord the Minister whether he is aware that the United Kingdom is the only country in the world which has a Government levy to finance security charges? No other country has an aviation security fund, and I do not think we should forget these things.

In the EEC, Australia, the United States of America and Canada, standards are set by the Government through the national security agencies of their countries and the airlines are expected to adhere to those standards. Ever since April 1978, I have been trying to have the system changed, the airlines have been trying to have the system changed and IATA has been trying to have the system changed. Apart from thinking that it is the wrong system, none of us who has complained about it believes that the allocation of costs is satisfactory. We feel that this should be more closely scrutinised. In being glad that the levy is being reduced, I can only hope that we may soon see it disappear altogether. I hope that one day those of us who believe, with the great majority, that the system should be changed, will succeed.

My Lords, I would like to welcome this regulation and to congratulate the Government and my noble friend for bringing forward such welcome news and for the action they have taken. I have not had the privilege of seeing this explanatory document, nor have others who will read this debate later, but I should like to ask two questions. First, may we have an assurance that this welcome news will be put into practice and that the price of tickets to the general public will not have been anticipated and therefore be charged? Perhaps my noble friend can explain how this arises. Secondly, on reaching the next stage next April, can my noble friend say whether the Government anticipate that the sum of £1·50 per capita will be necessary, or whether further discussion will be going on with the industry?

My Lords, certainly I am full of gratitude for the welcome which has been given to this amendment order tonight from all sides of the House. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, kindly took the trouble to consult me and other colleagues on the order and on the measures before your Lordships this evening. I just wondered whether it was not the voice of his noble friend Lord Bruce of Donington speaking, so expertly did the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, go through the accountancy, the details and the allocation of costs. I salute him and admire him for his mastery of the little schedule in the annexe.

The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, asked me one or two questions. First, he asked me about forecasting. In respect to the Government's forecasting, of what the level of the fund should be and of the costs which are likely to be incurred in carrying out security duties for passengers at airports, the department is in no way infallible but does try to prepare estimates which are as accurate as possible. No one will know that better than the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, and he will be strongly advised in that direction by his noble friend Lord Bruce of Donington. On the basis of these estimates, to set the levy rate so that the fund breaks even—and I say it roughly—at the end of the year ahead, in not, I am sure your Lordships will be aware, an easy task, particularly when they have to incorporate assumptions about the likely level of wage settlements and other figures which have to be taken into account in working out these estimates. I believe the important thing is that we are now taking prompt steps—and we have done so in the past—to adjust the levy rate in line with our revised forecasts.

The main reason for the changes in these latest forecasts is described in Annexe 2 of the background paper which your Lordships should have. I will certainly endeavour to see that my noble friend Lord Kinnoull obtains a copy and as much information as I can give him. As your Lorsdhips will be aware, the background paper has been placed in the library.

The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, also raised the question of the police. I would stress to the noble Lord, and indeed to your Lordships' House that security especially in the light of the tragic events of today, is in all our minds, and expecially when we have tens of thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands passing through our major airports in the course of a year. We believe our security is still effective. We believe it is certainly efficient. Indeed, I congratulate and I salute the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, if he has passed through the security checks at any of the major airports of London swiftly. I think I shall have to consult him as to how he does it, because I find security vetting is very thorough. It is also effective; I hope that it is certainly efficient.

The noble Lord asked me a very detailed point on the policing of the airports, particularly in relation to the figures that are found in the schedule, in the annex. The fund only pays that element of police costs which arises from police duties spent on anti-terrorist measures. These are, I think, fairly easily identifiable by your Lordships. The allocation of costs has been reviewed recently, and we are satisfied that it is entirely fair to all concerned and expecially to the travellers.

The noble Baroness, Lady Burton, said we have been here before. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Trefgarne and the noble Baroness have clearly been through this particular route. I think it was in February this year that my noble friend had a very interesting and lively debate with the noble Baroness. I am grateful to her for her welcome to the regulations and the steps we are trying to take this evening. The noble Baroness asked me for confirmation on two points. First of all, she showed a little concern about how the United Kingdom system is indeed unique in the world. We admit freely that it is entirely true that few other countries levy a security charge of any description, but I am sure the noble Baroness is aware that there are one or two which do so. For example there, is a small charge levied at Canadian airports to recover the costs of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I am not aware of any country that has specifically copied the system prevalent in this country, but certainly the United Kingdom is by no means unique in not paying for aviation security through general taxation. I am sure the noble Baroness and your Lordships are aware that in North America and Australia the cost of passenger searching is borne directly by the Airlines.

If I could just amplify this reply to the noble Baroness, the option of reimbursing security costs from taxpayers' general funds, as was done until 1978, certainly is not on the agenda for the present review. The Government take the view that those who benefit from the service which is provided, namely those who travel by air, should pay for the identifiable cost of their own protection. Lastly, it does not need me to remind your Lordships of the present tight constraint upon public expenditure.

My noble friend Lord Kinnoull asked me two questions. Certainly I can give confirmation on one of them: that the levy is one of many costs which are taken into account by airlines when they calculate the total revenue they need to raise from fares on their scheduled services. These various costs, and indeed the balance of the costs that go to make up their total costs, are constantly changing. Your Lordships will not need reminding, after the lengthy debates we have had in the past, especially with the noble Baroness, Lady Burton, that the fares structures are very complicated in themselves, and the cost factors in those fares change and they are also complicated. I think that is one major reason why it is not entirely possible to identify the element of the security levy in any particular fare or indeed in any particular series or types of fares. I am afraid that I missed the second point which was put by my noble friend Lord Kinnoull. I will pick it up and, if I may, write to him if I can obtain the answer to his detailed point, as I think I might be able to do.

I hope I have covered the points that have been raised by your Lordships. I would stress that the Aviation Security Fund is in surplus. The surplus reflects both the falling rate of inflation and the improvements in the way that the security measures are implemented in our airports, both in effectiveness and in efficiency. The extension of the 40p reduction in the levy will run down the surplus in what we think is a sensible and convenient way to about half a million pounds at the end of the financial year, at the end of March 1983. The amendment regulations are sup- ported by the airlines and indeed by the rest of the air transport industry. After this brief intervention, I hope that they meet with your Lordships' approval.

rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will explain the circumstances in which it became necessary to remove from this country on the 6th June last a Canadian, Miss Lilli Luczak, who had been resident in London for nearly nine years; who has had to leave in this country her six-year old daughter—a British citizen thoroughly integrated in her locality; who was no charge on public funds—having secure employment and her own rented accommodation with her own furniture and effects; and whether they will, on compassionate grounds, admit Miss Luczak as an immigrant into this country so that she may be reunited with her daughter and so that they may resume their family life together within the neighbourly environment in which they had successfully established themselves.

My Lords, there was an occasion when the famous orator Edmund Burke dealt with a subject so eloquently that when he sat down the next speaker—who I think was Oliver Goldsmith, but the noble Lord, Lord Elton, might correct me was content to remark, "I say 'ditto' to Mr. Burke". That is my position tonight. I say ditto. I am proud to say ditto to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce. I promised to rise to my feet to support him but I assure the House that I am only going to detain noble Lords for a moment or two.

The noble Lord has brought out not just the facts but the arguments with great eloquence and power of feeling. Personally, I do not think there is anything I can add, except to express the hope that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has not come down with a cast iron brief. I have been in his position in past times often enough, and I am aware that in dealing with an Unstarred Question the Minister is able to deliver the last word and then, so to speak, make a quick getaway before anybody can cope with his arguments. No one has the right, in fact, to cope with them on the Floor of the House. But that would not be a very satisfactory victory, and it would not be one that would appeal to the noble Lord, nor is it one that would appeal to the House.

The most I can hope for, but I do hope for this very much, is that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has some flexibility available to him. The noble Lord will set out the Government's case, but, in view of all the misunderstandings that have been explained and the strong compassionate appeal that has been made, I hope that he will at least say that he will look at the matter again, if he cannot entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Bruce tonight.

My Lords, I wish at the outset to echo the words of my noble friend Lord Bruce that the object of this Unstarred Question is to persuade, not attack, the Government, and I hope that nothing I say will be taken as an attack on them. This kind of case, which is very much an individual one—the case of an individual person—must be dealt with often outside regulations, and it is evident from the details that have been given by my noble friend that that is the way in which this case was dealt with until very recently.

I also echo my noble friend's words in his appeal to the party opposite to recall the many occasions on which they have lauded the value of family life. We are talking here about the life of a family; it may be a one-parent family but that does not make it any less of a family, and the decision of the Government in this case affects the family, mother and child, and I would put my emphasis, as did my noble friend, on the future of the child.

Like my noble friend, I wish to add my welcome to the fact that the right reverend Prelate has spared time to sit through this debate. I would like to tempt him to speak in it, and I have perhaps a little right to do so, living within his diocese and having had one of his predecessor's as my college chaplain. The fact that he is here is of importance, and I regard it of importance to the case that has been made because of the vital nature of the family aspect of the whole of the case. There is also the need to regard the future of the child and mother as of greater importance to the Government than an absolute following of the details of rules and regulations, because this is an unusual, if not unique, case.

I wish to ask a few questions of the Government and then to make an appeal to them. My first question deals with accountability to Parliament. My noble friend Lord Bruce appealed to the Prime Minister to postpone the deportation of Miss Luczak on the grounds that he had already tabled this Unstarred Question and that the deportation would take place the day before Parliament reassembled, so that there would be no possibility of parliamentary debate. I am attributing no evil motives to the Government, but it is unfortunate that the deportation took place on the day before Parliament reassembled. There was therefore no opportunity for Parliament to question the Government and hear the details of the case before the lady was actually deported. Do the Government not consider that it would have been wiser and more in keeping with parliamentary accountability to have postponed her deportation until the Question had been raised in Parliament and that the deportation at least could have been left pending this debate?

I wish, secondly, to question the Government on a point which has been raised, at least obliquely, by my noble friend. Is it not extraordinary that this lady's claim to remain domiciled in this country apparently depended on her cohabitation with some man in this country? I hope the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but so far as I can discover, Miss Luczak was entitled to remain domiciled in this country only if she cohabited with some British male. For a time she did so and apparently was undisturbed. It would seem that the reason for the deportation was not any misdemeanour on her part, no inability to keep herself, no question of a charge on public funds, but simply because her cohabitation with this man came to an end. That seems to be an extraordinary way to conduct immigration policy.

Another condition which appears to have been laid on her continued domicile her—I am sure the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—was that she had to be dependent on this man, presumably financially, because the department was looking at his ability to keep her. But when she was able to keep herself, the department then said, "No, you have broken with this man". At one time they said, "This man cannot keep you", but now they said, "Whether or not you can keep yourself is not the issue. Even though you have proved that you are able to maintain yourself and your daughter, we are still deporting you". Is that not also an extraordinary way of exercising the immigration regulations?

Finally I come to the appeal to the Government. It has been said by the Secretary of State that this lady could have been allowed to remain in this country only on compassionate grounds, and that his department was unable to discover such grounds. I think that this House could discover them. I do not think that this House would find any difficulty whatever in discovering such compassionate grounds. Here is a young woman who has lived here from the age of 20 to the age of 29. She has worked here, and has never been a charge on the state. She has borne a child here and has brought up the child, who has been integrated into not only the country, but also the locality. The child goes to a local school and has friends. All her friends are local people in the Islington area. I know that there is in the possession of my noble friend a letter from the governors of the school which the child attends. Attempts are made by neighbours and friends to rally round this young woman, so that she can remain here, despite the actions of the department.

Those, my Lords, are compassionate grounds. What is the choice with which she is left? On the one hand she is left with the choice of uprooting the child, at the very impressionable age of six or seven years, from all her friends, from the environment that she has known, from all her emotional ties—uprooting her, and taking her to a country of which she has no knowledge. In that country by now her mother will have no friends, and will have to look for new employment. Alternatively, there is the choice that this young woman eventually did make with, I am certain, a great deal of agony—the choice of allowing herself to be deported, but of so valuing the environment in which her daughter had been brought up that she left her behind under the care of foster parents.

Are not those compassionate grounds? Are they not grounds for the maintenance of a family unit? Are they not the kind of grounds as regards which our country has long prided itself in its concern for mothers and children? I echo, and support without reservation, the plea made by my noble friend Lord Bruce that there are here compassionate grounds now to admit Miss Luczak back from Canada as an immigrant into this country, so that she may be reunited with her daughter, and so as to restore the family fabric which so far has been cracked, but which will be totally broken if the situation is allowed to continue. She should be allowed to resume her place in the neighbourly environment in which she and her daughter have been living.

My Lords, I rise primarily to make a plea to the noble Lord, Lord Elton. I shall not deal too greatly with the details of the case. I can well understand that more than likely the noble Lord has received a briefing from the civil servants at the Home Office, and it is right that they should inform him as to how the law stands. It is also the noble Lord's responsibility to take full cognisance of the material that the civil servants have provided for him. It is equally his responsibility not to have to jump every hurdle, nor listen to every submission made to him by civil servants.

I speak with some experience. I can remember—I recall this merely to illustrate to your Lordships the point that I am making—my time as leader of Fulham Borough Council about 30 years ago. We were engaged in trying to destroy the many slums of the borough. Children lived two or three to a room, with only one water closet outside, at the back of the building. A lady came to see me to complain. Her husband was an artisan. He was an honest man, she was a decent woman, with a number of children. It was in the year 1953–54, and she was becoming sick and tired of rats biting her children when they were in bed. She made a remark that I shall remember all my life. I was then Mr. Molloy, and she said, "Councillor, I live about eight miles from Parliament, and seven miles from Buckingham Palace, and these are the conditions under which I live".

It was a terrible situation. I remember the names of the streets—and I think that your Lordships will understand the point that I am making when later I come to the appeal that I am to make to the noble Lord, Lord Elton. The streets were: Balaclava Street, Inkerman Street, Nelson Street, Fleet Street. At one time the houses had been the homes of the wealthy middle class, but in the time of which I speak the working classes were crowded in, living in abject misery. We decided that we ought to pull down the stinking lot and build new homes. Then came the problem: to whom do we allocate the new homes? We worked out a system. When we tried to allocate who should first have the houses local government officers said, "According to the agreement passed in council Mrs. A has so many points over Mrs, B" Had we left it at that, it would have been very easy; those were the rules and regulations. Mrs. and Mr. A and their kids had an advantage over Mr. and Mrs. B and their kids.

Well, as was my wont, I did not leave the matter with the local government officers. I went to see Mrs. A with her three or four children. She complained that one child, in its cradle, was being harrassed by rats, eight miles from this Chamber. I had a look at the condition of the children. Nothing in the local government officer's report had told me, for example, that one child was blind. There was nothing in the regulations about that. Officials had asked merely how many children were there. There was nothing in the regulations which would help discover how many children were blind, how many were crippled, or whether Mrs. A had children who were not blind or were not crippled. I found out by being a very exacting councillor.

The lesson that I learnt was that the local government officers had a responsibility to supply me with information. It was my responsibility to realise that that information was restricted by the tight regulations and the council's decisions. I decided that humanity must come in as well. Those who oppose me will refer to the law of the land and the regulations of the realm, and will say that in no way can compassion or humanity cross those lines. That is what we are going to decide tonight. It would be far better if in our churches and chapels we preach that we do not really believe in compassion and humanity, because the law is there to put blinkers on us when we look at each individual case. If we do that, at least we shall not be hypocrites: if we try to get the best of both worlds and apologise, we are.

I discovered that the same thing applied when I became a Member of the other place. There were rules and regulations, and, quite rightly, civil servants briefed their Ministers, as is their duty and their responsibility, as to precisely what the law is. If I may say so with great humility, any outside utterances such as one might find in the New Testament do not come into it. I said, "No, this is not so; wherever I speak, this will not be so". I had further experience of this in the Council of Europe, particularly when I was responsible for moving the principle of reciprocity in our National Health Service, which resulted in nine or 10 other countries coming to join us, so that if our citizens were ill in their country then they would do their best to give them succour and aid and the best of medical treatment, and we would do the same for their citizens here.

My appeal to Lord Elton is simply this. It would be wrong of us to expect him to make a decision absolutely in our favour, particularly after the superb exposition in detail given by my noble friend Lord Bruce of Donington. That is why I have not covered the ground that he covered in his speech. I will be quite frank with the House, my Lords. My noble friend Lord Bruce and I have discussed and examined this case. I do not wish to shelter behind anything, and when I listened to him tonight I recognised time and time again the arguments that he was submitting.

I say this to your Lordships. Is it not at least a mark of credit to the parliamentary system of this country that one woman and her child can command the attention of this noble House? That in itself, I believe, is a mark of great credit. But we must not be tempted to think that that is enough. We have listened, and there has been an examination and there has been a debate; but nothing that has been said on these Benches, particularly the detailed analysis that was submitted by my noble friend Lord Bruce of Donington, matters if nothing is done. An airing has been given to this matter, but it will not make the slightest bit of difference if we do nothing because then, what I have just said about the grandeur and the honour of our parliamentary system, that one woman and her 6½ year-old child can command the attention of this Chamber, will in itself be an hypocrisy if there is no real ground in the submissions that have been made for examining the situation again.

In view of what my noble friend Lord Bruce of Donington has said, can we now afford to say, not so much, "Suffer little children to come unto me", but, in this realm of the United Kingdom, "Suffer one woman to return to give succour to the child which she bore"? That child is as British as my daughter; she is as British as the daughter of any Falkland islander; and she is as British as any 6½ year-old child born in this realm. That is the situation, and so I appeal to Lord Elton. As I have said, I do not expect him—it would be grossly unfair to do so—to go to the Dispatch Box and say that he, speaking on behalf of his honourable friend the Home Secretary, has been completely converted to the case put by my noble friend Lord Bruce of Donington, to the speech of my noble friend behind me and to those that I hope will follow. That would be asking too much of any Minister.

Let me conclude with this. Notwithstanding th correctness of the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Elton has been supplied with a brief by the Home Department, which I know he has examined—that is his responsibility, as I have said; and it is their responsibility to supply it—I ask him to add to that the detailed analysis supplied by my noble friend Lord Bruce of Donington and the points made by my noble friend Lord Hatch. Then, if he cannot make a decision on this issue tonight, I would expect him to say that; but would he give us at least this hope in our hearts, with no promises other than that he will examine what has been said by my noble friend Lord Bruce, that he will examine the submission made by my noble friend Lord Hatch, that he will put these in juxtaposition with the brief that he has received from the Home Office and will be prepared to discuss it with the Home Secretary—and all this on behalf of one woman and her daughter! If he would do that, and that alone, it will prove to the world that this realm of ours contains a real, compassionate and feeling democracy, and that that spirit goes through all the Members of this House and another place, and Her Majesty's Ministers as well.

My Lords, I think I can be brief. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, was in touch about this sad case with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and that the archbishop wrote to him to say that he was not able to be here himself but would very much have wished to be here in order to speak in this debate. However, he has asked me to speak on his behalf, and I would also want to speak on my own behalf because I think that we would be as much concerned as others have stated already in the family aspect of this matter, and particularly the aspect of the child, who is only six years old. I think the case is highly eloquent in itself, and I do not think I need to underline that; and I hope I would not need to underline the fact that I and those I stand for are profoundly concerned at this sort of instance.

I recognise the extreme complexity of a case like this. The noble Earl, Lord Longford, has used the word "flexibility". I would ask the Minister to use all the flexibility he can in interpreting the law as he finds it. I think the capacity to do that is the sort of thing that shows up the nature of our laws, and the way we apply them—and that is something which is of great importance to ourselves and to the world.

My Lords, in this I am not primarily concerned with Miss Luczak, but with her child. Miss Luczak appears to be a very couragous and able woman. She came over here from a brutal home in Canada with a drunken and very violent father. She made a life for herself here. She made an association, and she made a home such as she had never had. She lived with a man who was then married but had left his wife. She had this child, and she made a home again. When that man left her she was still capable of keeping that home going, getting a house, getting a job, getting the friendship of her neighbours, getting an association and getting the child, who is rather brilliant, to school.

There is an agument about whether a letter was sent and lost either by the Post Office or the various filing systems of the department, or whether it was not sent. She has an extremely honourable record, and upon that basis you would have thought that on any view it could at least be said to her, "We will reopen your appeal, which you never heard about, and give you the opportunity to be heard in it". That is what any court of law would do in the circumstances. Any judge in these circumstances would say, "Come back and you shall at least be heard, and your advocate shall be heard". That, I believe would be just to her.

But that to me is not the really important point here. She is a very able woman. She has re-created her life three times and no doubt can do it a fourth. The person I am concerned with is Jessica, the child; and to that child we are being very cruel. There is no getting away from it. We are asking here to be cruel to a child. The mother took what seems to me a very brave decision. She had either to take the child with her to Canada where she had only a brutal home to go to—and she could not do that where she had no job, where the recession was worse than it is here; or to leave the child undisturbed in the school where she was doing well and in the neighbourhood where she was doing well. It was a fine decision on her part. You may say it was right or wrong but that does not concern us.

We are concerned with the child who is also one of our citizens; as the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, said, as English as any of us. That child needs and wants her mother. The reports from the school says: Have them here. There are reports of new distress arising. This English child wants a mother to look after her. That mother is available and longing to come. She is a woman of perfectly good record, able, with a job to go to, with a house to go into, with her belongings here. Are we doing our duty to that child who, as I say, is an English citizen by denying her her mother? It seems to me the most cruel thing to do. I certainly do not envy the Minister whom I have known for many years and whom I know is a kind man and who does not like being unkind to children.

In what was a very notable speech, my noble friend Lord Bruce brought out all these new facts and this new, all-important knowledge that the school, and the people who are looking after her, pay tribute to this child and point out her need for her mother. To go on denying this child her mother is really an outrage and one which I am sure in his heart the noble Lord cannot possibly approve of. Let him at least say to us: "Well, there are new facts which have come out. I will go back to the department. They will not much like it. But I will go back to my boss who, I think, will like it a great deal for he is a very humane man and I know that if he understood what was happening here he would hate to be the author of this situation". Let him say, "I will do my best" and we will all say thank you to him.

My Lords, I regret that I did not register to speak in this debate. I forgot it was necessary to do so on an Unstarred Question. I apologise to the House. I feel impelled to say one word in tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, for initiating this debate. There he is on the Front Bench, deeply involved in many other issues, having to give time to it as all Front Bench men do; and yet his humanity was such that he felt it necessary tonight to raise an issue referring to one woman and one child—and that is a human attribute to which all of us must pay tribute.

I am not going to repeat the arguments which have been urged in this case. They seem to me to be overwhelming. I want to make one point briefly which so far has not been made. This House and the Government Front Bench are very proud of the tradition of this country in human rights. From all sides of the House, we criticise the denial of human rights in other territories, particularly in the Soviet Union; but it is not there alone. I want to urge on the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that if we are to be credible and effective in standing for human rights, then we must concern ourselves with the kind of issue which has been raised tonight, even if it affects only one woman and one child.

Over the years, I have raised many issues of this character. But we have never had a debate on them of the kind that we have had tonight. I speak almost personally to the noble Lord, Lord Elton. I was closely associated with his father many years ago. I know from that association that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, himself will feel compassion and the need to urge human rights just as much as all of us who have taken part in this discussion tonight.

The case from all sides of the House has been overwhelming, and I ask him in his reply to respond to the compassion that is in his heart and in his mind and at least to say, having heard what has been urged this evening, that he will refer the matter again to the Minister, ask the Minister to reconsider the case and to allow the mother to come back from Canada to join her child in this country—an act of human happiness. I have no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will feel it as deeply as we do, and will at least say that he will refer it to the Minister for re-examination and reconsideration.

My Lords, I am afraid I must make the same apology as my noble friend Lord Brockway. I did not add my name earlier to the list of speakers. But it is very difficult to listen to this debate unmoved particularly, if I may say so, if you are somebody who, like the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has held ministerial responsibility and has had to consider these awful questions where you say to yourself, "If, in this case, I make the decision that leads towards mercy, the decision that will be well received by my hearers, am I, by so doing, incurring a bill which I and the Government will not subsequently be able to pay? Shall I be creating so many precedents that in the end I shall have made the wrong decision? Shall I have tried to be kind and failed?" That is what must be troubling the noble Lord; and I want to address a few words to him and, through him, to the Home Secretary on that aspect of the matter.

First of all, I believe that we can all accept this: the charge of trying to enter this country illegally really will not stand up as a determining factor in the case at all. It is quite clear from what my noble friend Lord Bruce told us—which I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will dispute—that the lady at the time had no idea that she was entering illegally and against an order that had been made. She had no reason to do so. Her reason for leaving this country was obvious and substantiated. I am not a lawyer and I do not know whether returning against an order when you do not know that it has been made is illegally entering or not. It is not, of course, a matter of common sense and it could not possibly be argued as a reason for turning this lady's case down.

Once we set that aside, we are up against something which I believe will be a real help to the noble Lord Lord Elton, in dealing with the dilemma that I was trying to describe earlier. It is this: at one stage, when there was an adjudication, the decision was that on one point the lady was right and on the other point the Government were right; and it was the kind of case on which the Home Secretary could exercise his discretion. There, I believe the difficulty that I was trying to define earlier is resolved for the Government, the Home Secretary and the noble Lord, Lord Elton. He can quite truthfully say: "I have already been told from a quarter that does not normally go in for exaggerated compassion, from a quarter that tries to weigh the exact legality of the case. I have been told that this is a case on which I may properly exercise my discretion."

Once one has accepted that, it will be hard to find a case in which it would be more proper to exercise discretion than this. There is an overwhelming factor of compassion here. Few of us, few of our wives or any woman we know or can think of, would want to be faced with that dreadful dilemma which faced this lady when she had to decide whether to stay with her child or to leave the child here. Most of us will feel that she has made the right decision. We ought to: it is a very considerable compliment to this country that she does make that decision. To be able to leave the child here to grow up with the British citizenship that belongs to it is worth all the other difficulties that stem from that decision. But it is dreadful that she has been put in that position. That surely is a compassionate factor. How many files will one have to turn over before one finds a case in which something comparable to that will turn up? That I think is the ministerial reply when somebody says to him: "Beware of making a precedent". The Minister will have to say to himself: "How many precedents will this create? How many cases could be said to be so like this as to be quoted in future as an exact precedent against me?" Not many, I think.

I remember when I was a very young and inexperienced MP speaking to the then Home Secretary, Mr. Chuter Ede, about the case of a foreign lady who wanted to come into this country. He said—and he had to say this—to me: "If I open the door, half Europe will want to come here". That was indeed the situation in 1945. Her case was simply not strong enough. It was true. If he opened the door to her there were tens, hundreds and thousands for whom it opened as well. It could not be done.

That is not the case here. This is the chance. I therefore add my voice to many others who have asked the noble Lord, Lord Elton, please, to go back to the Home Secretary and describe to him the depths of feeling and the character of the debate he has had to go through. This is the kind of case where the wise, middle-rank Minister goes back to his chief and says, "Think again".

My Lords, I too apologise to the House for not putting my name down to speak. I rise now to make a brief point simply because of the strength of the argument that I have heard tonight, especially from the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington. I identify with the young girl, Jessica, and it is on this one point that I should like to make an appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, this evening. My family also broke up at about the same time as this child's family. We must bear this in mind: when a parent leaves a family, a child is stunned by that event. This child's father has already left. Now the child has to face the departure of her mother.

I appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, to think in the terms of the child, who is a British citizen, and I ask him to understand from someone who has been through it—and it is not always understood by people who have been brought up with both their parents throughout their lives—that when, as in this case, a second parent leaves the child, the child is stunned by that event. That feeling can remain with the child for an exceedingly long time. It takes years for that child to regain his or her confidence. I appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, to take this one point into account.

If there are no further speakers, my Lords, I will endeavour to reply to this impressive debate. I should like to start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, for the extremely considerate—or at least extremely perceptive—way in which he introduced this debate into my personal context—like a cross-bar between the two down-strokes of an "H". A very compressed day it has proved to be, with its own alarms and excursions. I am grateful also to those of your Lordships who put your names down to speak. One way of estimating the importance of an event is to see the number and indeed the calibre of speakers whose names are on the list. While I say nothing against the calibre of speakers whose names were on the paper when I saw it earlier today, certainly their number was a good deal less than it has since become. But all that is by the way.

I feel that I need to recite some of the facts; at the same time your Lordships may find it rather tedious if I repeat a great deal of what the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, has said and set your Lordships the task of wondering whether or not there are discrepancies. The fact is that Miss Luczak first came to this country from Canada on 7th July 1973 and was granted entry as a visitor for six months, on the understanding that is common to all such cases that she would leave the country at the end of her stay. In January 1974—and the noble Lord, Lord Bruce has given us the date of the letter—she wrote to the Home Office to say that she had obtained a job and would like to say for a further year, and this application was granted under the working holidaymaker arrangements that apply to Commonwealth citizens. A similar application was made in 1975 and she was granted an extension for a further year. In October 1975 she began to live with an Englishman whom she had met the previous year and who was the father of her daughter, Jessica, born in December 1975.

When Miss Luczak made her third application to the department in January 1976, she applied on this occasion for permanent settlement. It appears from that application, and from subsequent statements, that she was under the impression that the birth of a child here would qualify her to remain permanently. It was explained to her at the time, and on later occasions, that the birth of her daughter gave her no such entitlement; but subsequent events have shown that she has not always been entirely receptive to that explanation. The Home Office therefore considered her application in the light of her relationship with the man with whom she was living. He was separated, but not divorced, from his wife and therefore not free to marry Miss Luczak; but we were satisfied that their relationship was genuine and that he was able to support her. Although she did not qualify under the Immigration Rules for permanent residence, she was granted leave to remain for a further year; that leave was granted exceptionally outside the Immigration Rules.

In October 1976 she applied for leave to remain for a further 18 months to undertake a TOPS course and subsequently to take employment. Both she and the man with whom she had been living were interviewed and it emerged that, although they were still living together, he was no longer able to support her. Under the Home Office practice at that time, a woman in Miss Luczak's position would have been given extensions of stay for twelve months at a time, provided we were satisfied that she could be supported and accommodated by her partner. This was no longer the case with Miss Luczak but, in order to give her the opportunity of qualifying to remain in the United Kingdom in her own right, her application to take employment was referred to the Department of Employment for them to consider the issue of a work permit. In the event, they were unable to approve Miss Luczak's employment; she had no further claim to remain in this country and her application was refused in August 1977.

She appealed against this decision and her appeal was dismissed in September 1978, but the adjudicator recommended the further exercise of discretion outside the immigration rules to allow the couple to remain together. I think I should dwell on the point and say that the adjudicator did criticise the Home Office for misapplying, in his view, the immigration rules. The Home Office had failed to make it clear, however that this action had been taken not under the rules but quite exceptionally, outside them. The criticism was not that the rules had been too harshly applied: the adjudicator recommended that the Home Office should exercise its discretion outside the rules to give leave for Miss Luczak to remain. He did not specify that indefinite leave to remain should be considered, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, implied; and since the policy was to grant leave in such cases for 12 months at a time, Miss Luczak's leave was extended for a further year—

My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to intervene?

My Lords, if the noble Lord will allow me to put a marker in my pile so that I do not get lost, I will give way.

My Lords, I am very much obliged. There is a question here which has been raised by the noble Lord's speech and which has been raised in correspondence. Quite frankly, I do not know the answer and I should be very grateful if the noble Lord could give it to me. On what grounds did the Department of Employment refuse the application of Miss Luczak when she applied for a work permit? Also, why was it that they disapproved of her employers, apparently? What criteria do the Department of Employment use in a case of this kind?

My Lords, I will endeavour to satisfy the noble Lord's question a little later on. I was saying that Miss Luczak's leave was extended for a further year, and when a relationship such as hers has lasted for some time it was the practice eventually to grant settlement, but there were always significant doubts about the stability of her relationship, and those doubts proved justified only four months after her last grant of leave to remain.

The criteria to which the noble Lord referred are the possession of skills, and of course the details of that vary according to the job applied for. For a more detailed elucidation of what the Department of Employment's criteria might have been in this case, I should have to take further advice.

In fact, her partner had by this time obtained a new job and was again in a position to support her and in April 1979 she was granted yet a further extension of 12 months. Again the extension was exceptional and again it was outside the immigration rules. Four months later, in August 1979, the relationship between the couple came to an end. In April 1980 she informed the Home Office of this fact, as the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, has said—

My Lords, if the noble Lord will permit me, it was on 21st April 1979 that she notified the Home Office.

My Lords, I am not sure that it is material to this case, but I shall be quite happy to correct myself in retrospect if it proves to be wrong. I was saying that in August 1979, as I understand it, the relationship came to an end and she informed the Home Office of this in April of the following year and applied once again to take employment and also for settlement. Of course it was necessary for her to disclose her situation when she made her application.

She was again interviewed so that she could set out her case in detail, together with any compassionate considerations. She had previously been allowed to remain, exceptionally, outside the immigration rules on the basis of her relationship with an Englishman living here. With the ending of that relationship, she had no other claim to remain here. My right honourable friend the Minister of State considered her case very carefully and sympathetically to see whether there were sufficient compassionate reasons for permitting her to remain further, outside the immigration rules, but none were found and her application was refused in September 1980. She appealed against that decision, and her appeal was dismissed in October 1981. Neither the Home Office nor, I understand, the JCWI, it seems, then had her correct address. In November my right honourable friend wrote to say that she should make arrangements to leave the country. Miss Luczak, accompanied by her daughter, left the United Kingdom on 26th December—my Lords, I think this must be the last intervention.

My Lords, the point is so important. Could the noble Lord say whether the letter which his right honourable friend sent to Miss Luczak on the 26th November was sent to her at the address she now occupied or the other address? This is crucial to the case.

My Lords, again, I will revert to this. I think I am right in saying that it was to the original and not to the latter address. However, be that as it may—I have said that I will revert to this later—she left the United Kingdom on 26th December. My Lords, it is as I thought; the letter was sent to the original, that it so say the other, address. She returned on 3rd January this year, having spent just one week with relatives in Germany.

She sought entry for settlement but, since her application for settlement had been refused and her appeal dismissed, and since she did not qualify for entry under the rules, the immigration officer had no alternative but to refuse her admission. She was, however, granted temporary admission while her Member of Parliament, and many others, made representations on her behalf, notably including the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington.

Three main claims were advanced on her behalf: that she had been here since 1973; that she had a young child who was patrial; and that she was frightened that her father might punish her on return to Canada, where she would have difficulty in finding employment. My right honourable friends the Home Secretary and the Minister of State considered all these representations with very great care. Miss Luczak had never been settled in this country and had always known that her stay was in a temporary capacity, and that most recently it had also been outside the immigration rules. She was not misled by the department at any stage. Her daughter's birth in the United Kingdom gave Miss Luczak no claim to remain. Neither did we consider that a Canadian citizen who had lived in Canada until the age of 20 could claim real hardship if she were required to return there. Miss Luczak was a qualified secretary and should be able to obtain a job. She had left home at the age of 18 to live away from her father before ever she came to England and, given that she had other relatives in Canada, it seemed unlikely that she would have to live once more with her father. It was concluded that there were no grounds for allowing her to enter the country for settlement, and, after all the representations had been considered, she was finally removed to Canada on 6th June. Provision was made to pay her daughter's fare out of public funds and a seat was reserved, but Miss Luczak chose to leave her child in this country when she left it.

It is a long and complicated story—though not as complex as many immigration cases can be—but I thought that I should spell out in detail how it unrolled before the eyes of the Home Office. The fundamental point is that Miss Luczak came here only for a temporary stay and has never had an entitlement to settle here. There are, of course, many thousands of people throughout the world who would like to settle in this country and who make application to us. They may be Europeans; they may be Africans; they may come, like Miss Luszak, from Canada; they may come from the Indian subcontinent. One thing they have in common: if they have no entitlement to settle here their application has to be refused. We have, of course, every sympathy for someone in Miss Luczak's position who has to bring up a family on her own. But I fear that, however sympathetic we must be, this is not a problem that can be resolved by the immigration rules.

The noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, has spoken most eloquently of Miss Luczak's character and lifestyle. I do not think it was necessary to say that she does not smoke or drink, but I get the clear impression of a most agreeable character. The noble Lord has had the benefit of meeting Miss Luczak, which I have not, and I am happy to accept everything that he has said in that respect. But the immigration rules are not concerned with a person's character, except in one very special respect; that is, of course, the provision for the exclusion of people whose presence here would not be conducive to the public good, such as people with serious criminal convictions. That apart—and it does not, of course, touch Miss Luczak—character is not something which an immigration officer has to consider under the rules. There may be many people who settle in this country each year of whose character the noble Lord and I might thoroughly disapprove. Equally, there may be many deserving people of unimpeachable character who have to be refused, because they do not qualify. I can only say to the noble Lord in that respect that, if character became a major criterion in operating the immigration rules of this country, immigration cases would become a source of even greater contention than they are today.

Miss Luczak's daughter was born here, is patrial and has a right to remain here. Equally, if she leaves the country she has a right to come back at any time. What was never in doubt, however—and this has been made crystal clear to Miss Luczak at all times—is that her daughter's birth does not confer upon her the right to remain in this country. Whether her daughter remains in this country or goes to live in Canada is not a question for me, for the Home Office or for anyone except Miss Luczak herself. In June, she decided that her daughter should not go back with her to Canada, but should rather remain in this country in the care, I understand, of private foster parents. That was her personal decision, and it was not made for lack of a fare, since we were ready to pay it, and it is not for me to comment on it.

Until she left the country in December last year, Miss Luczak had been here for almost 8½ years. In only 2½ years of that time was she subject to an explicit leave under the immigration rules. That was for six months as a visitor and for two years as a working holidaymaker. For a further two years she held a leave that was granted to her exceptionally, and outside the immigration rules, on account of her relationship with a man living here. For the remaining four years she remained here perfectly properly and legally, while her applications, representations and appeals were all, in turn, under consideration.

In the light of that, I think I can say that her case has been exhaustively and sympathetically considered. She has been formally refused permanent settlement here on three occasions—in March, 1976, in August, 1977, and in September, 1980. On a fourth occasion she was refused leave to enter for settlement. In the light of that, I do not think it can be said that she was left in any doubt that she did not qualify to remain here on a permanent basis. In August, 1979, the basis on which she has previously been granted leave disappeared, and yet she was still allowed to remain for almost a further three years, while her case was considered, including the last five months on temporary admission after her refusal at the port in January.

The Question of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, asks us to consider the case again and to readmit Miss Luczak to this country on compassionate grounds. I should like to assure the noble Lord that we have taken the opportunity afforded by this debate to review all the voluminous papers in this case from the time Miss Luczak first came here, and we have looked again at all the points that have been made. But my right honourable friend the Home Secretary remains satisfied that there are no grounds, of which he is aware, for admitting Miss Luczak to this country for settlement.

I do not know when a Minister has been more effectively softened-up at the beginning and throughout a debate. My compassion has been appealed to, my father has been appealed to, the traditions of this House have been appealed to, Buckingham Palace and its proximity have been appealed to, and the housing waiting list of the Borough of Fulham has been appealed to. There is almost no avenue of approach which has not been made to my better feelings, to my historical instincts and to my grasp of the traditions of this and other places. What I have to tell your Lordships is that the case has been very thoroughly considered on a large number of occasions. But it remains the case that, if she makes a new application in Canada, it will be given full and careful consideration; and I will undertake that it is given that consideration in the light of what your Lordships have said.