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

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister of State for Agriculture and my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the Member for Sutton and Cheam, having received and considered advice from all interested parties, concluded that the owner should be allowed to fell part of the wood. As to the remainder, the provisions of the Wildlife and Countryside Act relating to sites of special scientific interest are now in force and, if application is received to fell further areas, the consulation arrangements authorised in the Code of Guidance for SSSIs will apply.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for that reply. Does that mean that the Government will support the NCC if it refuses permission to the owner to clear the 30 acres at the south of the wood, which apparently the owner has said he intends to clear, in direct contradiction of what the Ministers involved said after they had visited the site and made their decision? Is the noble Earl aware that his honourable friend at the Department of the Environment said that he understood that the 30 acres would not be cleared, and this has now been contradicted by the owner?

My Lords, I had not heard that the owner had contradicted what had been said. I am advised by the Forestry Commission that the majority of the remaining woodlands carries licensable size timber and therefore a licence would be necessary before it could be clear felled. With regard to a Section 29 order, it is for the Nature Conservancy Council to decide whether to seek such an order, and if it did, the Secretary of State would then give it proper consideration.

My Lords, has my noble friend noticed that there is just as much conservationist concern directed against cutting down trees as there is directed against planting them in other places? Is it not essential that trees should be cut down when they are due to be cut down, planted when they are due to be planted, and that the matter should be managed on a proper rotation, regardless of conservation?

My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend speaks much sense, but I do not especially wish to be drawn on that particular argument. Adequate procedures already exist to ensure that the Forestry Commission consults, as appropriate, the agriculture departments, local planning authorities, and other relevant statutory bodies, before reaching a decision on an application for grant or for a felling licence.

My Lords, is it true that the 30 acres referred to in the Question was cultivated during the 1939–45 war and that since that time it has fallen into its present disuse and become scrub, due to bad agricultural management?

My Lords, I have not records as full as those of my noble friend, but according to our records the area was clear felled in 1938.

My Lords, first, can the noble Earl confirm that the proposal in this case is not to cut down trees and replant them but to clear the woodland, which is a small remnant part of an ancient forest, and convert it to agricultural use, which would totally destroy it? Secondly, can the noble Earl confirm that the 30 acres that is referred to in my Question, and to which the noble Lord behind him has just referred, would not require a consent from the Forestry Commission before it was cleared?

My Lords, with regard to the first part of the noble Lord's supplementary question, yes, I think that he is right. So far as the second part of the question is concerned, my understanding is that it would probably require a licence.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether, in fact, Ministers are to make decisions in these matters, since I understood that the NCC was to have responsibility for them? I thought that FWAG (the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group) was told that Ministers would not be interfering in this way.

My Lords, it is only a last resort in cases of dispute.

My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether the Government consider the present felling controls and consultation procedures to be adequate?

Yes, my Lords, we do; and I think that I went into the point in some detail when answering my noble friend Lord Gisborough.

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

My Lords, the terms of reference for the Rayner Review provide for these matters to be taken into account and for the Nature Conservancy Council's staffing and organisation to be examined accordingly.

My Lords, if that is the case, can the noble Earl explain why the words contained in the Question on the Order Paper were deleted from the scrutineer's terms of reference at the last minute by the Government, without consultation with the NCC, and without its agreement?

My Lords, in the opinion of the Government the words were otiose. We believe that when one speaks of a council's statutory duties it is implicit that one is speaking of the full range of those duties.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that there are several thousand SSSIs around the country, of which several hundred are damaged or destroyed annually through trespass, sale, or other causes? Will he ensure that the Rayner Review Body take these facts into account when considering the staff implications?

My Lords, I am sure that those points will be taken into account in the review body's scrutiny of the organisation and staffing of the Nature Conservancy Council.

My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that additional responsibilities have been placed on every regional water authority in the country and on the land drainage authorities by the Wildlife and Countryside Act, and that these additional responsibilities that they are carrying out will almost inevitably result in extra work for the Nature Conservancy Council; and that the progress will be scrutinised very closely indeed by those of us who are . interested in the matter?

My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Baroness's intervention. I shall of course bring the point to the attention of my right honourable friend.

My Lords, the noble Earl answered the first part of my supplementary question but not the second part. Can he give an assurance that the scrutineer will take into account the extent to which the NCC's existing resources match their existing statutory responsibilities—the full range of those responsibilities?

My Lords, in the opinion of the Government, it will be impossible for the scrutineering officer to conduct his review, which is a review of staffing organisations and systems, without having regard to the extent to which the manpower resources of the council match their current obligations.

My Lords, can my noble friend tell me of any instance so far where a site has been damaged because of lack of funds by the NCC? Would he agree that, perhaps, if we talked a little less about the problems of the Wildlife and Countryside Act we might all get on a little bit better.

My Lords, with regard to the second part of my noble friend's supplementary question, I hope there are not very many problems. With regard to the first part, perhaps I may read what the Director-General of the Nature Conservancy Council wrote in The Times just the other day:

"The Secretary of State for the Environment, at his own request, is informed of any cases where the special interest of such sites would be damaged or destroyed because of insufficient funds. He has on a number of occasions provided additional money to safeguard these sites and we have every reason to believe he will continue to do so".

My Lords, no doubt the noble Earl is aware that the Government are currently in breach of the Berne Convention, which they recently ratified, because the NCC do not have sufficient staff resources at regional level with which to carry out the new international obligations that that international convention placed upon this country?

My Lords, that is slightly wide of the Question, so I cannot confirm it.

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

None, my Lords. There are no Ordnance Survey maps of the Falkland Islands.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, although I may have misdescribed the maps, the sole means of obtaining geographical and other information, and indeed, nautical information, about the Falkland Islands rests in the hands of Her Majesty's Government, including all the nautical maps of the area; and that whatever information the Argentine forces obtained about the Falkland Islands was obtained from Her Majesty's Government?

My Lords, I was not meaning to imply that there were no British-published and British designed maps. I was trying to answer the Question on the Order Paper—which I think I probably did. The overseas directorate of the ODA publishes maps. Copies of these maps were found as a result of the Argentine invasion and, obviously, had been used. However, these were not the kind of topographical maps referred to in the Question. These were basically tourist maps which had been supplied to the Falkland Islands Government as long ago as 1966. It would be hardly surprising if there were not various maps around on the islands at that time.

My Lords, is it not the case that, although the nomenclature was wrong, the reality of the Question was right?

Hear, hear!

My Lords, I think that the noble Lord was rather sheltering behind what was perhaps an error of wording in seeking to avoid the fact that it is the case that a large quantity of maps of strategic and tactical importance to the Argentine forces were supplied, not directly, but indirectly, by Her Majesty's Government a short time before the invasion. Is that not the case?

My Lords, no, as I thought I had explained already to the noble Lord. I answered his Question. I also answered his supplementary question which, I agree, elicited slightly different facts. Nevertheless, I maintain that both answers stand on the record. The Directorate of Overseas Surveys have examined the statistics of sales of Falkland Islands maps over the last 10 years and can detect no large-scale sale of them to any purchaser in 1981 or 1982. Maps of the Falkland Islands of British origin were captured from the Argentine military during the repossession of the islands, but these maps had been reprinted in Argentina—in breach, incidentally, of international copyright.

My Lords, would it not have been in keeping with the traditions and courtesies of the House if the noble Lord had given some of the information contained in his answer to the supplementary question in his initial reply?

No, my Lords, I should have thought that it was in the traditions of the House for the Minister, so long as he was answering the Question, to answer in his own way.

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

Yes, my Lords; the BBC external services broadcast about 725 hours per week in English and 36 vernacular languages. The BBC estimate that some 100 million people tune in at least once a week. We expect this audience to increase as we implement the new and expanded capital programme designed to improve audibility.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that very satisfactory Answer. May I ask him whether he agrees that

"Bemã etelããt az dunyâ-ye ãzãd bedahïd"

and

"Dýe-chay nam informâtye zvolnéygo sheeáta"

which, translated from Dari and Polish, mean, "Give us information from the free world", is a desperate plea? Would he confirm that increases have been made in foreign broadcasts, in the Polish language to Poland and in Dari to Afghanistan?

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend, not only for her supplementary but also for translating it. It is not a prerequisite of my job that I understand every known language. However, I agree with my noble friend that Polish has increased and also that Pushtu to Afghanistan has increased recently. The present total of 725 hours broadcast weekly compares favourably with 712 hours a week broadcast in 1979 and with similar figures for the four preceding years.

My Lords, will the Government allow the BBC to re-open the Spanish language service? Are they aware that its absence was bitterly regretted by the British Embassy in Madrid during the Falklands campaign, and continues to be regretted considering the attitude of the present Spanish Government to Gibraltar?

My Lords, I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, put a similar supplementary question to my noble friend Lord Belstead fairly recently. I have not the reference with me, but I am sure this is so. I have nothing to add to what he said then.

My Lords, can the noble Lord tell us whether any additional direct broadcasting to Venezuela is planned for next year in view of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Bolivar, who of course came to England in 1810 and derived most of his political ideas from reading Hobbes and Locke?

My Lords, not so far as I am aware.

My Lords, does the noble Lord recall that earlier this year there was great consternation expressed in this Chamber about the Government's decision to cut back drastically the BBC's overseas broadcasts? The BBC itself made protestations, and so did all the responsible newspapers. Those cuts still remain. Is the noble Lord now saying that the situation is satisfactory, when we are not covering nearly as much as we did before those cuts were inflicted?

No, my Lords, I am not saying that at all. What I am saying is that the total number of hours has increased; but the noble Lord's memory is quite correct. We have debated the matter very fully and have had many Questions on the subject of the cuts, which amounted to 30 hours' broadcasting time and involved £l½ million. All this was switched to increases in capital equipment, and new money was added by the Government. This was agreed by Parliament in October last year. Since then the following increases have been made: Polish by five hours a week; Spanish, to Latin America, by 8¾ hours a week; "Calling Falklands" from 40 minutes once a week to 45 minutes seven times a week; and Pushtu, to Afghanistan, by 1¾ hours a week. The Government are determined to maintain the fluidity of the situation, and where a demand arises we shall most certainly do our best to meet it.

My Lords, is my noble friend the Minister aware of any impending anniversary affecting these most prestigious services?

Yes, my Lords. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend. The 50th anniversary of the BBC's external services is on 19th December this year. I am sure that the whole House will want to wish them well in the future and congratulate them on putting up a magnificent show in the past.

My Lords, would I be correct in thinking that under this Government vastly increased sums of money have been spent on external services than ever were under a Labour Government?

Yes, my Lords, that is absolutely true. As I said, we have changed the emphasis to making sure that such services as there are should be heard in as many places as possible, rather than concentrate, as our predecessors did, on having as many languages as possible.

My Lords, referring to the increase in broadcasting to Poland, is the noble Lord aware that the vast majority of our friends there will say, "bardzo dobrze I dziepuje", which means "very good and thank you"? Does he also appreciate that they will be looking forward to hearing on the BBC that the sanctions have finally been abandoned?

My Lords, the second part of the noble Lord's supplementary question does, I suggest, go slightly wide of the Question on the Order Paper. However, to keep all this in perspective, I should also say that of course we are continuing, and have continued throughout, to keep world service broadcasts in English on the air for 24 hours a day.

My Lords, did we not have a full-scale debate on this subject a short time ago? Ought we to have two debates so close to each other?

My Lords, is the noble Lord able to give the House any indication when the audibility of BBC shortwave broadcasts will be strengthened to make them comparable to those of the Soviet Union, Germany or a number of other countries, which always seem to crowd out the voice of the BBC, making it difficult to hear?

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord. This is exactly the reason why we are pursuing this capital development programme.

My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord will be prepared to check the coverage? This is a vitally important sector, I believe, of the BBC's activities, and much has been lost because of these cuts. Is the noble Lord not aware that one cannot simply go on saying that the service is costing more, because everything in this island has cost much more since we have had a Conservative Government. That does not mean that standards have been maintained.

My Lords, the noble Lord's impressions obviously vary from mine. I was under the impression that inflation was falling drastically and is expected to fall further next year. However, so far as his real point goes, inevitably the BBC and the Foreign Office have a budget in this matter. It is a matter for joint decision by both bodies to assess priorities within the range of the available money. This they have done. It has been done very amicably, and I am glad to say that we have agreement.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like in the normal way to say a brief word about the timing of the short debates this afternoon. Following the accepted principle that the mover should be entitled to approximately 15 minutes, and that the Minister should rise to reply no later than 20 minutes before the scheduled end of each debate, may I suggest that other speakers should endeavour to limit their speeches to about 11 minutes in the case of the debate in the name of my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway, and to about 9½ minutes in the case of the debate in the name of my noble friend Lord Polwarth. May I point out to the House that if any noble Lord were to speak longer, he would do so at the expense of other speakers later in the debate.

My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to remove certain restrictions imposed by the Truck Acts 1831 to 1940 and the Payment of Wages Act 1960 with respect to the payment of wages. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.

rose to call attention to the restrictions on the right to claim compensation under the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979, and to the state of public administrative law which precludes an action in negligence as regards the exercise of discretionary powers; and to move for Papers.

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friends on these Benches and also on behalf, and at the request, of my noble friends in the Social Democratic Party in your Lordships' House, perhaps I should make clear that, since I am speaking for both parties, that does not mean that I regard myself as entitled to 22 minutes instead of 11.I shall stick to the strict par of 11 or perhaps less. Let me say a word of thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, for introducing once again into your Lordships' House a matter of continuing interest and concern, not only to many noble Lords but also to parents and children throughout the whole country; and of very special concern to parents who have experienced this matter of vaccine damage in a child at very close quarters indeed. Of course, we have those people represented by the Association of Parents of Vaccine Damaged Children—a body which has done so much to alert Members of both Houses of Parliament to this very serious question.

Not only is this a continuing matter of concern, but I think it is right to say that it is particularly timely that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, should have raised this matter at this time, because we are now on the eve of a fairly large, and rather serious, epidemic of whooping cough, as a result of which very many children have suffered and a significant number have died. We do not yet know the number that will carry further damage throughout the rest of their lives, as can occasionally happen with this disease, which can sometimes have serious consequences.

Of course, that epidemic resulted in a sudden revival of enthusiasm (if that is the appropriate word) for immunisation against whooping cough among parents who, perhaps, had become disinclined towards it. They were encouraged in that enthusiasm by the Government, by the Secretary of State for Health, for a variety of reasons; and I think that a new factor has been introduced here. We have often said, and many of us believe, that people who suffer very serious brain damage—or, indeed, who suffer at all—ought to be adequately compensated and provided for by society, however the damage may have happened. That was the kind of message that came through loud and clear from the Royal Commission, under the late Lord Pearson, which has often been referred to during these debates.

Once again, I should pay tribute to Lord Pearson, but I repeat that that tribute, which is so often expressed in your Lordships' House, might sound a little more genuine if Parliament itself acted a little more on the recommendations of the Pearson Commission. But the point was made rather clearly in the Pearson Report that where parents take specific action, medically, in relation to their children, on the advice of Government, not necessarily in the specific interests of the child but in the interests of the community as a whole, then one ought to accept that society has a greater responsibility than it might have towards the occurrence of serious damage in other ways. That arose in the course of this epidemic.

Noble Lords may remember that in messages given to the country—and rightly so—by the Minister of Health and by the Secretary of State, Mr. Fowler, we decided at one stage to raise the age limit. Noble Lords will recollect that whooping cough is regarded as a disease which can be quite serious in the very young but which, relatively speaking, is much less serious in older children.

My Lords, is that true?

My Lords, the noble Baroness asks whether that is true. It is true, otherwise I would not have said it. What always happened in the past was that immunisation for children was provided free up to a certain age. The Secretary of State for Health decided to raise that age. It was raised to the age of three or even four for older children where immunisation against pertussis whooping cough could be provided free. That was done, as the Secretary of State explained, not for the protection of those children who were being immunised—because we recognised that in their case whooping cough was less serious—but for the protection of other very young children with whom they might later come into contact. Therefore we quite clearly have a group of children who have now been immunised not for their benefit but for the benefit of others. Should it happen that it ultimately turns out that some of those children have been—and some may have been; I do not know—damaged by this vaccine, then we ought to realise that we must have a particular responsibility towards those children.

The noble Lord's Motion points very clearly, as did his speech in introducing the Motion, to the complexity of the law in this area. The noble Lord has done the House a service, because the law is very complex. I shall leave the legal matters to the lawyers who are to speak in this debate and will concentrate on the medical matters and the medical aspects of the case, which are perhaps outside the scope of the noble and learned Lord who is later to reply. However, I am quite sure that the noble and learned Lord will be able to take them on board, if he considers it necessary, and pass them to those other Ministers who may be able to act.

The complexity of the law and the complexity of the medical situation is illustrated in a timely article by Arabella Melville and Colin Johnson, which appears today in the Guardian called, "This unacceptable priceofprotection".Thisadmirablearticleillustratesthe complexity of the problem and the dilemma with which parents are faced when deciding whether or not to take action on behalf of their children. I quarrel only with one part of the article. It appears to suggest that doctors in general are not now alerting their patients to the possible risks—let me underline that they are very small risks—involved in immunisation against whooping cough. After talking to doctors up and down the country, it is my experience and belief that all doctors now underline those risks, try to balance them and try to tell the patients or the parents that the decision must be theirs. Then they do their level best to assist parents to come to a balanced judgment in the light of the particular circumstances of the particular case.

What are the medical facts with which we are particularly concerned? The first is one which we must now clearly accept: that the whooping cough vaccine, the pertussis vaccine, can do and has, in fact, sometimes done serious harm to those who receive it. That now has to be accepted. There was a time when doubt was cast upon it, but the statistical relationship of vaccine brain-damaged children following whooping cough vaccination is now so close that one cannot for a moment deny that some of those cases are undoubtedly due to the vaccine. The difficulty is knowing which, because the same kind of conditions can arise from other causes.

The report makes that point in Volume 1, Chapter 5. It says that the problem of establishing causation with certainty in any individual case may well be difficult. We can all say that again. It is desperately difficult. All I do say is that the statistical connection is now so overwhelming that nobody could dispute that the pertussis vaccine does cause, and has caused, brain damage of a very serious and distressing nature for the child, for the parents and for the whole family. The second point, which I have already made, is that whooping cough as a disease can be very serious, that it can often be fatal in the very young and that in other children it can sometimes lead to long-term consequences of a serious nature.

The third medical point I want to make—it is one which I have made before in your Lordships' House—is that when one alerts patients to the dangers of a vaccine, parents take this on board but they do not always discriminate as between different vaccines. If one vaccine can cause this damage, why not all the rest? Therefore, I have to say that there is no doubt at all that while there was a considerable fall at one time, as a result of public anxiety in this area, in the number of children immunised against whooping cough, there was also a very distressing fall in the number of children immunised against desperately serious conditions like diphtheria. In some areas, the number of children immunised against diphtheria fell to well below 40 per cent. That in part was because some parents, because they had become a little suspicious of the whooping cough vaccine, became suspicious of the immunisation programme as a whole and decided to opt out. That could be very serious indeed. May I remind your Lordships that before diphtheria immunisation was introduced into this country there were 73,000 cases a year of that very serious disease. Within a very few years that number was reduced to single figures. If ever we allowed the immunisation level of children against that serious disease to fall very low, I say that we should be on a very dangerous course.

What, then, must we do? Obviously, what ideally we should like to do is to eradicate whooping cough. We found, for example, that the smallpox vaccination was dangerous. It had many serious dangers. But we have been able, with the World Health Organisation and others, to eradicate smallpox altogether. So now we do not need to have smallpox vaccination unless an epidemic arises and there is a particular risk. But I see no hope of dealing with haemophyllus pertussis, which is the organism which causes whooping cough, in the same way. The noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, knows more about these matters than do I and he will probably be able to say something about them. We should also try to pioneer and develop a safer vaccine. That is something which we have done before. When the poliomyelitis oral vaccine was first introduced, there is no doubt that there were certain dangers. Further research was carried out on a world basis. Now we have an oral vaccine against poliomyelitis which is wholly safe and never gives rise to complications.

That is the second thing which we should try to do. However, if we cannot do either of those things, then I am wondering (I say this quite seriously and with some diffidence, but as a doctor) whether we ought to consider the abandonment of whooping cough immunisation as a matter of routine public policy until further thought has been given to the matter of pioneering and developing a safer vaccine and until we have in fact discovered a safer vaccine. I say that only for this reason. I believe that the continuation of tragedies of the desperate kind which we have seen from time to time with this particular vaccine has done great damage to public health in other ways by undermining public confidence in immunisation as a whole.

In the meantime I certainly share the view of the Pearson Commission and of other noble Lords that children and their families who suffer from the harrowing and distressing experience of the consequences of this vaccine which they have had given to them in the public interest rather than in their own individual interest ought to receive wholly adequate compensation and support for as long as their lives last and for as long as they need to be cared for in the community.

My Lords, I am sure that your Lordships will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, for bringing this matter to your Lordships' attention. It is always pleasant to have a reference to the Pearson Report, if only because it immediately brings to his feet the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, who is to follow me, who was such an eminent member of the Pearson Committee, and whose voice it is always a delight to hear in this Chamber.

In the few minutes which are put at a speaker's disposal in a short debate, I will try to summarise the matters, as I see them, which your Lordships ought to consider. The first would be that vaccination is, of course, no longer compulsory in the United Kingdom, although there was a time when it was compulsory. Therefore, we are dealing with something which, although being in the community's interest, is a voluntary step to take. The second point I would like to make is that, although it is voluntary and definitely in the interests of the community, there must be a duty on those who advocate this step, with the full authority of the state behind them, to give adequate warning to parents before they make the decision in respect of their children, to have them immunised.

The next point which flows from that is that if one understates the possible advantages and overstates the minimal cases which may occur, however tragic they may be, what one does is to deter people, possibly unreasonably, from taking a step which may save their children's lives and may save other children's lives, too.

In that connection, possibly your Lordships will allow me to quote from paragraph 138.2 of the Pearson Report to show the advantages. I am sorry that I do not have any figures which are more up-to-date. The paragraph reads:

"Whooping cough notifications in England and Wales declined from about 85,000 in 1957, when routine immunisation was introduced, to less than 2,500 in 1973. Deaths dropped from 88 to 2".

As I said, I must apologise for not being able to give the House later figures, and it may be that more informed speakers who will follow me will be able to do that. But there is no doubt that immunisation is an advantageous step to take and an advantageous step to promote. What we must obviously do—and this is very much the lawyers' concern—is to ensure that the proper social duty we owe to those children who unfortunately suffer damage is carried out by us as legislators. There is no doubt that in 1979, when Parliament passed the Vaccine Damage Payments Act, it did the best that it could at that time, without very much information and research being available, and at a very critical moment (as no doubt it was), in order to deal with some kind of public outcry and anxiety. We now have an opportunity, encouraged by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, to look at that Act to see whether it is not right and proper that certain matters relating to the Act should be improved.

The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, talked in terms, if I may say so, of criticising any suggestion that compensation to the children about whom we are talking should be adjudged by tribunals. The noble Lord felt that these matters should go before the courts. That is a perfectly tenable point of view, and I know that the noble Lord will forgive me if I differ from him rather strongly on that matter. I believe it depends upon what sort of tribunal one has, on the remit given to the tribunal, on the tribunal's personnel, and so on. I would have thought that the great need was for informality of procedure and speed of the essence, in order to help parents and families afflicted in this way: and the expense which falls upon them, as well as the anxiety, is tremendous. I would have thought that the speed of the remedy and informality are the advantages of a tribunal. To go to the law courts, much though I myself enjoy that process and will do so until the end of my days, is not the most welcome journey for parents in this position, with the complications, no doubt, of having to apply for legal aid and going through the whole question of a court action.

I stick by tribunals, but I would make it the right sort of human tribunal—and that is not meant to be a criticism of existing tribunals, which do take up where the Secretary of State finishes his jurisdiction or where there is some appeal against him. The second point I wish to make is that this should not be a matter for the Secretary of State at all. As I haye said, it should be a matter for a tribunal as the "court", as it were, in the first instance. It is a ridiculous burden to place on the Secretary of State; an unfair one, if I may say so—and possibly unfair also to the parents.

The third point I wish to make concerns the remit of the tribunal. Pearson stated in the clearest possible terms that proof of causation was one of the great difficulties here. If I remember correctly, the evidence Pearson heard was that, from a medical point of view, it was extremely difficult if there is brain damage in a young child, to be able to say with any degree of certainty whether it arose from vaccination or from different causes. Rather than have the strict burden of proof which was put in this Act—that the Secretary of State had to be satisfied about causation—I would very much prefer, if there is another enactment, that it is sufficient for the tribunal "to have reasonable grounds for inferring", which is the language I would use, that the causation was there. That would mean, one would hope, that a medical certificate from some doctor of standing to the effect that one could reasonably infer this would be sufficient.

One argument that I would immediately try to impress upon your Lordships is, how wrong it would be to allow the onus of proof as it exists now, with the Secretary of State or a tribunal having to be satisfied. The tribunal and the Secretary of State must have it in mind that if they make an award on the basis of this Act—namely, that they are satisfied—it means that they are adding to the statistics nationally, which are deterrent statistics. What they will have done is to have said, "So many cases have occurred where we are satisfied that this was the causation". That must weigh heavily on the Secretary of State, when he has another duty to encourage vaccination and immunisation.

Quite obviously, an amount of £10,000 as compensation for this sort of thing is wholly inadequate in this day and age. I would not seek to put any figure on it. I would have thought that the proper measure of damage is the ordinary measure of damage, with absolute liability, once there is reasonable proof of causation, following upon the ordinary damages arising in tort. We have known of tribunals, such as the Criminal Injuries Board, which follow that sort of line in awarding damages based upon those damages ordinarily awarded in the courts where negligence is shown. So far, this has been a useful debate and I have no doubt at all that other speakers than I will make it more useful hereafter.

My Lords, 11 minutes is a very short time in which to do justice to a complicated and important issue like this. I am sure that the House and indeed the whole community must be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, for raising this question at this time. We have already heard a good deal, and no doubt will hear a good deal more, about the problems set by the restrictions imposed by this Act of 1979, the 80 per cent. test for disability and so forth, and the doubts as to whether it is really contributing to one of its main objectives—I assume it was one of its main objectives—to try and increase the proportion of children who undergo vaccination against various ills. So far as the medical tribunals are concerned, to which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, and the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, have referred, I do not know if it is the intention to use the regulation-making power under the Act in effect to apply the adjudication changes contemplated in Part VIII of the Health and Social Services and Social Security Adjudications Bill—dear me, I hope I got it right!

My main purpose in speaking is not to suggest tinkering with the Act or the regulations, but rather to raise the question whether it is right to continue the Act at all in its present form, because it was never presented as being a long-term solution; it was introduced as an immediate measure to meet an urgent need until a long-term solution could be worked out. At the time the report to the Royal Commission on Compensation for Personal Injury, the Pearson Commission, which had just been published, was in everyone's mind. I apologise if I go over again some of the points in the Royal Commission's report, but I am, I suppose, the only member of that Commission, alas! now in the House. I am neither a lawyer nor a doctor, and I would like to make my own shot at explaining what we were after in lay terms.

The Royal Commission, in a very wide-ranging report, had two sets of recommendations relevant in this context: first of all, they had been unanimous in concluding that some further help was called for for all severely handicapped children, however the handicap was caused. They were well aware of the help which is already available, including mobility allowance and attendance allowance, but they were persuaded on the evidence that this was not enough. The presence of a severely handicapped child completely distorts the life of a family. As well as the emotional shock and the continuing disturbance, there are various physical needs such as special clothing and equipment. The Royal Commission were convinced that the state ought to provide extra help for the 100,000 or so children involved, whether the handicap arose from congenital disability, or from post-natal illness or injury, including vaccine damage. The Royal Commission recommended, at 1977 prices, an allowance of £4 a week, coming out at a total of £17 million a year—not, my Lords, a vast amount. So far, the Government have done nothing about this recommendation.

Secondly, the Royal Commission made the specific and additional recommendation about vaccine damage to which reference has already been made. They thought that there should be a new remedy in the field of tort or delict; in other words, they went down the road towards the court rather than towards the tribunal. Under the present law, where negligence has to be established, if a vaccination goes wrong there is very little chance of a successful action against a doctor, but, as has been said already and I am sure will be said again, the circumstances here are that the vaccination is being undertaken at the behest of Government and in the interests of the community, in the full knowledge by Government that there is some element of risk. The Royal Commission thought that the basis of liability of the authorities should be changed from one of fault to one of strict liability.

This would be a change of much greater significance than is perhaps always appreciated outside legal circles. It would mean that if the plaintiff could show, on a balance of probabilities, or however the provision was worded, that the injury was attributable to the administration of a vaccine on the recommendation of Government or local authority, he or she should be entitled to compensation. Subject to these matters of fact and causation—and there is no denying that they could raise problems of their own—there would be no defence.

There has been no decision from Government of either complexion on this recommendation. When the Labour Government introduced the Bill which became the 1979 Act they said that they were still thinking about the Royal Commission's proposals and that this was a measure to give some immediate help. I am sure the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn- Jones, will be able to enlighten us further about the motivation for this legislation, but from what I recall at the time and from the written record it seems to me that it was all done on the basis that this was a pretty broad brush approach until the complicated issues raised by the commission's report could be thought out.

The Conservative Opposition welcomed the Bill as far as it went. The debates on the Bill do now make very interesting reading. I will content myself with one quotation from a speech for the Opposition by the noble Earl, Lord Avon, on 8th March 1979, at column 310. He said:

"We understand that this is a sum given as an interim payment; that this is an immediate and, I may say, very welcome, gesture to ease the suffering of families. Can the Minister assure the House that this will not in any way prejudice either the acceptance of the Pearson recommendations, on the whole, or the timing of putting these recommendations into effect? It is so easy to shelve a report on the grounds that something has already been done".

I could not have put it better. We have had no word so far of what conclusions this Government have reached since they took office.

I certainly do not want to widen the debate or take up time, but I cannot resist the temptation of saying very briefly that the Government's handling of the Royal Commission's recommendations in general has not been such as to gain unalloyed approval. Much has never been discussed at all. Some useful administrative changes have been made, but on "no fault" for road traffic accidents we were met with what I can only describe, in my kindly way, as a marked lack of sympathy; and on products liability, notably drugs, we were eventually met by the most unhappy conclusion that the Government were set on allowing the defence of development risks and that the private citizen was to be left to be the guinea pig for experiment.

Today we come to the recommendation on vaccine damage. It is quite clear that the 1979 Act cannot continue to hold the field indefinitely. If £10,000 was right in 1979 it must already be out of date, and even with a Conservative Government it must become increasingly out of date as the years go by. In the serious case, it is inadequate. What is £10,000 for a child whose whole life has been blighted and a family whose happiness has been destroyed?

I shall not complicate matters by reminding the House this afternoon of the recommendations made by the Royal Commission about calculating damages and deducting social security benefits, although this is all part of the whole picture. I simply end by saying that Parliament has already decided, with the unqualified approval of the Conservative Party, that, because vaccination is carried out in the interests of the community and at the urging of Government, notwithstanding a known element of risk, there is a special responsibility on the Government to do something about those few cases where the procedure goes badly wrong. This debate is showing beyond a peradventure that the 1979 Act is imperfect in its operation. But it was not, and was never intended to be, the final answer. Like other noble Lords, I wait with great interest to hear what the Government propose to do next to meet a need on which they have been silent for too long.

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, for introducing this subject today. With time so short I confine myself to social factors. As the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, said, nothing is outside the scope of the noble and learned Lord who is to reply.

I wish to make three points. One is to consider first the parents of the children who have suffered as a result of vaccination or immunisation. They have been disappointed for too long. They were given hope that their cases would be dealt with and understood. The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, referred to this. Their cases were accepted, but temporarily, under the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979. They were given to understand by the Government then in power that they would be assisted, supported and helped. They were also given to understand by Members of the then Opposition, the Conservative Party, that they, too, sympathised with the parents' plight; and yet they still wait.

My second point covers the question of society as a whole. If the climate of opinion is against immunisation then more children will sustain illnesses, particularly whooping cough, measles and diphtheria. It is Her Majesty's Government's responsibility to create an atmosphere of trust and confidence which will establish parents' willingness to accept vaccination for their children. Nothing could help such parents more than to know that should something go wrong they will be assisted and helped.

My third point covers the wider field of disabled and impaired children. The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, referred to this group, and I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, will be talking about them as well. My plea is for two things. The first is that children who are to be vaccinated—I stand to be corrected by the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, here—should be better screened with regard to their history and background, and that parents should understand exactly what is expected of them. My second plea is that there should be a rationalisation of the whole system of help to the handicapped and the impaired. If one is a social worker in either a voluntary organisation or one of the statutory services it is extraordinarily difficult to know exactly what help can be given to the handicapped and the impaired, how it can be given and through what channels it should be given. There needs to be a whole re-think of help to all handicapped and impaired children. But in the light of the present situation with regard to children who suffer from vaccination, if the finances of the country are such that we cannot help all children at this time there should be an overall policy, perhaps implemented in part to one group and later on to another.

It would be of enormous value and help to all parents of handicapped children, and particularly to the parents of those who have suffered from vaccination damage, if, as I said earlier, the Government could rationalise the whole situation so that there is one Act of Parliament, or one section of an Act of Parliament, dealing in total with all the help and support that can be given to the parents of these children.

My Lords, may I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, for introducing this debate. As has been said, in the last decade the number of infants vaccinated against whooping cough has dropped. In 1972–73, 79 percent. of children were vaccinated. In 1980–81 that had fallen to 39 per cent. However, the evidence published by the Department of Health and Social Security in May 1981 showed that benefits far outweighed the risks of damage caused by vaccination. But suspicion and anxiety remain, and the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979 is part of the background. Does it contribute to anxiety? Is it a good Act? Should the unfortunates who suffer from the adverse effects of innoculation and treatment be compensated in this way? That is something, as has already been said, that will have to be reviewed.

The United States are moving steadily towards a declared policy of the eradication of measles. In England and Wales we are now achieving a vaccination rate of about only 50 per cent. and it should be noted that there are about 100,000 notifications of measles each year. In 1981 in the United States of America there were 2,961 cases out of a population that is four times our size. Yet the belief that the public acceptance of vaccinations has dropped as a result of whooping cough is not so. Diphtheria, tetanus and poliomyelitis innoculations have not fallen. The reputation of the measles vaccine may still be suffering from the problems caused by side effects and the efficacy of the early vaccines.

The present excellent vaccine has a poor reputation. Why? Part of the success in the United States in eliminating measles has been the enforcement of laws requiring immunisation before school entry. Is a national policy of measles eradication warranted in the United Kingdom? Mumps eradication is also being seriously considered in the United States. It is urgent that we begin to understand our problems in the United Kingdom—and that is highly relevant to the Bill that your Lordships are discussing and to any of its successors.

Vaccines have two purposes, as has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley—one is to protect the vaccinated person and the other is to reduce the transmission in the community. For example, vaccine efficacy in poliomyelitis refers to the patient, but there is a great deal of debate about the effect on transmission. Therefore, vaccination of the individual in that case is all important. In smallpox there is a difference: the disease is controlled in the individual and in the community by the vaccine and smallpox, as has been said, has gone a further stage. Control of transmission has been so effective that it is now wrong to risk any reaction to vaccination for all except those specially exposed to smallpox. But when smallpox was rife, in spite of the risks there was no question about vaccination. The danger to the individual and the danger of spread throughout the country made all this very necessary.

Therefore, in what way is whooping cough different? The incidence of damage may be almost as great as with smallpox, but whooping cough has a low mortality. It occurs in cycles every two years or so and it usually affects young children. The size of recent epidemics has been such because of the increase in the number of "susceptibles" in the population. But all the evidence suggests that the vaccine protects only against the clinical disease—the dynamics of transmission have not changed, only the size of the outbreak.

Fifty years ago, the young mother was fearful that her child might die. The enormous improvements in maternity and child welfare services have resulted in a situation where the mother's main concern now is not that her child might die but that it might be deformed or suffer some disability. If we combine this already present concern with partial protection only, low mortality, and no danger of a widespread epidemic like smallpox, are we not beginning to see the reasons for the lack of enthusiasm? But attempts to improve this vaccine must continue and we could easily finish with a situation similar to that with regard to measles, where there is an excellent vaccine.

The other important part of our debate concerns compensation. Industrial and other compensation Acts are all related to disease, and the proof is first concerned with identifying the disease and its effects and then the extent of the disability—the proof of pneumoconiosis rather than of chronic bronchitis, even though the symptoms and the disability may be the same. It seems to me that future legislation in a welfare state should be concerned with the degree of disability or the kind of disability rather than the cause, unless that cause affects the prognosis—the future. The patient is a human being who requires care if he is disabled. I feel sure that, as matters develop, the present Act will not prove satisfactory for such a new purpose. What we need is improved provision for all disabled.

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway, who asked me to take part, has the whole House in his debt for initiating such a very important and timely debate. The speech which we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, has covered some very interesting medical aspects of the subject.

There is no doubt that protection against such distressing complaints as variola and whooping cough are essential, certainly as regards the latter. I would ask Her Majesty's Government whether there is any indication that vaccine today is any safer than it was, for example, a decade or two ago, when so many tragic incidents took place. It must be stressed that there are a very small number of such cases, but one handicapped child is as tragic for one set of parents as 500 handicapped children are to 500 sets of parents. As I understand it, at the time when the admirable Pearson Report was published there were 240 child victims as a result of vaccination for whooping cough. I wonder, can my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack confirm whether that number has increased?

One of the problems arising on this particular matter is that we perhaps do not know whether there is any vestige of a chance of a partial recovery from the symptoms of vaccinations that go wrong. I and other Members of your Lordships' House have seen vaccine damaged children. If there is such a chance then nobody would be happier than Members of your Lordships' House.

The whole question of compensation is extremely difficult. I am the last person to delve into the law. However, one thing is quite certain: anybody who has seen or worked with handicapped children will know the special attention that they need, especially as regards keeping warm. As has been said by other Members of your Lordships' House, £10,000 as arbitrary compensation is totally inadequate, and indeed would have been totally inadequate 50 years ago. I do not wish to pursue that point, but there is one matter that I would like to pursue. My understanding is that not every parent has yet received the full £10,000 compensation. If I am wrong as regards that matter, then I shall, of course, stand to be corrected, and I very much hope that I am wrong.

Paragraph 1396 of the Pearson Report says that virtually all the medical bodies—the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow; the British Medical Association; the Standing Medical Advisory Committee of the DHSS and others—have stated quite categorically that there was a reasonable case for paying compensation where vaccination was proved as the cause of the damage, and in those circumstances it should be paid without reservation. That is an important point to bear in mind.

The argument has been put forward that the parents of children who are born with inherent conditions such as Down's syndrome are not subjects for compensation. There may well be allowances under the various National Insurance Acts; but here, as has been pointed out by other noble Lords, we are dealing with a situation where the present Government and previous Governments have, quite rightly and quite properly, spent public money on urging parents to have children vaccinated.

Those of us who are parents and, indeed, grandparents, are only too happy and too concerned to see that this is done. Anyone who has had whooping cough, or has seen whooping cough, knows what a very unpleasant condition it is, to say the least. At the same time where a Government give, if not a directive, then a persuasive aspect to a matter, and where obviously, through no fault of any Government or indeed necessarily of the medical profession, there is an accident whereby a certain amount of vaccine may in some way be contaminated so that its use produces terrible tragedies, such as are referred to in this debate, I believe that central Government are very seriously committed to paying adequate compensation.

In the time at my disposal in this debate, and not being a lawyer, I would be the last person to try to adjudicate on adequate compensation. Anyone who has a brain-damaged child, or who has seen braindamaged children, knows full well that no amount of compensation whatever can help in the sense of enabling that child to lead a normal life. Therefore, I would conclude by asking Her Majesty's Government to give very sympathetic consideration to the very important Motion which my noble friend has moved, because although these damaged children are small in number, the effects upon them and their parents are too grievous to mention.

My Lords, I should like to add my tribute to my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway for initiating this debate and for bringing to it the depth of his legal knowledge. The reason for my short intervention is to express certain views forged through observation and experience, to some degree views that differ from those put forward so far. I would make it clear at once that in no way do I seek to belittle the huge burden placed on parents, families and the community, and perhaps most of all on the patients concerned, as the result of the kind of damage that is under discussion. I believe that we are all of the same mind in thinking that it is virtually impossible to equate such disasters in terms of cash; but, as with other horrific happenings, it is all too easy to turn on the taps of emotion in powerful doses and so largely submerge logic and reality. That course is far from the one that I wish to pursue today.

Disasters and tragedies strike and they have to be dealt with as they occur. For 10 years I worked very closely with the Disablement Income Group—known as "DIG" for short—and for another six years I have been associated with them. Not surprisingly, I uphold the principles of their campaign for a "national disability income". This is based on the belief that it is not the cause of disability but the degree of disablement and handicap that should be concerned in calculating the amount of financial help to be given. We believe that this is the right way forward to break out of the escalating and enduring unfairness caused by the different levels of financial assistance awarded for the same degree of handicap—the same degree of potential loss of earnings suffered and of extra expenses incurred.

Let me suggest to your Lordships that there are three chaps who meet in a centre and who are all disabled to the same extent. One was industrially disabled, so he receives about £120 per week; the next is equally immobilised through multiple sclerosis, so he is only eligible for the standard rate of invalidity pension at about £28 per week; the third, similarly disabled, was in a road traffic accident and had received over, say, £100,000 in compensation. Is this the kind of justice we want for disabled people in the future? The more complicated the settlements for such compensation, arranged by tribunals or courts, or on the lines of the Pearson Report or through vaccine damage provisions, the further we slip back down the road of favouring groups of victims at the expense of others who still rank financially as second and third-class citizens.

To compare with the vaccine-damaged, there are the autistic, the cerebrally-damaged or the Down's syndrome children to measure against those we are discussing, for theirs is a similar handicap. All of us who are old polios are well aware of the great benefit to humanity endowed by immunisation, an endowment which, because of its efficiency in ridding this country of the scourge of poliomyelitis, is not always properly appreciated, especially by the young. Parents of children brain-damaged by an attack of whooping cough, parents of children who have died of it, must feel this way about the whooping cough vaccine. The great fear is that debates such as these, and even more so those on television, which refer only to the damage done by vaccine, can discourage immunisation among harassed parents, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, said in his otherwise very wise words.

Perhaps it is as well that some of us who succumbed to polio survive as ugly reminders of the effects of an attack of polio. In my case the attack was in 1930. I was a lucky one, for so many victims died in other epidemics. We survivors were thrilled in the 1950s to hear that an effective form of combating this dire disease was about to surface. Our optimistic hopes that this meant a cure were soon shattered, but the bitter disappointment was somewhat ameliorated by news that the Salk vaccine could render children and people of all ages safe from its threats.

Polio attacks the nerves of the spinal column, damaging and paralysing muscles, killing many people and maiming more. It is those of us who have experienced the real horror of its effects who cannot remind people too often that immunisation is the only—I repeat, the only—protection against this virus. So far it has done wonders in freeing the United Kingdom of all but occasional cases. But poliomyelitis is still rife overseas, and unless we keep our advantage, the virus can too easily take hold again here. Once it has damaged a victim, there is precious little that medical science can do to repair the damage.

I should fail in my duty as an "old polio lag" if I did not remind your Lordships that to alarm the public of the effects of vaccination is a very dangerous step. Those of us who really know are most deeply grateful for this protection, and others should not be frightened out of accepting it. On the other hand, we look to the medical profession to get the screening of children right and the vaccine perfected for whooping cough, as in other cases. If matters of compensation demand to be disentangled, could they not be dealt with quietly and discreetly, with the least possible publicity—in fact, with the minimum of publicity and causing the minimum of panic? These health hazards caused by spreading alarm could then be eliminated.

My Lords, I too should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, for raising this distressing subject this afternoon. While we know that if they have been warned to look for them there are signs by which a mother can tell if a baby is reacting adversely to the whooping cough vaccine, such as rolling of the eyes and raised temperature, et cetera, there are a great many mothers who, even if warned, would not notice these signs: the young inexperienced mother of a first baby, for example; those who leave their babies with baby minders; the mentally deficient; the drunkards; the drug addicts; and even those who are just rather vague and unobservant. Many mothers do not have a thermometer in the house, nor could they read it if they had. Therefore, I do not think that the onus can be put on the mother in all cases.

I suppose that the Government could make immunisation compulsory, as it is in France, and then take complete financial responsibility for any cases which went wrong. But I dislike compulsion in these things and I would rather see the Government accept complete financial responsibility for those few cases as the carrot with which to encourage all mothers to take the very small risk involved in having their babies vaccinated rather than the much greater risk to them and others of not having them vaccinated. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, said, no money can compensate the victims, but it can enable them to suffer in more tolerable conditions.

My Lords, if this debate were limited to a conflict between doctors, parents and mentally handicapped children with lawyers intervening I would, if I may say so with due humility, be the personal embodiment of that conflict because I am a lawyer, the son of a doctor, and a parent of a severely mentally handicapped daughter. But of course the issue in the debate is not simply about that conflict, because, as the Pearson Commission argued in chapter 25 of their report, to which my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway referred, it is where the Government and local authorities have, for reasons of public policy, either attempted to make vaccination of one kind or another virtually compulsory, or encouraged it so much, that their responsibility is engaged.

But if we are looking at the benefits of vaccination from the point of view of the general public interest, we should also bear in mind that every time a mentally handicapped child is born, or a person receives brain damage for whatever cause, if it is severe damage then the burden on the public is very considerable indeed. Some people say that it should be even greater than it generally is; and that is really the foundation of what my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway invited your Lordships to consider when, having posed the problem, he asked your Lordships to suggest what should be done. In a moment I shall come to a suggestion which very much follows what the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, said.

May I just put this issue into the perspective of mental handicap, because I think it is right that we should do so. About one child in a hundred is either born mentally handicapped or becomes so through brain damage at birth or later. One in a hundred. A remarkably constant figure which I believe is constant throughout the Western world. Many of the causes of mental handicap—and nobody knows how many different causes there are—are unknown. Even when causes are occasionally discovered—as in the case of whooping cough one has clearly been discovered, as the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, pointed out—it is not the fact that a cure is discovered with it, because, broadly speaking, there is no cure for severe brain damage. This is why this is such a serious issue.

My noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway said that we owe a moral duty towards the children who suffer brain damage. I would point out that it is a twofold moral duty. It is first and foremost a moral duty to prevent the damage, and then if the damage is not prevented it becomes a further moral duty to compensate, and compensate fully. No nonsense about £10,000, or 80 per cent. I suggest that those two duties are mutually dependent in this way, if I can describe it. I am not sure that I am capable of doing so, but I shall try.

If full compensation is not payable, may it not be that Governments and local authorities will be less careful to prevent the damage? The public purse will be less at stake. If full compensation is payable then Governments, local authorities, doctors and parents will surely think twice before running the risk of causing brain damage. Because one must observe—and a lawyer would agree with this—that if some way was found of having somebody other than the parents as the litigating next friend on behalf of the child, who may never understand what has happened, then the parents could indeed in certain circumstances be sued successfully for having agreed to the cause of the brain damage.

However, that may be a bit hypothetical, and so let me conclude by saying this. I agreed with the analysis of my noble friend Lord Allen of Abbeydale—if I may presume to call him that as he succeeded me as chairman of the Royal Society for the Mentally Handicapped, of which I was then so kindly made president—and I should like to say that, although I am not in favour of all the proposals put forward by the Pearson Commission, I support the recommendation, at the end of Chapter 25, that where vaccination has been done in the interests of the community, the Government or local authority, as the case may be, should be strictly liable in tort for severe damage suffered by anyone as a result. "Strictly" liable is a word which has become a term of art among lawyers and carries liability beyond the present common law liability. It follows from that recommendation, if it is accepted, that the 1979 Act should be repealed and replaced.

My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, for raising the important questions of public policy which arise from vaccination against whooping cough. It has enabled us to have not only a wide-ranging but an exceptionaly well-informed debate in which great expertise medical and, dare I say legal, up until now has been brought to bear.

Our failure in regard to whooping cough to catch up with the great achievements in the protection of the population against diphtheria—to coin a phrase of the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, I am an old diphtheria lag myself; fortunately a disease more amenable to treatment—and then add to that polio and tetanus is clearly a matter of concern. Whooping cough, as we all know and have seen with children is a distressing and dangerous disease, and it is indeed worrying to learn that apart from the cyclical element of which the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, told us, there has been something of an epidemic this year.

I think the message that has emerged from this debate is that the disease is far more dangerous than the vaccine and that the higher the proportion of children vaccinated, the greater are the prospects of controlling whooping cough. Indeed, it is excellent that the Prince and Princess of Wales gave the lead to the country by the vaccination of Prince William. I am glad to say that all my nine grandchildren have been vaccinated, too.

The need to inspire confidence about vaccination is paramount, and it requires a climate of trust and confidence. A valuable study produced by the association of parents of vaccine-damaged children—to which the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, referred me timeously this morning—in relation to its question, "What is wrong with vaccination?" suggests three ways in which improvement could be made: first, by promoting vaccines which are safe and can be shown to be safe; secondly, by educating parents about vaccination; and thirdly, by acceptig responsibility in cases where damage results from vaccination.

With regard to the first—promoting vaccines which are safe and can be shown to be safe—I confess that I was a little troubled by the intimation of the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, that perhaps it is better to abandon the vaccination campaign at this stage, because of the lack of confidence in the vaccine. I do not think the noble Lord actually meant to say that, but it sounded dangerously like it, if I may dare to criticise him in those terms, as he so powerfully turned on my noble friend Lady Gaitskell earlier, and I think I have interpreted him correctly. There is, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, said, room for improvement in the quality of the vaccine, and that leads me to ask a question of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor of which, I am sorrry to say, I have not had time to give him advance notice. There was a report in The Times of 19th March of this year which read:

"The development of a safer whooping cough vaccine could be delayed because of cuts in the budget of the government-funded research laboratories at Porton Down, Wiltshire. Britain's lead in the field of biotechnology and genetic engineering was threatened by a cut of 4 per cent. in the laboratories' revenue, Dr. Peter Sutton, the laboratories' director, said yesterday".

It went on:

"Programmes involving the development of anti-cancer drugs, the production of synthetic human growth hormone"—

and the following I emphasise—

"and safer vaccines, were all threatened".

Perhaps the noble and learned Lord can reassure the House about that. It is a disturbing state of affairs if those are the facts. If we cannot be told now, perhaps we can be at some appropriate time.

The second theme of the parents of vaccine-damaged children was the importance of educating parents about vaccination. I understand that the Government have embarked on a substantial propaganda campaign of information, but I do not know whether the Lord Chancellor can tell us to what extent that has got home. One hears of areas, certainly in the East End of London, where, I am afraid, people are ignorant about the availability of vaccination and where its value is still not fully learned, particularly in the centres where many of the immigrant population reside, and perhaps that can be looked at.

The third issue, the need to accept responsibility in cases where damage results from vaccination, has given rise to most of the difference—which has been more of a difference of emphasis than conclusion—in this debate. State provision in other countries has long been regarded as a necessary element of immunisation policy. As we have been told, in France it is compulsory, and provision in Germany is most generous and elaborate.

When we faced the problem in 1978—when there was one of the recurring phases of an epidemic—I confess that we had to tackle the problem with not really full information as to all the implications of immunisation and vaccination. It was a time when the economic problems of depression and recession were beginning to hit the country at the end of 197 8, and we laboured long and anxiously as to what should be done in the situation that had arisen. No British Government had done anything about the problem until we moved in 1978. I am not making a political point of that, at any rate not deliberately, but that was the situation we faced; the need for action to help the parents of children was emerging more and more clearly and impressively.

It was in that emergency situation that we decided to act as quickly as we could to give at any rate some immediate emergency help to the parents of those children. It was in those circumstances that the machinery of the 1979 Act was devised, and we gave effect to the payments made in 1978. It was certainly not intended as a permanent piece of legislation—the reading of it makes that painfully clear—but it was intended to give immediate first-aid, and the 750 families who have benefited from the £10,000 will, no doubt, think it was something good to have done.

We are now more than four years later, and I agree with the general view that the whole of the handling of this matter, and the operation of the Act, needs to be reviewed. I should have thought that the Act itself needs to be reconstituted from top to bottom as to definition of answerability and liability, as to the areas of damages which ought reasonably to flow and as to the machinery for determining whether it should be the courts or a tribunal which should be used to deal with the situation. Before I elaborate that further, I suggest that in the meantime there is an immediate case for raising the figure of £10,000 bearing in mind what has happened with inflation since that time. The £10,000 of 1978 is in purchasing value now about £6,500. Therefore if accepted, the suggestion that there should be a review and an inquiry, which could last for a substantial time, would mean that the present unsatisfactory provisions would continue for an unacceptable period of time.

We find that it is not so easy when we come to answer the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, who modestly put it, and who, equally modestly, did not seek to answer it, but sought guidance. My own view moves towards that which has been expressed in the debate, I think almost generally; namely, the conclusion that was arrived at by the Royal Commission itself. It was good that we had the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, once more to clarify the report for us. I think that the noble Lord has explained the relevant paragraph, but since time is favourable and I shall not be eating into the time of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, thanks to the wonderful economy exercised by those who have preceded me, I should like to read the passage. Paragraph 1409 states:

"We think that the basis of liability should not be fault, but should be strict; that is to say, that where a plaintiff can show on the balance of probabilities that the injury suffered was attributable to the administration of a vaccine on the recommendation of the Government or a local authority, he should be entitled to compensation. Subject to these matters of causation and fact there should be no defences".

There follows the important sentence:

"We reach these conclusions because vaccination is recommended by the state for the benefit of the community, and where it causes injury the state ought to provide compensation as part of the cost of providing protection for the community as a whole".

That is an admirably stated principle, which I venture to think will be universally accepted in the House. I think that there was also some attraction in the choice of words of my noble friend Lord Mishcon: where there are reasonable grounds for inferring that the damage or injury was caused by the vaccination. Perhaps consideration might be given to that form of words.

Now, who should assess the damages? Two suggestions are made. The Commission favoured the courts. My noble friend Lord Mishcon favours tribunals; not of course the limited kind of medical tribunal referred to in the Act, but a tribunal of a more substantial character, with greater powers. I feel open-minded about that. In the tribunal proceedings there is advantage in the way of speed, to some extent in the informality, and in cheapness; and I know that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor is not over-enthusiastic about adding to the burden of the courts which, as I think we are all fully aware, are already very heavily burdened.

Therefore, I should think that there is much to be said for considering the possibility of the tribunal being the adjudicating body, but in saying that I must add that, as we are constantly told, the defect of tribunals is the unavailability of legal aid. However, the House struck a blow in regard to mental health tribunals and, I think, ensured that legal aid was available for such tribunals. That is a good precedent in regard to which in due course we received the assistance of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor.

I must not abuse the patience of the House, but I should like to mention one other, minor matter; namely, that in addition to raising the £10,000 in the interim period, so as to keep in line with inflation, something should be done in regard to the capital sum received under the Vaccine Damage Payments Act when assessing supplementary benefits. I understand that in another place in July 1981 an assurance was given by the right honourable member for Norwich, North, to the effect that the Government had in mind that the capital sum should be disregarded in respect of assessment of supplementary benefits. I think that such an arrangement would be well received in the House, and certainly by the victims.

Again, I return to the great responsibility that lies upon us in the debate to see that help is given to both the children and their parents who may have been injured in the pursuit of the health of the country as a whole.

My Lords, before I embark upon a wider range of topics, perhaps I can deal with two matters of fact about which I was asked by two of the participants in the debate. First, my noble friend Lord Auckland thought that nobody had been paid the £10,000; at least, that is what I understood him to say. All the successful awards have been of £10,000, and where they have been allowed, they have been paid, subject of course to a very few pending cases.

The second question was asked by the noble and learned Lord who has just resumed his seat. I can tell him that research into alternative whooping cough vaccine at Porton Down is continuing undisturbed by any financial stringencies. Results so far are promising. I am not quite sure what that last sentence means. But I can also say—I think again in reply to my noble friend Lord Auckland; but certainly one noble Lord asked me—that since 1968 whooping cough vaccine has improved. It has been made to World Health Organisation standards, and has an additive to reduce side effects.

Those are the questions of fact which arose, and I now address myself to the series of speeches, so admirably brief, of the participants in the debate, which was very well introduced by my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway. To some extent I feel that I should like to express my own thoughts. Of course in the main I reply on behalf of the Government, but I have thoughts of my own and I think that just as occasionally one declares one's own interest in a subject, on a matter such as this it is rather difficult not to give vent to one's own convictions.

I start with the question that was certainly raised by my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway, and I think reverted to again during the course of the debate. I think that it lies at the bottom of one's whole analysis of the problem. The question is: what should a doctor tell a parent? Of course if he is an honest man, he must tell the parent that he cannot guarantee the child whose vaccination is proposed against damage of any kind, or even against damage of the severe kind that we have been discussing. There is no absolute certainty, and that is true just as much of other types of vaccination as it is of whooping cough vaccination, on which much of the discussion has centred. It is as true of polio vaccination as it is of whooping cough vaccination, and it is true in regard to any one of the nine varieties of disease that are covered by the 1979 Act.

However, reverting to whooping cough in particular, I think that I agree with what I understood the noble and learned Lord to be saying: that the doctor's duty is to compare, so that the parent understands it, the danger of having one's child vaccinated against the danger of not having one's child vaccinated; and that if—I was going to say "my instructions"—my departmental brief, is correct (and I have done my best to verify it by cross-examining the experts behind me) he would be saying something like this. He would be saying that there has been this year an epidemic of whooping cough; that there have been, I think, between 58,000 and 60,000 cases; and that that resulted in the deaths of 13 children.

Of course one cannot treat this absolutely mathematically, but it means that there is a chance of 1 in 6,000, if a child catches whooping cough, that he may die. I was also told, although this cannot be reduced to a statistic, that the after-effects of catching whooping cough and not dying can be at least as serious as the after-effects that we have been discussing as the consequence of vaccination.

Of those who are vaccinated, 1 in 300,000 injections—and, as there are three injections, 1 in 100,000 cases—is liable to suffer severe damage as the result of the vaccination. What I think the doctor ought to tell the notional parent, the parent who has to make up his mind, is that, to the very startling extent that I have been seeking to describe, it is much more dangerous not to have your child vaccinated than to have it vaccinated. I think that that really ought to be said, and I am sure that there has been a failure either on the part of the doctors or of the Government or of the parents to understand that very simple fact—to explain the drop in the take-up rate of whooping cough vaccination. That I think is a moral problem. That leads me on to say that I think that there has been too facile an assumption by the Pearson Commission—and, may I say, I mean no disrespect to the commission, for I was partly its putative father some years ago—that the reason why we want children to be vaccinated is one of public policy. I do not wholly accept that.

I will tell a very short anecdote, if I may, to illustrate why I say that. About 30 years ago, about 1957, I was Minister for Education. In the early part of that year (I think it was) the Lord President of the Council of the day (and I think it was the then Earl of Home) went away from the country and I was left holding the brief of the Lord President of the Council. I had then to decide—and, obviously, if I had made a mistake, I should have had both deaths and disaster on my hands—whether to import a thing called the Salk vaccine. That was because the medical advice was that there was going to be a polio epidemic that summer and that, if there was a polio epidemic there would be deaths and there would be permanent disability—as the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, explained.

The argument for importing the vaccine was that there was only a very small quantity available of a British vaccine which was safe; and, therefore, if I did not import it, there would be a large number of children who would not have any vaccine at all. The argument against importing it was that there had recently occurred a thing called the Cutter incident, as a result of which, in the United States (which is where the Salk vaccine came from) a number of children had not only caught polio from the vaccine but had died from it or had suffered permanent injury.

I knew very well that if I imported it, and that happened, I should have this on my conscience for the rest of my life, and I also knew that it would be something which must lead inevitably to my own resignation; so naturally I took the problem very seriously. I took it, perhaps, a little more seriously, because my own two young children, as they then were, were among those likely to be vaccinated if vaccination took place. I asked the Secretary of the Medical Research Council, who was advising me, one very simple question: "Was it safer for a child to be vaccinated, bearing in mind the danger of another Cutter incident; or was it safer for him not to be vaccinated?" Like a good professional he gave me a positive answer. He said: "It is much safer to run the risk of vaccination than not to run the risk".

I then applied to my own children exactly the same standards that I applied to the children, viewed as a group, of every citizen of this country. And I applied to the group of the citizens of this country the same standards as I applied to my own children. You can call that (if you like) a decision of public policy; but I do not think it was. I think that it was a perfectly straightforward decision about where the interests of children lay, each child individually viewed as an individual.

Therefore, I challenge the view which has been put forward—and accepted, I think, with too great a facility by nearly every speaker in this debate—that the mere fact that the Government are on the side of vaccination gives the disabled child who suffers from the vaccination a better chance than the child who suffers and who has not been vaccinated—and, as he is only about three years old, he has no responsibility at all—who has caught the disease and who suffers permanent disability from it.

That brings me back to a point which has been adumbrated time and time again in the course of this debate; that is, that what this country really lacks is a coherent policy towards disabled people. It has never pursued it. I remember that at the time of the Attlee Government I had a tremendous row across the House with a Member of Parliament, Dr. Hyacinth Morgan. The policy of the country has always been to select particular groups of disabled people and to give them favoured treatment—industrial injuries over non-industrial injuries, people who have had accidents as a result of negligence over people who have had accidents in the home, caused, perhaps, by their own negligence, or inevitable accident.

If you are to carry out public policy, you will never come to terms with conscience, in my mind, until you have a coherent policy relating to all groups of disabled people and their means. I would rather not use the word "compensation" in this connection because compensation raises a number of very difficult philosophical problems. Having said that—and I have said it off my own bat—we are a million miles away from having got such a policy. But I, myself, am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, referred to this, as did a number of others who have taken part in this debate. I think that my noble friend Lady Faithfull, did so, as did the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, and the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale.

Having said that, I come to the problems surrounding the 1979 Act. May I start with this? Irrespective of the Act, a child disabled through vaccine damage or a disabled child for any other reason has a chance, such as it is, of an action of negligence either against the state, in some cases, or against the doctor or a driver in other cases. A doctor is likely to be insured and the driver must be insured by law and that is the first option—and he gets a much higher rate of compensation in that way than in any other way. He will, in addition, and in any event, be entitled to an array of social benefits from the Welfare State. These will include—and these are important from the point of view of what we are discussing—mobility allowance and attendance allowance, which together can amount to £45 a week. Those are not affected by anything that we have been discussing today.

The Pearson Commission was set up I think during the period of office of the Conservative Government and reported during that of the Labour Government. Its report on this subject was known in advance of the actual publication in about 1977. It recommended at that time, so far as I remember, that a severely handicapped child should get a weekly allowance of £4–00 a week. That was costed by the Commission at something like £15 million. The comparable figures today would I suppose be about £30 million and £7–50 a week. No Government so far, neither the Labour Government nor ourselves, have at the moment felt able to implement that.

Of course, in evaluating what one gives to any group within the field of social benefits one must bear in mind that all groups must be considered, and to give it to one group in preference to another is a difficult matter of priorities as well as a question of expense. If you give it to one favoured group you will probably reduce the chance of a general increase in benefit. This is a difficult question of policy. The House will not expect me to develop this today, but of course that is true. Equally, mathematically it is obviously true that if you raise the maximum limit of £10,000 to its equivalent today you will be spending money on that rather than on something else. I am sure that my right honourable friend who is responsible for these things will take on board the various points which have been made by speakers on this point.

The House may have gathered from what I have already said that I share a good deal of the scepticism about the nature of the 1979 Act, which was a lump sum payment of £10,000 for 80 per cent. disabled children over the age of two years at the time when the claim was made or, if the child died, at the time the child died. These are obviously arbitrary figures. The conception of the Act is an arbitrary one. I can see why some noble Lords have said, "We must think of something a little more logical than that". I must say to the House that if an Act has been running only three years, unless you are going to replace it totally, which is an option which has been mentioned by more than one speaker, you cannot expect to be tinkering about with it much except on the figure of, say, £ 10,000. You cannot alter its whole basis.

This is where I fall a little into doubt about some of the things which came from more than one speaker, notably from my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway. He challenged the principle of causation. I do not see how that can be done within the ambit of the Act. The Act is an Act for the benefit of vaccine damaged children. Therefore, it cannot be for the benefit of non-vaccine damaged children; that is to say, children who suffer from a defect after vaccination but not because of it, or without having been vaccinated at all.

May I say to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, that the standard of proof which is required of the Secretary of State and of the tribunal is that of a balance of probabilities. It is no higher than that. I do not know that one can improve upon it. It is true—and I have statistics which, if pressed, I would be compelled to admit would bear it out—that among the seven tribunals in different parts of the country there are striking differences in the proportion of claims which are allowed. But, nonetheless, I doubt whether we can improve on the situation.

As regards the dispute about tribunals versus courts, I must say that I have no doubt whatever in coming down in favour of tribunals and against courts in this particular field. Each tribunal consists of a legally qualified chairman and two medical experts of consultant status. They have a greater expertise in deciding the only question that they have to decide, which is causation, than any other body I can think of. With respect to my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway, when it gets to the tribunal stage reasons have to be given. That follows from the general law. The work of the tribunal is subject to review, although I think it has not been challenged in the courts as yet. It is subject to review under Order 53 of the Rules of the Supreme Court if the tribunal acts on the wrong principles, or there is an error of law appearing from its reasons. I think that the machinery is probably as good as one can get if one is going on with the present system.

I do not think I ought to speak any longer. The House has been very generous to me, and I may have taken more time than I ought to have taken in a short debate. I apologise if I have in fact done so, because this is the first short debate to which I have ever replied. I should like to conclude by saying that the debate has been of great interest. I shall make quite sure that the remarks of each of the speakers who has participated are conveyed to my right honourable friend. If there is anything I have said which is not strictly accurate, I shall write and correct it. If there is anything that my right honourable friend would wish me to add, either he or I shall write to the speaker concerned. I share the gratitude of every speaker to my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway for having raised the matter in this short debate.

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate and for the very kind things said about me. I realise how difficult the subject is. I beg leave to disagree fundmentally, but of course respectfully, with my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor in what he has just said; not the last matter but the one before it where, joining hands with my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox, he elevated this debate to another plane, a plane to which this debate in truth was not intended to go. Here was the way in which—I hope it was legitimate to do so—I sought to limit this debate to a situation where brain damage was occasioned by a certain type of injection with the weighted factor.

My noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor takes the same point, as I understand it, which was taken by my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox, that you simply cannot differentiate. It is morally wrong. It is a moral approach between different causes of disability which relate to the same category. Surely it cannot be right to approach this problem—which is a serious one, and this is acknowledged on all sides—in this way. If we are not going to have a national disability income—and. with the utmost respect, it does not ! look as if we are—and if the present system is unsatisfactory, as many of your Lordships manifestly appear to think, then it must be wrong to say. "We shall do nothing because we cannot have a national disability income".

With the utmost respect, although I totally accept that I am looking at it from a lower moral plane than is my noble and learned friend, at the lower plane at which one may look at it something should be done. The other point made by my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox was that it was wrong to discuss the subject as it might put people off having vaccinations. I sought to make it clear beyond peradventure—I think it was the second point I made, but I cannot quite remember ! because my notes have gone to the transcribers—and to make it totally plain that it was not the intention to do any such thing, or indeed to spread alarm, but to provide fair and adequate compensation in the circumstances, for the reasons that I gave.

May I, as there is a moment left, with your Lordships' permission, explain the sort of idea I had in the back of my mind and which I did not put before your Lordships earlier because I considered that your views should certainly come first and were of far more importance. I agree unreservedly that there is no object in tinkering with this Act. It is a rotten Act; it is unacceptable, for the reasons which I sought to submit; and it was never intended to last for as long as it has. I remember my noble friend Lord Renton saying, "We should repeal it". I say with my noble friend and also with other noble Lords, "Repeal it".

What should we do? In submission, we should introduce a statute which imposes a duty upon the department to warn of the risk, to inform parents of the relevant contra-indications, and to provide that on proof of breach of duty and on proof of brain damage subsequent to vaccination, then without proof of causation in any form there shall be entitlement to compensation to be assessed by the High Court. Why the High Court?—because it is the only place where you get true, reflective and totally fair and adequate compensation, with full revisory machinery. I would also suggest that we should impose such strict liability on the department in cases where it is shown that vaccinations were given by the doctor contrary to the contra-indications—again, with damages to be assessed by the High Court. Apart from that, I would respectfully suggest leaving the law alone and considering relevant implementing machinery.

If I may take a further two minutes of your Lordships' time, I would suggest that trial by tribunal may be convenient for those who on an administrative plane have to see what type of contest goes before a court and which goes before the tribunals. But from the point of view of the subject, Order 53 the judicial review machinery, is, in submission, wholly unsatisfactory. Again, with the utmost respect, it is not going to be effective, especially where the Secretary of State maintains that he need not give reasons and need only state conclusions.

In this case the machinery is that it first goes to the Secretary of State, then to this tribunal if the Secretary of State rejects it and then, in very limited circumstances, the Secretary of State is enjoined to reconsider under Section 5 of the Act. If we do away with all that and reinstate another type of tribunal it would again be open to serious criticism because applications for discovery against the Secretary of State tend to be resisted. There are no notes of evidence and, on many occasions, no sufficiently reasoned awards. There is no means of knowing the whole of the material before the tribunal so as to enable you to attack it in the Divisional Court.

No, my Lords, let us do away with tribunals. Let us have matters decided in the courts, where there is full discovery and the possibility of a full and total revisory procedure by way of appeal, without any restriction. Those were the views which, with the utmost respect, I would have put forward earlier. I am grateful to your Lordships for having allowed me to put them before you now, and I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

rose to call attention to the precarious financial position of the performing arts; and to move for Papers.

My Lords, we are all extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, for having put this motion before us. We can measure the appreciation to a certain extent by the number of distinguished speakers who have put down their names to speak this evening and by the consequent rationing of the time that any single one of us has. In particular, we look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Marley. We are now almost getting into the habit of debating subjects which call for the expertise of members who have sat in your Lordships' House for quite a time without finding an opportunity to make their maiden speech. We certainly look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Marley.

There were two matters which I wanted to discuss this afternoon. Unfortunately, I shall have time now for only one of them. One was the use of the subsidies which we at present have in the arts to subsidise the arts of the mainly well-off. There is an imbalance. There is a need for us to switch resources into arts for those who are less well off. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, will say something about that matter a little later in our debate. In the meantime, I want to put before your Lordships one or two considerations which have been decided upon by the Liberal Party in putting forward its new and, I think rather distinctive policy for subsidising the arts.

If, as now seems likely, the grant to the Arts Council is increased by about 4 to 5 per cent. in the current financial year—we hope that it will be increased by more, but the message we seem to be getting is not very hopeful—the result will be not to sustain the arts system in its present state of impoverishment but to force the council into further severe cuts. Several major regional theatres are threatened, together with one or more of our national companies, and there would still be no money to spare to respond to new initiatives—perhaps the most valuable side of the Arts Council's work. The time has come when we must consider a more appropriate way of funding the arts.

It is not just a matter of finding more money but of considering what kind of priorities our society should have. We must start by acknowledging that the arts have suffered from a singularly confused administration in Britain. It makes no sense at all to have films under one Ministry, telecommunications under another, the live arts under a third and heritage under a fourth. All these different areas of the arts are closely, and indeed crucially, related. Many films nowadays are made for television. The whole of the telecommunications industry depends upon the flourishing of the live arts. And the record industry depends upon 2,000 years of product development.

We need one Ministry, whatever we like to call it, with a Minister of Cabinet status. Everybody calls for Cabinet status for their personal pet subject. But I believe that the need for this for the arts is becoming more clear. With the growing number of people unemployed or under-employed, the uninstructed, the unstructured time of the population is becoming greater. There is a need for a Minister of Culture, a Minister of Leisure—call him what you will. It is overdue but it is quite clear that we should have one now.

We also have various other problems which we must tackle. There is the problem of video piracy, which we have allowed to grow to a point where it threatens the survival of legitimate video dealers. But it is not just a question of the dealers. It is a question that if this piracy goes on, no producer will be able to afford to make films, either on video tape or for the cinema. Video piracy is only one aspect of the problem. There is the problem of the free domestic borrowing of music and drama through home recording—in its way a very admirable development but one which has economic effects on the producers. Here it is that the Liberal suggestion that there should be a low tax levied on all blank sound and video tape, to be used specifically to assist the live arts, comes into its own. It is hard to get precise figures, but a 2 per cent. tax on blank tape is likely to raise more than £50 million. If that were to be given direct to the Arts Council it would transform the council's financial situation. But perhaps that is not the best way of using it. Perhaps we do not want to continue centralisation of the patronage of the arts through the Arts Council and the Ministry of Culture. Perhaps we want to go rather more for pluralism in our culture.

It is here that we have developed a scheme of vouchers which we believe will restore power into the hands of the customer. It is a vitally important thing to do. One key factor in the decline of the theatre, for instance, has been that ticket prices have not risen to meet inflation. We believe that the new money which would be found through our proposed tax on blank tape should be devoted to the support of theatre prices in subsidised and commercial enterprises alike—and not just theatre prices but also those for concerts and other performing arts.

There are several methods by which this could be done, but we suggest a voucher system whereby consumers could buy arts vouchers which would offer them a reduction of, say, one-third on the price of theatre and concert hall tickets. This keeps ticket prices low for the consumer, but allows managements to receive a proper reward from their box office sales and does not distort the pattern of patronage which is then enforced by the purchaser and by the consumer. Such a measure would have the effect of relieving the Arts Council of some of its financial burden. Money which now many subsidised companies use to keep their ticket prices low could go into other areas—priming grants to get new companies going, bridging loans for new companies.

The tax on blank tape and the voucher scheme, and possibly an increased subsidy to the Arts Council, are all measures which are urgently needed, but they will not themselves cure the crisis of the arts. We also need to encourage the local authorities. It is a combination of local authorities, the Arts Council and regional arts associations whom we need to put to work on these particular tasks.

That can happen only if we adopt a different attitude to the arts in this country—not regarding the arts as the deserving poor always in need of charitable handouts, but recognising their contribution to the country's economy and acknowledging the special needs of creative and interpretive artistes. Overall, the arts are not a drain on the country's resources. They are a major draw to tourists. One survey has revealed that for the £ 1 million invested as subsidy in the Edinburgh Festival, the city received £16 million in return. In themselves our organisations may be poor but they contribute to the general wealth of society. We would all suffer in plain financial terms if the arts were to decline in this country; the West End is a vital part of the economy of central London.

That is not the only reason why we should support the arts. As I have suggested, there is the prospect of increased leisure in our society even when we move, possibly, out of the depths of this particular recession. The age of the silicone chip and microprocessor is here. That will mean, I believe, a continuing shortening of the working week, a lowering of retirement ages, and a reduction of hours worked during the day. This prospect is in some ways frightening, but the answer does not lie in increased consumerism, as some suggest; it lies in doing what we can to improve the quality of our lives in this country. This requires, among other things, the skill and aesthetic appreciation which our artistes can provide—and our artistes are now recognised as being among the leading artistes in the world.

If we lose the battle to ensure the survival of the arts system now, we shall not win the war against commercial and state interventionism in the future. The Liberal Party has produced an arts policy that is both practical and distinctively liberal in its traditions. We hope to implement it in the not too distant future but in the meantime we are not dogs in the manger. It is up for grabs, and we invite this Government to help themselves.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Polwarth, on introducing this debate today, knowing as I do what he has done for the arts in his native Scotland. I note that one or two of the recommendations which he made in evidence have got through to become recommendations for attention by the Government.

I have been associated with the funding of the arts for a long time. In fact, I sent a letter to Andrew Carnegie when I was seven years old, in 1902, asking him if he would buy me a cornet. A cornet was something in those days—I believe it cost £5. Today it is a different proposition, but those were the days when my aunts and uncles used to go to the local vocal society. My aunt used to appear at our house with her skirt tied at the waist with a tape, so that her skirt would not drag in the mud as she was walking two miles to rehearsals, and performances.

I sometimes believe that we ought to consider what progress we have made, and a little historical sentiment will not do any harm whatsoever. I did not get a cornet from Andrew Carnegie. In fact, I did not even get an answer to my letter, but I was sent to get a cornet from the local band. I took this battered instrument back home and my mother boiled it, because it was full of tobacco quids. Eventually, I became very proud of this instrument, which I became able to play as time went on.

When I came home after the First World War, instead of my hobby being running, it was music. As a boy I had to stand at the elbow of my grandfather, who used to transcribe as fast as an ordinary individual could write orchestral parts condensed for the brass band stand. That was where I learnt what it was all about.

In the 1920s, I played my part in organising choirs. In fact, I was for years the only person who was instrumental in getting grand opera into the barren wastes of culture in Oldham. Those were the days when it was degrading, the way in which music makers were treated. Time and time again I was organising concerts in the parish church for the cornet men of the Hallé Orchestra, who were delighted to come to Saddleworth for the collection. The record collection was £17 10s. Od. for people of the calibre of Alfred Barker, Denis Mathews and Stewart Knussen—and I could name many more.

What we did was to establish something of which we are very proud. We have that involvement in our district of 22,000 souls of a nature that I do not believe is matched in many places in this country. We have eight full brass bands. We have three school bands. We have several drama companies. We have a theatre of our own. When our heritage treasures looked as though they were going to be disposed because of a shortage of museum space and the local authority could not accommodate the treasures we had, we built a museum. Out of a total of £200,000 we owed, we have wiped off that debt until it is no more than £6,000 today. It is providing work for out of work librarians and statisticians, and it is kept going by voluntary means.

When funding for the arts is talked about, most people think in terms of grand opera. There is a lot more to it than that, because if one is to make a success of making art more available one has to enlist the enthusiasm of the people who live in one's area.

I am the president of the North West Arts Association and have been for the past 10 years. I am also president of many other associations which have to do with the development of the arts and the funding of them. It is no use haranguing local authorities from London. It has to be done by influential people who know what they are talking about in the region. This is why this magnificent report. one of the best I have ever seen on the arts, emphasises this in about 10 recommendations which have to do with the grass roots and the money to be distributed by the regional associations.

I am impressed by the heavy emphasis placed on the future role of the regional arts associations, and it is pleasing to note the confidence the committee had in the regional associations being able to carry more responsibility. The local government reorganisation of 1974 was a very heady time for newly appointed officials and representatives, who thought they were better able to distribute money for the arts than any regional arts council. But that is a long time ago, and I am glad to say that the relationships that we have with the local authorities have never been more stable or closer than they are now; we are now making progress, but it is very slow. We should remember that any major change in the attitude of people in any country or any community in the world is a very slow job; it takes a minimum of 40 years before a good idea really gets going in the community.

We are not complacent in the North-West. There is room for closer contacts still. There is too wide a gap between one local authority and another in the provision that they make for the arts. It is education and patience and constant working for it that will do the job. What we have got to do is to keep a watchful eye on our arts administrators, too, who try to keep the politicians at arm's length. Despite the great differences in what local authorities provide for the arts there is much room for closer contact still. It is very interesting to see the gradual change of attitude on the part of local authority members who were suspicious of the arts, changing their opinions when they have the experience of sitting on one of our numerous panels.

Over the 10 years during which I have been associated with the North-West arts I think the most outstanding development has occurred in what is known as community participation. Here the report stresses precisely what we have been trying to do on making the arts more available. We are happy when we see local authorities increasing their involvement and we do all in our power to encourage them to run their own show. A bigger income is not our first priority regarding the local authorities, but more interest and action by the local authorities in doing things for themselves. That is one of the first priorities.

I was interested to see in the report recommendations 48 and 49 which drew attention to the way in which the Scottish Arts Council has been funding amateurs. But this is a short debate and I will not keep the House any longer. What I do, however, say is this. It is a job which needs patience, which needs education, which needs persistence, which needs leadership with vision. I hope that it is possible for the Government to be able to keep pace and, if possible, improve on the way they have been funding the arts. I sincerely hope that we can make more progress with the local authorities than we have done before. Some of us are doing our best to do so, and it is a very good thing to raise this subject in this House today.

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Polwarth for introducing this debate today. It is a vital subject and he has presented the details very clearly indeed. Also, speaking personally, it at last gives me an opportunity of speaking to your Lordships for the first time. In my very brief remarks I am simply going to concentrate on what some of the performing arts, in groups or individuals, can do for themselves within their own perimeter. The first obvious objective is to gather an audience. An audience pay, or if they do not pay at least they spread the interest in the subject which they have watched. In this context I might possibly be allowed to suggest to Her Majesty's Government that VAT might be withdrawn from theatre tickets.

I am simply going to give your Lordships a few examples of the individual enterprise and achievement that can happen, has happened in the past, and is happening at present, and I hope will continue to happen in the future. The first two examples are concerned with my own career in the film production business. Some 35 years ago I was involved in a film which necessitated the shooting of a scene in your Lordships' House, in the Royal Gallery, depicting a trial by Peers. Obviously at that time, 35 years ago, one could not construct the whole Royal Gallery in the studio. So we developed an earlier experiment, building half of it and completing the roof by making a small model and placing this in front of the camera. This added value to the film and also halved the cost of the set; and we were particularly gratified at the end that critics quoted the scene as being an impressive one.

The second example I am going to offer your Lordships is that of when I was working some years later with a smaller company. We had the idea of adding realism to a film production. This case involved the use of real actual houses, natural settings, instead of building sets in film studios. This was an interesting experiment because we had a group of very young actors at that time, and we found that it added immensely to their comfort if they were in a room instead of sitting on a bleak studio set. This led to a series of financially pretty successful films, including, if I may quote, Tom Jones, for which no shot was filmed in a studio at all. Indeed, at that time it was a fairly revolutionary approach.

For my last two examples, I am turning to youth. The European Community Youth Orchestra is a remarkable achievement. This was started, as many of your Lordships will presumably know, in 1975, when my noble friend Lady Elles put if forward to the European Parliament, and it was carried on by the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher of Rednal. It has now developed into an international and very important orchestra. Indeed, this year it extended its tour outside Europe to Mexico. It is conducted by such distinguished artists as von Karajan, at Salzburg in 1980. Sir Georg Solti and, particularly, by Claudio Abbado, who is its musical director and trains the orchestra himself. The result is that about 150 players from this orchestra have since joined leading international orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the Concetgebouw, and La Scala, Milan. I hope this will continue to gather momentum in the musical world.

My last example refers to a festival on the South Bank involving, schools. This is an event which takes place annually, early in July, and was started three years ago by John Dodge, who is now the Director of Information for ILEA. He had the idea because as a young journalist he covered the Festival of Britain and thought that the South Bank should be more used. I briefly quote from their leaflet, Schools on the South Bank '82;

"These displays and performances illustrate the quality and variety of creative activities within London's schools . . . provide pupils with the opportunity to display their talents not only to the general public but also to each other, and to do it in an exciting venue in the centre of their own city."

The standard is remarkably high. Acting, singing, dancing and costume design are infinitely worth seeing, and I recommend that your Lordships cross Westminster Bridge next July to do that. They are, of course, helped by the delightful, exasperated and laughing teachers who are a great inspiration to the whole festival. This costs ILEA only £2,000 to £3,000 a year. Next September they will present the cream of their talent to the Barbican Centre.

Here I relate just one tiny little incident that does not concern this debate but which happened at the festival. Two small boys were sitting on the grass. One, white, painted his face black to represent a jazz musician. The other, black, was busily painting his face white. "What are you doing that for?" said the jazz man. The answer came, with the supreme logic of the very young, "In school they teachin' us to be equal, so I'm equallin' you." So it goes on with each group, individual and idea filling one of the squares of this vast patchwork quilt of performing arts. After all, they have been with us for upwards of 6,000 years and I hope will continue for another 6,000. All these activities help to improve the precarious financial state of the performing arts at the moment. All deserve the maximum encouragement from not only the Government, the organisers and the sponsors, but the whole nation.

My Lords, it gives me singular pleasure that I am the first of your Lordships to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Marley, on his maiden speech. It was vigorous, crisp, practical and elegant, and it has sharpened our disappointment that the noble Lord has denied the House the benefit of his contributions for so long. We are pleased that his silence has finally been broken.

I shall describe in brief detail the circumstances of one orchestra, the Forest Philharmonic—as its chairman, I declare an interest—in order to provide evidence in support of one suggestion that I wish to make to the noble Earl who is to reply. What I have to say illustrates in miniature many of the major themes of the compelling speech of the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth. The Forest Philharmonic was established nearly 20 years ago in what is now the London Borough of Walthamstow. It was then under a young and highly gifted conductor, Frank Shipway, who has since achieved international renown as guest conductor of, among others, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic and the Danish and Italian Radio Orchestras. Nevertheless, he still trains and conducts the orchestra in Walthamstow.

Like similar orchestras in other parts of the country, the majority of players are amateurs with a stiffening of professionals. In this case there are 15 professionals among the 80 regular players. The Forest Philharmonic gives five concerts a year in the Walthamstow Assembly Hall, which is acoustically superb. It is always filled, averaging throughout the season an audience of 900 which is drawn from the locality and. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, is fully representative of its social structure. The programmes include as many as possible of the works of such contemporary composers as Panufnik, Malcolm Williamson and Nicholas Maw—perhaps rather more than the audience would have chosen for themselves on a free vote.

Because this orchestra is an amateur body, it does not receive a grant from the Arts Council. Some two-thirds of its annual expenditure of some £20,000 is self-generated from the sale of tickets and programmes, subscriptions, donations and the like, together with the usual run of fund-raising activities. Although there is very little industry in Walthamstow, the orchestra is very fortunate to have three generous sponsors—the John Shand Group of Companies, Bush Boake and Allen and the Midland Bank. The rest of its expenditure is covered by public funds. The local borough, the London Borough of Waltham Forest, has given many varieties of support, including a substantial grant that has remained unaffected by political change. Further income is received from the National Federation of Music Societies and the Greater London Arts Association.

The objectives of the orchestra are not restricted or even primarily directed to mounting concerts. Great importance is attached to education and training and a full programme is maintained. All amateur members of the orchestra pay an evening class fee of £50 a year and those who cannot afford the full amount are subsidised. Weekly tuition is provided in collaboration with Waltham Forest College. Not only is this orchestra a musical focus for its local community, but it also trains students and exponents at different levels of skill and experience. The instrumentalist straight from school rubs shoulders with the graduate from the major colleges of music. Other institutions within and without London do this too, but few, I think, achieve the scale, range and quality of this orchestra which has often been praised in glowing terms by the country's leading music critics.

The orchestra is able to attract soloists like Pierre Fourniér, Tortelier. Christian Ferras, Shura Cherkassky, John Lill and many others of like quality. I am sure that no voluntary body could be more fully self-helpful in recruiting money than is the Forest Philharmonic Society. But it is now coming to the end of its days. Next season, when current debts are paid, we estimate a loss of around £400 per concert, and the decision has to be taken soon whether it can continue at all. The orchestra has exhausted all its sources of funds. If its members give more time to raising funds they will have no time left at all for music. For the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, it is becoming impossible to seek support by extending sponsorship.

Therefore, here is an orchestra that fulfils essential musical functions: it give concerts; it enables graduates from the main professional colleges to obtain experience in an orchestra before they find their places and their life's work in the professional orchestras; and it enables amateur instrumentalists to pursue their art and their hobby.

Within the school system we invest heavily in musical training. Some 6 to 7 per cent. of all school-children receive instrumental instruction. If orchestras like the Forest Philharmonic collapse, where are those who wish to continue their interest and extend their skills to go? Will such investment yield anything like its full benefits?

Many think—and many noble Lords have already said this in the debate—that we are on the eve of a great increase in leisure deriving from a combination of technological development and general unemployment which it seems reasonable to assume is likely to become a permanent condition of advanced industrial societies. Surely facilities for training and music-making are a national requirement which will become increasingly important to cultural vitality and social stability?

For the purposes of this debate and of immediate action we must, of course, accept the premises and framework of Government policy in respect of public expenditure. But I do not doubt that the policies of the noble Earl's right honourable friend the Minister for the Arts and Culture, are compatible with discrimination in favour of such cases as I have outlined. Indeed, if discrimination is not possible in this area, then policy ceases to be policy and becomes a mere blunderbuss. Would the noble Earl be willing to ask his right honourable friend if it will be possible to consider the establishment of a small emergency fund or some other means which would enable organi- sations in extremis, like the Forest Philharmonic, to make a reasoned case for their survival? I ask the noble Earl this question in despair, because irretrievable cultural damage would be prevented by such a very small step.

My Lords, I have known my noble friend Lord Polwarth as a near neighbour for a very long time, from about the period in which I suppose I had my first taste for the arts when I made a considerable hit at school by playing the Queen of the Fairies in Iolanthe—the dear, dim days beyond recall. I am, of course, as every noble Lord has already said, grateful to my noble friend for raising this subject. I should also like to voice my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Marley for his very interesting and illuminating contribution.

I shall limit my remarks to the performing arts in Scotland for reasons which will become obvious. One of my regrets is the difficulty I see in making really constructive suggestions for solving what I consider to be an immensely difficult problem. It was some 17 years ago, in 1965, when there was a debate in another place in which I took part, that precisely the same concern was expressed about financing the arts. Those were the days when the standard price of a seat in the grand tier at Covent Garden was £2. The Arts Council received £3.9 million from the Government and passed on £258,000 to the Scottish Arts Council. The local authorities in Scotland—and this is an interesting point—contributed £400,000 in that year to Scottish arts, equivalent to the rate of one old penny all round. Admittedly it was far below what was then their statutory allowance—and I do not know which civil servant dreamed up this figure—of four and four-fifths of a penny which they were allowed to contribute; and of course many local authorities contributed nothing at all. But the point of great interest is that £400,000 then was far more than the Scottish Arts Council's £258,000.

This year the Arts Council has received just over £80 million from central Government. The Scottish Arts Council has received £9.3 million out of that, and local authorities in Scotland a year ago contributed about £1¾ million to arts organisations which are also supported by the Scottish Arts Council. But, of course, there has been inflation since. The equivalent purchasing power of the 1965 pound sterling as of October this year was £5.55.

So in the last 17 years the Government's grant to the Arts Council has gone up by between five and six times in real terms and what the Arts Council passes on to the Scottish Arts Council has kept pace almost exactly with that. But to match the £400,000 that they gave in 1965 local authorities would have to be contributing £2¼ million today; they are, in fact, contributing about £250,000 less than that.

I come now to the box office. In 1965, and in evidence given before the recent Select Committee, the same claim was made that the point of no return has been reached and if prices are pushed up, audiences will fall. I am not competent to judge this. I suspect that my noble friend Lord Polwarth is right. But the £2 seats at Covent Garden in 1965 in real terms today should be about £11. In fact, the price is £19. So the box office would seem to be playing its part. In the last three years sponsorship, which was not mentioned in 1965, probably because it had not been thought of, has more than doubled in Scotland, from £299,000 to £658,000. I am advised that it could be better still if sponsorship by a company could be regarded as straightforward advertising and allowed as a business expense. I am assured that this is not allowed, by the then managing director of a company which has been very prominent in this field, and who, in fact, assured me that it would make a world of difference. That is one of the constructive proposals that I would make to assist in what I have already said is a difficult situation.

Quite frankly, I cannot upbraid the Government in the light of the economic situation over many years. I cannot possibly upbraid the Arts Council, because I think that it has been scrupulously fair in maintaining the share which the Scottish Arts Council receives. It is true that it is well short of something about which we used to talk a great deal in those days, the Goschen formula, which I think was eleven-eightieths of the total. The Goschen formula is not heard of so much today, and if I were to go into it I think that it would open up too wide a field for this debate. But that the local authorities have fallen short I think is undeniable. However, everyone must admit that their difficulties are great and a squeeze is on them. Mr. Mackie, who I think was the chairman of the Arts Committee in the Tayside Region, in his evidence to the Select Committee said:

"The arts are well down in the list of priorities";

and went on to say that there just are not any votes in them, even though Tayside has, in fact, given more than the recommendation made to local authorities by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.

The mandatory rating for the arts has been suggested, and I think it is even recommended, by the Select Committee. I noticed that some councillors who gave evidence were not averse to this, I am bound to say that I would regard it with extreme misgiving. I think that it would set a bad precedent of central Government ordering what local government should spend and I believe that it would be immensely difficult when it came down to defining what precisely the arts were.

Finally, very strong feelings were expressed by local authority representatives on the committee, of which I was the chairman, into the functions of local authorities in Scotland, where there are two tiers. To paraphrase what they said, it was: "Why should local government support bodies which never perform in their area—which cannot, anyway, because there is no suitable hall for them to perform in? Let central Government fund the national companies, with the local authorities who are lucky enough to be visited by them contributing if they want to. Leave us, the less fortunate local authorities, to support local artistic efforts".

The evidence by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to the Select Committee is interesting, representing, as it tries hard to do, both tiers of local government with their hithero competing functions. It says that the Scottish Arts Council might fund the national companies, provided that the local authorities agreed to be more responsible for revenue-funding theatres, et cetera, in their own areas. My committee was not given the benefit of receiving evidence from the convention, but it is interesting to note that in this particular matter our views do not seem all that far apart.

I would merely make one final point. I believe that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State must treat as a matter of very great urgency, now that the functions are being redistributed, the needs of the districts to know how the rate support grant is to be reallocated in order that they may take on the new functions which are placed upon them; and one of those is responsibility for recreation, leisure and the arts. I believe that a crisis for the performing arts does exist.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, has done a tremendous service to the arts by introducing this debate today. This subject is not one which is usually given a great deal of time in your Lordships' House, but to those of us who are connected with the arts it is a tremendously important one. I should also like to join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Marley, on his maiden speech. I can remember that when I made mine, a good many years ago, I, too, had waited for several years before doing so. The only difference is that I think his has been much better.

This debate presumably includes all the performing arts, but I shall confine myself to music as that is the only one of which I have any personal experience. Music is not a profit-making profession. I do not think it is generally realised that an orchestra cannot give a concert without making a financial loss; it is practically impossible. They cannot recoup their costs from the sale of tickets only. Therefore, the only hope is support by the Government or subsidisation by commercial firms. I might say that the later source has been extremely generous, and these firms have done very well indeed in their support of such concerts.

I well remember the 1960s, when the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was having a very bad time financially and very wisely formed a council to deal purely with the matter of raising money. That council comprised various members from the commercial world, and others, and for a time I was its chairman. I must say that, thanks to the co-operation of the commercial firms that we contacted, we managed to get the money we wanted; and the Royal Philharmonic is now on a very sound footing. Of course, the money that is given by the Government is given to the Arts Council. There have been some critical remarks made tonight about the Arts Council, but on the whole they have done very well. Naturally, they have done some things which one might question, but in a sphere such as music one can hardly do anything which is not questioned by somebody.

Government support, too, has been criticised for being smaller than in other countries. Of course, the figures which have been quoted are true, but any cake must be of a limited size and the more people there are who want a slice of it the smaller the slices are likely to be. I do not think that any of the countries which give larger support to their music than we do has anything like the overseas commitments (or the inland commit-ments, for that matter) that our own Government have. Therefore, I think it is not very likely that we shall see a great increase in Government support.

That being the case, I wonder whether there is not some other way in which we could circumnavigate this difficulty. Would it be possible, for instance, to form a committee which could circularise large firms with the events of the coming season and accept their subscriptions towards them, and who could then, with the advice of the Arts Council, distribute the money among the appropriate activities? It might be possible, though I do not quite know how. I have not worked out all the technical difficulties that might arise.

In the discussion on a Question asked during the last Session by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, on the future of the orchestras, the subject of the content of orchestral programmes arose. They tend at the moment to be rather conventional, purely for the reason that orchestras realise that if they introduce anything unfamiliar they will at once empty a quarter of their hall. Our nation is a peculiar one from that point of view. Nobody appears to want to hear anything that they have not heard already several times. The result is that the young and unknown composer does not get a look in anywhere.

It is only right that the unknown composer should have a chance. Therefore, I wonder whether it would be possible for programmes which contain unknown works to be subsidised more heavily than those which do not. A great deal of modern music is absolute nonsense, but, on the other hand, a great deal of it is of great value. You-cannot just say that because the music is modern it is meaningless. There is a great deal of excellent music being written today. That which is nonsense, or rubbish, will die a natural death at its first performance. Nobody will want to hear it again, and nobody will want to play it again. Therefore, no harm will have been done. But the good music will survive. I think that is only just, and that orchestras should be supported in this way.

Then there is the question of education, which was raised particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Rhodes. Nobody can become a performing musician without having first learned his instrument. That is fairly obvious, and I do not think anybody could question it. I was very disturbed indeed to see that the Surrey County Council had issued an edict—I do not know whether it did it on its own initiative or whether it was told to do so by the Department of Education; that I intend to find out, so let it be in the air at the moment—saying that schools shall cease all music teaching outside school hours. Of course, most of it has to be outside school hours; and that will mean that practically all part-time instrumental teaching will cease in Government schools. That is going to be a tremendous blow to music. One particular school in Epsom that I have been in touch with has a wonderful record, and it has an enormous number of pupils learning instruments out of school hours.

All that will disappear simply because, apparently, that was laid down in the 1944 Act, if you can believe it—the 1944 Act, when we were still at war and conditions were entirely different! Something should be done to put that straight. I cannot believe that anything of that kind should be allowed to go on. I sincerely hope that when I go to see the Department of Education they will be able to tell me the true situation. My Lords, I have exceeded my time, so I shall sit down.

My Lords, I am sure we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, for having put down his Motion. I hope that this short debate will be followed by a longer debate when the Select Committee's report from another place can be thoroughly discussed, because it contains many important recommendations. It is a remarkable document. I should also like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Marley, who must be blushing up to the top of his cheeks from all the praise he is getting for his stimulating maiden speech. Now that he has broken the ice, I am sure he will come here again. I never come, but I felt today that I ought to because for 16 years, from 1958 until 1974, I was chairman of the Royal Opera House. I am still closely identified with it because I am joint chairman of the Development Appeal Committee which exists to raise money for improvement to the dreadful facilities of the building. The first phase of the work was completed a few months ago.

Covent Garden is the largest single recipient of money from the Arts Council. At the present time it receives between £9 million and £10 million a year. Together with the English National Opera Company at the Coliseum, London's two opera houses absorb about 17 per cent. of the Arts Council's total budget. If one adds in the two great repertory companies, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, the percentage of the Arts Council grant going to these four enterprises—the big four, so-called—comes to about 30 per cent.

There are people who hold quite strongly that these four enterprises should not be subsidised through the Arts Council at all; that they should be handled separately through the Arts Minister. There is a strong case for making some change in the present situation because there is always a good deal of criticism and complaint that so much money is going to these threatres, and, of course, Covent Garden in particular, which is the sort of epitome of élitism in the eyes of many people—which is nonsense. The Select Committee recommend that there should be a separate special grant which would be administered by the Arts Council, but would be given to the Arts Council from the Minister for the Arts, who by then, it is suggested, should have Cabinet rank, and then the argument would take on quite a different colour, or so I hope, anyway.

Obviously, no decision is likely to be made in time to help the present predicament, which, ironically enough, comes when Covent Garden is celebrating its 250th anniversary. The predicament, quite simply, is that too little money is being made available to the Arts Council. The needs of the Big Four are growing at a rate well in excess of the funds provided for the arts by the Government. Your Lordships should bear in mind that from a total national budget of well over £100 billion, the Arts Council receives a mere £80 or £85 million to support the arts throughout the country. Even if one adds in the cost of the museums and galleries, which are not handled through the Arts Council, the total cost to the Exchequer represents, I reckon, about one-third of 1 per cent. of national expenditure. The noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, quoted figures relating to other countries; I am afraid it is sadly true that we show up very badly.

At the same time, there is no doubt that the flourishing of the arts which has taken place in this country since the war has largely been thanks to the setting up of the Arts Council and the change in attitudes which has thereby been brought about. We know that in many fields the position of this country relative to others has declined, but in the arts it is widely recognised that we hold a pre-eminent position, both for the quality of creative work and for the quality of performance; and one can justly say that, taking one night with another, Covent Garden really is one of the centres of excellence, standing high in the international league, to which I know that the Prime Minister herself attaches importance. To jeopardise what has been achieved by a niggardly attitude on the part of the Government—to try to force every form of expenditure into a sort of common straitjacket—would be shortsighted and extremely unimaginative.

I am afraid that the idea of the noble Lord, Lord Somers, that one can somehow bridge the gap by help from the private sector, is sadly unrealistic; some money is gradually forthcoming all the time, but it is still far away from what is required. The first thing must be a major change in the tax laws. In the case of Covent Garden—and elsewhere, I think—the level of seat prices has been forced up to a point at which it is becoming counter-productive. As my noble friend Lord Stodart said, the box office has, therefore, been playing its part, but attendances are showing a tendency to fall, not because of performance standards but because people cannot afford to pay, with the stalls going up to £20, £25 and £30 each. Covent Garden's annual expenditure is now approaching £20 million. People may say, "Surely, from a total like that, you can squeeze out 5 or 7½ per cent?" But three-quarters of the figures represents wages, salaries and artistes fees, and the artistes fees are determined by the international market, which is not helped by a falling pound. Every year, when the figures are presented to the Arts Council, they go through them with a fine comb, so I do not think there is much fat there.

I hope the Minister will be able to say that he and his colleagues recognise the importance of the arts and appreciate that what is, relatively speaking, a very young growth should not be checked as it develops. This means that more money than has been promised to the Arts Council for the coming year must urgently be made available, for I assure your Lordships that the position is seriously critical. For the longer term, I seriously hope that action will be taken to implement the carefully-considered recommendations of the Select Committee's Report, for it is a very important document which must not be pigeon-holed.

I regret that I must apologise, in that I do not think I shall be able to remain until the end of the debate. I have not exceeded my time, but I have a long-standing prior engagement and may therefore have to read Hansard to see what the Minister had to say in reply.

My Lords, I hope the noble Earl, Lord Avon, will accept my excuse when I say that I do not

know what the punishment is for impersonating another noble Lord. I expect it is decapitation on Tower Hill at the very least. I telephoned to say that I wanted to take part in this debate but I suspect that, as the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, will recognise, an English ear does not always hear accurately a Scottish name. I am glad that my old friend Lord Polwarth initiated this debate because it emphasises how important the arts are in Scotland, Wales and in the regions. We tend so often, I feel—those of us who live in London—to think it is only the great companies in London which matter.

I wish to comment on rationalisation. During the 'sixties the universities and polytechnics were continually being urged by the Government to rationalise. They did nothing about it; perhaps it was impossible for them to do anything about it. Equally the University Grants Committee refused to do j anything about rationalisation. They simply said, "Each university has a base line. We honour that base line. Of course, some are better off than others, and we will make minor adjustments"—upwards, of course—for those which show special initiatives". In the end they had to rationalise. They did rationalise in the 'eighties and it was a very painful process.

I wonder whether the same thing should not happen with the great companies in London. In the 'sixties, there was no national theatre at the beginning of the decade. There was the Old Vic, which had the status of a national theatre, and there was Sadler's Wells as the second opera house. Then, in the 'seventies we had the ENO at the Coliseum and the National Theatre in all its glory. But still attempts were made to keep the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells going, and the contraction which should have taken place at that time did not occur.

I remember some years ago, when I was a director of Covent Garden, being part of a delegation to the Arts Council. It was the usual kind of delegation, saying, "We are in a desperate state of crisis. Please may we have more funds?" I said to the chairman of the council, "Is it not possible for you to think of some rationalisation? Do we really need so many ballet and opera companies? Is it not possible for some amalgamations to take place which would still give touring companies to the public and would still keep the Coliseum and Covent Garden going? But there could be some economies". He replied, "Not at all. That is not the Arts Council's business. Our business is to put pennies into begging bowls. We do not go in for this business of rationalisation. That is up to the companies themselves". Believe me, my Lords, it really is impossible for individual companies to rationalise in this way. Therefore I ask myself whether some rationalisation of these great companies is not possible. As speeches must be short, I shall not this evening put forward my own plan for this; it would be a great impertinence if I did so. But I think that there are possibilities that are well known, if I may say so, to those who are the directors or trustees of these great organisations.

I wish to conclude by saying one other thing. I know that this is a debate about the performing arts, and of course the performing arts are dear to all our hearts. They give pleasure to hundreds of thousands of people. But what I fear the Government might be tempted to do would be to take money from the non-performing arts and give it to the performing companies. The British Museum has 3 million visitors a year, the Science Museum has 3 million, and the National Gallery has 2½ million. Those are institutions which lost out in the great bonanza of the 1960s when everybody's base line was raised. The museums and the galleries remained rather as ugly sisters until the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, came along dressed as the Fairy Godmother and waved his wand. He improved their situation, but it was not all that much improved.

I want to sound a word of warning here. It would be false economy to say: "We could cut the purchase grants, we could reduce the amount that we give to the museums and galleries in order to save the performing arts, particularly the big companies in London". Indeed those companies need greater sustenance. They need sustenance if they are to maintain their standards. They will not maintain their standards if there are so many bits and pieces attached to those companies and if no rationalisation takes place. I know that the noble Earl who is to reply would not for one moment want the Government, nor the department, to get involved in any rationalisation of this kind. But I urge him to draw this point to the attention of the Arts Council and to say: "Dislike it as you may, you may have to follow the policy which the University Grants Committee has been forced to follow in recent years".

My Lords, you may have noticed in the newspapers this morning a report of an interesting event. It occurred last night in the great city of Bath, and it was the re-opening of the restored Theatre Royal. I at once declare an interest because like many people who lived around that area, I was persuaded to take part in a little fund-raising, and the result was extremely encouraging The money came in—I must remind your Lordships that there is still a little more to come, please—from the widow's mite of the old-age pensioner, right up to extremely generous gifts from the English Tourist Board. I mention that organisation in particular having myself for a long time been engaged in the tourist industry, and I say it for the benefit of those who mock tourism, who jeer at tourists, and who forget the contribution that tourism and the theatre make to our economy.

We learnt some interesting lessons, one of which was I think mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Marley, in an interesting maiden speech. No matter how much money is made available, it is no good if one does not have an audience. The Theatre Royal in Bath will succeed because Bath has a need for a theatre. But go down to the seasides, look at all the piers, at the end of which are derelict theatres, which in the old days used to be full, and which gave birth to many new and rising stars. The supply and demand has got out of kilter; it is out of balance. The demand has gone off, and has switched to holidays in the Costa Brava. That is the trouble there.

Look at London, my Lords, where we have more than six theatres standing empty, or up for sale. Of course, the difficulty is not only in Bath, and the reasons are familiar to everybody—traffic problems, parking problems, poor restaurant and bar facilities. But the one that was mentioned most of all to my friends and myself when we were going around looking for money was the dearth of good new plays; and that is where the audience will go, to look at good new plays. But there are none. So they stay at home. They stay at home in front of the television, watching the "Barchester Chronicles" and "Yes, Minister". Therefore, I am not surprised to read that when the average man reaches the age of 68 (my age) he will have spent nine and a half years before the television set.

What therefore is Bath's answer, and what has Bath to contribute to the problem? The first is good parking, and there is also good catering, as well as facilities for the deaf and the disabled. But most of all the theatre in Bath is a triple purpose theatre. Far too many theatres around the country have gone broke because they are eating up rent, rates, and insurance while standing empty for most of the day. Not so Bath, where the theatre is triple purpose, able to take conferences, and able also to put on concerts. Of course, one cannot guarantee good plays; nor can the Government.

Out of interest I turned up the copy of The Times for 1st December exactly 50 years ago, and your Lordships might like to know the names of the authors who then had plays on the stage in London: Bernard Shaw, Somerset Maugham, James Bridie, Noël Coward, Frederick Lonsdale, Ben Travers, Hugh Walpole, Ian Hay, and Dodie Smith. Are your Lordships surprised that some theatres are empty nowadays? By the way, there was also a revival of "Macbeth", but I do not think that it was quite the fiasco d'estime as was the last revival that occurred in London.

There is the same kind of trouble with music; I was glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Somers, mention this. The RPO has been complaining that only £3,000 has been allotted for contemporary music. Again, I turn to The Times, and I find that during the week in which the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth—whose excellent speech I so much admired—put his Motion on the Order Paper, there were four performances of Beethoven's seventh symphony. I bow to no one in my admiration of Beethoven's seventh symphony. Indeed, I think that I am one of the few Members of your Lordships' House who has actually played in a performance of it. But too much programme music was what the noble Lord, Lord Somers, was complaining about; and it is bound to happen. Again, it is the question of supply and demand being out of proportion. There are far too few good composers, as there are far too few good playwrights, and people just will not go and listen a second time to a piece that has bored the daylights out of them the first time.

The other day when the death occurred of Percy Grainger—whom, your Lordships may recall, wrote Country Gardens and Handel in the Strand—one of the obituary notices criticised him for being not really a composer, but only a tunesmith. May I remind the author of that obituary notice that Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert all wrote a large number of thundering good tunes!

I am slightly to blame myself. I know about this, because on one occasion while I was studying music at Bonn University we all had to submit a composition of our own. I composed a sonata for unaccompanied 'cello—which is a rash thing to do at the best of times. But my instructor was a kind man. He looked at it, and he said, "Mancroft, your work will be acknowledged long after Beethoven's is forgotten—but not before!"

Time is running out, and I must conclude. I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, that we need more money. I shall not repeat all his excellent arguments. But, as I say, I think that one of the basic troubles is the lack of new creative talent, and that is something that the Government cannot provide. Of course, the system of music and the arts is irrational, when one thinks that the Beatles can earn a million in a day and Mozart was buried in a pauper's grave.

There is another point, which I should like to put to the noble Earl who is to reply. I do not want an answer on it tonight, but I hope that he will bear it in mind. I believe that there is a conflict in regard to the policy of donations in the public sector, involving the Arts Council, the tourist boards, local authorities, and the Government. I have noticed this more than once in going on my rounds. If we do not face these facts, there is a very great danger of the arts falling into grave disrepute. I understand that a 14 per cent. rise is needed, but I think that we are very unlikely to get it. The only solution is for the noble Earl, Lord Avon, to produce for us a new Beethoven and a new Shakespeare. It might be a little difficult for him, but I have such confidence in our Government Front Bench that I am sure that they will do their best.

My Lords, I should like to add my thanks to those expressed by other noble Lords to the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, for initiating this debate and demonstrating so vividly the severe crisis in the performing arts. The knowledge and experience of the noble Lord, Lord Marley, which he demonstrated so well in his speech, make me feel inadequate even in congratulating him, let alone in speaking further. In that vein I think that in a debate on this subject it would be appropriate to describe myself as an understudy for my noble friend Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, who is unable to attend your Lordships' House this evening and whose knowledge and experience will therefore be much missed.

To pursue a theatrical analogy, I fear that I have perhaps earned a reputation with the Government Benches as an "angry young man" in the year since I first spoke in your Lordships' House, so perhaps I should begin by saying that support for the arts is not a matter for political controversy and that the efforts of the present Government have not been, and should not be, under-estimated. The last 10 years have seen an extraordinarily difficult economic environment in this country, and it is a tribute to all the Governments which have held office during this time that the arts have continued to thrive. There is, however, now a clear danger that the achievements of the artistic world and of successive Governments in nurturing it through thick and thin will be jeopardised by the relentless economic squeeze.

I think it is easy for my generation to take for granted the quality and range of choice of the performing arts which are now available, not only in London but throughout the United Kingdom. I was, therefore, particularly struck by a passage in the recent article by the successor to the noble Earl, Lord Drogheda, as chairman of the Royal Opera House, Sir Claus Moser, which was published in the Financial Times recently. In fact, the whole article seemed to me to portray the current position and problems so well that I was strongly tempted to read the entire peice to your Lordships rather than to inflict on you my own views. I believe, however, that that would be not only out of order but also time-consuming, None the less, I hope your Lordships will bear with me if I read a short passage:

"One does not have to go back beyond the lifetime of at least the older ones among us to see a scene totally different from today. Take the 1930s. Opera in London meant mainly summer seasons lasting a few weeks, and outside London there was the Carl Rosa Company and Gilbert and Sullivan. That was about the sum of it. Audiences can hardly have numbered more than a few tens of thousands, mostly well-off and, of course, there was no public subsidy.

"Here we are, a mere 50 years later, with London alone typically putting on between 300 and 400 opera performances and as many again outside. There must be well over a million 'bottoms on opera seats' in a year . . .

"It is a stunning transformation and the same story could be told of theatre, ballet, museums, music generally and so on. Much of this is owed to the sensible use of public subsidy, a credit to successive Governments and Arts Councils".

I hope that every visitor to British theatres, opera houses and arts theatres during this Christmas season can be reminded of how much we have to lose if we do not find ways of helping the performing arts at a time of crisis.

The case for maintaining our artistic life at its present level is, of course, a broad one, relating to the quality of life of every section of the community. The fact that there can also be narrower economic grounds for support should be seen as a bonus.I will join the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, in reminding your Lordships that tourism in the United Kingdom contributes substantially more to our invisible earnings than the City of London, and while the British weather may be as unfairly maligned as the j British worker, it is undeniable that a large number of visitors to this country are attracted by our outstanding artistic life.

If the contribution of the Government to the country's artistic and cultural richness has been substantial, the private sector has played an important role as well. In recent years business sponsorship of the arts has been increasing rapidly in real terms, with estimated support in 1980 of £4 million, rising this year to around £7 million, as the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, pointed out. The most recent annual report of the Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts includes a list of sponsors which demonstrates the contribution which companies now make to our artistic life, as well as the valuable role played by ABSA itself in advising both sponsors and artists on the right way to balance the sometimes difficult and different demands of art and commerce.

The immediate priority must be, however, that central Government support for the arts is increased to ensure that there are no casualties in the performing arts over the next year that lead to irreplaceable loss to the country's artistic life. The sum needed for this purpose, perhaps £10 million in the next financial year, may represent a substantial increase in the total central Government expenditure on the arts, but in relation to public expenditure as a whole it is tiny. It is difficult to imagine any area of public expenditure in which value for money could be achieved through such a comparatively modest sum.

In the longer run, however, I feel, like my noble ally Lord Beaumont of Whitley, that there must be a reexamination of the way in which central Government, local government, business, the media and the artists themselves work to maximise the revenue available for the performing arts. The Arts Council has long had a policy of favouring applications where real efforts have been made to raise at least some part of the required funds from the private sector. I should like to ask the noble Earl whether any extension of such a principle is considered feasible, so that for approved projects or applicants the Arts Council might allow a fixed sum plus an amount based on that raised additionally through private sponsorship or donations, perhaps on a ratio of £2 additional Arts Council support for every £ 1 raised from the private sector. In my view it would be better to institute such a scheme than to introduce greater tax concessions to those supporting the arts—as the noble Lord, Lord Stodart, suggested—which might further diminish the influence of individuals and smaller corporate supporters compared to that of the wealthiest and largest companies. Commercially-based support will inevitably favour the more conventional and less experimental areas of the performing arts, so that grants related to individual donations and contributions must be a more effective method of protecting the interests of the smaller groups in the performing arts without prejudicing the continuation of our flagship enterprises.

Although I have just exceeded my time, I should like to make a further point. This week may well mark the demise of the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, which seem to me to have established in a short time an outstanding reputation as a model for a successful community arts centre. To an outside observer—and I have no connection with the studios—their fate seems to have depended on local politics more akin to a BBC production of "The Borgias" than to a sensible approach to the performing arts. Here seems to be an outstanding opportunity for commercial interests, local government, central Government and the media to combine forces and establish a pattern for the future that allows the performing arts in the United Kingdom not merely to maintain its health and quality but to rise to new glories.

My Lords, I crave the tolerance of your Lordships for indulging in two debates today. I believe this to be a very important debate and I should like to add to the congratulations already extended to the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, who, over the years, has done so much for the arts. The insurance companies have been particularly outstanding in the field of sponsorship and, although I earn my own living in the insurance industry, no company with which I have been concerned has been thus involved so that I have no financial interest to declare. So far as the

Scottish National Orchestra is concerned, my wife and I went to the last of their concerts two years ago when they made a tour of the United Kingdom. It was a highly successful tour. I knew that they had just returned from a tour of America. I hope that it will be possible for them to do more overseas tours, because they are an outstanding orchestra and I believe that much can be done for our balance of payments by splendid organisations of this kind.

I should like to devote a few minutes to the theatre and, particularly, to the repertory theatre. I have been involved for many years in the Thorndike Theatre at Leatherhead. I was a trustee when the new theatre was built just over ten years ago and I and my family have taken a great interest in that theatre ever since. The late Dame Sybil Thorndike herself followed every move in the theatre. She was present at the topping out ceremony; she acted in the second production of the new theatre. That great lady of the theatre certainly made her name even more immortal by her marvellous work in this theatre.

The current Arts Council grant—which I have checked this afternoon—is £ 151,000.I gather that any increase in this figure is unlikely. The Surrey County Council provide £12,800, and the local authority, the Mole Valley Council, £30,000. I do not know what percentage of the rate that is. There was a time when local authorities were asked to produce a sixpenny rate under the old coinage. I do not think that many authorities have done that. To be fair to local authorities these days, who have many vital social needs to deal with, is it necessarily fair to expect such a contribution? Nevertheless, this theatre is nearly always full. It has an exceptionally fine management committee and a devoted set of artists who, like all repertory theatres, subsidise the theatre. Also, their designers and everybody else do an absolutely marvellous job. It means that those who do not live in London—and I am not only thinking of the Thorndike Theatre—do not always have to go to theatres in the West End of London.

Some years ago I initiated a debate in your Lordships' House on the subject of the then Arts Council report. I coined a phrase: "penicillin before Puccini". Penicillin is a lifesaving drug; Puccini is a great composer. If one gets one's priorities right at a time when we are needing funds desperately for our health service, for housing, roads and so on, we have to get into proportion what the Arts Council can be granted for the arts. This is something which is sad to have to say. As I say, we must get these matters into proportion and also pay tribute to those companies which sponsor the arts. I hope that they can get some kind of financial relief in so doing because they add to our export potential.

There is much more that could be said, but may I say this finally. The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain has always been one of our finest orchestras. The Pianist of the Year competition, which is sponsored by one of the television companies, has produced some remarkably fine British pianists. If we cut down too much, what of the future of our young instrumentalists? Can they play with the Hallé Orchestra, the Scottish National Orchestra and all these fine orchestras? In the theatre, can our budding actors really get jobs worthy of their hire? This is the kind of subject which leads one into a veritable dilemma; but the future of the theatre and the performing arts of this country is a heritage too valuable to be overlooked.

My Lords, I think that on this occasion the tributes which were paid to the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, for introducing this debate were no ordinary customary statement. I believe that they were deeply meant by everybody who has spoken in the matter, and every noble Lord who has spoken has paid that tribute. It is the case that at the moment the arts are in a condition of crisis and therefore it is appropriate that at this point we should have—however brief and short it may be—a discussion upon them and the noble Lord has done us a service in making that possible.

It is also possible not to be purely perfunctory in welcoming the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Marley, even if he has taken a little time to get around to it. He demonstrated to us the fact that if he decides to continue his contributions to us—and I hope he will decide without too much delay—he will do so out of a knowledge, background and with a facility which will enrich our debates in the future. I must resist the temptation that there is to try to comment on the very well informed speeches that we have heard from all parts of the House. I do so because of the time factor. However, that duty will evolve upon the noble Earl and I must try not to take up time which he will use in performing that task—a very welcome task though it would be for me on this occasion.

One aspect of the matter has not been fully touched upon and I should like to spend my time chiefly on that. I prefer to refer to the "performance arts" rather than to "performing arts"; I know that the words "performing arts" have come into the language; but the arts do not perform, it is more correctly the "performance arts". But I give up. I think that we have to accept the "performing arts". I do not think that we can do anything about it. It is too late.

The question may reasonably be asked: why is it they are always in financial difficulties? Why is the theatre always short of money? Why did the Arts Council summarily cut off 41 recipients of grants last year and thus ensure the demise of some enjoyable and valuable productions and companies? Why, since they get more and more money every year and the State assumes a larger and larger share of the financial burden, are they never satisfied? Why do we never reach a plateau? The reason was very convincingly set out in 1966 by Baumol Bowen in their magisterial book The Performing Arts—The Economic Dilemma. That came from America, I need hardly say.

This book was referred to in the eighth report of the Education, Science and Arts Committee to which tribute has been very properly paid this evening. It is a remarkable report and I am glad to be able to say so at this Dispatch Box. In a notice which I wrote on this report, the congratulatory section was cut for reasons of space, much as much else that I was hoping to say tonight is going to be cut for reasons of time. However, I can at least get in a few words of appreciation of what is a remarkable report.

I hope that—as is not always the case with every report that one sees—the Government are going to take notice of the 71 recommendations of that report. Not all of these recommendations are of equal value. I do not agree personally with all of them. There is one most important recommendation; that is, that the money that is going into the arts must be very substantially increased. I hope that the Government are going to take that seriously to heart, and I hope that we shall hear promisingly about that from the noble Earl in a few minutes. As I was saying: why do the arts never reach a plateau? This book on the economics of the arts has been my bible in office and most of the time out of office ever since. I dislike the title, but the authors have put their finger on the arguments, and to summarise a book of this kind is always to risk weakening the argument or compressing it into obscurity. However, I think the authors would agree that, expressed at its simplest, the arts are both labour-intensive and marginal.

If I may add a gloss of my own, technological development in the performance arts takes place alongside the original form instead of transforming it into a replacement medium. By that I mean this: the theatre remains the source medium even when the mass audience has deserted it for the cinema, the television or whatever may be the latest technological development. If we wish to retain the source, we have no alternative but in one way or another to sustain it by the injection of financial supprt to the box office income on an increasing scale. I should like, if I may, to quote from the introduction of the book:

"The basic difficulty arises… from the economic structure of live performance. This conclusion has implications that are rather sobering. It suggests that the economic pressures which beset the arts are not temporary'—they are chronic. It suggests that if things are left to themselves deficits are likely to grow. Above all, this view implies that any group which undertakes to support the arts can expect no respite".

My Lords, the Government can expect no respite. No government, once into the business of arts patronage, can ever get off the escalator. I return to the book:

"The demands upon its resources will increase now, and for the foreseeable future. … a state of financial crisis may not just be perennial—it may well grow progressively more serious."

That is an American book. It applies in America and it applies in this country, and at all points where the arts are subsidised and by whatever means. It means that subsidy, and a growing subsidy, is necessary and cannot be avoided. The result of the transportation of technological change into another medium—chiefly into television in our present case—is that the original medium remains as labour-intensive as ever, and nothing whatever can be done about it.

It was in this book that I first encountered the hilarious exposition which was originally written—I know not by whom—in a British Civil Service magazine. It purports to be the report of a work-study engineer after visiting a concert at the Royal Festival Hall. I have mentioned it to your Lordships once before, but even under the present pressure of time I cannot resist another short quotation. The report says:

"For considerable periods the four oboe players had nothing to do. The number should be reduced and the work spread more evenly over the whole of the concert, thus eliminating peaks of activity.

"All the 12 violins were playing identical notes; this seems unnecessary duplication. The staff of this section should be drastically cut. If a larger volume of sound is required, it could be obtained by means of electronic apparatus. Much effort was absorbed in the playing of demi-semi-quavers; this seems to be an unnecessary refinement. It is recommended that all notes should be rounded up to the nearest semi-quaver."

It continues in that vein. I wish I had the time to read more of it. because it gets even funnier as it goes on. The point is that if you are going to play Hamlet in the theatre, on the stage, you need as many people as was the case in Shakespeare's time. There is no way in which the arts can compete with the changes that have taken place in the post-war period in our industrial society.

I will not trouble your Lordships with the economic argument, because there is not enough time; it shows that in the circumstances ticket prices cannot be raised enough—we have had practical examples of that—to compensate, and therefore the income gap must grow each year. What emerges from the book is that inflation in the arts must always be relatively much higher than is generally the case; and this of course applies to other areas where labour is intensive, such as hospital and welfare services.

As economists often argue, it is necessary to increase production if inflation is to be avoided, and it follows that in an inflationary world the cost of services of a non-productive and labour-intensive character must relatively increase indefinitely at a compound rate. It further follows that inflation in the arts and services must be substantially higher than inflation in industry generally.

I think I have not more than perhaps another few minutes, but in that few minutes I should like to say this. The Treasury takes no account of all this. When I became Minister for the Arts in 1974 I found that the increase in subsidy for the previous year was actually below the rate of inflation. I managed to get it 3 per cent. above the average, but even that was much less than the actual figure in the arts which, as I have just said, was much higher than the average. In short, the message is that if an increase in subsidy is based on an average inflation rate, the arts will always be in difficulty, for they have no way of reducing their inflation to average, let alone below it; and ticket prices are generally at the top the market will bear.

If it is true that the Arts Council is to receive less than 5 per cent. increase this year, we will be in serious difficulty. I will not proceed with that argument because of the time factor, but I hope that the Arts Council will reject any such draconian reaction as the drastic cuts it embarked upon last year. I hope, too, that when the noble Earl comes to reply he will be able to tell us that it is not the case that the Government are going to restrict their increase to a figure of 5 per cent. or less. If that were to happen we would indeed be in dire trouble, and I hope that the noble Earl will be able to give us a little assurance on that point. I know that his heart is in it and I hope that his head will be able to lead him in the direction I have urged.

My Lords, the other night I went to the National Theatre and listened to a subsidised production of "Guys and Dolls". In it there was a very nice Salvation Army brass band. I do not know if others of your Lordships are as cold as I am but I think it would warm us all up if we could have a rendition at this moment. I join in the universal welcome to my noble friend Lord Polwarth for giving us the opportunity for this debate on a subject of such importance and topicality. His was a most forthright and constructive contribution. I have listened with interest to the many helpful points made by noble Lords this evening and I welcome the opportunity to attempt to reply to at least some of them. I know that what has been said here today will be taken into account by the very many interests whose cause it is to further the arts, including, of course, my right honourable friend the Minister.

I should like to join in the general congratulations to my noble friend Lord Marley on his very entertaining speech with the many and varied examples he gave. One of them, "Tom Jones", reminded me that many years ago I was asked to contribute some money to that particular production. Perhaps if I had done so I would not need to be standing at the Dispatch Box now.

The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, in a very interesting speech, produced some interesting suggestions about vouchers, which I look forward to looking into. I would like to say to him that I do not think it is the case that public support is given only to arts activities patronised by the better-off. In the first place, the Arts Council has a charter responsibility to bring the arts to the widest possible audience and to assist a very wide range of activities. The national companies themselves play to a very mixed audience and they have ticket policies to encourage the young and the less-well-off.

As a number of speakers have made abundantly clear, the arts are, to a large extent, dependent on public subsidy. There is no way round this, given the limits to box office returns—which, incidentally, many noble Lords have touched on—the need to attract the widest possible audience and the essential requirement of a continuing level of funding, to ensure that new productions and performances can be developed and mounted. Understandably, therefore, interest turns on the level of grants to be announced by my right honourable friend the Minister for the Arts for the year 1983–84.

I am informed that the announcement will be made shortly, but neither this House nor I is in possession of this information today, and, therefore, I am unable to comment on the last remark of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins. Nevertheless, it is worth reminding your Lordships that this Government are pledged in their manifesto to continue to give,

"as generous support to Britain's cultural and artistic life as the country can afford".

I believe that the figures to date speak for themselves, and the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, was very generous in his comments. The Arts Council has received successive grant increases from £70 million in 1980/81, to £80 million in 1981/82 and £86 million in 1982/83. By any standards, that is a lot of public money and I believe that it demonstrates the Government's commitment to the arts.

I recognise, equally, of course, that the arts are particularly sensitive to inflation and that when rises in inflation are taken into account, it can be said that the arts have not had an increase in real terms. Nevertheless, the Government have done all in their power, at a time of retrenchment of public expenditure, to ensure that the arts programme, as a whole, can continue without fundamental change. My noble friend Lord Stodart paid tribute to this.

Looking ahead to next year, the House will know that the Government's planned public expenditure levels for the arts, taking central and local government expenditure together, assume an increase of about 4–1 per cent. I cannot, of course, anticipate again how the 1983/84 figures will be broken down. As I said before, this will be the subject of my right honourable friend's announcement. But I should like to point out that the Government's projected expenditure figures are broadly in line with expectations on pay and price increases, and these in themselves do not sustain an argument that on this basis the arts are likely to suffer any major disasters.

In saying this, I have, of course, taken due note of the various instances of hardship and financial difficulty that have been quoted. But, we have to look at these, too, in perspective. First, there is a continuing need for economies within all publicly funded bodies, just as much as within Government themselves. An arts company, like this country, cannot live beyond its means. Of course, it is regrettable that some companies have to reduce their commitments or even, in a limited number of cases, to close.

In particular, I recognise, as does my right honourable friend, the difficulties caused by the decision of the Royal Opera House to cancel its visit to Manchester next year. But the discipline of a careful look at costs, and the need to measure opportunities against resources, should be no less welcome in the arts than elsewhere. This brings me to an important consideration which should be reiterated. The Government take decisions about the overall level of support for the arts, but they are not responsible for the way in which that support is allocated to individual companies, or, in turn, for the way in which those companies discharge their responsibilities.

Over the years, we have built up in this country the principle of independent bodies which mediate between Government support and the consumer organisations. In the field which we are discussing tonight, there are such bodies as the Arts Council, the British Film Institute and the Crafts Council; in other fields, one can cite the University Grants Committee—and I did not put that in after the noble Lord, Lord Annan, spoke—as well as the research councils. This is a tried and trusted mechanism for avoiding direct pressure by the Government of the day to support their own particular, and often temporary, interests. Equally, it means that it is wrong to look to Government to solve the crises which may occur with individual companies or situations. These are properly matters for the Arts Council and its client bodies. I am sure that the Arts Council does not rationalise to the degree that the noble Lord, Lord Annan, wishes, but I think he did it less than justice in its aim to keep a balance.

Perhaps I may take this moment to say a few words about the problems of the Royal Opera House visit to Manchester. I recognise the disappointment caused in Manchester by the cancellation of the 1983 visit. Noble Lords may, however, be aware that statements were issued last night by the Arts Council and by the Greater Manchester Council to the effect that, following a very useful and constructive meeting yesterday, there is some possibility that the previously uncovered estimated deficit of £370,000 on the Royal Opera House Manchester season may be covered in—rather mysteriously—one way or another. I also understand that further talks are taking place between the various parties concerned, and I very much hope, as I am sure does the whole House, that the possibility of covering the estimated deficit may become a reality.

On the Government's level of commitment, I should like to disentangle two separate strands of the arguments which are worth examining. These came slightly as a result of the article to which the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, referred. First, it is said that the arts are an economic force in the country, a source of employment and tourist attraction and should be supported for this reason. Secondly, it is suggested that they have an inherent value to society in terms of adding to its happiness rather than its prosperity. The Government recognise that both these points have validity; they underlie the degree of central support given to the arts in the last few years that I have already quoted. But neither leg of the argument in itself is a claim for a specific level of support.

It is to the credit of the many imaginative and committed individuals and institutions in this country that the arts will always absorb what can be given to them. For practical purposes, nevertheless, the immediate benchmark must be the historic level of funding. I understand that the Arts Council have asked the Minister for the Arts for £98.5 million for 1983–84—my noble friend Lord Mancroft commented on this—which is an increase of 14½ per cent. over the current level of support, and they regard this as still £ 10 million short of what they would like as a desirable level. I have no doubt that my right honourable friend the Minister for the Arts would like to be able to meet an increase of this order, but I think it is an unrealistic expectation at the present time. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, commented on bodies making requests to Ministers. There is simply not enough money to go round from the public purse, however desirable the objectives may be in themselves. The belief of this Government is that a different approach is necessary to the funding of such objectives. Inevitably, there must be a basic level of public support to enable a satisfactory arts programme to be maintained and developed. We believe that we supply this. But beyond this, it is, and it should be, a matter of self-help.

It is for the bodies in the field, for the Arts Council and the individual arts companies, to develop a strategy which maximises the value from a given level of resources and which attracts the highest possible degree of support from other sources—from the box office, from marketing techniques, from streamlined management and good union practices, and from private support, be it from individuals, friends' organisations or business sponsorship. That, this Government believe, is the way forward—not by expectations, year by year, that support for the arts will be well above the expected inflation rate.

I think, too, that we do the arts a disservice in this country if we assume that they are totally dependent on such support for their future prosperity. The noble Lord, Lord Rhodes, made some interesting comments here. Two things stand out historically about the way the arts have flourished in the last 20 or 30 years: the fact that we have built up a world recognised level of performance in many artistic fields—and, like other noble Lords, I can cite theatre, music, opera and dance—and the fact that the artistic companies concerned have consistently been able to develop and take new opportunities, in spite of the grant restraints which have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that these trends will not continue, given an assured historic level of support.

The arts are inventive, inspirational and ingenious, and for this reason we should not seek to ossify the system. I do not think it follows that any particular company will always be able to maintain itself at the highest possible level. Thus the Arts Council is in a continuous dialogue with individual companies about their requirements, and the possibility of withdrawal in one area to advance on another must always remain open. We should not regard any arts organisation as sacrosanct in its present régime, management or structure. It lives by change. The fact that we have to some extent a changing picture of support among individual companies is not something to denigrate; rather it is a reflection of the health of our society that there are options and choices which remain open, without asking the taxpayer for an inordinate sum to shore up every individual venture.

As I have said, the Government cannot, and should not, be seen as the sole provider of the arts. Local authorities have a very large role in funding the arts, and I am happy to say, on information so far available about their expenditure in the current year, that their support for the arts has held up encouragingly well. I must now add the words. "South of the Border" to this particular phrase. With a few exceptions, local authorities have not asked the arts to bear an unfair share of any necessary economies. Indeed, the reverse is true in some cases. Many have taken a major interest in new ventures. I will give, as two examples, the new civic theatres in Plymouth and Swansea. Long may such support and interest continue. Regional arts associations also have an important part to play in dispensing Government money received from the Arts Council. They do it at a level where the smaller individual arts activity can be closely analysed.

But public expenditure, whether central or local, is not enough—nor should it be. The arts have a good track record in attracting private support. We have had an interesting example: the North-West area. However, I believe that private support can be improved. Box office takings, as a percentage of total revenue, vary greatly from company to company and activity to activity. This is something which needs to be studied closely, and where the best ideas and achievements, particularly in terms of marketing operations, need to be widely disseminated. Similarly, management practices, staffing levels and union agreements need to be kept under review. Most performing arts organisations are inevitably manpower intensive. It is therefore all the more important that they should keep their use of manpower regularly under scrutiny. I am sure that many organisations have already learned this lesson. I turn last, but by no means least, to business sponsorship, which I know is a particular concern of the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth. There is every sign that business sponsorship is a steady contribution to the arts and one which we can expect to grow as economic conditions improve. It is currently contributing, on the somewhat conservative estimates of the Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts (I am a little more "bullish" than my noble friend) around £8 million a year. I am happy to pay tribute to the work of the association and to all those individual companies who have aligned themselves with support for the arts. It is not a question of philanthropy but of mutual interests being served. I believe that such liaison should be encouraged, and I would ask noble Lords in their own spheres of influence to do all they can to help. My noble friend Lord Mancroft gave us an excellent example about Bath.

I have not taken this evening the opportunity to talk about the very welcome report from the Select Committee on Education, Science and the Arts on public and private funding of the arts, because it would be premature for me to do so. I recognise, like other noble Lords, that many of the ideas have been of great interest. My right honourable friend the Minister for the Arts is currently taking soundings about them before putting together the Government response. May I simply say, in answer to the particular points in the committee's report which have been highlighted by your Lordships, that your Lordships' views will be taken into account in these soundings. I agree with many noble Lords that the Select Committee system has proved itself again in producing a report which has focussed not merely on funding the arts, but on a whole range of problems underlying this simple concept. My noble friend Lord Polwarth and one or two other noble Lords spoke about covenants. I recognise the point made about the need to offer further incentives for companies and individuals to support the arts. These are matters to which the Select Committee on the public and private funding of the arts has drawn attention. I know that these proposals will be carefully considered.

The noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, and my noble friend Lord Stodart of Leaston talked about the situation in Scotland. I realise that this is an especially difficult problem. The situation in Scotland is a matter, in a way, for the various local authorities there to decide. However, I appreciate the points made by my noble friend. In the meantime, I can assure him that his remarks will be brought to the attention of my appropriate colleagues. I thought for one moment that the noble Lord, Lord McGregor of Durris, might be speaking on Scotland, too, but fortunately he turned to the more neighbourly Walthamstow. I recognise the funding problems referred to by the noble Lord and I appreciate his plea. However, it is really a matter for the Arts Council. But I note that the Select Committee drew attention to the Scottish experience in funding amateur as well as professional work. I gladly undertake to draw the attention of my right honourable friend to the interesting suggestion of an emergency fund.

I am beginning to run out of time, but I should like to answer the question about the Riverside Studios which was asked by the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos. I was sorry to learn that this arts centre is to close from 5th December, at the end of the Kantor season. I know that my right honourable friend hopes very much that when the development plans for the Riverside site are agreed between all parties, the future of the arts centre, as part of that development, will be assured.

Since the war we have built up a tradition of artistic excellence in this country over a whole range of performing arts which is second to none. It is not the Government's policy to jeopardise that achievement, Many of the points which have been made here tonight are valuable in support of the case for the arts. The arts must seek to combine public help with private endeavour. They must be ready to look critically at their own use of resources. They must be ever vigilant to maximise income from all sources and they must continue to keep their dynamism. The belief of my right honourable friend is that all these things can be achieved, and that we are facing not a crisis but a renewed opportunity to demonstrate the value of the arts to our economic and social life.

My Lords, I hope I may be considered to have one minute left for my reply. All I will do is to thank the noble Earl, Lord Avon, for the great trouble he has taken with his reply and express the hope that, as he said, he will convey the views of this House to the Government in their consideration of this report, while bearing in mind that we are not crying "Wolf!" about the straits of the arts and that they cannot expect for ever that organisations will be able to go on turning out their high standards under the pressures to which they are subjected. I am most grateful to him.

I should like to thank all noble lords who have supported me throughout the debate. Again, may I in particular express gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Marley, for his splendid maiden speech. As a byproduct, we have had revealed to us the hidden talent which exists in this place. I look forward to your Lordships' production of Lord Marley's South Bank revels, with my noble friend Lord Stodart of Leaston in the role of the Queen of the Fairies, to the accompaniment of my noble friends Lord Mancroft and Lord Rhodes on their 'cello and cornet respectively. As for myself, having once been privileged to take over Sir Alexander Gibson's baton to conduct an encore at a Scottish promenade concert, I shall volunteer my services as the conductor. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my motion for Papers.