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

My Lords, the National Coal Board is currently spending about £18 million per year on the development of coal utilisation and conversion technology. This is roughly equivalent to 2 per cent. of annual investment and is not expected to increase significantly.

Later this year the National Coal Board plans to begin construction of a 2½-tonne per day coal liquefaction pilot plant at Point of Ayr in North Wales. Operation of this plant should begin in late 1987.

Trials will begin shortly on the board's new 12-tonne per day demonstration plant to make low-calorific-value industrial fuel gas from coal.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord the Minister for furnishing the information for which I have asked. I also apologise to him for bringing him here on a Friday morning. I asked for an available date and this is what they have done to me; I never expected this. However, I am very glad to meet the Minister and noble Lords on a Friday morning.

Is the Minister aware that I am completely dissatisfied with the Answer? Ever since 1924 I have sought to raise the question of the relationship between technical advance, scientific development and our remarkable assets in coal production. In view of the paucity of information on the developments that the National Coal Board intends to implement, is there any means of introducing onto the board of directors a number of technocrats, scientists and people who are associated with technical development, who can assist in building up a great manufacturing industry out of the processing of our coal assets? What is the use of proceeding in the future, as we have done for too long in the past, with the production of coal which is unprofitable? Bearing in mind geological faults, flooding and all the other problems, what is the use of proceeding along those out-of-date, outmoded lines when there is an opportunity to associate ourselves with scientific and technical development?

My Lords, I share the noble Lord's concern that this Question has come on on a Friday morning, but I can assure him that it is as great a pleasure to answer him on a Friday as it is on any other day. Perhaps I may tell him that one of the aspects which has to be borne in mind is the general cost, and the current estimates suggest that synthetic crude oil from United Kingdom coal would cost about 60 dollars per barrel, while substitute natural gas would cost about 50p per therm at the conversion plant site. Those are significant factors, but that does not mean that both the National Coal Board and the British Gas Corporation have not made considerable progress with their research. Indeed, the Government fully supported the original design studies for a larger 25-tonne per day coal liquefaction pilot plant, but process uncertainties dictated a more modest pace of development. However, the Government are still interested and will still support the National Coal Board on this.

My Lords, is the noble Lord the Minister aware that I am fully cognisant of the excessive costs involved? I discovered this in 1924 when, after Lloyd George had abandoned a scheme of his own, I introduced a pilot scheme, when I was able to get £30,000 from the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Snowden. Then it disappeared. I know that the cost is excessive; but let us compare the cost with the provision of new machinery introduced into the pits, wage costs, the difficulties associated with geological faults, and the rest. We must, I suggest, proceed with a scheme of the kind which is being partly developed by the Coal Board, though not to the extent that is necessary, in order to use our assets advisedly.

My Lords, I defer to the very great experience of the noble Lord, and I am sure that we are all well aware of his great knowledge on this subject. As regards advanced power generation, the National Coal Board, British Gas, the CEGB, and the Department of Energy are collaborating in two engineering studies of low-pollution power generation based on advanced coal gasification and pressurised fluid-bed combustion technologies. These studies, including estimates of generation economics, will be completed in mid-1986. So we are making some progress.

My Lords, is not technology in this area very greatly advanced in South Africa over what it is in this country?

My Lords, my information is that significant advance has been made in South Africa in this technology.

My Lords, can we not learn from them?

My Lords, can the noble Lord the Minister say what progress is being made in the Common Market on research, and whether or not they are ahead of us?

My Lords, obviously I shall wish to check my facts on this, but my recollection from my own days as a Minister at the Department of Energy is that we were in the lead as regards those researches. I think that we are ahead of our Common Market partners, but I shall check that and perhaps I may let the noble Viscount know.

My Lords, would not the noble Lord agree that, as usual my noble friend Lord Shinwell is on a good point and is very forward looking? Is not what he is saying that coal is not only for burning, and that with our oil resources depleting at quite a sharp rate by 1995 now is the time to invest in research not only into liquefaction and gasification but also in respect of getting the by-products of coal, which of course when oil runs out will be much more expensive and worthwhile producing from coal?

My Lords, I would not disagree with the noble Lord. These objectives are important and the Coal Board at the present moment is following the lines which the noble Lord suggests. There is a great deal of research and development taking place but we must keep this in perspective. Part of this perspective must be that at the present moment it would not be economical to suggest that coal synthetically treated as the noble Lord suggests would be in any way competitive with what is already available. That is part of the equation.

My Lords, may I ask my noble friend about a point that he missed before? Could we not send a mission to South Africa to learn from their techniques to the benefit of ourselves so that we could advance our technology more rapidly here?

My Lords, I imagine that there would be no reason why such a mission could not be sent. Whether one would be sent might be a different question.

My Lords, I am asking that it should be sent. I ask my noble friend seriously. We want to advance in this field. The noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, has a good point here. Can we not send a mission? We know that they use these processes on a large scale in South Africa. Is it not worth our while to send a mission there? Would my noble friend please look into that and see whether it can be done?

My Lords, I shall certainly pass on the views expressed by my noble friend. It might be that there could be private sector interests which might be interested in exploring the possibilities of South African technology.

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

My Lords, the aim at the Geneva talks should be to make maximum progress in each of the three negotiating groups. It would be wrong to make progress in any one group dependent on that in another. The suggestion of a 25 per cent. reduction in nuclear weapons appears to be a repetition of an earlier and inadequate Soviet proposal. We believe that American efforts at Geneva offered scope for agreement on significant reductions in United States and Soviet strategic forces.

My Lords, I wish to thank the noble Baroness for her reply, although I am somewhat amazed that there is a system of priorities in the reduction of nuclear weapons. Frankly, I do not care what sort of nuclear weapons are going to be abandoned, it is bound to be a good thing. Is the noble Baroness further aware that since the tabling of my Question the Chief of Staff of the Russia forces, Marshal Akhromeyev, has made even further proposals which will involve the abolition of almost 30 per cent. of nuclear weapons held by Russia and the Americans and has offered a system of verification, and that his aim is to stop the militarisation of space and to make the western allies feel safe about what is being proposed? Ought not our Government to consider at least the marshal's proposals and discuss them with our allies, the United States of America?

My Lords, our consistent objective at Geneva has been to negotiate a balanced and verifiable agreement to limit and reduce intermediate range missiles in Europe. A freeze, or indeed a reduction, would mean either a massive imbalance in favour of the Soviet Union, or would still mean an imbalance in favour of the Soviet Union if the reduction was just, as it were, across the board.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the Soviets, having pushed the free world and NATO alliance off the neutron bomb, have tried to push them off deploying cruise missiles, and are now pushing to a large extent to abolish the strategic defence initiative? Is it not a fact that if this becomes successful, these conventional weapons will knock out nuclear weapons and thus not only reduce the nuclear weaponry by 25 per cent. but actually neutralise it altogether; and nothing could be better for the peace of the world than that this should happen?

My Lords, the fact is that the Soviet Government is continuing its research programme on ballistic missile defence. The United States is continuing its research because there is a clear need for it to match the Soviet efforts. But I believe that our immediate task is to maintain alliance unity and to work for results in Geneva.

My Lords, would not the Government agree that these great matters can hardly with profit be discussed at Question Time?

Yes, my Lords.

My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that I totally disagree with the last intervention? I believe that the saving of the human race and my nation is a matter which should constantly be debated in this House, whether it is for hours or for minutes. I do not share the appalling myopia of the person who made the last remark.

Order!

My Lords, the noble Lord. Is the noble Baroness aware that one cannot abolish the SDI because it is not yet invented? It is on the research into trying to achieve the militarisation of space that the marshal has made his recommendation. Political commentators in the United States have considered this proposal and have said that if we examine it, particularly the verification aspect, we may find ourselves returning to the situation in the 1970s when the SALT II Treaty first brought the Americans and the Russians reasonably together to examine these frightening proposals on nuclear weapons that now exist.

My Lords, I should like to confirm the United States' decision to continue to observe the SALT II constraints, even though the Soviet record gives cause for concern. It is a decision which underlines the United States' commitment to the arms control process and its positive contribution to the Geneva talks. The noble Lord, Lord Molloy, should be aware of this from the Question that he asked yesterday, but as he has perhaps not read Hansard this morning to see my reply I shall repeat part of it:

"President Reagan and the Prime Minister are in full agreement that the United States' and Western aim is not to achieve superiority but to maintain a balance, taking account of Soviet developments".—[Official Report, 20/6/85; col 367.]

My Lords, is the noble Baroness—

No!

My Lords, the noble Lord has made two speeches in addition to his Question. That is enough for one morning. I think we should move to the next Question.

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

My Lords, detailed figures on 1985 are not yet available, but it is estimated that in 1984 expenditure by overseas visitors staying in London amounted to £2,375 million, an increase of 14½ per cent. on 1983. Expenditure was on a wide range of goods and services and supported jobs in shops, hotels, restaurants, theatres, public transport and others, as well as in supply industries throughout the country.

I am optimistic about the prospects for this and future years. It is essential, however, that all those working in the tourist industry should continue to provide good value for money services.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that encouraging Answer, particularly the reference to employment. What definite prospects are there for permanent employment in the trade and also for temporary work, particularly considering how useful such jobs could be for school leavers leaving at the time when the tourist trade begins?

My Lords, it is estimated that about a million jobs are taken up by tourist activities. My noble friend the Minister Without Portfolio is currently considering in his enterprise group various aspects of job creation, including the tourist industry. One is optimistic that that industry will provide even further job opportunities in the future.

My Lords, the noble Lord exhorts those within industry to give value for money. Does he not agree that we should expect our local authorities also to do likewise, when one considers the squalor in many of the main streets in the centre of our capital? Much of it is old litter. Cannot something be done to clean up these streets to make them more like the streets found in other cities of Europe?

My Lords, I understand the concern that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, expresses. The English Tourist Board has made representations through the regional tourist boards to local authorities. I should like to ask the noble Lord whether he does not agree that perhaps if we each separately and individually observed a rather more tidy way of going about our streets the responsibility would not necessarily fall upon the local authority and its expenditure.

My Lords, the noble Lord may be right, but surely the fact is that we have deep squalor in main streets in the city of London.

My Lords, your Lordships will know that the old London Tourist Board, the London—

The London Visitor and Convention Bureau, my Lords.

the London Visitor and Convention Bureau—I thank the noble Lord opposite—reconstituted only a few months ago, has introduced a number of street cleanliness schemes which I believe are having some effect.

My Lords, with reference to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Gainford, who was concerned about school leavers, does the Minister not agree that in view of the fact that we have the Youth Training Scheme developing well the last thing one wants to do is to encourage school leavers to go into dead-end jobs in catering? If they are jobs with training, that is one thing, but the temptation for school leavers to take dead-end jobs is highly to be deplored. Does the Minister not agree?

My Lords, I agree that to encourage people into dead-end jobs is not a worthwhile pursuit, but I think that encouraging youngsters into the catering industry is a very valuable thing to do. It is a valuable occupation and serves a wide variety of people, both home and overseas visitors.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the catering industry in this country has a very good record of training schemes for young people?

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter. The House will probably recall that in an article in the Financial Times a few weeks ago Surrey University was praised as being a world centre for training in hotel management, catering and tourism.

My Lords, can the Minister indicate, in the figures of increased spending he quoted, how much is taken up in increased hotel charges in London? The levels these have reached have become a matter of concern to many people.

My Lords, I very much regret that I cannot break down that figure as the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, asks. Across the world it is generally thought that our hotel prices are very much in line and I do not think that the noble Lord opposite should think only in terms of perhaps the Park Lane hotels because there are many other lower-priced hotels in our capital city.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that a million language students come to this country every summer? Many of these take part-time jobs in our catering industry. Will my noble friend bear in mind that, if we got rid of the wages council covering the catering industry, many of these jobs would be available for British students and would be most welcome as part of their training?

My Lords, again I understand what my noble friend has said. Many English students take vacation work throughout the country in the tourist and the catering industry. Your Lordships' House will be aware that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Employment is currently considering the role of the wages councils and their future. As I said in answer to an earlier supplementary question, so also is my noble friend the Minister Without Portfolio currently considering the restraints to further employment that now occur. The wages councils are perhaps one of them.

My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord can comment on the importance, once having got the foreign visitors to London, of persuading them to spread out into the countryside where there is much more space and many more facilities for them? Is he aware that, among other things, we have the largest number of inland waterway hire cruisers available of any country in the world and that in large areas these are already being used up to 50 per cent. by foreign visitors; but there is space for more?

My Lords, there is a misconception as to how many visitors remain in London for their entire stay in this country. Tourists spread widely across the country into Scotland, Wales and the West Country. They do not all stay in London.

My Lords, this Question is going on at some length. Three noble Lords have risen to speak. Of course I will allow those three to speak—certainly the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, my noble friend Lord Inglewood, and the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, but I think that after that we shall probably have had enough.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware, as the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, reminded him, that it is vitally necessary to retain the goodwill of tourists coming to this country? While it may be good commercial practice never knowingly to undercharge, it is of vital importance that the actions of a minority in this country in not giving a fair deal to the tourists should be stamped on as firmly as possible.

My Lords, of course I agree with the noble noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington. As I said in my original Answer, it is essential that everybody working within the tourist industry should continue to provide good value-for-money services.

My Lords, can we all agree that we need not be so critical of the catering and hotel industry in this country, but rather that the standards there have risen greatly over the past few years—not only in the practical side of their work, which is of a standard such as we see in hotels in Switzerland and Austria, and which has been the case there for many years; but that, in addition, we have very high standards in a number of colleges in this country?

My Lords, I think that the best way that I can reply is to say that I totally agree with my noble friend in his remarks.

My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, is not going to speak, may I do so for a second?

No!

My Lords, I must bow to the noble Lord the Opposition Chief Whip if he wishes to do so.

My Lords, I would not wish the message to come from this Question that London hotel prices are excessive. Is the noble Lord the Minister aware that some 20,000 members of the American Bar Association will be coming here for a convention on 15th July; that that convention is likely to produce 60 million dollars' worth of revenue, and that the Americans regard London hotel prices, in dollar terms, as being very reasonable?

My Lords, I was aware of that convention. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede. He will know that many of those American families coming to this country are staying in a variety of hotels in and around London at varying price levels to satisfy their own need.

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

My Lords, Mr. and Mrs. Nicola, whose case has been carefully considered by Ministers of different governments and the independent appellate authorities, were made the subjects of deportation orders on 15th October 1979. We can see no reason to vary the decision to return them to Cyprus.

My Lords, while appreciating the restraint of the Government in not deporting Mr. and Mrs. Nicola during the three months that they were in sanctuary in an Anglican church, may I ask whether the Government will reconsider this matter for three reasons? Will he confirm that in 1974 refugees who came were given indefinite leave to remain. Is the noble Lord aware that Mr. Nicola was unable to come in 1974 because he was conscripted into the army to fight the Turkish invasion? Thirdly, since it has been suggested that Mr. and Mrs. Nicola were in hiding and taking part in deception, will the Minister make inquiries to find out whether they went to the police in a quite open way?

My Lords, the fact is that Mr. and Mrs. Nicola are not refugees, and they fall well outside the concession applied to displaced Cypriots. They have practised deception; they have ignored our laws and have gone into hiding to evade enforcement action. Their case has been reviewed, as I have said, on numerous occasions by Ministers of different governments and their appeals against deportation have been turned down by the independent appellate authorities. There are no strong compassionate features. Mr. and Mrs. Nicola are comparatively young and it would be unfair to many law-abiding people if the couple were to benefit from their unlawful behaviour.

My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister would be good enough to clarify the situation in regard to what I believe are the 1,400 Cypriots who are in this country and who did not come here immediately after 1974. Does he know that many of them were in refugee camps and could not get here before they in fact arrived? Whatever may be the facts of the particular case that my noble friend has brought to the attention of the Minister and the House, is the Government's policy to be merciful to those people and to bring them within the main Government policy in regard to Cypriot refugees?

My Lords, I think that the noble Lord is referring to the case of the people who came over here as a result of the Cyprus war. I think that is the point that he is trying to make. The wholly exceptional treatment for citizens of Cyprus as a result of the events there in 1974 applied only to those legally resident at the time when it was announced in 1982. It was made clear that that did not apply to those who had overstayed or otherwise disregarded the law. As I have said, Mr. and Mrs. Nicola have been here unlawfully for over nine years.

My Lords, will the noble Lord not agree that this whole affair would appear to be something of a propaganda stunt directed against Turkey, and to a lesser extent against Britain, in that nearly all Turkish Cypriots who formerly lived in the South and the West of Cyprus have now gone to live in the North, and conversely most Greek Cypriots who formerly lived in the North and North-East have now gone to live in the South and West; and that thanks to the commercial drive and initiative displayed by the Greek Cypriots, the economy is booming, there are plenty of jobs available and that there is therefore no need for this couple to come to live in England?

My Lords, that is an interesting interpretation.

My Lords, if I heard the Minister aright, he said that Mr. and Mrs. Nicola are not genuine refugees. Is it not a fact that they were expelled from their home by the Turkish invaders; that they lived as refugees in appalling conditions in camps: and that Mr. Nicola was conscripted and prevented from coming to this country in 1974 when, if he had done so, he would have had indefinite leave? I beg the Minister to look at this issue again in a sympathetic way.

My Lords, they are not refugees; they are nationals of Cyprus and can and should look to the Greek Cypriot authorities in Southern Cyprus from which they have no well-founded fear regarding protection from persecution. In these circumstances, they fall outside the provisions of the United Nations convention relating to the status of refugees to which both the recognised governments of Cyprus and the United Kingdom are parties.

My Lords, is not the Minister aware of the very strong feelings that exist in this country and in Cyprus about this case? Is he not aware that the belief is that there has been inadequate attention paid to the difficulties of these people in wishing to return to Cyprus to find a place where they can live in security and to good effect? Is it not right that, in spite of the delay that has taken place, there should be another look at this particular case which internationally, in our own country and in Cyprus, has aroused such strong feelings? Would the Minister not be prepared to look once more to see whether it would not be to the credit of this country to look at this case with sympathy and compassion yet again?

My Lords, every case is looked at on its own merits. The fact is that if in this case we were to do what the noble Lord and others suggest it would be unfair to a great many other people who have been in a similar position but who have not deceived in the way that this couple have.

My Lords, would not the noble Lord the Minister agree that this European decision may well have given us the opportunity to review the tragic human circumstances of many of those people who had to flee from Cyprus following 1974? Is he aware, too—and he must be getting the feeling of Members of this House—that there is a great deal of support from all strands of public opinion outside this House, particularly for the case of Mr. and Mrs. Nicola and for others like them? The only difference between these and most of those who were already given leave to remain is that they spent some time after 1974 in refugee settlement camps in different parts of Cyprus, as has already been mentioned by my noble friend Lord Brockway. They then fled to this country. We feel, and many who have studied this case feel, that there is merit in this case being reconsidered, and that Mr. and Mrs. Nicola should be allowed to remain.

My Lords, I have nothing to add to what I said earlier. Each case is looked at on its merits. As I have said, when they arrived, these people deceived the immigration authorities. They then disappeared and went into hiding. The fact is that the European Court judgment is not connected with this case. The European Parliament is free to discuss what it likes; but we have to look at each case on its own merits.

My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether the Government will bear in mind the unfortunate effect which the decision in this case and in other cases is making on our reputation in Europe? This extraordinary majority in the European Parliament and the recent decision of the European Court, indicate how this country is getting a bad name for dealing with such cases.

My Lords, I do not think that I can say anything other than repeat what I said earlier. The fact is that the European Parliament voted on this issue without even discussing it. I think that your Lordships might feel that is a rather strange way to proceed.

Hear, hear!

My Lords, it is my privilege to be invited to present for Second Reading a Bill as approved by the Personal Bills Committee intituled,

"An Act to enable Sonia Ann Billington and Norbury Billington to be married to each other.

Sonia Ann Billington is nearly 37 years of age. Norbury Billington, a widower, is aged 63. There is no blood relationship between them. Both are domiciled in England. But there is a technical affinity existing between them: that they are father-in-law and daughter-in-law and, as a result, the desired marriage between them would be void under Section 1(1) of the Marriage Act 1949.

Both of them desire to get married. The children wish them to be married. I shall give details of the children later on. They desire that this impediment should be removed. Accordingly, under the clumsy and expensive procedure now available for such persons, they have to come to your Lordships through procedures which I need not dwell upon in order to deal with these matters.

For your Lordships' convenience I shall refer to the daughter-in-law and the father-in-law by their Christian names. Sonia is the daughter-in-law; and Norbury is the widower father-in-law. Norbury's wife died in January 1978. Sonia was married to one of Norbury's sons, Barry, in June 1969. She was then 21 years of age and he, son of Norbury, was barely 20 years old. It was a marriage, therefore, of young people. There are two children of that marriage: Christopher, now aged 15, and a girl, Cheryl, aged 11. They were living in Cheshire. Norbury, the father-in-law, had always lived and still lives in Penzance, several hundred miles away.

March 1980 is a crucial date in the unhappy circumstances which I have to put to your Lordships. In March 1980, Barry, the husband of Sonia, on the pretext of going for a holiday to Penzance to the father-in-law, left Cheshire and went to see his father, Norbury. On the first day of their arrival, the husband of Sonia disclosed for the first time to his father that he was in love with another woman. He wanted to live with the other woman. But he thought in fairness to Sonia, his wife, that there ought to be a trial period of separation and said "I am going to leave next day and leave my wife and her two children with you".

The next day he rang his girl friend—if I may refer to her like that—to say he was leaving his father's home and would be returning to Cheshire. One can imagine the kind of shock to both Norbury and Sonia at this abrupt leaving of the son. The daughter, Sonia, had nowhere to go. She stayed in her father-in-law's house with the two children and by September—six or seven months after they had come there—the father- in-law and the daughter-in-law became attracted to each other, soon afterwards cohabited, and lived as man and wife in Penzance, she being deserted by her husband, who had gone off with another woman. There has been a child of that cohabitation born about 16 months after September 1980.

Divorce proceedings were instituted before the birth of this child but they dragged on. But on the birth of the child it was not necessary to fight a divorce action and Sonia was divorced by her husband in circumstances that I need not go into in any detail whatsoever.

That is the position. Father-in-law wishes to marry Sonia. There are three children living there, two of them—one aged now 15 and the other aged 11—call Norbury "Father", "Dad". It is a happy menage. They would like Sonia and Norbury to get married. There is also the young child of four years of age.

One can understand a situation like this arising, and I am sure that your Lordships will take a very sympathetic view of the position of this young woman, lured as it were, from her home in Cheshire to her father-in-law's home and left there. It seems to me that this is a proper case for your Lordships to give this Bill a Second Reading so that we can proceed a further step in removing this impediment. I should have said that in the course of the divorce proceedings Sonia was given custody of the children, and they have remained with her ever since.

I had the privilege of introducing a Bill some two or three years ago in order to get a simpler procedure for dealing with these difficult personal matters which have arisen several times and which have been presented to your Lordships. But at the request of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury I was asked not to proceed with my Bill because the Archbishop decided to set up a commission in order to investigate these matters. That commission produced a report called No Just Cause, and, if I may, I shall read from the foreword by the Archbishop of Canterbury:

"In recent years there have been suggestions, from a number of quarters, that the law which prevents marriages between those connected through affinity, i.e. by marriage but not by blood, should be changed. The matter received prominence in the years 1979–82 when on four occasions Private Members' Bills were introduced in the House of Lords to amend the present law. It seemed to me that, before the question was further debated, it would be helpful if a thorough study of this matter could be made in which the theological, sociological and legal aspects could be carefully examined and the experience of other countries taken into account".

My noble friend Lady Seear chaired that commission and a majority report was eventually produced. That report indicated, first, that,

"The procedure by Personal Bill in Parliament is unsuitable mechanism to decide whether two people should be allowed marry one another".

The whole commission agreed with that and with the second conclusion, as follows:

"To marry is a fundamental human liberty which should be protected. A couple wishing to marry should not be prevented from doing so unless there is some compelling reason or logical impediment. The many particular theological or doctrinal reasons held by particular religious bodies may not for all time constitute appropriate grounds for restrictions against marriage to be embodied in the general law, except in so far as they bear upon the nature of marriage".

The Committee as a whole referred to stepchildren and said that stepchildren below the age of 18 should not be permitted to marry a stepparent

The majority report also said:

"There are social and psychological reasons for limiting permission to marry in circumstances where the younger person has been a child of the family of the older person. We do not consider that this circumstance warrants a prohibition on marriage for all time but marriage between such persons should be permitted only after the younger party has reached the age of 21".

There was a minority report which did not accept that, but it is irrelevant to the case I am presenting to your Lordships because there is no child-of-marriage circumstance involved in this case. It is merely that a widower living in Penzance had the family of his son dumped upon him. I hope that is not too offensive a term to use in these circumstances. His son went away with another lady, and where was Sonia to go but to stay in her father-in-law's house? Sonia was then 32 and Norbury was a widower and it seems to me inevitable that, living together, they should have been attracted. So far as I can see from the papers, there was no question of collusion or financial inducement. There is of course the element that she was in her father-in-law's house and to that extent I suppose she was there without paying any rent, but I do not think that is any real impediment.

My Lords, I am sure that the House will be indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, for the way in which he has presented this Bill to your Lordships for Second Reading and that Lordships will pay tribute to the kindliness with which he dealt with some quite sad facts. Having said that—and I am merely speaking personally, as one always does on Bills of this nature—there are various factors which trouble me and which, with respect and I hope humility, I wish to bring to your Lordships' attention.

The fact is that we should not be dealing with matters of this kind. I have said this before and I repeat it: we are completely unable to judge the facts. We do not even see the parties. We have not heard the first husband. I do not know what is the situation. I know the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, well enough to be sure that before he made the speech that he did to your Lordships he carried out what investigation he could. But this is not a matter for your Lordships' House—I respectfully say this—with a procedure of this kind. We have previously had a Bill which suggested that with the protection of minors the matter be brought to the summary courts of our land in order that they may be dealt with. I wondered whether summary courts, which normally deal with criminal matters, were suitable courts. Turning my eyes, always respectfully, to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, I wonder, as I stand here, whether the family courts that some of us hope for when they come into existence will not be the proper place for such matters to be dealt with in camera, with the judge seeing all the parties and being able to come to some decision.

Having got in that little bit for the family courts, I move on. The next thing that worries me is that the law at the moment—and we all have respect for the law—is that a marriage between those who are within prohibited degrees cannot take place unless an Act of Parliament decides otherwise. Therefore one would assume that the facts have to be exceptional on the basis of the present law of the land because, if they are not, what we are really doing by an Act of Parliament is saying that we do not agree with the law but nevertheless we have not altered it. Therefore the next point which I respectfully draw to your Lordships' attention is that if we are to go on, especially with this procedure, the sooner we deal with the situation of the law, the better, confirming the law as it is, amending it or fundamentally altering it. But we have at the moment the law as it stands.

Then, from this position, without in any way at all wishing to oppose the Second Reading of this Bill, which of course I would not do, I look at the facts, in order to see what they are and whether or not prime facie they show an exceptional position, all of us in your Lordships' House, I believe wishing to preserve the very well-known and sanctified unit in our social life, the family.

The first fact, looking at the Bill before us, is that this unfortunate young lady found herself with her children in the home of her father-in-law and she stayed there because she had no other place to go, as the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, has said. Of course everybody says, "What a dreadful situation!" But she was there because her father-in-law was in loco parentis. He was the grandfather of her children and he was her father-in-law. Are we to take it for granted that it is an exceptional case, and one that we ought to sanction, in which that in loco parentis relationship turned within a matter of months, into another relationship between a gentleman now aged 63 and a lady in her 30s?

There is no lack of sympathy, because in all the cases that we have ever had to deal with since I have had the privilege of being a Member of your Lordships' House, we have always tried to adopt a sympathetic, humane and understanding attitude. But the other fact to which I draw your Lordships' attention is that I am left with paragraph (6) of the Bill without hearing any other evidence at all. It says that the marriage:

"was dissolved by a decree of divorce on the 5th May 1982"—

and I am assuming that the husband was here the petitioner—

"it being one of the grounds of such divorce that the said Sonia Ann Billington had a child of a relationship she had then commenced with Norbury Billington".

So I have the fact before me, as your Lordships do, that the divorce was granted on the ground of the adultery with the father-in-law and the birth of the child. I do not know any more than that. I am wondering, purely expressing a personal view, not knowing anything other than the court's decree and the ground of this divorce, whether there would have been any chance of a reconciliation but for this relationship between father-in-law and daughter-in-law. I am most likely wrong in thinking that there was any hope of it, but without looking at those facts and based purely upon what we are told about the divorce and the grounds for the divorce, I wonder if this is one of the exceptional cases which we ought to be approving. I am asking myself questions. I am not giving myself answers, because by this procedure I cannot give myself answers.

My Lords, I speak in this debate with a considerable degree of reluctance, partly because I have not been present at the debates on previous Bills of this kind, and also because it is not pleasant to have to discuss the personal affairs of individuals, least of all of those whom one does not know. I have tried to study this Bill. I know that the Bill itself, although it is a Private Bill concerning the marriage of two persons, puts the whole matter in the realm of public policy. Paragraph (10) of the Preamble on Page 2, lines 26 to 28 of the Bill, says that the parties:

"regard the legal impediment … as serving no useful purpose of public policy in the particular circumstances of their case."

Therefore, we cannot consider this simply on the grounds of compassion for certain individuals.

I understand that a Bill is in preparation to give effect to certain recommendations of the report called No Just Cause to which the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, has referred—not to the majority recommendations, but to the minority recommendations, which are the only parts of that report which are supported by the House of Bishops. When that Bill comes forward, it will provide an opportunity for a general debate on the principles which should govern public policy on marriage between those connected by affinity, though, if carried, it will not provide for the circumstances of the present case.

Meanwhile, as the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has said, the law is clear and definite, and we are being asked to set it aside in this particular case. I do not deny that there may be exceptions. Without having been able to go very fully into the matter, it appeared to me on first reading that Barry v. Ward in 1980 and Small v. Small in 1982 were such cases. But what we are having to do is to make a judgment about individuals; a judgment not unlike those judgments which the matrimonial courts have to make, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has said, without the machinery for checking information, and for obtaining professional advice and so forth which is available to those courts. So we have to do the best we can with the information available to us that is contained in the Bill and the Statement of Reasons. Here, like the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, I have real concern.

In both the cases that I mentioned earlier, the couples lived apart and did not wish to live together unless and until they could be lawfully man and wife. In this case, we not only have a couple who have been living together for some five years and have a child of their union, but also it is stated in the Bill, at page 1, line 21, that that adulterous relationship was one of the grounds for the divorce of Mrs. Sonia Billington from the son of Mr. Norbury Billington, whom she now wishes to marry.

In the Church of England we have recently had lengthy discussions about the question of the remarriage of divorced persons in church, and, to the regret of many of us, we were not able to agree on a change from the existing policy. But one thing which seemed to be generally accepted by both sides throughout those discussions was that neither marriage in church nor the use of a service of dedication after a civil marriage would be appropriate when one of the parties had been involved in bringing about the divorce of the other. I believe that to be a sound principle and of wider application than in the particular context in which I have mentioned it.

The general attitude of the Church to the matter of the marriage of those connected by affinity has been expressed in previous debates and will be repeated when the Bill to which I have referred comes before the House, so I will not go into it in detail now. I will say only that, although we must all feel sympathy and compassion for a couple who wish to marry and to legitimise a child born out of wedlock, it seems to me that we have to consider the public policy which is involved. If we pass this Bill, I think we shall appear to be condoning the adultery and its involvement in the divorce, which I have described, and that I believe would be a very serious matter.

My Lords, before discussing the various factors relevant to this Bill, I should like to make it clear that I do not know either Norbury Billington or Sonia Ann Billington personally. I have obviously studied the various papers made available by the Personal Bills Office in relation to this case and my remarks are therefore based on the facts as presented.

As your Lordships are aware, the law does not permit a man to marry his daughter-in-law and this prohibition is for reasons of affinity. When the last personal Bill of this nature came before your Lordships, I got the firm impression that almost everyone accepted the married prohibitions for reasons of consanguinity or, more simply, of blood, but that there was widespread misunderstanding of the motives for prohibiting marriage for reasons of affinity. Indeed, I suspect that some of your Lordships, and indeed some members of the public at large, may think that the motives for prohibiting marriage for reasons of affinity are archaic, outmoded and no longer relevant to society in Britain in 1985. I shall seek to show that this is very far from the case.

This would not be the time or place for a lengthy explanation into the reasons behind the prohibitions on marriage for reasons of affinity, but The Times leader of 31st May 1984 had this to say on the subject:

"The cardinal principle is that no individual may look for potential sexual or marriage partners within the family."

I should now like to paint a brief picture to demonstrate exactly what this means. Let us take a man aged 60, who has a son aged 25 who marries a girl aged, shall we say, 20. Relations between the son and daughter-in-law deteriorate and the girl begins to form an attachment with the father. Is this not likely to produce sexual pressures within the family of a quite unacceptable nature—without doubt, the strains on the marriage of the son and daughter-in-law would be aggravated—and are not relations between father and son likely to come under considerable pressure also?

There is further important evidence in favour of the retention of the prohibition on marriage for reasons of affinity. On 22nd January this year, the House of Bishops debated this issue and came down in favour of retaining the prohibition preventing parent-in-law from marrying daughter-in-law, by a very substantial majority of 36 votes to one. Thus this well-informed body of Prelates clearly considers the law as it stands to be both relevant and meaningful in today's modern society. Finally, Holy Scripture decrees in Leviticus, Chapter 18 and verse 15, that a man may not marry his daughter-in-law. Furthermore, this is only one of four instances in which the death penalty is ordained for marital offences, thus emphasising the enormity of this proposed marriage.

In conclusion, as I said earlier, I am not personally acquainted with either of the parties involved and my sole motive in arguing against this proposed union is that I am concerned about the effect it will have on the stability of the family if this Bill ever becomes law. Furthermore, it seems to me that the onus is on the noble Lord who introduced this Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, and others in favour of it to demonstrate in incontrovertible terms that very exceptional circumstances exist in this particular case. It is of course for your Lordships to judge in this matter, but for my part I cannot see that there is anything fundamentally exceptional about the case before us today, and consequently I must urge your Lordships not to give this Bill a Second Reading.

My Lords, we always listen with the greatest interest, sympathy, and indeed fascination, to the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, who this afternoon deployed all his most plausible forensic eloquence in favour of the proposition that a woman should marry the father-in-law who was the co-respondent in her divorce from his son. The noble Lord, who I regard as a great personal though not political friend, gave a rather selective interpretation of the report of the committee of the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, No Just Cause, because he quoted from the majority report, whereas it is the minority report that was endorsed by the Bishops.

There are real doubts, as the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, made so clear, about the facts and we have no means of testing those facts. We are told in the statement in support of the Bill that the obstruction to their marriage is merely "technical". It is not technical at all. It is law, and to treat the law as a mere technicality is itself a debasement of the law. We are told in the statement that they lived as father-in-law and daughter-in-law for the first six months or so that the lady was in the father-in-law's house. But in the Bill they are described as having "lived together" during that period.

We are told that the children want this marriage to happen. But are we to be influenced by the judgment of a child of 15, still less of a child of 11? We are told that the couple, "believe in marriage". I daresay they do, but what kind of marriage do they believe in? Apparently they do not believe in marriage as defined and established by the law of this country, and as protected by the law of this country.

Finally, we are told that there is "hardship". I am not quite clear where. They will no doubt continue this relationship of living together, if they want to. So far as I am aware, nobody can stop them. Where the hardship comes in is difficult to see, unless it is that, for the sake of legitimising the third child the other two are to be faced in after-life with the taunt: "Your mum married your grandad". Hardship is not, in my view, proven.

The critical question, however, to which we must address ourselves is that raised in the preamble to the Bill, where we are told that the legal impediment serves,

"no useful purpose of public policy".

This is the point to which your Lordships are in duty bound to address yourselves. The Marriage Act 1949 confirmed, once again, that our society, whatever our religious convictions may be, treats the family circle as desexualised and that was the purpose of that Bill. Here is a proposition which would contribute to the undermining of family stability in general. The question of hardship, I submit, is unreal and, with regard to the adultery continuing, I am not sure that there is anything useful to be said about that. This Bill would be more suitable for the advice columns of a rootless society and might be better described as an exercise in the law of triviality.

I would remind your Lordships that back in the 17th century Lord Halifax reminded us that "All irregularity is catching."

"Man is a beast when shame stands off from him."

I beg your Lordships to support the negative approach to this Bill to be determined presently in the Lobbies.

My Lords, I had no intention of speaking today, and in fact I am only here by accident as it were. I noticed that no other noble Lord of my own religious persuasion is here to say anything, and I thought I would just say that I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester in what they said.

I should like first to say, if I may—I do not often speak in your Lordships' House—a word of congratulation to the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, on the absolutely clear way in which he put the case. I do not think it could have been done better and it enables us very easily to make up our minds about what we should do. There are two aspects of this problem. One is the great matter of public policy which is infringed by this Bill. I say that because there is a tendency these days to ignore the sanctity—I use that word here in a general sense and not in a sacramental sense—of marriage and thus break up the family, which is the most important unit of society. Therefore I feel that I must say that I would not wish to support the Bill on those grounds and could not do so.

More particularly, I was fascinated by what the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, had to say about the ins and outs of the particular case. One can see all kinds of reasons why people in this situation should bring forward a Bill. One does not like to talk in this House about the private affairs of any family, but how do we know, for example, that there was not something going on between the father and the daughter-in-law long before this ever happened? We know nothing about all that. That is just one thing. There are so many other things which, as the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, rightly said, are so difficult for us to decide upon. One comes back to the old adage that hard cases make bad law. One will not rectify any scandal by doing this, because the whole world knows exactly what is the position. People make their beds and then they must lie on them. That is really all there is to be said about it.

My Lords, I should like permission to speak although I have not put down my name, because I am deeply concerned about the way in which this discussion is going. We have on several occasions passed Bills which, if we were to examine them in detail, would make it very difficult to say that this case is any less acceptable than other cases that have previously been accepted. I agree that we are in a difficulty in that the Bill to be brought forward as a result of the revision of the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, will not come forward until the autumn. Therefore, as has been said today, the law is exactly as it has always been and this is technically contrary to the law. Of course on previous occasions we have taken no notice of that and I think it would be extremely difficult to establish that the case before your Lordships' House today is any less acceptable than other cases which we have accepted.

I would also remind your Lordships' House that although, as many speakers have said today, the law does not permit of the marriage of affines, nonetheless the law does permit a man to marry his brother's divorced wife. If one can marry one's brother's divorced wife, it seems extraordinary to be taking exception to the fact that one might be allowed to marry one's son's divorced wife. The fact of the matter is that once that was permitted by law the question of marriage between people who have been related in the family, though not related by blood, has been settled. It has been accepted that it is possible so to do. It has not been extended by law to daughters-in-law or sons-in-law, but it has been for brothers-in-law.

The logic of the position is one of the reasons that we urged so strongly in the committee to which reference has been made, and which produced the report No Just Cause, that the law urgently needs to be changed. It is regrettable that it has so far not been changed. We are in a difficult position, but I would remind your Lordships very strongly that with the law as it is you have previously accepted cases which you would find it very difficult to say were more acceptable than the case now before your Lordships' House.

In regard to the position of this woman, whom I have never seen and whom I do not know, I would remind your Lordships that she was not aware, according to what we have been told by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, why she was taken from Cheshire to her father-in-law's house. Her husband then left her to go to somebody else and she stayed with her children in that house. It was not a position of her choosing. What developed since then surely merits a consideration and compassion from your Lordships' House no less than the compassion you showed in the case of the Hills earlier this year.

My Lords, I do not know at all whether it is proper for me to say anything on this occasion. I have only two qualifications to do so. The first is that I think I have been present at every one of the previous discussions either on Private Bills which fall into this category or on a Public Bill which failed, I think, to be passed to alter the law—

My Lords, it was withdrawn.

It was withdrawn, my Lords. That is what the effect was. There are things I should rather like to say to the House about this matter. I do not want to say much about the merits of this case, which I have not studied. I would point out, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, has just done, that the original act of adultery in this case was not that of the proposed bride, if this marriage were to take place. One has to view the subsequent adulterous association which took place between the father-in-law and the lady in the light of that fact and in the light of the divorce law as it is, about which I have probably a good deal of professional experience both before and after the new system of divorce was introduced.

I can only infer from what I have read, because we have not gone into the facts, that it was probably the result of an arrangement between the parties which is now perfectly proper that the original petition, which was that of the former wife of the son, should be compromised on the basis that a new petition based upon the wife's adulterous association with her father-in-law should proceed instead. I feel sure from a very considerable experience of family law, that that was the case. Therefore, that is a mitigating factor if it be true, which I feel confident it is.

What I really got up to say is that I think the House is being put in an impossible position this morning.

Hear, hear.

My Lords, I do not want to say a word about the convictions, religious or moral, of anyone who has spoken, but I am concerned about the procedure and the fact of this House being in the position in which it finds itself. I absolutely agree that it would be highly desirable if a general law which commanded sufficient support to get through Parliament should be passed, but the more I have heard of these private Bills the more unacceptable I find it that the House should be asked on Second Reading either to reject, as it were, the petition or to admit the petition.

To begin with, the House has behaved with the utmost sensitivity. There is no reproach to he levelled at anyone who has spoken, but it really is not possible to discuss this matter without offending against human decency on the Second Reading of a Bill. This is a private Bill. It is not opposed, but it will go to the Private Bill Committee, an Unopposed Bill Committee, I understand. I see that the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees so indicates, and that is the information I have.

The facts, then, can be ascertained. We are asked to decide this question without evidence, and that offends me. It offends my sense of justice. It offends also my sense of public decency—that these discussions have to take place in public if we are to decide upon them at Second Reading. My own very strong conviction is this. I see before me perfectly well-filled Benches, but still that a very small number of Peers who have a right to attend and consider matters of this kind are present in the Chamber and have heard the debate. Many of them may have come for reasons totally different from any to do with the Bill proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran.

I would hate to see a Division on this Second Reading. That is not because I necessarily do not agree with the right reverend Prelate: it is simply that I do not think that on Second Reading we have the material before us that would enable this House to form a judgment finally on this matter. In the procedure to which we are condemned by reason of the state of the law as it now is, we must have a Second Reading. I believe that the Procedure Committee ought in future to consider what is the proper course to take on the Second Reading of Bills of this kind. I say that in the knowledge that general legislation might overtake the Procedure Committee in those circumstances. But I also feel that if we are to be condemned to go through this experience from time to time, then we ought to know what the will of the House is as to how we should proceed. I hope that the Procedure Committee will consider this matter on the basis that in the absence of general law we must try to preserve human decencies, which the present procedure does not.

Having said that, my own strong conviction is that a Division on this matter at this stage of the Bill would not be a very desirable way of deciding a question of human relationships. I should like to see a Committee stage, when these matters could be discussed more or less in private and on evidence. I understand that the procedure would be that the two parties most affected by this Bill would have to give evidence on oath; at any rate, it would be possible to ask questions.

I may be wrong, but my own conviction is that if we are to undergo this experience at regular intervals of about six months then we must devise a procedure that is acceptable in this House. My strong conviction, having listened to all these debates, is that the merits or otherwise of what is proposed, in the light of the fact that we have allowed a number of these unions to take place, ought to be discussed in Committee and not on the Floor of this House on a Friday morning. I feel this very strongly.

My name was not down to speak; my noble friend Lady Cox was to speak on behalf of the Government. The Government must be neutral in a matter of this kind, and perhaps my noble friend would like to say so formally afterwards. I felt very much, simply as a Member of this House, and with rather considerable experience of it, that we were being asked to take a most distasteful decision, in a way that really is incompatible with human dignity on evidence that is unsatisfactory, and in a House that is not altogether representative.

I would myself say, therefore, that, if left to myself, and without prejudice, what I might do after this stage may very well depend on factors such as those mentioned by my noble friend Lord Lauderdale. This morning, I think that this matter ought to go to a Committee and not continue to be laundered in public. Whatever may be the moral or theological values involved in this debate, the moral and theological values of what we have been doing are very much more questionable than anything which this unfortunate couple have done or might do in the future.

My Lords, before the noble and learned Lord sits down, perhaps I may at once say how much I believe the House will follow him in his remarks and will agree with so much of what he has said. I tried in language that was not as clear or as eloquent to say rather the same things. The reason for my intervention is that I believe the House is faced with a procedural difficulty, and I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord can help.

As I understand the matter, if this Bill goes to an Unopposed Bill Committee for private Bills in the normal way, then that committee will not be in a position to go into the merits of the case at all. Therefore, referring the Bill to that committee would not do what any of us would want it to do. I have taken certain advice, and what I hope to do is to move that this Bill be referred to a Select Committee of this House, for that Select Committee to look into the matter in the way the noble and learned Lord indicated. Obviously, I have not had an opportunity to put down such a Motion in a formal way, but if the House will allow me to do so I shall certainly undertake to put down such a Motion in the course of this morning.

My Lords, I am really in the hands of my noble friend on the Front Bench and of the Lord Chairman of Committees, who might like to explain to the House with more authority than myself what is proper. Certainly I would favour a committee discussion rather than a public discussion of this highly distasteful matter.

My Lords, perhaps I may say just a few words. This is a personal Bill, but it follows the same procedure as a private Bill. Normally speaking, with a private Bill, when your Lordships receive it for a Second Reading you are not asked to approve the content of the Bill. In fact, in giving a Second Reading earlier today to the Plymouth Marine Events Base Bill your Lordships were not approving what was in that Bill but were merely saying that it should go to a committee and there be examined. In this case, therefore, I would go along very much with what the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has said—that it would be highly desirable that this Bill should proceed to a Committee stage.

We are, though, in a procedural difficulty, as the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has said, in respect of an Unopposed Bill Committee. There is no petition against the Bill. In fact, apart from the former husband I imagine that there are very few people who could establish a locus standi to make a petition. So the Bill would go to an Unopposed Bill Committee and that committee would hear only what the promoters have to say on oath.

I should therefore like to suggest that we give this Bill a Second Reading and then give further thought as to whether the correct procedure should not be to set up a Select Committee, as the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, indicated. I know that it would be possible to do so now, but I thought we could possibly merely undertake that the Bill will go to a committee. If an Unopposed Bill Committee is in a position to give proper consideration to what has been said here, that will be all right. Otherwise, perhaps a Select Committee would be a preferable move.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, and before the noble Lord sits down, I believe that many of us would be content not to divide—and I have already indicated my neutral position from a personal point of view. But I believe that the House would want to know with some certainty that this matter will be looked at by a committee, that such a procedure will be followed. That is why I asked whether my notice of Motion, that it be referred to a Committee so that the matter could be dealt with in that way, was acceptable to the House at this moment rather than leave it, as it were, in limbo. Therefore, with the permission of the House, I beg to move.

My Lords, the Question is—

My Lords, I interrupt the proceedings again, if I may, with the leave of the House. I think that the noble Lord has to give notice of such a Motion. Therefore, it would be better, I suggest, if he followed my advice that in due course we proceed to give the Bill a Second Reading on the undertaking, which I readily give, that we will see that it is referred to a proper committee. If the Unopposed Bills Committee is not the correct committee and cannot deal with the points raised today, I will come forward, or the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, will come forward, with a proposal in due course that it be referred to a Select Committee.

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down will he clarify this point? Are we to understand that if we give the Bill a Second Reading now, it will go to a committee which can test the evidence and, if necessary, cross-examine the petitioners, because that is what bothers us?

My Lords, I certainly give the undertaking to arrange for the Bill to go to a suitable committee which can, in due course, report to the House when the Bill comes back on Third Reading.

My Lords, but will it be a committee that can question and cross-examine the petitioners?

My Lords, it would have the normal powers of a Select Committee.

My Lords, as my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor suggested, it may be helpful to put the Government's position, which I shall do very briefly. It has for some time been the policy of successive Governments not to seek to advance a view in debating personal Bills such as the one before us today. As the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, reminded us, since 1979 Parliament has passed four such Bills and the Government have consistently and collectively adopted a neutral position on the merits of each individual case.

Such Bills always bring to the fore the much more general question of the principles which should govern marriage between affines Indeed, these have been raised in this morning's debate. While the Government follow closely the learned and informed debates that arise on these issues of principle and have taken note of the differing views expressed in the report published in May 1984 by the group appointed by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, to which reference has been made, the Government remain reluctant to depart from their neutral position in regard to Bills which concern individual cases. The Government have not found any special features which persuade them to offer any advice to your Lordships regarding this personal Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, introduced the Bill with great sensitivity and any decision must be a matter for the judgment of individual Members of your Lordships' House.

My Lords, one thing that this interesting debate on this Friday morning has shown is how totally unsatisfactory are the present procedures for dealing with these sensitive and emotional matters involving such human misery as has occurred in this case.

I shall not make a long speech in summing up, but I should like to say how grateful I am to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester for having indicated that as a result of the decisions of the commission, of which my noble friend Baroness Seear was chairman, discussions are going forward to reach a procedural and an administrative position which will avoid personal Bills coming before the House in this way.

The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said that the procedure is incompatible with human dignity, and he referred to the human decencies of life not being properly looked after by this procedure. As my noble friend Baroness Seear indicated, there have been four very difficult cases which have come before this House and which have led to Bills being given Second Readings. I have regard to the sensitive summary of the position given by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, when he put forward his personal view to the House and advised your Lordships that he will not be pressing this matter to a Division. I also have regard to what was said by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and also the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, as chairman of the Personal Bills Committee, who have considered this matter as a preliminary affair. In those circumstances I hope that it will not be pressed to a Division and that your Lordships will agree that the Bill should be read a second time.

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

moved Amendment No. 1:

Page 1, line 6, after ("man") insert ("persistently")

I wonder whether it would be helpful for the Committee if I intervened on one point. The noble Lord referred to part of the Criminal Law Revision Committee's report. The part to which he referred, that is to say paragraph 3.44 on page 34 is a working paper appended to the report. If the noble Lord refers to paragraph 40 on page 13, I think he will find that the recommendation is perfectly clear.

Yes, indeed I note that "for the purpose of prostitution" is mentioned under the heading of "Kerb-crawling" at page 12 of the report. I also notice that later on in the report they use the words "for sexual purposes". I am saying that "for the purpose of prostitution", whether or not recommended in the wording of the Criminal Law Revision Committee, makes a nonsense of this offence.

If I may, I am going on to say that the Government have had some very muddled thinking about this if they feel that what they are doing is protecting innocent ladies—and I believe that that is what they think they are doing. However, if they have the words "for the purpose of prostitution", the view of most people, including that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, as I understood him, is this. The noble and learned Lord said: do not worry about proof; what one will be able to do is to have a police officer there; police officers know all the prostitutes in their area and they will say that this was a known prostitute. The noble and learned Lord has communicated with I think a few of us and I believe that it is perfectly proper to give his point of view. He also thinks that it covers somebody who the motorist thinks to be a prostitute even if she is not one. However, I should have thought that we are anxious also to cover ladies who the motorist does not necessarily think are prostitutes. As I said, this is the muddled thinking of the Government on this matter and on this clause, showing that really not enough consideration has been given to it.

I quote from the Second Reading of this Bill in another place (at col. 1290 of Hansard) where the Minister, the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, Mr. David Mellor, says this:

"As an hon. Member who represents an inner city area, I know that it is being made extremely difficult for people to live a civilised life in some areas of our cities because of sexual harassment. That is unacceptable. Parliament has a duty to find some form of redress, subject to all the usual safeguards and appropriate rules of our criminal law, which is much more distinguished and better thought out than ever appeared in the travesty of a speech from my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross"—

I hope I never refer to honourable friends of mine in quite such an unfriendly way.

"He appears to have disappeared at the moment that he led us to believe he was greatly anticipating—my opportunity to comment on his points, in so far as some of them merit it.

"We know of the problem, for example, in Bedford hill from just one piece of evidence submitted to the Home Office. A questionnaire was sent out to the residents of Bedford hill, 345 of whom responded. Their answers give an idea of what it must be like to live there. Incidentally, Bedford hill is not a rundown or ramshackle area—not that the problem would be acceptable there, if it were—but a pleasant residential area, and the people living there value their amenities.

The questionnaire asked:

Have you or any member of your family ever been accosted by a kerb crawler?

The answers were: once, 30; often 73; occasionally, 119; never. 113. Two thirds of the people asked had been accosted, or said that members of their families had been accosted, by a kerb crawler. The extent of their anger will be seen readily from the response to another question:

Do you think it should be against the law—

and I am repeating the Minister's words and the noble Lord the Minister will listen to me I am sure with great care, in view of his previous intervention—

"for a man to accost a woman from a car for sexual purposes? In that case, 315 said yes and 21 said no".

Obviously the Minister had in mind that what he was doing in supporting this Bill was protecting perfectly innocent ladies, perfectly respectable ladies, who had been annoyed by the kerb crawler who had accosted them for sexual purposes—not for purposes of prostitution, but for sexual purposes. They were not prostitutes, I am sure they did not look like prostitutes and I am sure the kerb crawler did not think they were prostitutes.

Thus, what I am trying to do is this. I say this with due humility. I am trying to do what I think the Government intended to do, and if they did not intend to do it, they should have done. We ought to have an offence which will be within Clause 2 and we do not need Clause 1. We need to catch the kerb crawler. We need to make it clear that we are catching the kerb crawler. We need to protect the residents in areas from the nuisance of kerb crawlers accosting prostitutes and we need to protect respectable people from being accosted by kerb crawlers persistently for sexual purpose.

Thus, in trying to get rid of Clause 1, I am merely doing it in order to bring the offence very clearly out in Clause 2, where of course "persistently" already occurs, and, as the Committee will see from Amendment No. 4, to insert the words:

"whether from a motor vehicle or while in the immediate vicinity of a motor vehicle that he has just got out of or off, or otherwise".

I know that the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, will quite rightly quarrel with those words, "got out of or off", but he will quarrel with them purely from the point of view of beauty of language and not from the point of view of their practicability in a clause in a legal statute.

Hence, we have there the kerb crawler brought in. We have already the word "persistently" and we delete "for the purpose of prostitution" and we insert "sexual purposes" so as to cover the whole lot: the kerb crawler who goes for the prostitute; the kerb crawler who goes for a perfectly respectable lady, but he has to do it more than once in order that a criminal charge can be brought.

It has not been very easy, but I hope that I have brought out, as clearly as I can, the reasons for these amendments. I hope that I have done it in a way which will not necessitate, my making more than one long speech, as this has been.

In conclusion perhaps I may say that I am first of all saying that if the Committee is not going to throw out Clause 1, there must be the word "persistently" in it in order to safeguard innocent people. If, as I hope it will, the Committee says that in view of what I have said and what I hope others will say, that Clause 1 is not a suitable vehicle for this offence, then we ought to have a composite offence safeguarding everybody who we are trying to safeguard but hitting everybody who we are trying to hit. I think we do that by amending Clause 2 in the manner suggested in Amendments Nos. 4, 5 and 6. At this stage, I beg to move Amendment No. 1.

In general terms at this stage I should like to support the argument so eloquently put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. If I have any observations to make in support, I should like to reserve them until a slightly later stage, because now I want to ask the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, what I hope is a series of fairly simple questions, the answers to which I believe will clarify our minds in deciding how to approach the problems which the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has raised.

Can the noble Lord give us the considered view of the Home Office in a particular situation? I accept that it is not a definitive legal view—of course it is not. That will await a decision by the courts in due course. However, at this stage I should like to know what view the Home Office has formed of the following perfectly simple situation. May I say that I do not expect an immediate answer until there has at least been a little time during which the noble Lord can collect his thoughts. Let us take the following perfectly simple situation.

A police officer sees a motorist drive up, park at the kerb, get out, speak to a woman, get back into the car and drive off—no more and no less. I simply put those elementary facts. Under Clause 1 as it stands, does that give the police officer a right of arrest? Let us assume for the purposes of this proposition that the motorist says nothing at any stage; he says neither what he was doing, why he was doing it, nor anything. Does it give the police officer a right of arrest for the offence as at present set out in Clause 1?

Furthermore, on those facts, if it does give the police officer a right of arrest, would it give the station officer at the police station the power to charge the defendant, the motorist, on that evidence? If the motorist were charged on that evidence and that evidence was put before a court, and there was no other evidence at that stage, would that be a prima facie case of an offence under Clause 1?

Those are the questions that I should like to ask. The reasons of course are as follows. If the answer to any of those questions is yes, it means, does it not, that a motorist is in peril the moment he stops his car, speaks to a woman, gets back into his car and drives off? That is why I want to know whether the answer to any of those questions is yes.

If, on the other hand, the answer to those three questions is, as I very much hope, "No, of course not", then I should like to know what sort of additional evidence is envisaged as being possible before the police officer can arrest a motorist, the station officer can charge him, or the magistrate can find that there is a case to answer. The answer being no, as I hope it is, if we could discover what sort of additional evidence is envisaged I believe that we could begin to redraft Clause 1 in order to meet the situations which the Home Office envisages actually will arise.

That is why I support the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. I suspect that, in responding to my simple proposition, the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, will say that that would not constitute an offence and that a motorist would not be in danger of being arrested simply because he stopped his car, spoke to a woman, got back in the car and drove off. If that is so, there must be some additional factor lurking about somewhere before a motorist is in peril. If we can identify that factor, I believe that we can begin to redraft Clause 1 in the appropriate way.

I think that the most likely factor is that the police officer says, "I saw him do it several times", which amounts exactly to the "persistently" proposition that is put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, and which I very much support. As an alternative, I suppose that if the woman to whom the motorist spoke happens to be a known prostitute, it might be said that that is an additional factor, which again we could cater for in amending Clause 1.

Alternatively, it is possible that a police officer might say, "It was perfectly clear from the conversation which I saw, though I did not hear it, that there was annoyance and a nuisance because the woman raised her fist", or that she threatened to strike the man or whatever it was, in which case we come precisely to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Monson. Therefore, without making a speech at this stage, I hope that I can ask the noble Lord to be kind enough to answer my questions, if that is possible, and then perhaps we can see how we should approach Clause 1 as this debate continues.

I want to address myself to Amendment No. 1, although I too am very impressed indeed by the arguments used by my noble friend Lord Mishcon. Perhaps noble Lords will allow me to say that the moralists in another place always tend to run away with themselves. I believe that it is the duty of this Committee to put a restraining hand on the moral fervour of Members of another place. Certainly this Bill is to deal with a nuisance. I was very much in favour of the remark made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, that the Bill is to deal with a nuisance, not to deal with morals. Therefore, we must ensure that the Bill deals with a nuisance.

Clause 1 as it stands makes no suggestion of its being a nuisance—the fact that it may be soliciting is enough. When we talk of soliciting we always think of the protection rackets which were involved in the old laws about soliciting for the purposes of prostitution under the old conditions. We must be very much on our guard against this. The best word that one can find is "persistently". It implies being a nuisance, and unwelcome attentions. I think that that is the right word. Other words can he used, but I think we need the word "persistently" in Clause 1.

Later on I shall be supporting the deletion of Clause 1 from the Bill because I believe that the all-embracing proposal to amend Clause 2 is probably the best solution.

I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Monson, wants first to speak to his amendment, Amendment No. 2?

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kilbracken, for giving way. I must say that I am very attracted by the simplicity of Amendment No. 1; but, sensing that almost certainly it will not be acceptable to the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, and the other sponsors of this Bill, I tabled Amendment No. 2 by way of compromise—a compromise which, as I hope to show, is actually rather nearer her point of view than the point of view of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. I think that it might be for the convenience of the Committee if I were now to explain Amendment No. 2.

Amendment No. 2: Page 1, line 6, after ("man") insert ("persistently or in a manner likely to cause annoyance").

Amendment No. 2 toughens up Amendment No. 1 considerably in that, as an alternative to the element of persistence which would otherwise be needed to justify a prosecution, one single act on the part of the prospective client in his motorcar, or having just got out of his motorcar, which is likely—and I stress the word "likely"—to annoy would also justify a prosecution.

Note that there will be no need actually to prove annoyance under the terms of my amendment. It would suffice that a reasonable person, not an unduly sensitive person, nor, on the other hand, an unduly thick-skinned person, considered the behaviour of the motorist in question, or passenger, likely to annoy. Nor are the potential "annoyees", if I may coin a horrible word, confined to the women actually approached by the would-be client. Householders living nearby, passers by on the pavement, and even motorists following the car in question whose progress was impeded by the slow driving of the person looking for a prostitute would be included.

In other words, the tooting of horns, the revving up of engines to attract a woman's attention, the flashing of headlights for the same reason, shouting at a woman or even speaking in a raised voice after midnight or 11 p.m., the making of obscene gestures—all these acts are likely to offend people in the neighbourhood generally, and would therefore all constitute illegal behaviour.

As the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, said, it is the nuisance aspect that we are getting at—the nuisance not just for women approached who are not prostitutes but for all the people living round about. In other words, only the most discreet and low-key approach to a woman would slip through the net. Even that kind of approach would be exempt only if the woman concerned was not herself annoyed by the manner of the approach. In order to avoid the risk of prosecution, the client would have to be sure that the woman he approached was almost certainly a prostitute, whether professional or amateur.

The noble Lord, Lord Mischon, at Second Reading spoke about the dangers which would face foreign tourists who had lost their way and were trying to get directions should an amendment such as one of these two not be carried. To this category I would add British tourists, who are just as likely as foreign tourists to lose their way in strange parts.

Then there are political canvassers. Recently I saw an article in a Conservative Party newsletter, I think called Conservative Newsline, which highlighted the danger to canvassers if this Bill went through unamended. There are also encyclopaedia or life assurance salesmen, who tend to call upon households after working hours and who may try to find a particular house the name or number of which is badly lit in an already badly lit street. In the absence of any possibility of trial by jury, and in the absence of any necessity for the testimony of a single individual to be corroborated, all these categories are at risk. I hope that the Committee will support one of these amendments. When creating a new offence it seems better to tread warily and to err on the side of caution. If the law turns out to be inadequate, it can always be strengthened later.

My noble friend Lord Mishcon has told us that he has two strings to his bow on his proposals, one being to amend Clause 1 and the other being to delete Clause 1 and incorporate what he wants into Clause 2. He has spoken to both these possiblities in his opening remarks. I should like to confine myself to Clause 1 and perhaps add something later when we come to Clause 2.

What would really be meant by Clause 1 if, on the one hand, his amendment or, on the other hand, Lord Monson's amendment were agreed? The amendment we are now considering would make it an offence for a man to solicit a woman persistently or, as my noble friend has it,

"persistently to solicit a woman for the purpose of prostitution".

Those word are left in if we accept the present amendment, though in his amendment to Clause 2 there is a change to the words "for sexual purposes".

Therefore, it is an offence only if the punter—as we have learnt to call him, though I have always associated that term more with the race track—approaches a woman and solicits her persistently for the purpose of prostitution. He has to introduce a mercenary tone to his remark. If he simply says, "How about dinner tonight?" or, "Shall we go to the movies?" or makes any suggestion that has no mercenary content, under my noble friend's amendment no offence has been committed.

When I listened to the Second Reading debate—and I did without thinking—I found that the facts as discussed and as drafted were very different from those I have ever experienced or noticed in real life. It seems to me that nobody would ever solicit a woman for the purpose of prostitution persistently. He has, to be guilty, to go up to the woman and immediately say, "I will give you £20 if you will come with me". He has to make it clear that he is soliciting her for the purpose of prostitution.

I cannot imagine any man doing that, but if he does and he is then rebuffed—

I think that the noble Lord has misunderstood the effects of the first amendment. The word "persistently" applies to the soliciting. It is suggested that it should be an offence "persistently to solicit" women, not solicit the same woman persistently.

I realise that, but the noble Lord is not perfectly accurate, because Clause 1 would read: "to solicit a woman persistently".

It would read:

"persistently to solicit a woman for the purpose of prostitution".

That does not imply it being the same woman, as I understand it.

I hesitate to intervene so early. I shall intervene after my noble friend has spoken, but I may be able to clear up the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, and say that the single inclusion of the word "persistently" in this instance—and this is the only amendment I am speaking to at the moment—would be unhelpful. First, an offence would be committed only if a man solicited the same woman persistently. So it does mean the same woman and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Kilbracken, is correct in this case.

That was the point I was going to make. A man may start off by soliciting a woman for the purposes of prostitution, but it would read "persistently to solicit a woman", and he certainly will not do it twice. If he has made a mistake and she is not a prostitute and tells him she is not interested, why should he persist in persuading someone who is not a prostitute to accept money from him? As far as this clause is concerned, I should rather have the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Monson, which says what should be said: that he must not solicit the woman,

"in a manner likely to cause annoyance".

If Clause 1 is to stand part of the Bill, I agree with both the amendment of the noble Lords, Lord Mishcon and Wigoder, and that of the noble Lord, Lord Monson. I should like, if I may, and if it is in order, which I believe it is, to ask the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, a question concerning his proposed amendment to Clause 2.

Let us suppose that a young man goes down the King's Road either getting on and off buses, or on foot, and he introduces himself in a perfectly charming manner to a girl. He is all the time watched by a policeman, let us suppose. The first girl makes it plain that she is not interested in the young man for any purposes whatsoever. He goes a bit further and approaches a second girl and introduces himself. She might turn out to be a policewoman or she might go to the local police station and say, "This man has tried to pick me up". As I understand it, if the amendment proposed by the noble Lords, Lord Mishcon and Lord Wigoder, is carried this young man might find himself in very deep water.

I am not sure about the depth of the water, but I have no doubt about what the noble Marquess has said. I have introduced the words, "for sexual purposes". On the assumption that this young man was not asking the lady in question (whom he had not previously seen) to discuss the current Royal Shakespeare production, that the approach was for sexual purposes, that he was overheard and he approached more than one women or persistently approached the same woman, he would be committing an offence.

How do we define "sexual purposes"? Anybody who walks down the King's Road addressing a number of young women is quite likely to have sexual purposes at the back of his mind. I do not think that this is a particularly repulsive thing to do, provided that the young man is polite about it. I might add that under Section 32 of the 1956 Act homosexuals are already in the position that I believe the noble Lord's amendment might put heterosexuals in.

I can only reply by saying that there is a nuisance which ought to be dealt with in regard to the kerb crawlers and other people who make a nuisance of themselves for this purpose. One imagines that prosecutions would only be brought where a nuisance occurs. But I am afraid that where the noble Marquess and I differ is that I believe there is a nuisance which ought to be dealt with. In those circumstances I have incorporated all the factors such as kerb crawling into my amendment.

If what my noble friend says is right, have we not all hundreds of times in our young days committed acts which might now be classed as criminal offences?

I could not agree more. Of course I am against the nuisance element, but I do not believe that young men wandering about looking for potential sexual conquests constitute any such nuisance.

May I add one observation arising from the recent intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur? It is only a matter of draftsmanship, I know; but if I persistently make a speech on a Friday afternoon it is not, I hope, the same speech. If I persistently catch a bus to go to work it is not the same bus.

I should like to thank noble Lords for the points they have put forward much more eloquently than I could, because they are all well trained for it. I have admired the way in which they have approached the problem. I shall consider what they have said and add a few words to put an opposite point of view.

I have had a number of notes from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning. I shall not quote them, but he referred to the Criminal Law Revision Committee Report at paragraph 36, which reads:

"We are in favour of creating a specific offence to prohibit kerb crawling. The nuisance caused by kerb crawling seems to us sufficiently serious to justify legislative intervention".

That was contained in the Criminal Law Revision Committee's Report, and perhaps it answers a question about legal standing.

I cannot agree with noble Lords. I am sure my noble friend the Minister will help to deal with some of these amendments. If we are to impart an element of persistence in Clause 1 we may as well do away with Clause 2 altogether, since persistent kerb crawling is dealt with under Clause 2.

I agree.

I believe the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, agrees with me. That clause deals with persistent soliciting whether or not it is carried out from a motor vehicle, which perhaps also covers what the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, said.

I should like the Committee to consider what sort of message we would be sending out if we were to delete Clause 1. This Bill is widely known as the kerb-crawling Bill. Apart from the important penalty increases in Clause 4, kerb crawling is the offence under Clause 1 which is at the heart of the Bill. If we delete this clause, we shall be faced with the real concern expressed by people who live in areas affected by kerb crawling. We have the advice of the Criminal Law Revision Committee, which spent a great deal of time and energy looking into this problem. It concluded that a specific offence was needed to deal with kerb crawling, which of itself is a public nuisance.

Some noble Lords have mentioned tourists. I daresay that, like myself, they have been to places such as Holland where there are particularly notable kerb-crawling areas; and also France, and New York. It is not something that happens just in this country. I do not think tourists are so ignorant about the manner in which to ask the way to anywhere as has been suggested.

The noble Lord made the point that it is no less reprehensible to solicit women for prostitution on the pavement than it is to do so from a car. If we are talking about one-off incidents, I agree with him. I hope I made it clear when I spoke at Second Reading that this Bill does not take a high-minded view of the clients who seek the services of prostitutes. This is not about what may or may not be morally reprehensible but about activities pursued by clients who should be restricted because of the effect on the residents.

In the other House, as noble Lords may remember from reading Hansard, Members have had many letters from troubled constituents. Men cruise around for hours. When the 1959 Bill was being prepared I went out with the police to many areas to see for myself what was happening. I thought that was only fair, having read the Wolfenden Report. This was before the new legislation was brought in. There are community police who do this kind of duty. They get to know the personnel on the streets. They may occasionally make a mistake, but I have discussed this matter with them and I can say that they are very careful about what action they take.

As mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Munson, there may be the sounding of horns and the slamming of car doors in the early hours when prostitutes and their pimps are attracted to an area. Bargains are struck and arguments start. It is not surprising that people do not want to live in a community like that where they have to watch this trading going on. To deal with a nuisance on this scale, we have to agree with the commission that kerb crawling is a nuisance. I believe that the specific offence of kerb crawling in the Bill would be a real deterrent.

Another effect of the noble Lords' amendments is to say that kerb crawling is all right as long as only one woman is approached. I believe that such an amendment would be in favour of the experienced and successful kerb crawler (and many are successful) who drives round and round looking for probably the same woman but often other women. If that one is careful to choose an accommodating girl on the first round, he is a lucky chap. The effect on the not-so-successful kerb crawler might be to compel him to drive slowly round making a general nuisance of himself for longer or frightening ordinary young girls who perhaps are in the street because they are going home. As I mentioned in my previous speech, many of them in certain areas are not allowed out at night by their parents.

He might, I suppose, pick up the right girl first time. But what about the woman who is trailed by car, frightened, and solicited by a man for the purpose of prostitution? Suppose that she is very upset but is willing to help the law protect her and so to give evidence in court. Surely, this would be a pretty watertight case in which the public would be right to demand some action to be taken. I am sure that the noble Lord would agree that action should be taken in such cases. If this clause were to be amended as proposed, the kerb-crawler would be immune from prosecution if persistence could not be shown. I believe that it is necessary, in order to explain the damage to the Bill that may be caused by the noble Lord's amendment, for my noble friend the Minister to add something at this point which I may have omitted. He will probably be able to answer better than I some of the questions of the noble Lord.

Perhaps this would he a convenient moment for me to give the Government's view on the noble Lord's amendment and to take up some of the points that have been raised. The issue of persistence was debated at some length in another place, and it has given me, my ministerial colleagues and the Home Office time to reflect carefully on the arguments that have been put forward for change to the clause. But I have to start by saying that we remain persuaded that Clause 1 is right as it stands, and I shall not try to explain why. In doing so, I shall elaborate a little on what my noble friend Lady Vickers has said.

As your Lordships will be aware, this very issue formed the basis of representations made to my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary by the Law Society, and my honourable friend responded very fully to them. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, is concerned that the evidence of a single observer of a single incident might be sufficient to secure a conviction under Clause 1, and suggests that this should be met by importing an element of persistence into the offence. That is the issue as I see it. Since I have some very basic objections to the amendment, I hope that it will not be thought churlish of me by the noble Lord if I mention that there are two drafting points. One of them has been brought out, and that is the question of having solicited the same woman persistently; and I shall not deal with that. The other one, as has been indicated, is that if one puts "persistence" into Clause 1 (and my noble friend alluded to this just now) then Clause 1 becomes otiose and one could rely on Clause 2. I think that the noble Lord is about to rise to say that that is not what he feels.

It is not that. I think that it will help in the debate if, most respectfully, I make clear from my point of view the two matters that I think the Minister has to answer. The first one is that I did not just talk of a conviction. I have already dealt with the fact that in another place the answer given by the Minister was that one ought to have faith in English courts and the evidence would have to be sound enough for a conviction. I dealt with the question of a charge of this kind being brought, as it is capable of being brought under the clause without "persistence", and of the dangers to reputations, to married life and to family life if that were so. That was the first point.

The second point is that I accept absolutely the argument of the Minister in another place—I think it was the Minister's argument—that what you have to do is to make everybody realise that you are dealing with kerb-crawling. That is why I have imported the words of Clause 1 into Clause 2, bringing kerb-crawling very distinctly into Clause 2. Therefore, Clause 2 deals specifically with kerb-crawling and with other offences that are brought within Clause 2. So I have covered the intention of Clause 1 by importing it into Clause 2. All that I have done, therefore, is to have one clause instead of two, accentuating the kerb-crawling element but insisting upon "persistently".

I am grateful to the noble Lord for clarifying that. I will come on to those points in a moment. The broad point is the question of whether kerb-crawling is to be tackled at the root. That is the basis: that an act of solicitation of this nature is to be controlled by law—that is what the whole thing is founded on—and whether the police can be trusted to enforce the law. In a moment I shall come to the three questions which the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, asked. Our intention is that the woman who has been approached will be encouraged to give evidence wherever possible, obviously. Naturally, many prostitutes will not wish to do so, and some other women who have been mistaken for prostitutes may not wish to do so for a variety of reasons. In such circumstances, the police officer will have to decide whether the evidence he has of a single approach is sufficient to convince the court that the man was soliciting for the purpose of prostitution.

The noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, asked me three questions and the answer to those three questions is, of course, "No". My view of the scenario which the noble Lord painted is that, first of all, there is in any event no power of arrest under the Bill. Prosecution will be by summons under Clause 1. That clarifies the first issue. Secondly, there is no prima facie case unless there is evidence of the clear act of solicitation of a woman for the purpose of prostitution. Those words run together, it seems to me, as the key words in this particular clause; and those were the words that were drawn out at Second Reading by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning.

Thirdly, the additional evidence which might be required in an attempt to make a charge like this stick could, for example, be an outraged or frightened woman who might come forward to testify, or advances to a known prostitute which are overhead by the police, or the known prostitute being seen to come to an agreement with the driver and to get into his car. But obviously—I think the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, made the point himself; but I shall repeat it—the decision on whether or not the elements in Clause 1 are met in a particular case is for the prosecuting authorities and for the courts.

Persistence will not help the innocent man who asks several different girls for directions. The key to protect the innocent man is the need to show beyond reasonable doubt the soliciting of a woman for the purpose of prostitution; so that I have come back to the words which I used just now as being the key. If a police officer overhears the conversation and knows the woman to be a prostitute, there would, I imagine, be a good chance of a conviction under Clause 1. But if the police officer or any other person does not overhear what is said, then even where the woman is a known prostitute they will probably wish to see if the man makes more than one approach before deciding whether a charge should be brought under the Clause 1 offence or under the Clause 2 offence.

Where a man stops and merely asks a woman for directions, there would not, I think, be sufficient grounds for a prosecution, let alone a conviction. While I appreciate the concern which leads to the suggestion that the offence should contain an element of persistence, we firmly believe that such a proposal would make the Bill much less effective. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has himself pointed to the principal nuisance which is to be dealt with in this case, and that is kerb-crawling. He, himself, has said that he does not doubt that it is a nuisance.

To allow car drivers to pick up women as long as they made only one approach each time would not, in the view of the Criminal Law Revision Committee, cure the serious nuisance problem which is experienced in some of our cities. The Criminal Law Revision Committee, on the basis of evidence submitted to it by a wide range of organisations and individuals, recommended that kerb crawling should be an offence per se; and Clause 1 of the Bill gives effect to that recommendation. The hope is that many men who would otherwise go looking for a prostitute in their cars will be deterred by the knowledge that kerb crawling is an offence.

Before the noble Lord moves on, he talks about prime facie evidence for a prosecution and did not think that, in certain cases, a prosecution would even be brought. He bears in mind, of course, that a private prosecution is possible here?

My Lords, yes, and I can tell the noble Lord on the question of private prosecutions—I corresponded with him on this point, and he is aware of it, but I can repeat some of the arguments for the benefit of the Committee—that I appreciate that it would be of little comfort to the man proceeded against that he was acquitted by the court, since, by that time, his reputation might have been ruined in the way the the noble Lord suggests by the very fact that he has been charged with the offence.

One of the ways of dealing with this might have been to provide that proceedings would be initiated only by or with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions. But, as the noble Lord knows, we believe that that would not be appropriate for a fairly minor summary offence of this nature. In any case, such a procedure might not necessarily inhibit the occasional malicious accusation. As the Committee will be aware, the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure recommended that the right of private prosecution should be abolished, but we have rejected that recommendation on the basis that the right to bring a private prosecution represents an important safeguard for the individual.

I shall not rudely interrupt the noble Lord. My only excuse is that the Minister in another place promised a very full debate on "persistently" in this House and did so in specific terms. Therefore, I am obviously entitled, as it were, to carry on. But the noble Lord, the Minister, is not dealing with my point. My point is that before a summons is issued on a private prosecution an application has to be made to the court. If you have to have evidence prima facie of "persistence" then the summons will not be issued unless that prima facie evidence is there. The court has no alternative but to issue a summons if somebody—on the present wording of this clause—merely comes forward and says, "I saw Mr. So-and-So and I happen to know him, he is on the job again of soliciting for the purposes of prostitution. I only saw him do it once. That is all I have to show." The summons will be issued. If one has the word "persistently" the court will not even issue the summons unless there is prima facie evidence of the persistent behaviour.

In that case, I shall not go further into the question of private prosecution but I shall revert to the point the noble Lord has made in a moment.

I was going to take the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, up in amplification of his concern about sexual purposes and the wording in the Criminal Law Revision Committee's report. He referred to paragraph 3.44 and I drew his attention to the fact that that was a discussion paper not the recommendations. The recommendation is paragraph 40. I shall quote it:

"We now recommend that it should be an offence for a man to use a motor vehicle in a street or public place for the purposes of soliciting a woman for prostitution. The object of the offence is to stop the man who goes out in a vehicle to look for a prostitute. We are not of course drafting the offence. This will be the task of the Parliamentary draftsman".

He makes that quite clear. The evidence to the Criminal Law Revision Committee suggested that the nature of the sexual harrassment to ordinary women lay in their being approached by men looking for prostitutes. The CLRC thought it unwise to inhibit all sexual advances towards women by men in the street and this is amplified—and I shall not read it out—in the bottom of page 13. I think to some extent that that answers, or perhaps add to, the point which I think was being made by the noble Marquess, Lord Tweeddale, just now.

The noble Lord has left us with a series of options. Although he is only speaking to the first amendment, he is covering with it the whole question of whether Clause 1 shall stand part of the Bill. I should like to set out for the noble Lord some of the disadvantages which will accrue should Clause 1 disappear.

First, what it would do is to refer the CLRC's conclusion—which is a conclusion based on considerable evidence—that a specific offence is needed to deal with kerb crawling because it is by its very nature a nuisance, and the noble Lord has said so himself. Secondly, no offence could be charged even, for example, where a young girl had been trailed for a long time, perhaps by more than one man in a car, and was prepared to testify as to how frightened she had been by the approach—which was the point that my noble friend made. Thirdly, a specific offence directed at the use of a car may have a more explicit deterrent effect.

Fourthly, if "persistence" is an element of the offence the unsuccessful kerb crawler will be penalised whereas the smooth operator will not. This is a point that ought to be considered by the noble Lord. Fifthly, if that is so, kerb crawlers may simply cruise around for longer and more slowly to ensure that the girls they approach are obliging. Those five points are the consequences of the noble Lord's insistence on removing Clause 1, and the two latter ones relate particularly to Amendment No. 1.

If the noble Lord will allow me, he has just told us that "the smooth operator" would be at an advantage. As I understand it, we have been told many times that the purpose of this Bill is to abate nuisance and not to promote morality.

The noble Marquess is absolutely right. We are not judging on the morals of the issue. We are talking about the nuisance. But the fact is that it is still a nuisance if somebody comes and does it once. It is a harassment of the people who are not in the particular trade of which we are talking. I do not think that what I have said is contrary to that. I think that, if the Committee reflects on these disadvantages along with the need for clear evidence of an act of solicitation of a woman for the purposes of prostitution which will be needed to take forward any proceedings against a man for kerb crawling, it may feel that the CLRC tackled the problem in the right way and not only that but that we should support its strategy.

My noble friend has set out much of the issue, but I think that it would be a very great shame if your Lordships were to deal with the Bill in the way proposed. Such action would effectively be quite a snub—perhaps "snub" is not the right word—but it certainly would not be welcomed by the citizens of areas such as Bedford Hill, which is referred to, Southampton and Leicester, because they are genuinely afflicted. They are afflicted night after night by the activities of kerb crawlers. They have lobbied long to have protection under the law. Without Clause 1, many of those who support it feel that we might as well abandon the Bill. Certainly the Criminal Law Revision Committee saw Clause 2 only as a back up—I stressed this at the Second Reading—to the prime tactic for dealing with the problem.

With that, I do not think I can add anything more. I hope that your Lordships will consider very carefully those five major disadvantages that would accrue if this action was to go ahead. I trust that they will not press their amendments.

May I say that I am grateful to the noble Lord the Minister for his answers to my questions? I am relieved to think that apparently a motorist who does stop and speak to a woman, goes back to his car and drives off, is not simply from those facts to be in peril. That is helpful. In parenthesis, I would add that if that is right it is putting rather a temptation in the way of a police officer who happens to see that particular scene to gild the lily a little in the course of his evidence. But no doubt that is a risk we shall have to take.

I went on to ask the noble Lord to be kind enough to indicate what sort of evidence in addition to that would be needed to warrant a prosecution and he gave, I believe, four examples. They are of considerable interest in the light of these amendments. The first was that there might be evidence that the woman was outraged or frightened. That is caught exactly by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Monson:

"in a manner likely to cause annoyance".

The second was that the police officer might say, "I have seen this man do this repeatedly". Leaving aside the drafting, that is caught by the amendments of both the noble Lord, Lord Monson, and the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, by the use of the word "persistently". Therefore the two categories which the noble Lord indicated might be of additional evidence which would warrant a prosecution are very neatly covered by the amendments which are before the Committee at the moment.

I am bound to confess that the other examples the noble Lord gave leave me feeling a little unhappy. I find it difficult to accept that if a man stops his car and gets out and speaks to a woman, who then gets into the car and they drive off together, that in itself is evidence which would warrant a prosecution or possible conviction. I cannot see why on earth it should: I cannot see why on earth there should be a presumption that the woman in that case was in the car for the purpose of prostitution, rather than being an old friend who was being given a lift home, or the motorist's wife or whoever it may be. It seems to me a remarkable proposition to say that simply because a woman gets into a motorist's car there is prima facie evidence of an offence under this clause.

The fourth example also leaves me a little unhappy: that is, if the approach happens to be to a person of whom the police officer says, "She won't give evidence: we all know that" and who is, according to the police officer, a known prostitute. Is the position really to be this? If, say, an American visitor happens to stop his car in order to ask the way to somewhere, if the woman is not a prostitute, then he is not committing an offence. However, if by chance she is a prostitute—unknown to him, the woman is a known prostitute—that is prima facie evidence on which the man can be convicted. That seems to me to fly in the face of common sense.

Before the next stage, we ought to read carefully what has been said. I venture to suggest to the noble Lord the Minister that when he looks back on the examples he has given, he will realise that the safeguards against the innocent motorist being wrongly accused and possibly wrongly convicted incorporate some additional tests in Clause 1. The examples he has given appear to me to lead to the irresistible conclusion that the additional tests proposed in the amendment to be moved by the noble Lord, Lord Monson, may be the safe ones.

I accept that we shall probably all have to read with great care what each of us has said. We are dealing with several amendments at once and it is by no means simple, as I am learning to my cost.

I should like to pick up one point referred to by the noble Lord: we are putting a lot of reliance on the policeman, and the policeman might not interpret the act in quite the way as the noble Lord hopes he might. I can only stress the principle, which is of course contained in the Home Office guidance to the police—and the noble Lord will be aware of it—that no member of a police force should

"counsel, incite or procure the commission of a criminal offence",

I understand that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner recently issued an order giving greater prominence to that principle and that it has been brought to the attention of other chief officers.

I have no doubt whatever that the principle will apply to the offences which will be created by this Bill in the same way as it does to other offences. I have a copy of the guidance to hand.

I can only say that if that guidance had always been followed in the past I would have had an even smaller criminal practice than I had.

I have listened to most, but not quite all, of this debate and it seems to me perfectly clear that we are right to take every precaution that we can to prevent innocent people being convicted; but I think it is equally clear that unless we take a fairly bold line then this Bill will be a completely dead letter. I believe that far too much has been made on Amendment No. 1 about the dangers of innocent people being committed. After all, I think that, sensibly, any motorist (except possibly a stranger to a district) must realise that in red light districts, and districts where prostitutes are, if one keeps stopping a car at night for no good reason, then one takes a risk. We all take risks on everything and I really feel that too much has been made about this danger of innocent people being convicted. I hope that the Government will take a strong line over some of these amendments which I consider to be quite uncalled for.

May I just make one further observation? I noticed the words used by the noble Lord the Minister, although I am not sure whether I have the words correctly, that kerb crawling per se was a nuisance that had to be suppressed. He will have the words there, but I had the impression that just to kerb-crawl ought to be made an offence. Surely the nuisance is not just going slowly along the kerb, getting out and meeting somebody, but accosting or soliciting somebody.

I think we have to be careful that we do not make the cure worse than the disease. The nuisance of it has to be identified, and it is that nuisance which has to be outlawed. But there are occasions when in certain places, either because the environment is pleasant, the pavement is wide or there may be something going on, people move slowly along the kerb with no particular intent except to observe the passing scene. There must be something to it besides just going slowly and getting out.

Also, some places are suitable places for meeting people. People may say: "I'll see you there: watch out for me." I often see cars crawling along waiting for someone to come out of an office, perhaps because that person is going to be taken home. It seems to me that we have to be very careful indeed that, in order to deal with this nuisance we do not invent offences which are entirely unjustified. That is why I think it is so important that we must somehow clearly identify the nuisance. I doubt whether, at the present moment, Clause 1 does that, and that is my worry. The words of explanation of the Minister make the situation less clear.

I am sorry if I have made it less clear, but the fact is that Clause 1(1) clearly says that,

"It is an offence for a man to solicit a woman for the purpose of prostitution".

Then it goes into a number of conditions. I simply cannot understand the proposition of the noble Lord that somebody who is driving around slowly, and not actually soliciting a woman for the purpose of prostitution or stopping to have a meeting, is affected in any way. The wording of Clause 1 is perfectly plain. As I said, it relates to soliciting for the purpose of prostitution. That is a very far cry from the kind of thing that the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, suggested.

I shall give your Lordships' Committee the words of the noble Lord and we will see whether I have reason for anxiety. He may have been using shorthand terms, but he mentioned kerb crawling. Kerb crawling by itself is not an offence. Kerb crawling is done for a purpose. I do not think one should ever use the words "kerb crawling" as though that action of itself were an offence.

The fact is that kerb crawling has become familiar jargon for this particular issue. What we are trying to do is to put this whole matter into the context of what is now actually written on the face of the Bill.

We have been relied upon in this Committee to deal with the question of persistency. As I have said to the noble Lord, the Minister when he was speaking in another place made it clear that there should be in this Chamber a debate and a full discussion on persistency. Perhaps I may turn to the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, for a moment, and I shall be very brief. If only the Bill before us contained the words that he may like to see in it—namely, that it is an offence only if it occurs at certain times of the night, or if it happens in a red light area—then of course some of my comments may not have been necessary. But the Bill says no such thing; and to say that people who travel at certain times of the night and in certain areas really ought to understand the consequences is, with great respect, no answer to the wording of this Bill which makes no reference to either contingency.

I must say that, while I was listening to my noble friend and his definition of "kerb crawling", I remembered so well from previous transport debates the Government's anxiety that people should give lifts to other people, should share cars, and indeed that there should be some sharing of taxis. I can only say that if this Bill goes through unamended, I would view that campaign with the greatest trepidation.

My final remark is that whatever the advantages of clearing up certain areas and certain practices—and I recognise them—they do not weigh with me quite as much as does the danger of innocent people being brought before the courts and having their reputations and their family life ruined. It is because of that that, even at this hour. I am going to test the opinion of the Committee.

had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 2:

Page 1, line 6, after ("man") insert ("persistently or in a manner likely to cause annoyance").

Will the noble Lord speak up because I cannot hear him?

I believe that the amendment is not only superfluous but technically cannot now be moved by virtue of the previous amendment having been carried.

moved Amendment No. 3:

Page 1, line 11, leave out ("got out of or off") and insert ("left").

In general I strongly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kilbracken. I wonder whether he is aware that under Section 192 of the Road Traffic Act 1972 a hovercraft is classified as a motor vehicle. Should not therefore the words "left or disembarked from" be added to the Bill?

I appreciate and understand the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Kilbracken, in respect of this amendment and the others he has tabled, to improve the drafting of this Bill. We must all seek to make the law as plain and clear as possible, and I know that his amendments are proposed in that spirit. I also know that the phrase, "got out of or off", has been criticised by some as being awkward and cumbersome. I am afraid, however, that the neat suggestion in the noble Lord's amendment would sacrifice clarity and the proper working of the Bill for the need of a simpler phrase. That cannot be right.

Briefly, the ambiguity with which the police and the courts would have to struggle in enforcing Clause 1 would be that if a man loiters on the pavement near a parked car, not his own, and then moves away to solicit a woman for the purpose of prostitution, will he not be in breach of the law, since he has just left the car in one sense? In another sense, of course, the motorist who was in fact using his car to trail and pick up girls might argue that he had in no sense left his car and that he fully intended to drive away again shortly, even if he was leaning out of it with the door open for the prostitute at the time. This ambiguity is considered to be dangerous.

Noble Lords opposite are worried that such may be a difficult defence for a kerb crawler. They are, I understand, concerned at the possibility that those who are not kerb crawlers but who are in the area of various motor vehicles may technically be in breach of Clause 1 by a single act of solicitation. I should also like to offer, therefore, not only the reasons for being unable to accept the proposed change but also the reason for the positive view of the words now in the Bill. The existing phrase is not, of course, the most elegant that one may hope to meet in the history of legislation, but it is clear and ordinary plain English, which we are always being asked to adopt in our legislation. It fits the terms in which ordinary men will talk. The simple question will be, "Have you just got out of that car?" or, "Have you just got off your motor-cycle?" The spirit of the phrase we now have in Clause I will be very well understood. I believe that Clause I as drafted will have the right effect and that the ambiguity that would arise from the noble Lord's amendment should be avoided. On this basis I hope that the noble Lord will consider withdrawing his amendment.

I see the problems with the word "left" which is proposed in the amendment, although, as has been appreciated, it is the word that is used in the Explanatory Memorandum, by whoever drafted it, and was thought to be adequate there. Without attempting to redraft this Bill across the Floor of the Committee, which is never a very happy course to take, I suggest as a possible alternative for reflection before the next stage the words, "from which he has just dismounted".

I do not want to spend very long on this amendment. Personally I share much of the noble Lord's concern about the inelegancy of the existing form of words, but I have to tell the Committee that the draftsman took exceptional care to try to find a way of not using the words which now appear in the clause. The choice was not entered upon lightly, as your Lordships will realise.

The noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, suggested the word, "dismounted". That word has been considered, but I understand that the draftsman is of the view—and to some extent I share his view, even though I am quite clear myself that one does not want to use tortuous phrases—that "dismounted" is not a word that is popularly used in connection with a car. One may dismount from a horse, and I dare say one could stretch a point and dismount from a motor-cycle, but one does not dismount from a car. "Alighted" is another word that has been suggested.

I share the noble Lord's concern. This matter has been looked into; but, apparently, the problem cannot be overcome. I dare say that if some of the other words suggested are put into the Bill they would probably have to be qualified under the interpretation clause, and that would not be particularly easy. I hope that the noble Lord will not press his amendment because I can assure him that the matter has been looked at most carefully.

Does the Minister not agree that the late Sir Winston Churchill would probably have insisted on the words, "of or off which he has just got"?

I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken to this amendment. I do not like the word "dismounted" because I agree with the Minister that one dismounts from a horse but not from a motor car. I chose the word "left" because, as the noble Lord pointed out, that is used in the Explanatory Memorandum, which states:

"either from a motor vehicle or having just left one".

It does not seem to me to make any difference whether one has just "left" a motor car or has just "got out of' a motor car. I would prefer the former. Pehaps this can be thought about to see whether a better phrase can be found to replace the objectionable phrase before Report stage. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I shall not detain the Committee for very long on this matter; but I think it right that we acknowledge our agreement on all sides of the House that Clause 3 should not stand part of the Bill. The clause is aimed at frightening sexual behaviour towards women. As such, few of us deny that it may well gain a place in criminal law in due course. However, the offence created in Clause 3 is not one aimed primarily at controlling the nuisance in the street caused by the plying of the prostitution trade. It involves wider issues, and indeed in some senses very important issues. It is an area in which moral judgments on what is appropriate behaviour between men and women, whether in public or in private, have been made.

I commend the Criminal Law Revision Committee's courage and sensitivity in being aware of these questions and seeking to tackle them, but I feel that this modest Bill may not be the right instrument for such subtle matters. Clearly, similar concern was felt in another place and I noticed that on our own Second Reading the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, in pledging his support for the Bill nevertheless expressed initial reservations about Clause 3. Accordingly, without penetrating any further into the mysteries of whether or how such an offence might be framed in the future I invite your Lordships to agree that this clause should not stand part of the Bill.

moved Amendment No. 7:

Page 2, line 20, leave out ("Life") and insert ("Ten years").

More than once I have drawn attention to the fact that Private Members' Bills are legislation by lottery. They depend wholly, or almost wholly, on successfully emerging from a ballot in another place. This Bill is a case in point. It was taken up by a Member of the House of Commons on his name coming out of the ballot.

Perhaps I may intervene for a minute. The noble Lord is making a general remark about the Bill. I wonder whether he is going to address the particular point of this amendment in the interests of—

Yes: if the noble Lord will be patient for only 30 seconds more, he will see the point that I am getting at. I feel that noble Lords should be given a chance to develop the point that they hope to put before the Chamber. I stress what I have just said because of the contents of this particular clause in this Bill.

This Bill came to grief in another place, but by a fortuitous turn of events was revived. It comes to your Lordships' House as a kind of revived corpse of a Private Member's Bill. This is the hazard upon which this clause rests. This has nothing to do with kerb crawling. The point made when the Bill was originally being considered and publicised was that it was to deal with the nuisance of kerb crawling. However, now it has been used as a vehicle to increase dramatically the penalties for other offences. What is that proposal doing in this Bill? If to increase the penalties set out in Clause 4 was so important to good order, and adequate penalties for entirely different crimes were so important, why was it left to the hazards of a Private Member's Bill for it to go up or down or to remain in or go out?

I object to including this in a Bill, the main purpose of which is to deal with a comparatively minor crime. I do not underrate its importance but kerb crawling is not at the top of the bill so far as criminal offences are concerned. However, here we are dealing with a proposal to impose a life sentence for something which has not previously attracted this penalty or anything like it. I think that a clause such as Clause 4, which deals with attempted rape and which proposes to replace a penalty of seven years with life imprisonment, deserves a more important place in legislation than being incidental to kerb crawling. That is really what it is: it is incidental to kerb crawling. The Bill was about kerb crawling, it was discussed on the basis of kerb crawling. I do not think that life imprisonment should ever be imposed in a Private Member's Bill, especially when it is separated completely from the whole of the remainder of the Bill itself. If life imprisonment is to be imposed for attempted rape, let us discuss the matter in the context of rape, let us look at rape as a problem, because it is a problem and convictions for rape are a problem.

In the other context we are talking about the need to reduce the prison population. We are looking at penalties. We are looking at imprisonment in a broader context. Yet here, spatchcocked into this Bill, are proposals to increase quite seriously penalties for other offences. Hence, I object to the clause being in the Bill at all. If these are offences which require steeper penalties, they ought to be introduced by the Government specifically so that they can be discussed on their own and not be mixed up with other matters. This belongs to an entirely different code of sexual offences from that of kerb crawling. In fact, I am not in the least sure that kerb crawling is a sexual offence at all. Yet the Bill is entitled "Sexual Offences". It seems to me that no sexual offence has been committed by kerb crawling. However, a sexual offence is committed certainly by rape or attempted rape, or indecent assault, which are far graver crimes and specific crimes.

I register my protest. I think the whole system of legislating on this basis is wrong. The sooner the Private Members' Bill procedure is thoroughly gone into, the better. In a recent crisis in another place over Mr. Enoch Powell's Bill, the whole procedure connected with Private Members' Bills was raised, indicating the need for a great deal of attention to be given to it.

Turning to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Monson, I support the noble Lord because he seeks to get a little more rationale into Clause 4. The idea of a life sentence in a Bill of this kind is monstrous.

Can the noble Baroness or the Minister tell us why Clause 4 has been included in the Bill, because it seems to bear no relation at all to the rest of the Bill?

The noble Lord will see that the Long Title in line 3 on page 1 of the Bill, states:

"and to increase the penalties under the Sexual Offences Act 1956 for certain offences against women".

I do not want to anticipate too much of what my noble friend will say in her substantive answer to the noble Lord's amendment, but it is by no means unprecedented that a recommendation, such as the recommendation that has been made in the Fifteenth Report of the Criminal Law Revision Committee, should be put into a convenient piece of legislation which is not wholly unrelated. It may be unrelated in certain respects, but the fact is that the recommendation is there that the penalty should be increased in the way that has been described. This Bill is the vehicle for doing it. I do not think that there is anything immoral in that, in the sense that the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, has suggested.

I did not say that it was immoral; I said that it was monstrous.

I take back "immoral" and instead insert "monstrous". I cannot really believe that it is as monstrous as the noble Lord makes out for a vehicle such as this Bill to be used for these purposes. It seems perfectly reasonable.

Without the same persuasiveness as my noble friend Lord Houghton always has when he rises to address the Chamber, perhaps I may make just two observations. I tried to make the same point on Second Reading: I thought that this was the incorrect vehicle for the matters with which we had to deal; that a Private Member's Bill was not the proper machinery. I had in mind very definitely this provision.

My second observation is as follows. We are dealing with a very serious matter, whether or not it should have been dealt with by way of a Private Member's Bill. I find it completely wrong not only that it should be dealt with by way of a Private Member's Bill, but that we should be considering this matter on a Friday afternoon, with a very badly attended Committee. Therefore, perhaps I may be bold enough to suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Monson, that, for that reason alone, we ought to break off the debate on this matter now and deal with it at the Report stage, when I hope there will be a better attendance. It would be quite wrong to divide the Committee now and I think it would also be quite wrong to continue the debate.

I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Monson, wishes to respond to the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, before my noble friend rises to speak?

Obviously we are interested to hear the response of the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, but, to put it bluntly, this is a Home Office matter and not a matter for a private Member of this House. Before we decide what to do, we should like to hear the noble Lord the Under-Secretary of State give his recommendations on this matter. Many of us are gravely apprehensive about making this offence susceptible to a sentence of life imprisonment. We want a very full explanation as to why we should favour that. Frankly, it is a matter for the Under-Secretary of State and not a matter for the noble Baroness.

In that case, I shall accept the noble Lord's invitation. However, as he is aware, the Bill is in the name of my noble friend, and that is why I suggest that she may like to comment. However, I am very happy to deal with the matter.

First, I must draw noble Lords' attention to the fifteenth report. I do not know whether copies are available. In paragraph 2.54 on page 17 of the Fifteenth Report of the Criminal Law Revision Committee it is stated:

"We therefore recommend that the maximum penalty for rape"—

the arguments have been gone into beforehand—

"should remain at imprisonment for life and that this should become the maximum penalty for attempted rape. Attempts to commit the other offences recommended in this Report should follow the general rule and we say no more about them".

This amendment has provided us with an opportunity to discuss an important matter. I do not detract from that one bit. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, said so, in addition to the noble Lord, Lord Monson. But I should say at the outset that I do not agree with the noble Lord's amendment, though it is a modest amendment which ought to be discussed, unlike the other amendment to Clause 4 which was moved as a wrecking amendment in another place.

A general principle of the law on attempt is that the maximum penalty should be the same as that for the full offence. That is a general principle. Parliament enacted this principle as recently as 1981 in the Criminal Attempts Act. However, sexual offences were left out of that Act for the very reason that the Criminal Law Revision Committee was reviewing the law on sexual offences.

As your Lordships will know, the Criminal Law Revision Committee has now completed that review, and its recommendations are contained in its fifteenth report. That report was prior to the one we were discussing in relation to kerb crawling, which was the sixteenth. The committee has recommended in its report that sexual offences should follow the general principle, and that accordingly the maximum penalty for attempts to commit the offences dealt with in that report should be the same as those for the substantive offence.

The Criminal Law Revision Committee recommended that the offence of rape should remain substantially as it is, and it is therefore appropriate that the maximum penalty for attempted rape should be increased in this Bill, and it fits well into the context of a measure which tries to afford some additional protection to women.

I am sorry to have had to go into the background in some detail, but for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, gave it is important to put this clause into context. I can see no reason in respect of rape to detract from the general principle. Attempted rape may be just as vicious and damaging as the completed act. Where, for example, it is clear that rape was intended but simply prevented by, for example, the arrival of other people or something else outside the man's control, the attempt may nevertheless form part of a pattern of dangerousness of which the courts must have power to take account.

I would stress, too, to the noble Lord, Lord Monson, that we are only increasing the maximum penalty. Indeed, we do not expect that it will be much used, as the proper role of the maximum penalty is that it is applied only in the very worst cases, and I do not think your Lordships would disagree with that. But I believe it is right that, as the Criminal Law Revision Committee recommends, life imprisonment should be available for the worst cases of attempted rape, in keeping with the general view of the relationship of attempted crime with crime itself.

I do not think I can add anything else to what I have said. Rape in all its forms is horrific for she who suffers it, attempted or otherwise. It is clear that people can be distracted. Somebody may turn up and prevent the actual rape taking place. In view of what I have said about the principle of attempts being treated in the same way as the full crime, I really think that it is important that this is included in the Bill in the way that has been suggested.

Surely our difficulty is that this serious matter has been tucked away into a Private Member's Bill. Too few Members of the Committee have been alerted to the need to read and consider the reasoning behind the recommendations of the report.

I note the noble Lord's point, but the fact is that this has been discussed in another place. The whole Bill drew considerable interest in another place, as was discussed and made clear earlier. As the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, or the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, said, it was revived from an untimely death and is now here. There is no principal reason or matter of principle that indicates that a Private Member's Bill cannot be used to tack on some important recommendation or the enactment of some recommendation which has been made by a body as respected as the Criminal Law Revision Committee. I cannot see that the noble Lord's argument has much force.

Accepting what the noble Lord has said, the Government, notwithstanding, allowed this important clause which was to implement the recommendations of the Criminal Law Revision Committee to be at the hazard of a Private Member's Bill. When the Private Member's Bill now before us came temporarily to grief in another place, the Government were not prepared to give extra time to the Bill to carry it forward. They left it to the hazard of Private Members' legislation and to a procedural occurrence which rescued the Bill quite fortuitously when even the mover was not in the House, but away on constituency business. So unexpected was the turn of events that they left this important clause dealing with increased severity of penalties for certain sexual crimes to suffer the hazards of a Private Member's Bill.

This procedure must be exposed time and time again. In my view the Government should not regard themselves as free to catch any Private Member's Bill that happens to be passing for the implementation of important legislation dealing with important matters of public policy. If they do, they run the risk of not being able to implement such recommendations at all except by finding a special place for Government legislation to do so. My point is that I am attacking the consequences of the Private Member's Bill procedure and the way in which your Lordships' Committee is asked to deal with an important clause which we are now having impressed upon us is vital to the further protection of women. They have flung it into a Private Member's Bill and allowed it to take its chance, and it nearly lost the day.

I do not suppose that any of us at this hour wishes to extend the debate beyond the confines of the amendment and the proper protest that has been made by my noble friend Lord Houghton of Sowerby and by the noble Lord, Lord Monson, when moving the amendment. I too tried to make out such a protest as humbly as I could but nevertheless as loudly as I could at Second Reading.

The real objection that I want to emphasise is that the noble Lord the Minister made it clear that the Government wanted to wait until this report was out before they took it for granted that attempts at sexual offences should have precisely the same principle applied in regard to an equivalent maximum sentence as should the main crime. If the Government waited to consider this report before adding it to Government legislation they must have thought that a considerable principle was involved. It is not good enough in our view that this matter forms not only the subject matter of a Private Member's Bill, but is tacked on to a Bill that the Minister wanted to call the kerb crawling Bill.

Again, this debate need not be extended beyond the expression of that view. The noble Lord the Minister, with his usual capability and clarity, has expressed his point of view. What I am concerned about is that this matter should not be dealt with in this way with a poor attendance of your Lordships' Committee on a Friday afternoon. It is too important. I respectfully invite the noble Lord, Lord Monson, if he agrees with that view, to ask leave of the Committee to withdraw the amendment at this stage. But I want the noble Lord to know that many of us will be listening with interest when he renews the amendment, as I assume he will, at Report stage.

I shall say only a few words on this issue. I realise that we have got ourselves into a difficult position; namely, that if the noble Lord, Lord Monson, presses this amendment to a Division it may well be that there will not be a quorum in the Committee. As a result of that, we shall lose this Bill today. None of us wants that. We are keen and firm supporters of legislating in this area. What I want to emphasise as much as I can is how strongly we take the view expressed, first by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, and, more recently, by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon.

It is perfectly reasonable, as the Minister has said, for private Members of your Lordships' House or of another place to put down Private Members' Bills which have implications for the criminal justice system. I, myself, would not say that this was an area from which private Members in both Houses should be excluded. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Wigoder and I tried to do precisely this when we attempted to deal with the problem of criminals serving on juries. But I must say this to the noble Lord. I believe that there is a strong indication at the moment that, because of the difficulty of finding places in the parliamentary timetable for Home Office Bills, we are now getting a whole succession of Bills in this area which in reality should be Home Office mainstream legislation.

I give as an illustration—and I do not want to widen and prolong the debate unreasonably—and draw the attention of the Committee to the Bill (which, again, I support) dealing with sentences of life imprisonment in respect of people who have been convicted of serious offences under the dangerous drugs Acts. I repeat that I am in favour of that legislation. But I believe that we should not have this pretence—and it is a pretence—that these are Private Members' Bills. In my view, they should be put forward by Ministers and defended by Ministers. What worries me, and what I object to very strongly, as do my noble friends, when dealing with a Bill of this sort—and, I repeat, the noble Baroness's Bill, which many of us support and which deals with a mischief which should be dealt with—is finding a clause of this kind on the face of the Bill which to my mind and in our view should form part of a Government Bill. It has nothing to do with kerb crawling, as the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has said, and it should be dealt with entirely separately.

I do not want to prolong the discussion. I have made the point. A few moments ago I would gladly have gone into the Lobby with the noble Lord, Lord Monson, but, given the fact that there is a danger, if we divide, that we may find ourselves without a quorum and that this Bill could be seriously damaged in terms of its passage through Parliament, I think it better not to divide on this amendment.

I very much hope, however, that the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, will listen to the expressions of anxiety which have been expressed and will discuss this matter with his honourable friend so that we are not placed in the position of having to make speeches of this kind on other Bills which, similar to this one, have admirable ojectives but are used as vehicles for putting on the statute book provisions which are in reality wholly outside the major thrust of the Bill.

I can respond only very briefly by saying that, of course, I accept the force of the noble Lord's arguments. I shall certainly read what he has said with great care, and draw it to the attention of others concerned.

If the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, does not wish to say anything, perhaps this is the moment for me to reply. I am, of course, well aware that the Criminal Law Revision Committee recommended the inclusion of subsection (2) of Clause 4 into the Bill. But with all respect to the learned individuals concerned, I wonder is they were right in doing so. From the point of view of a layman I have always believed that justice must be seen to be done, and it is often difficult for laymen to follow the reasoning of their learned brethren.

It seems to most people, I believe, not just to me, that attempted murder is not nearly as bad as murder; and attempted rape is not, except in a very few cases, as bad as rape. In those serious cases the matter can be dealt with in the way I suggested. I think that a little lateral thinking is needed on these matters. But in view of what the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, has said about the possibility of the absence of a quorum I think the best thing for me to do is to beg leave to withdraw this amendment now, reserving the right to return to it at a later stage.

Perhaps I may very briefly raise one matter on Clause 4 (3), which increases the maximum penalty for indecent assault on a woman from two years, or in some cases five years, to a maximum of 10 years. May I say that I entirely agree with that. There can be very serious cases of indecent assault on a woman and it is quite appropriate that the maximum sentences as at present in existence should be regarded as wholly inadequate and should he increased to 10 years.

But as was mentioned on Second Reading, the way that this change is made in subsection (3) has had, I think, a very curious and rather inadvertent result. As many of your Lordships will know, the position in law is that if two 15-year-old reasonably sexually mature youngsters decide to go in for a session of heavy "petting" that is in fact, so far as the boy is concerned, an offence of indecent assault on the girl, because the girl being under the age of 16 is presumed in law to be incapable of giving her consent. What we are therefore providing by this subsection as it stands is that not only in the real cases of indecent assault on a woman but in the ordinary "petting" cases of teenagers there should be a maximum sentence of 10 years' imprisonment. I do not disagree with that in regard to the genuine case of indecent assault, but using even the very worst case test—which I think is a good test of a maximum sentence—I cannot believe that there are any cases of consensual "petting" by teenagers which would warrant a sentence of 10 years' imprisonment.

I note the noble Lord's concern about that matter, I am sure there is a reason behind it. I am afraid I cannot at this moment put m), finger on the reason. But I shall consider what the noble Lord has said. I think that might be the best way of approaching it.

moved Amendment No. 8:

Page 2, line 30, leave out ("word "boy" ") and insert ("words "or boy" ").

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for the detailed drafting proposals. I think we agree and there is nothing between us on the sense or substance of Clause 5. It is simply a matter of grammatical preference. I am content to leave the drafting of Bills to lawyers and for them to decide that Clause 5 is right as it stands and follows the precedent of Section 46 of the Sexual Offences Act of 1956. I do not see anything wrong about what the noble Lord has suggested. However, as we know, what we have in Clause 5 now has worked without difficulty for a long time in earlier legislation on such sexual offences. I hope the noble Lord will agree that we may hold to that, but that nothing is lost if he would agree to withdraw his amendment and we can consider his views at a future time.

Before the noble Lord replies, may I simply amplify what my noble friend has said because the noble Lord, Lord Kilbracken, may not necessarily have in front of him the Sexual Offences Act? What Section 46 of the 1956 Act says is:

"The use in any provision of this Act of the word 'man' without the addition of the word 'boy', or vice versa, shall not prevent the provision applying to any person to whom it would have applied if both words had been used, and similarly with the words 'woman' and `girl'.".

I hope that helps the noble Lord.

I have not looked at the Act which has just been quoted, and I can only say that in my opinion if that wording appears in that Act it is equally wrong there as it is in this Bill because it simply does not make sense to have a clause beginning: A man boy commits an offence. It has to be a man or boy who commits an offence. It is not a very advanced grammatical point; it is absolutely self-evident. I do not think this is a point of such profound legislative significance that I shall trouble your Lordships to walk through the Division Lobbies for or against it. However, I personally am going to say "Content" quite softly when the Question is put.

moved the following amendment:

Page 5, line 4, leave out ("act in accordance with") and insert ("have regard to").

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, has raised an important point which, as he said, has general application, and I shall cover the generality a little later in my remarks. At this point I should say that I am afraid that this is such an important general point that it will take rather longer to answer than the time it took the noble Lord to move this particular amendment.

Having said that, I can well understand anyone concerned with local authority law being concerned about the apparently dictatorial phrase "act in accordance with" in this particular clause. Since it was the Government who redrafted what is now Clause 3 in the Bill, complete with the offending phrase, I think it is appropriate for me to restate our position in some detail, since my speech in Committee appears to have been misunderstood. Clause 3 extends Section 43 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 requiring national park authorities to prepare maps showing not only moor and heath, as in the existing legislation, but also mountain, woodland, down, cliff or foreshore.

Regarding the amendments tabled in another place by the Government, we took the view that it would be more helpful if national park authorities were to focus their attention in this particular context on the more important types of natural and semi-natural landscape and vegetation on which the differing characteristics of the individual parks depend. It would be unfortunate, and possibly counter-productive, if authorities felt obliged to include on their maps virtually all the land, and buildings as well, within the parks, lest the omission of any particular area be regarded as an admission on their part that it was somehow unimportant in conservation terms.

This is precisely why the use of guidelines was decided upon. Of course they are statutory. It is simplistic to say so, but anything that arrives on the statute book is statutory. However, the subject that we now have to consider is: what is the meaning of the word "guidelines" in the Wildlife and Countryside Act as amended by this clause? The Concise Oxford Dictionary gives the meaning of "guideline" as "directing principle". In my view, this clearly indicates the general nature of the word. It would, I feel, be helpful to look at an example in a totally different context. The meaning of "guidance" as used in Section 3(2) of the Civil Aviation Act 1971 was considered at some length in the Laker Airways v. Department of Trade case heard in the Court of Appeal in 1977. The observations of the judges are germane to our consideration of this matter.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, stated:

"So long as the guidance given by the Secretary of State keeps within the due bounds of guidance, the authority is under a duty to follow his guidance. Even so, the authority is allowed some degree of flexibility … So, while it is obliged to follow the guidance, the manner of doing so is for the authority itself. But if the Secretary of State goes beyond the bounds of guidance, he exceeds his powers: and the authority is under no obligation to obey him".

In the same case, Lord Justice Roskill, taking a similar line and making a distinction between the words "guidance and "direction", said:

"guidance is assistance in reaching a decision proffered to him who has to make that decision but that guidance does not compel any particular decision".

I think, perhaps, those are the words for which the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, was asking.

Our amendment linked the scope of the maps to the range of landscape defined as "open country" in Section 59(2) of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, as amended by Section 16(1) of the Countryside Act 1968. This adds to moor and heath, areas of mountain, down, cliff, foreshore and woodlands and, in our view, provides sufficient flexibility to cover the more important features in all the national parks.

More importantly, in this context we considered it desirable to clarify what we believed should be two separate aspects of the consultation process. In our view, the Countryside Commission's main concern should be to advise national park authorities on matters of general principle with a view to achieving, among other things, the sort of uniformity of approach which I think all concerned recognise to be desirable. That implies some form of centralised advisory mechanism in which the commission should play the predominant role. The issue of guidance is the appropriate form for this to take in such circumstances.

It has, however, never been our intention that the Countryside Commission's guidelines should supplant national park authorities' responsibility for the detailed decisions involved in the map making process. Accordingly, the Bill as now before the House provides for national park authorities to prepare and review their maps in line with guidelines issued by the Countryside Commission and prepared in consultation with interested bodies. It also provides for a second stage in the consultation process by requiring national park authorities to seek the views of those bodies which they consider to represent interests concerned with matters affecting their particular park.

This clause also introduces a more relaxed timetable for the map making process than that currently laid down in Section 43 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act. Under that section, the maps of moor and heath had to be prepared within two years of commencement and reviewed at 12-monthly intervals thereafter. The Government took the view, which was supported by national park authorities, the Countryside Commission and the Council for National Parks, that it would be more sensible to set the clock ticking for the two-year period of initial preparation for the new maps from the date when the commission's guidelines are issued, and to provide for five-yearly, rather than annual, reviews in parallel with the statutory arrangements governing the review of national parks plans as laid down in Schedule 17 to the Local Government Act 1972.

The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, which we are now discussing would bear upon only the first stage of the preparations, relieving the national park authorities of the obligation to abide by the guidelines issued by the Countryside Commission, but requiring them instead to "have regard to those guidelines". They do not have to abide by them, but merely have to have regard to them.

Although, as I have said, this amendment would bear upon the process, I do not think that it would actually affect it. That is because, as I made clear at Committee stage, we can rely upon the commission not to issue guidelines which are generally unacceptable to the authorities or subsequently to review them in any way which is generally unacceptable to them. I have previously given an assurance that the Government will discuss the proposed guidelines with the commission before they are issued so that their contents can be checked for their likely acceptability to the authorities.

I hope that in the light of this, the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, will realise that in practice the obligation placed on national park authorities to prepare and review their maps in accordance with the guidelines will not prove to be onerous or jeopardise their freedom to draw up maps which delineate all those areas of open country that they believe are particularly important to conserve.

I can go on and dilate at great length on comparable instances of non-governmental organisations issuing guidelines in the same kind of form, but I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, will agree that, in the light of the explanation and the assurances I have already given, his amendment in this particular case and more generally is unnecessary.

I do not think that I have ever had such a comprehensive answer to any amendment I have moved. I am deeply grateful for the great industry that has gone into the preparation of it. I was raising a purely general point and I was using this clause simply as a peg on which to hang it. I commend to the Minister for light reading over the week-end our debates upon statutory provisions versus guidelines during the passage of the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill a short time ago. With those few words, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.