asked Her Majesty's Government:

When they expect the National Health Service Executive and the General Medical Council to complete their investigations into Dr Rita Pal's dossier of cases of abuse of elderly patients in National Health Service hospitals overdosed with diamorphine.

My Lords, these allegations necessitate the tracing of patients' notes in order to verify the claims made by Dr Pal. Although this may take some months to complete, I can assure my noble friend that these allegations are being dealt with very seriously.

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. Is he aware that, while they are deeply shocking, Dr Pal's eye-witness accounts of the killing of elderly patients in NHS hospitals by overdosing them with diamorphine, a class-A drug more commonly known as heroin, are not the only, nor even the most easily corroborated, cases of patients being so abused for the stated purpose of easing the bed shortage? When does he expect to see the reports of the two investigations? And can we be assured that, if tough action is called for to bring to account those responsible, then tough action there will be?

My Lords, I wish to make it clear to the House that these are allegations and stand to he investigated by the GMC. I cannot give my noble friend a date for the conclusion of those investigations for the reason mentioned in my first Answer, but I can assure him and the House that the Government are committed to the highest possible standards of care in the NHS for older people. That is why we have established a national service framework, which will report later in the year.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that allegations such as these demonstrate the need to have proper statutory protection for older people and that the national service framework, which will be purely voluntary, will be inadequate to protect those older people?

No, my Lords, I do not agree with that. These are allegations. We have to be very cautious before we make statements alleging that these things are happening until the facts have been thoroughly investigated. National service frameworks are an essential component of ensuring high-quality care in the future. We are committed not just to developing national service frameworks but to ensuring that they are published and agreeing that they will be implemented.

My Lords, is it not the case that it is not only in National Health Service hospitals that elderly patients are alleged to have been murdered by diamorphine injection? Is it not the case that the police are pursuing a number of allegations of this kind? Do the GMC and the NHS Executive involve themselves with research outside NHS hospitals or is that the responsibility solely of the police?

My Lords, the GMC is concerned with the professional competence of individual doctors. The Department of Health and the NHS Executive are directly concerned with the performance of the National Health Service. If the noble Baroness is referring to care homes, the Care Standards Bill, which has already passed through your Lordships' House, is designed to ensure a high and consistent standard of inspection, including issues to do with the quality of treatment provided in those establishments.

My Lords, can the Minister assure the House that, whatever the outcome of these investigations and whatever measures may need to be taken to prevent the abuse of diamorphine in elderly patients, nothing will be done to prejudice or-compromise the proper and generous administration of diamorphine in the treatment of terminally ill patients? There is a need to spread the good practices of the hospice movement more widely among the medical profession.

My Lords, the point made by the right reverend Prelate is particularly apposite. Diamorphine is a drug that is legitimately used to treat those who are terminally ill. It is important that we adopt a measured approach to what sometimes can be very scurrilous allegations. In the end, the procedures we are putting in place—in particular as regards the development of the national service framework—will ensure that we achieve a consistent and high quality service for older people. It is important that we await the results of the GMC investigation into this matter before we become too embroiled in allegations which, to be frank, are not proven.

My Lords, following on from the intervention of the right reverend Prelate, with which I wholeheartedly agree, can the Minister say whether he will ask the National Institute for Clinical Excellence to look into the recommended dosages, uses and so forth for diamorphine?

My Lords, a long list of investigations has been referred to the National Institute for Clinical Excellence. As regards future referrals, we shall of course keep this under constant review. Full consideration will be given to suggestions such as that just put forward by the noble Baroness.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that too many allegations have been made about withdrawal of treatment for this to be left to the GMC? The Government should set up an inquiry into every hospital trust to ensure that all practices in this area are above board. Is he further aware that this particular case arose because the woman doctor concerned was a whistle blower? She was able to blow the whistle only because she was leaving the profession. What message can the Government send to future whistle blowers to reassure them that they will be protected when they feel the need to speak out?

My Lords, I believe that my noble friend knows that firm procedures and guidelines are already in place to enable staff to raise concerns about aspects of patient care. We expect all NHS trusts to ensure that those guidelines and procedures operate effectively. I am of course aware of concerns in this area. However, I believe that the House also needs to be assured that when allegations are made, they are considered as carefully as possible. That is why this matter has been sent to the General Medical Council.

In general, the Government are committed to high quality care for older people. In terms of safeguards, we have introduced a new system of risk assessment called "controlled assurance" which will match clinical governance to medicines management and ensure that a continuing assessment is set up to monitor prescribing in NHS hospitals. I believe that that is the approach that will produce results as quickly as possible, rather than a system of separate inquiries along the lines mentioned by my noble friend.

My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that this subject forms part of a general campaign to promote the notion that the elderly are using up all the resources of the NHS? However, does the Minister agree with Professor Richard Himsworth, of Cambridge, who clearly demonstrated that it is not the elderly who are burning up NHS resources but rather the dying? It is only that it so happens that most people are old when they die. However, if they die in their teens or twenties they burn up just as much in the way of resources.

My Lords, I do not disagree with that comment. We should not ever begrudge the resources used by the NHS in providing support and care for older people. However, it is essential to ensure that a consistent and high quality standard of service is maintained throughout the NHS. That is what the national service framework for older people will enable us to provide.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

What was the outcome of the workshop on research on organophosphates held on 28th March.

My Lords, this broadly based scientific workshop was set up to assist the development of a targeted research programme, taking forward the recommendations of the Committee on Toxicity and other research questions identified in the workshop. It was an extremely productive day, with useful input from all those who attended. The record of the proceedings has now been finalised and is being made public. It is being published on the MAFF, Department of Health and HSE websites and copies are being sent to all participants. Copies have also been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

My Lords, first, perhaps I may thank the Minister for organising the workshop. The noble Baroness will know that for many years I have been asking for just such a workshop. Perhaps I may also express my gratitude to her for the help that she has given to OP sufferers.

Can the Minister tell the House whether extra research will be undertaken as a result of this workshop? Furthermore, will that research concentrate in particular on the synergistic effects of using combinations of organophosphates, either two together, with synthetic pyrethroids or with phenols? I understand that blood tests can be undertaken at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee to see whether antibodies can be made to these. Furthermore, can she encourage the development of the unit at the Middlesex Hospital which is investigating the neurological effects?

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Countess for her remarks. She will be aware that the Committee on Toxicity recommended that research be undertaken into a number of specified areas. The reason for holding the workshop was in order to investigate whether it was important to look into additional, broader areas. We are building up the research requirements document which will be published and will call for bids by open competition to address research questions. We hope to be able to publish that document before the summer break. I shall ensure that the issues pointed out by the noble Countess—I appreciate that she has identified certain specific areas—will be taken into account when we come to draw up that research requirements document. Equally, I shall look into the issues surrounding support for particular services also mentioned by the noble Countess.

My Lords, whatever is the outcome of any new research, does the noble Baroness accept that, in effect, her ministry forced the use of organophosphates for 10 years and then proved astoundingly complacent about initiating investigations into the misery that that use has caused?

My Lords, I do not accept the noble Lord's suggestion that the Government have been complacent in any way. We have put more effort into investigating OPs than I believe has ever been done before. The Committee on Toxicity was asked to take a fresh and completely independent look at the toxicity of OPs. On the basis of its results, not only have we undertaken the extra work necessary but we have taken regulatory action in order to withdraw OP sheep dips from the market while their containers are not considered safe by the VPC. Such action has not been universally welcomed but has been taken on the advice of the regulatory authority.

My Lords, will the Minister give more information as regards the outcome of the meeting that was held on 28th March? My understanding is that a great deal of evidence came out of that meeting and the Minister has suggested that research will be undertaken. Will she say more about the timing and the programme? She said that the report will be published in the summer. How soon will the suggestions in the report be followed up?

My Lords, I am not certain that new evidence was presented at the workshop. It was a matter of bringing together people who had worked in fields slightly peripheral to the mainstream investigations into OPs. It has been of particular concern to sufferers that we should investigate the database of people who believe that they are suffering from the effects of OPs. We are funding a study to do just that and the work should get under way shortly, before the research requirements document to which I alluded is published. When I attended the workshop, one of the main areas of concern related to the potential effects on children and foetuses in the womb. We need to look carefully at whether that matter should be included in research requirements.

My Lords, did the workshop consider rumours that French wine barrels are treated with organophosphates?

Not while I was there, my Lords. Having looked briefly at the report published today, I have not seen a reference to the issue. If it is of concern to my noble friend, I shall certainly investigate whether it should be examined in more detail.

My Lords, the Minister spoke of the Government withdrawing organophosphates from sheep dip because of inadequate containers. Will she indicate when there will be containers that the Government will approve?

My Lords, the question is when the industry will produce containers that are considered by the Veterinary Products Committee to be safe for use. I understand that several suggestions for new container design are currently being examined by the committee and that it hopes to give advice to the licensing authorities next month.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether they will either take powers to reduce the number of companies now at liberty to dig holes in the road or advise the chairmen and chief executives of those companies how they might limit the inconvenience to the public.

My Lords, the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991 imposes a duty on street authorities to co-ordinate works, and the Government welcome the launch of the Central London Partnership earlier this month. They hope that it will be successful and, if successful, that it will be extended more widely. The Government also intend to implement Section 74 of the Act to allow utilities to be charged for occupying the road longer than an agreed period.

The Government are willing to look at new measures to reduce disruption but do not intend to reduce the number of companies with the right to dig new holes in the road as they believe that effective competition is the best way to increase choice, promote enterprise and bring down prices for consumers.

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will accept my assurance that, when I tabled this Question, I had no idea that Thames Water, egged on by one of the noble Lord's right honourable friends, would select today to announce that it is to dig 3,000 new holes in London's roads this year. Will the noble Lord wrack his brains as to whether there is any other capital city in the world where this kind of mess would be tolerated? Will the noble Lord—or perhaps his noble friend on the Front Bench—explain why people who make a filthy nuisance of themselves on the roads do not pay for the privilege, while the rest of us do? I am sorry that the Government Chief Whip is no longer in his place. Perhaps the noble Lord will have a word with him and urge him to give the excellent Bill that I introduced a week or so ago a fair wind. Then these pestilential people will be paying £1,000 per day for a very small section of road.

My Lords, I am happy to accept that it is entirely a coincidence that the issue of digging holes for water repairs has been raised today. It stems from the suggestion by the water regulator that the major leakages that are taking place should be repaired properly. That is the reason why Thames Water has suggested that it will have to produce more holes. It is perfectly reasonable to suggest that Thames Water should have proper regard to the number of holes it digs in roads but at the same time properly conserve water. Those are two objectives that it should be set, and it should be able to abide by both.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that there has been considerable disruption to the streets around Victoria for several weeks, with pneumatic drills, noise and dirt, and traffic lights put out of order at crossings, presenting a danger to pedestrians? What is the purpose of it all? This is not for water—there must be some other reason. Who gave these companies permission, and what is it for?

My Lords, I cannot comment on individual cases and particular holes. My area of responsibility is the licensing of telecommunications companies, to which the Question relates. I would point out that the major initiative taken by the street authorities in the Central London Partnership is exactly the kind of initiative that we want to see in order to make certain that work of this kind is properly co-ordinated. Most people accept that much of this work has to be done. We all want to see it properly co-ordinated so that when a street is blocked and people try to find another route they do not also find that road blocked. It requires coordination. I welcome the fact that the Central London Partnership is attempting a major initiative to co-ordinate the work.

My Lords, if we have lane rental for road repairs, why can we not have it for disrepairs?

My Lords, lane rental is for disrepairs/repairs of this kind. That is the point. We shall have to continue to repair roads. The major issue is the attempt to co-ordinate the work so as to minimise inconvenience to road users.

My Lords, will the noble Lord agree that his original Answer gave the impression that he felt that the more competition there was in digging holes, the better it would be for London and other major cities? I invite him to withdraw that impression. More seriously, will the Minister assure the House that when he meets the captains of this particular industry he will try to get them interested in this problem, if only for the sake of public relations? Only when there is a direction from the top will there be a country-wide approach to the problem.

My Lords, if I in any way gave the impression that telecommunications companies were there to compete in digging holes, I withdraw that immediately. Their primary function is to provide telecommunications services. That is why this matter is the responsibility of the DTI. The DTI is in discussion with telecommunications companies to make certain that we try to achieve best practice in this regard and to raise performance in what is an intolerable situation for many road users.

My Lords, does the Minister believe that it is beyond the wit of man to invent a machine that can dig a narrow channel, lay a cable and backfill all in one go, with small road works at junctions? Will the Government consider offering a prize to an entrepreneur who can invent such a machine?

My Lords, if that would in any way reduce the number of questions raised on holes, personally I would offer such a prize.

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that, although much of the existing dislocation has been caused by the activities of water companies, by and large the field goes much wider? In view of the Minister's Answers to previous Questions on this subject, does he agree that the Department of Trade and Industry has issued open licences to many of those who now dig up the roads? Do the Government have any powers either to revoke those licences or enable the people of London to exert their will in this matter?

My Lords, as I have said in the past, 86 companies have the right under telecommunications licences to carry out work which is a major cause of holes in roads. This is part of a major programme to install the infrastructure that we need for the 21st century. We do not intend to reduce the number of licences because we believe that this is an essential piece of infrastructure. Within the terms of the Act and European legislation we must adopt a fair policy towards all companies.

My Lords, a few weeks ago in a debate initiated by my noble friend, the Minister announced that Section 74 of the New Roads and Street Works Act would be implemented. Can the noble Lord tell the House what progress has been made in that regard? Have the necessary orders been drafted and, if so, when will they be laid before the House?

My Lords, the regulations are being drafted. It will take a considerable time as this is a complicated matter. However, we hope to achieve our aim before the end of the year.

My Lords, will the Minister contact the chairmen of the companies concerned and tell them what pests they are? They give the appearance of lacking the manners or wit to understand the annoyance they cause. Surely, the Government should give them a friendly prod.

My Lords, we are perfectly aware of the situation. The question is how to devise a course of action which will improve the situation rather than simply expressing aggravation about it.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

How they plan to stimulate public awareness of, and involvement with, the work of the House of Lords.

My Lords, overall this is an area which is the responsibility of the House itself, not Her Majesty's Government. However, I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, is himself well placed to offer ideas on, and to contribute to, the wider understanding of the work of the House of Lords. There are many other noble Lords in all parts of the House—obviously, it would be invidious to name them—who are equally successful in promoting public awareness. I would be encouraged if the House was accurately judged as an important part of the legislature and Peers as hardworking Members of Parliament, rather than, as is sometimes the case, colourful characters in a bizarre comic opera. But, as always, it is the responsibility of Peers themselves, individually or collectively, to achieve that.

My Lords, I am grateful to the Leader of the House for her reply. Does the noble Baroness agree that the great British public is in a state of almost complete ignorance about what is said and done in this place and that that is an evidently self-defeating state of affairs, as recent research and polling data make clear? Is the Leader of the House also aware that, as far as I have been able to assess, we spend less than one penny per head on public information and education about the entire workings of this place? Does the noble Baroness agree that that is scandalously inadequate and, compared with other legislatures, very backward?

My Lords, as I am sure the noble Lord is aware, since the autumn of 1996 the House has had a dedicated information officer who does a very good job of work. It has also had a dedicated inquiry service since 1998. I refer the noble Lord to his helpful contribution to the debate in this House on 10th May on the workings of the House of Lords in which he said that the Information Office carried out its work "brilliantly". I suggest that we are fairly well served at the moment.

My Lords, can I tempt the Leader of the House to agree with me that the best way that noble Lords can stimulate involvement in and public awareness and approval of this House is by actions such as voting against the Government on closed lists for European elections, student fees, free post in London mayoral elections and Section 28? Will the noble Baroness encourage the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, not to "cosy up'. to new Labour too much but occasionally to join us in the coming months to increase public approval of your Lordships' House by similar defeats of the Government?

My Lords, I certainly do not intend to fall to the noble Lord's temptation to intervene in the relationship between the Conservative Opposition and the Liberal Democrat Benches. I point out to the noble Lord that the dedicated information service to which I referred in my Answer to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, had its busiest day on 11th November 1999 when this House passed the House of Lords Act.

My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that the pre-legislative scrutiny by committees in the Scottish Parliament has proved very popular in engaging both the public and civic organisations? Since the Leader of the House made a speech in this House 10 days ago about the possibility of dealing with more legislation by way of committees and electronic voting, will she come to Scotland to see these methods working very successfully in practice?

My Lords, I always welcome any opportunity to visit Scotland. As I have not yet had an opportunity to see the Scottish Parliament in action that is a particularly attractive invitation. Several points were raised in our useful debate on the workings of the House of Lords on 10th May which referred to some of the very good practices in the Scottish Parliament. That is an attractive invitation.

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that a good way to inform the public about what we are and what we do is by each Peer having a website to tell the public about the work of the House and the interests and expertise of noble Lords? Does my noble friend agree that that would provide some means of communication with the public?

My Lords, I very much welcome my noble friend's energy in this regard. It is up to individual Peers to create the appropriate impression of their work in your Lordships' House. As I understand it, the website of the House of Lords is being redesigned to make it more effective and easier to manage for users both in the House and outside. I look forward to seeing the extent of that redesign.

My Lords, can the Leader of the House tell noble Lords how many hits the website has had over, say, the past three months and how high up the search engines it is, since those are the two factors which really matter?

My Lords, I do not have the precise figures broken down in that way. The only information I have, which I believe covers both the dedicated call line and website hits, is that inquiries are running at about 2,500 to 3,000 a month. If I can obtain the more detailed information that the noble Lord requests I shall write to him.

moved Amendment No. 1:

Page 2. line 33, leave out ("aged sixteen or seventeen") and insert ("between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one").

The noble Earl said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 1, I speak also to all the other amendments in my name. As we reach the final stages of this short but important Bill there is one issue above all others that we have debated at earlier stages which remains to be resolved. I refer to the question of whether the new duty on local authorities to assess and meet the needs of eligible young people should extend beyond the limited period allowed for on the face of the Bill. The case for extending this duty beyond a care leaver's 18th birthday up to and including the age of 21 is, I believe, overwhelming. It is a case that was strongly recommended by Sir William Utting in his report on the review of safeguards for children living away from home and was endorsed wholeheartedly by the Select Committee on Health in another place.

Nor is there any doubt among the many voluntary organisations working in the care system and assisting care leavers that to limit the scope of the new duty to the two years immediately following a young person's discharge from care would be profoundly shortsighted. As noble Lords from all sides of the Chamber argued in Committee, we can see from examples of work done in various parts of the country how cost-effective it is to provide good quality support to care leavers throughout their first four or five years of independent living. The evidence can be seen in lower rates of offending, acquiring skills for life, maintaining a home, and building that essential quality of self-esteem. By contrast the statistics for those care leavers who are not so fortunate in terms of aftercare tell a very different and depressing story.

I am certain that the Minister needs no persuading on the merits of these arguments. Indeed, it is clear from all that he has said that the issue for the Government is not whether extended support should be given to care leavers, but when. That issue depends on the availability of resources. Those of us who have worked in government departments will know how easy it is for others outside government to make demands on the budget when the reality for Ministers is a good deal more complex and difficult. Quite often, chief among those difficulties is the process of obtaining agreement from the Treasury.

However, one significant thing has happened since we first began debating the Bill last December and since we last debated it on Report; namely, the pledge from Ministers of very substantial additional resources for the health budget with effect from next year. In the light of that announcement, is the Minister able to say anything more on funding? In making that request, my hopes are high. A number of amendments, grouped with my amendment, have been tabled by the Government on the issue of extended support. Without wishing to pre-empt the Minister's remarks, I believe that I am right in interpreting the amendments as a significant move by the Government in the direction of the position that I and other noble Lords have been asking them to take. I am grateful to the Minister for his courtesy in letting me have the text of these amendments on Friday and for the helpful explanatory letter which accompanied them.

If I have understood the government amendments correctly, they represent very good news indeed. They appear to fulfil the undertaking made by the Minister in Committee on providing extended support for care leavers for training, education and employment. Equally, they appear also to encompass the continuing support proposed in my amendments. I should be grateful if the Minister could answer two questions. First, if the government amendments are accepted, the new duties to be placed on local authorities will apply to care leavers, or "former relevant children" as they are termed, up to the age of 21. Can the Minister say whether that means until the child or young person reaches the age of 22 or, as I slightly fear that it means, up to but not beyond his or her 21st birthday?

Secondly, I am sure that it will be of immense interest to the House if the Minister can now say when the Government propose to bring the new provisions into effect. The noble Lord may be unable to be too forthcoming. I am reminded of Sir William Utting's words in his report. He believed, and still does I trust, that if there is a time to make these changes, it is now or as soon as possible. I look forward to hearing from the Minister and other noble Lords. I beg to move.

My Lords, the aim of the amendment—it was put forward in Committee and on Report—is to ensure that local authorities are under a duty to meet the continuing assessed needs of young people up to the age of 21 who have previously been in care. This would provide a safety net for all those young people who leave care and get into difficulties later. The view of all sides of the Chamber in Committee and on Report was that young people leaving care have to cope with the challenges and responsibilities of major changes in their lives at a far earlier stage than other young people. Yet they face additional problems purely as a result of having been in care.

It cannot be right that young people in care must go to great lengths to obtain the opportunities that other young people take for granted. It cannot be right that children and young people leaving care have to fight for Financial and practical assistance to stay on a course, in a job, or in a home where they feel secure and happy. I am glad to say that the amendment was supported by the Association of Directors of Social Services.

On 10th February in the debate in Grand Committee, and on 9th March on Report, the Minister expressed his agreement with the principle of the need to extend the proposed new duty to care leavers up to the age of 21. He said that the Government were committed to doing that as soon as possible. However, the problem as he expressed it was essentially one of timing On these Benches, although we understood the timing difficulties faced by the Government, and the fact that the Comprehensive Spending Review round two had not yet pronounced, we were firmly of the view that the duty should be put on the face of the Bill. A powerful moral and practical case for pressing ahead was made by Sir William Utting in the House of Lords at a meeting in January. He concluded:

"A better time for pressing ahead is unlikely to occur. If it is not done now, can it ever be done?"

We are delighted on these Benches, therefore, that after consideration the Minister has decided to accept the arguments put forward on all sides of the House. I should like to join the noble Earl, Lord Howe, in thanking the Minister for his courtesy in writing to me on Friday announcing that decision. I pay tribute at this stage to the consortium of voluntary organisations working with looked-after children led by First Key which campaigned so effectively and gave us such valuable support in arguing the case.

I recognise that much of the efficacy of the amendment tabled by the Minister will depend on the appointed date chosen. I hope that the Minister's influence, which has proved so considerable to date, will extend to ensuring an earlier appointed day. Guidance, however, on when that appointed day will be would be much appreciated. I look forward to hearing from the Minister.

My Lords, I support the amendment. Many young people who have been in care or are coming out of care are disabled or have learning difficulties, and the process therefore takes much longer. It is an important matter.

I congratulate the Minister on his hard work on, and interest in, the Bill. I was surprised that more noble Lords did not take sufficient interest in the Bill. It is exceedingly important. If one can prevent people being sucked into a life of crime, it is well worth while. That is of great importance to the families, the young people and to the country because it saves money.

My Lords, I support the amendment and put forward one further argument. We have discussed the way in which young people have been let down before they arrived in care and while in care. The Government's innovations—the young person's assistant and the pathway plan—will give those young people the additional support they need to make a go of life. However, if the young person's assistant does not have the authority to require local authorities to provide the necessary facilities agreed between the young person and his assistant, there is the danger that the trust between the young person and his adviser will be lost. We have talked often of the danger of estrangement. It is an important consideration. I, too, welcome the happy news of the Government's concession with regard to training and education.

My Lords, I welcome the success and my congratulations on the cross-party achievement. We have all worked together to make the Bill more successful. I have worked with children in care—indeed, many years ago I worked in a residential home—and this Bill is the most important piece of legislation I have participated in since my introduction two years ago. We know that the passing of the Bill will mean something real to a group of young people who are most disadvantaged and in need of support. I congratulate the Minister and thank him for all his efforts on our behalf.

My Lords, it is tempting to quit while we are ahead in the mutual congratulations. It is a reflection on our serious and considered debates on the Bill throughout its stages in this House. It is also about our united determination to do much better for looked-after children and looked-after children who have left care.

The stark statistics which I quoted at Second Reading resulted in our discussions on the amendments: 75 per cent of young people leaving care have no educational qualifications; up to 50 per cent are unemployed; and up to 20 per cent experience some form of homelessness within two years of leaving care. Such statistics make me believe that the Bill will enable us to provide the support that has been so sadly lacking in so many parts of the country for these young people.

The development of a much enhanced service and the legislation that is before us rests on current good practice within the system. It is as well also to acknowledge the work of some local authorities in providing effective support.

The noble Earl, Lord Howe, said that it is "when" and not "if". That takes us to the substance of what is proposed: ensuring that young care leavers receive the support they need. The Government's amendments provide a far-reaching and coherent package for support for these young people. In beginning my remarks I apologise to your Lordships for the lateness in their tabling. However, given their welcome, I am sure that I can ask indulgence.

There is no doubt that support for care leavers aged 18 and over has aroused considerable passion and debate. Noble Lords from all sides of the House have made the point that young people from a normal family background can usually expect to be able to ask for help and support from their parents into their 20s and in some cases even longer. Noble Lords have made the point that young people leaving care have at least the same need for such continuing support. I agree wholeheartedly.

The amendments are about making sure that care leavers receive the support they need as young adults. Amendment No. 5 removes any ambiguity about the status of a young person who is an eligible child and leaves care at 18. Such a young person skips, as it were, the status of relevant child, as relevant children are those who leave care at 16 and 17, qualifying for the new arrangements. It might therefore seem that such a young person would not qualify for support after 18, but this amendment makes it quite plain that they are to receive these continuing duties from their responsible authority.

In addition, through these amendments we have brought together all the provisions for continuing support for former relevant children, so that they will sit as a single package at new Section 22C rather than being scattered through the Bill. I believe that that approach has a number of benefits. First, it makes this part of the Bill a good deal clearer. As we have debated the legislation, we have all had to wrestle with the fact that it is complex. We have tried to balance concision against repetition. This new presentation introduces some repetition, but I hope that your Lordships will agree that it is a price worth paying for the clarity it offers.

Amendments Nos. 3, 6 to 10 and 13 to 15 are all drafting amendments, mainly consequential on grouping all these duties together in new Section 23C. Finally, Amendment 11, at subsection (5), introduces new duties whereby local authorities must provide assistance to their former relevant children.

We have agreed that we would want to see those duties introduced as soon as possible, but we have so far failed to agree how they should appear in the Bill. The Government's position continues to be that implementation will occur when resources permit and at levels which resources permit, with differential commencements if necessary. In laying the amendment, I must again stress that we cannot anticipate the outcome of the spending review. It would therefore fall to health Ministers to defer implementation or to meet any costs arising from the amendments by reprioritisation within the Department of Health allocation in the event that the spending review did not award sufficient funds for this purpose.

Given that position, which will not come as a surprise to noble Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Laming, offered us a way through our impasse when he spoke in Committee. He pointed out that it is not uncommon for Bills to be passed without a final commitment to a timetable for implementation either for all or part of the Bill. It remains a matter for government to decide when to commence any of the Bill's provisions.

We have listened carefully to the arguments which noble Lords have made repeatedly throughout debates on the issue. Noble Lords are rightly concerned that there should be no shred of ambiguity about the Government's commitment to these young care leavers to ensure that they receive the support which will enable them to live fulfilled and productive lives as full members of society. That is why we have decided that the new duties should appear on the face of the Bill to be implemented as soon as we have secured the resources to support them.

The amendment to new Section 23C(5)(a) imposes a new duty on a responsible authority to assist a former relevant child up to the age of 21 with the expenses associated with employment. I say to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, that that means on the person's 21st birthday. The amendment at new Section 23C(5)(b) imposes a new duty on a responsible authority to assist a former relevant child with the expenses associated with education or training. In this case, the duty applies until the end of the care leaver's agreed programme of education or training, even if that takes him past the age of 21. This is another place where this approach offers more than was before us previously.

The amendment at new Section 23C(5)(c) imposes a new duty on local authorities to provide general assistance to care leavers aged 18 to 21 if their welfare requires it. That assistance can be in kind or, if appropriate, in cash. As ever, the key mechanism for this is the pathway plan. A young person will always keep his pathway plan until he is 21 and it will continue to be reviewed and revised until then.

However, if the local authority continues to assist someone in education or training, new Section 23C(8)(b) ensures that he will keep his personal adviser and his personal plan, which will continue to be reviewed and revised until that support comes to an end. So it is possible to envisage a case where someone comes very late indeed to education, starts his GCSEs just before the age of 21 and is assisted by the local authority through a complete course of education to degree level or even beyond. That meets an important point which was raised in Committee.

The amendment at new Section 23C(9) requires the authority to disregard any gaps in attendance for reasons such as illness so long as the young person resumes the course as soon as possible. New Section 23C(10) obliges the responsible authority to provide vacation accommodation to young people whom they are assisting with higher education, should they need it.

I hope that noble Lords will agree that this package of support is a significant step forward for young people aged 18 and over who have left care. It treats them as adults operating in the adult world, but it provides support for them while they find their feet. It seems to me to be very much a feature of the Bill that support and assistance will be tailored to young people's individual needs and circumstances. Therefore, the provisions mirror much more closely what a young person could expect from his family.

I believe also that the provisions for support through education and training should encourage more young people to take up those opportunities and so improve their chances of a rewarding career. No longer will we have a situation in which as many as 75 per cent of young people who leave care have no educational qualifications. I trust that noble Lords will support the amendments.

My Lords, I should like to thank the Minister for sending me the amendments at the weekend. I was most grateful and I congratulate him. I do not know whether the lateness of the amendments was a sign that he had to fight hard in the department to get them. However, he has done extremely well. We are very pleased and grateful to him.

I am glad that he said what he did about those who enter education rather late. They may not have finished by the time they reach 18 or 21 but they will continue to receive some help and advice, perhaps by means of accommodation or cash. However, I believe that altogether it represents a very happy outcome for the Bill and, again, I congratulate the Minister. I hope that it will not be too long before it can be implemented, and I hope that he will continue to fight for that.

My Lords, perhaps I may remind the House that at Third Reading only the mover of the amendment should speak after the Minister. However, in the general atmosphere of good will that prevails, perhaps we shall ignore that.

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord. I much regret that, due to other duties in the House, I have not been able to take part in the Bill before now. I have one specific question to which I should be most grateful for an answer. That question arose because of experience that I have had in connection with children's committees at local authority level. I have known of occasions when children who leave care have been allocated a flat but have not had the slightest idea how to shop, cook or do anything connected with looking after themselves in that flat. Do the amendment that we are now discussing (which I have been following carefully) and other amendments deal with that point?

My Lords, I believe that the noble Baroness has made a very important point. The whole purpose of the Bill as it stands before your Lordships' House is to ensure that a pathway plan and young person's adviser provide an infrastructure of support which will not allow a young person simply to be placed in accommodation or elsewhere and left to fend for themselves. The purpose of the pathway plan and the advice from the young person's adviser is to enable young people more easily to cope in those circumstances. I believe that the noble Baroness has raised a most important issue.

My Lords, I noticed the Chief Whip's eye on me and I shall be brief. I wish to ask a very short question. During the course of the Bill, I noticed with interest that the Minister talked of cash being available in exceptional circumstances. However, just now he referred to "appropriate circumstances". They are not the same. The words "appropriate circumstances" provide a wider definition. I was about to question the Minister as to whether "exceptional circumstances" are, indeed, wide enough.

At First Reading I raised a question, which I believe my noble friend has just amplified, with regard to the necessity for young people to be able to budget and to be taught to budget. I believe we agreed that cash would be available. I noticed that in both new Section 24C and now in the new Section 11 it will be available in "exceptional" circumstances. I wonder whether that is too tightly framed.

My Lords, I want to raise two points. When we debated this matter at Second Reading and in Committee, I believe that we agreed that part of the whole package of measures which arise from this legislation is to enable young people to go out into the world with the ability to survive with support that can be given through the young person's adviser and through other mechanisms contained in the Bill.

The question in relation to resources is important. One of the main purposes of the Bill is to remove the perverse incentives which encourage local authorities to encourage young people to leave care as soon as possible because those young people are eligible to receive benefits and the bill does not then fall on the local authority. Importantly for 16 and 17 year-olds, the Bill changes the circumstances so that a ring-fenced budget will enable a local authority to provide proper support, including, of course, issues in relation to the handling of resources.

I believe that the point raised by the noble Baroness relates to people aged 18 and over who become eligible for benefits. Therefore, the circumstances in which additional assistance may need to be given in cash would be exceptional. I hope that I have clarified that point.

My Lords, as always, the Minister has been very clear and helpful in speaking to his amendments. I shall not spoil the mood of general rejoicing by qualifying my thanks to him in any way. It was not realistic to expect that a commencement date for the new provisions would appear on the face of the Bill; nor, indeed, was I seeking that. It must be enough for us to place our trust in the Minister's assurances given today about the commitment that exists in his department on the importance of these matters.

This has been a most rewarding Bill in which to take part, not simply for the subject matter which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, rightly said, is of great importance, but for the way in which the Minister personally has listened and responded to the concerns expressed by noble Lords throughout the Bill's stages. I thank him for that. I believe that the House has done its work well and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

moved Amendment No. 3:

Page 3, line 18, leave out ("subsection (8) or under section 24A or 24B") and insert ("this Part").

On Question, amendment agreed to.

moved Amendments Nos. 5 to 11:

Page 4, line 19, leave out from ("the") to end of line 25 and insert ("duties provided for in this section towards—

(a) a person who has been a relevant child for the purposes of section 23A (and would be one if he were under eighteen), and in relation to whom they were the last responsible authority; and

(b) a person who was being looked after by them when he attained the age of eighteen, and immediately before ceasing to be looked after was an eligible child,

and in this section such a person is referred to as a "former relevant child.").

Page 4. leave out lines 26 to 29.

Page 4, line 30, leave out ("The first duty is") and insert ("It is the duty of the local a uthority").

Page 4, line 31, leave out ("him") and insert ("a former relevant child").

Page 4, line 34, leave out ("The other duties are") and insert ("It is the duty of the local authority").

Page 4. line 36, leave out ("him") and insert ("a former relevant child").

Page 4, line 38, at end insert—

("(5) It is the duty of the local authority to give a former relevant child—

(a) assistance of the kind referred to in section 24B(1). to the extent that his welfare requires it;

(b) assistance of the kind referred to in section 24B(2), to the extent that his welfare and his educational or training needs require it;

(c) other assistance, to the extent that his welfare requires it.

(6) The assistance given under subsection (5)(c) may be in kind or, in exceptional circumstances, in cash.

(7) Subject to subsection (8), the duties set out in subsections (3), (4) and (5) subsist until the former relevant child reaches the age of twenty-one.

(8) If the former relevant child's pathway plan sets out a programme of education or training which extends beyond his twenty-first birthday—

(a) the duty set out in subsection (5)(b) continues to subsist for so long as the former relevant child continues to pursue that programme; and

(b) the duties set out in subsections (3) and (4) continue to subsist concurrently with that duty.

(9) For the purposes of subsection (8)(a) there shall be disregarded any interruption in a former relevant child's pursuance of a programme of education or training if the local authority are satisfied that he will resume it as soon as is reasonably practicable.

(10) Section 24B(5) applies in relation to a person being given assistance under subsection (5)(b) as it applies in relation to a person to whom section 24B(3) applies.

(11) Subsections (7) to (9) of section 17 apply in relation to assistance given under this section as they apply in relation to assistance given under that section.".").

On Question, amendments agreed to.

Clause 3 [Personal advisers and pathway plans]:

moved Amendment No. 12:

Page 5, leave out lines 4 to 7 and insert—

("(2) Personal advisers appointed under or by virtue of this Part shall (in addition to any other functions) have such functions as the Secretary of State prescribes.").

The noble Lord said: My Lords, on previous occasions many noble Lords have recognised the central importance of the personal adviser to the success of the new arrangements for young people in and leaving care. On Report I stated that the Government intended to bring forward an amendment at Third Reading to allow for greater clarity as to the functions of the personal adviser and his or her relationship with the local authority. That is the purpose of the amendment before us.

The amendment makes clear that regulations provided for at new Section 23D may set out the functions of the personal adviser in respect of all the groups of children and young people who may be entitled to one. That means eligible children, relevant children, former relevant children and any other group of young people for whom the Secretary of State prescribes a personal adviser.

This amendment is straightforward. It seeks to provide greater clarity as to the functions of the personal adviser and the regulations that the Government will be putting in place to prescribe those functions. I beg to move.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

moved Amendments Nos. 13 and 14:

Page 5. line 14. leave out from ("under") to end of line 15 and insert ("this Part, both while they are looking after him and later:").

Page 5. line 21, leave out ("section 23B(8), 24A or 24B") and insert ("this Part").

On Question, amendments agreed to.

Clause 4 [Advice and assistance for certain children and young persons aged 16 or over]:

moved Amendment No. 15:

Page 6,1ine 45, leave out from ("duty") to ("empowered") in line I on page 7 and insert (", or are").

On Question, amendment agreed to.

Clause 6 [Exclusion from benefits]:

moved Amendment No. 17:

Page 10, line 16, leave out ("which also extends") and insert ("and this section, which also extend").

The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is a technical amendment to make clear that the ancillary provisions of Clause 8 also extend to Scotland. Noble Lords will be aware that the intention is that Clause 6 in respect of welfare benefits will not be commenced in Scotland until there is Scottish legislation in place to provide support for care leavers. This amendment will allow Clause 6 to be commenced in Scotland by order at the appropriate time. I beg to move.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

An amendment (privilege) made.

I beg to move that the Bill do now pass.

Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(Lord Hunt of Kings Heath.)

On Question, Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure. In moving this Motion, I suggest that we resume not before 4 p.m. Moved, That the House do now adjourn during pleasure.—(Lord Hunt of Kings Heath.)

My Lords, the House ought to have some explanation.

My Lords, the explanation I suggest is the expeditious nature of our deliberations on the Children (Leaving Care) Bill.

My Lords, that really is not a satisfactory answer. There may well be one. If every time the House proceeds to make rapid progress, we then find that we adjourn during pleasure, proceedings will be unduly delayed and we will all get to bed much later.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

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

Moved, That the House do now again resolve itself into Committee.—(Baroness Hollis of Heigham.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

House in Committee accordingly.

[The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (Lord Brougham and Vaux) in the Chair.]

Clause 56 [Rights of appeal]:

I rise to give my objections to the Question that Clause 57 stand part of the Bill. We seek to ensure that the present time-limit in relation to an appeal will remain as 12 months. We believe that the current time-limit within which to lodge an appeal works satisfactorily. The United States has a 12-month time-limit for its appeals.

There is some concern that if the time-limit is reduced to six months, servicemen and women who suffer illness or incapacity may not have sufficient time to gather the information necessary for an appeal. Appeals are long and tortuous processes, and such men and women will have had to go through the problems of the initial claim. Accordingly, the 12- month period should remain.

I rise to support my noble friend Lord Astor of Hever. The Law Society of Scotland is concerned about this issue. Six months seems to be a short time. I hope that the Minister will give an adequate explanation of why she believes that the people in the circumstances that my noble friend has mentioned will find that six months is long enough.

First, I apologise to the House for the delay in business. The preceding business collapsed faster than I had expected. I apologise. Did the noble Lord wish to—

My Lords, perhaps I have been in this House too long. In the old days, if the noble Lord who was to move the business did not turn up in time, we went on to the next business.

There were reasons for the delay which the Front Benches know about, but I apologise.

This clause provides new time-limits for war pensions appeals. Currently, there are two time-limits, a three-month time-limit and a 12-month time-limit, but some appeals are not subjected to any time-limit. Furthermore, those time-limits can be extended indefinitely if the appellant shows "reasonable excuse" for not bringing an appeal earlier. In practice, almost all late applications are heard and therefore there is no effective appeal time-limit.

It may help if I describe how the current provisions came about. Much of the war pensions appeals legislation dates from 1943. Naturally, the provisions were generous, acknowledging the very real difficulties that people faced at that time in both claiming a war pension and appealing against decisions. We can see that approach reflected in the test of whether a late appeal should be accepted. The appellant was only required to demonstrate that he, or she, had a "reasonable excuse" for delaying bringing the appeal. Legislators in 1943 did not attempt to provide for the many possible reasons people would have for not bringing an appeal within the specified time. But the legislators always envisaged that all appeals should be subject to a time-limit.

The effect of using that legislation, more than 50 years later, is that tribunals are asked to consider whether a decision, sometimes made decades before, was made correctly. It is a time-limit about appeals only, and not the initial decision. This is a time-consuming business as the tribunal attempts to ascertain the appellant's circumstances as they existed when the decision was made—possibly 10 years earlier, 20 years earlier or longer—and to apply the medical understanding and legislation that existed at that time. That does not help the tribunal to reach just decisions.

The provisions in this clause will require appellants to appeal closer to the time when the decision is made, when the facts of the matter are clear and not subject to assumptions about conditions that existed in distant memory. Hence interim decisions will retain the current three-month appeal time-limit but all other appeals will be subject to a six-month time-limit.

We have proposed a six-month appeal time-limit, which is a more generous time-limit than appeals to almost any other tribunal. This is because we recognise a debt of gratitude and because we need to strike the right balance, recognising that war pensioners' appeals have not previously been subjected to time-limits, unlike other appellants such as social security appellants.

I am aware that there has been some concern—as voiced this afternoon by the noble Lord, Lord Astor, and the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour—that a period of six months does not provide vulnerable and perhaps grieving people with sufficient time in which to bring an appeal. I should perhaps add that, before the appeal time-limit starts, a person will have made a claim for a war disablement pension or a war widows pension, provided the necessary information, and received a notification of the outcome. The appeal time-limit will therefore start some months after the event that precipitated the claim.

I should perhaps add that introducing these provisions does not alter the position that war pension claims originally are not time limited. It is the appeals only that are to be time limited. Indeed, the War Pensions Agency continues to receive new claims from people who are now identifying conditions that they attribute to service undertaken 50 or more years ago. The appeal time-limit applies only from the time the claim is decided. I also know that people are concerned that there may be changes in medical opinion, and if your Lordships want, I can discuss that further.

This clause also contains a provision that would enable the appeal time-limits to be varied either up or down. We have no intention of doing that, but we want to see whether the changes that we propose in this clause make good sense. Certainly the advice that we have had from some ex-servicemen's organisations is that they feel comfortable with the proposals.

We intend to replace the "reasonable excuse" provision with regulations that where there are late appeals, they must be accepted within the 12 months following the statutory appeal time-limit. These regulations, which will be subject to the affirmative procedure, will enable war pensioners to know the circumstances in which a late appeal may be accepted by the presidents of the pensions appeal tribunals.

Decisions made before the new time-limit is commenced will have transitional protection. People who receive a decision before this provision is commenced will have at least one year from the notification of the decision in which to bring an appeal, excepting those interim decisions that are currently, and will remain, subject to a three-month appeal time-limit. The new appeal time-limits will apply to people for whom decisions are made on and after the commencement date. I should also add—I am sure that this will be of interest to your Lordships—that the War Pensions Agency intends to contact war pensioners, by post and through articles in magazines, to advise them of their new appeal rights and the changes in the appeal time-limits.

I hope that your Lordships will agree that there is no limit to the time within which the original claim may be brought. Clearly, some illnesses or disabilities may occur significantly later than the point at which the injury occurred. However, we believe that this is reasonable and, as far as I am aware, no deep concerns about the matter have been raised by the relevant organisations. It seems reasonable that the appeal should be within six months of that decision, otherwise a decision could come 20 years after the original circumstance and an appeal 20 years after that. Clearly, it would be unreasonable in those situations to expect a tribunal to be able to make a decision that was informed by the circumstances at the time. I believe that the proposal is reasonable. If, at any subsequent stage, we need to vary it in the light of the workings of the proposals, I shall be happy to come back to your Lordships. I hope that that explanation and putting the matter on the record will be helpful to the organisations concerned. I ask the noble Lord to agree that the clause be accepted by the House.

I thank the noble Baroness for that full answer and I thank my noble friend Lady Carnegy for her support.

In respect of the Minister's answer, I am not convinced that the reasons that we have heard are good enough to reduce the appeal time-limit on the face of the Bill to six months. However, I shall read Hansard carefully and I shall discuss the matter with the Law Society of Scotland and the service organisations. In the mean time, I shall not press my opposition to the Question.

Clause 57 agreed to.

Clause 58 agreed to.

Clause 59 [Constitution and procedure of Pensions Appeal Tribunals]:

moved Amendment No. 170:

Page 62. line 42, leave out ("other persons") and insert ("persons with knowledge or experience of service in Her Majesty's naval, military or air forces").

The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 170, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 171 and 172. The purpose of Amendment No. 170 is to retain an ex-service member as a member of the tribunals. That is essential to maintain the credibility of the PAT as seen by the appellant. It would not be right to have only civilians sitting in judgment. The purpose of Amendment No. 171 is to remove the option of not having a service representative on the tribunal. We want to ensure that both service and disability representatives are included. Amendment No. 172 would give credibility in the eyes of the claimant that members of the tribunal understand the nature of warfare and service life. Even many widows do not know exactly what their late husbands did.

These amendments have the support of the Royal British Legion, SSAFA and the RAF Association. I declare an interest as a former Army officer who received a lump sum compensation for noise-induced hearing loss and as president of the Earl Haig branch of the Royal British Legion. I beg to move.

I support my noble friend, Lord Astor, in this group of amendments. In matters of this sort, as in all matters of justice, it is important not only that justice should be done, but that it should be seen to be done. It is more likely to be seen to be done in fixing service pensions, especially if they are pensions which result from injuries on active service, if those who have the responsibility of awarding and fixing the pensions have the sort of sympathy and understanding needed. Claimants are more likely to get that from people who have themselves served in the Armed Forces.

These amendments seek to maintain many of the current arrangements that apply to the composition of the pensions appeal tribunal. Amendment No. 170 would require the Lord Chancellor to appoint a service member to the tribunal. Amendment No. 171 would place a requirement on the Lord Chancellor to appoint lay members with specific experience to the tribunal, and Amendment No. 172 seeks to prescribe the military service the lay member should have.

The intention of this part of Clause 59 is to enable the Lord Chancellor to create a pool of people with the expertise required to hear all the appeals within the jurisdiction of the pensions appeal tribunal. Pulling together the expertise that is necessary to deal with individual appeals will be a matter for the presidents of the pensions appeal tribunals. As such, the clause provides that each of the tribunal's jurisdictions should have a pool of people with the skills, expertise and experience to decide the issues.

Subsection (3) of Clause 59 provides that the schedule to the Pensions Appeal Tribunals Act 1943 will include a new paragraph 2A. The first subparagraph—that is, paragraph 2A(1)—defines three categories of tribunal members; that is, those who are legally qualified, those who are medically qualified and those termed as "other persons". The following sub-paragraphs stipulate the qualifications required of the tribunal members, describing the legal, medical and other qualifications. As such, it is not appropriate to introduce a definition of "other persons" into that sub-paragraph, particularly in an amendment which does not recognise other expertise that could be helpful to the tribunals. Amendment No. 170 is therefore unnecessary and I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw it.

Amendment No. 171 would amend paragraph 2A(4) which deals with the definition of "other persons". As written, the clause requires the Lord Chancellor,

"to have regard to the desirability",

of appointing persons with knowledge or experience of service in Her Majesty's naval, military or air forces and matters relating to the disability of persons. Amendment No. 171 would make those appointments compulsory.

It is the intention of the Lord Chancellor always to include people with knowledge or experience of service life and of disablement in the pool of people to hear appeals. The legislation has been phrased in this way to provide for the smaller jurisdictions, such as Northern Ireland, where the number of appeals are low (around 100) and therefore the number of tribunal members is small. In those instances, the unexpected loss of a tribunal member could result in the jurisdiction being incomplete and therefore unable to operate. It is solely to provide for that eventuality that the clause has been phrased in this way.

But the concerns of the Committee have been heard and I assure Members that the Lord Chancellor will appoint people with service experience to the tribunal. If it helps, and in response to the speeches made by both the noble Lords, Lord Astor and Lord Renton, I am happy to come back on Report with an amendment placing a duty on the Lord Chancellor to appoint persons with knowledge or experience of Her Majesty's naval, military or air forces to the pool of tribunal members; in other words, putting a duty on the Lord Chancellor in the Bill, if that would meet the Committee's concern. I appreciate at the moment it is an understanding. If the Committee is willing, I am willing to respond with a government undertaking.

Amendment No. 172 also relates to the subparagraph which deals with the appointment of "other persons" and provides for people with "similar military experience" to be appointed. Unlike the previous amendment, the problem here is that we are dealing with a group of people who are diminishing in number. The phrase we use in the Bill,

"knowledge or experience of service",

will enable the Lord Chancellor to appoint people with a wide range of service experience to the pool of tribunal members. It will be for the independent presidents of the tribunals to allocate people to the individual tribunals. Again, I am more than happy to write on the Committee's behalf to the presidents of the pensions appeal tribunals to ensure that they are aware of the concerns of the Chamber.

Our problem is that there is a shrinking number of people with an exact match of appropriate service. That is why we are seeking to establish a pool on which the Lord Chancellor may draw and from which the presidents of the tribunals may appoint to any specific tribunal. If it meets the Committee's concern, I shall bring an amendment forward on the face of the Bill for the Lord Chancellor to appoint such a pool, and I shall write to the presidents of the appeal tribunals drawing attention to the anxieties expressed today. With those undertakings, I hope that I have met the noble Lord's concerns and that he will be content to withdraw the amendment.

I thank the Minister for that helpful reply and my noble friend Lord Renton for his support. I was comforted by the Minister's reassurance that the Lord Chancellor normally appoints people to tribunals with knowledge and experience of service life. I am sure the Committee will be happy for the Minister to come back with an amendment on Report as she suggested. I shall consider her words in detail and discuss them with the service organisations with whom I have been in touch, for I know this is a matter of great concern to them. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

moved Amendment No. 175:

After Clause 60. insert the following new clause—

This amendment stands also in my name. I am very anxious indeed to see justice done to this small group of ladies about whom the noble Baroness, Lady Strange, speaks so eloquently, as she has done for many years. Like her, I appreciate that this is not strictly a matter for the noble Baroness; none the less it is an opportunity to state the case once again and also, through the medium of this Chamber, to urge upon the Ministry of Defence the absolute necessity of coming to a decision on their behalf quickly. I am increasingly concerned about the length of time reviews take. It seems to be becoming a substitute for action. I hope therefore that, at the very least, we can urge upon those who represent the Ministry of Defence the necessity for coming to a decision quickly and in favour of these war widows.

Perhaps I should explain that I have no financial interest but I am a vice-president of SSAFA, which has urgently called for action to be taken. I am also newly appointed as a vice-president of the War Widows Association, of which the noble Baroness, Lady Strange, is president. Slightly strange, you may think, since I am neither wife nor widow; but it is a very important post which I take seriously. I do urge upon the House the importance of looking with sympathy and concern upon the plight of these very few war widows who, in my view, have such a strong case.

I strongly support this amendment, so eloquently and clearly moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Strange. The noble Baroness told the House last year that she would return to fight another day, and I am delighted that she has. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Strange, and my noble friend Lady Fookes, I have considerable sympathy for the position in which the Minister finds herself. I know that in opposition and in government she has campaigned long and hard for war widows.

It is a tragic fact that death can come to very young service personnel. These are not just faceless people. The soldier who drove me throughout my tour of duty in Northern Ireland, Trooper Durber, was subsequently killed there, aged only 26. He left a widow and two young children. Death can also come from the most unexpected quarter. In 1982 a bomb killed an officer, a warrant officer, two soldiers and seven horses in Hyde Park. I had served with the warrant officer, Corporal Major Bright. He left a widow and two children.

Over the last year this country has had troops—unarguably the best in the world—on active duty in high-risk locations such as Iraq, East Timor, Bosnia, Kosovo, and now Sierra Leone. The Government are responsible for their safety while they are there but also, in the event of any of them being Idled, for their widows.

The question therefore arises of how we as a country look after the widows in a compassionate and responsible way. The answer is quite well, so long as they remain single for the rest of their lives. As soon as they remarry or cohabit, they lose every penny of their pension. We make it financial suicide for them to rebuild their lives and provide stable family units. Their children will not have the chance to belong to a loving family unit again. This really cannot be right.

Every independent review has recommended a pension for life. Hopefully, the Armed Forces pension review will report soon. Were the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, here today, she might have been able to tell the House the date. Even Mr Jeffrey Rooker, the Minister in the other place, has now accepted that there would be minimal cost implications in accepting this amendment. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness will do so.

After what has just been said by the noble Lord and by the two noble Baronesses, it does not rest with me to try to make the case further. However, I should like it on record that I have strongly supported this particular proposition for a long time. The situation has seemed to me quite inequitable and I very much hope that, even if it cannot be found a place in this Bill, action will be taken to put right a longstanding and iniquitous wrong.

I express my regrets to the noble Baroness, Lady Strange, that neither my name nor that of my noble friend Lord Goodhart is on her amendment. Our problem was that we both wished to put our names on the amendment. It took us the immense length of time of 24 hours after Second Reading to resolve that. By the end of those 24 hours there were no spaces left on the amendment. I ask the noble Baroness to accept both our names as being there in spirit.

We on these Benches are firmly committed to this amendment and have been so committed for a long time. I say "for a long time". We have been debating the issue for a very long time. An overwhelming case has been made out for it many times over. We have been given assurances that it is under review many times over. It is proverbial that hope deferred maketh the heart grow sick. If the noble Baroness is feeling more than a little impatient for the conclusion of these reviews, I would not be surprised.

I take her points about the flexibility of summer and, in the light of the present state of our climate, one begins to wonder whether summer will in fact ever arrive. I hope that something will happen about this quickly, therefore.

The position taken hitherto by the Ministry of Defence is completely out of date with modern views about the status of women. As I understand the ministry's thinking, it is that if a woman is being kept by one man she need not be kept by another man. That is completely out of date. The pension should not be seen simply as the substitute for a man. It should be seen as a compensation for a loss, for suffering, and for a loss incurred in the Crown's service.

Whenever this matter is debated, we hear a great deal about the problem of ring-fencing. I do not believe that to be nearly as difficult as it is made out to be. If officials make out that it is too difficult to cope with, I cannot help thinking that they underrate their own ingenuity. The category of those who are in the Crown's service, in jobs that necessarily incur danger, is limited. However, service in the Armed Forces does incur some danger even in peacetime. Many things have to be done on manoeuvres where some risk is necessarily inherent; indeed, very sadly, some deaths may happen even in carefully and properly planned manoeuvres. So these are deaths in the service of the Crown. If the Crown wants to be loyally served, it must recognise that fact.

There are problems in the Armed Forces now, with recruitment and, even more so, with retention. The armed services have a considerable struggle in adapting to a world in which women have independent careers. They cannot follow their husbands around the globe because they have interests, bases and prospects of their own. That is just one sub-set of the need of the MoD to come to terms with such social change. If it does not do so, all our Armed Forces will be in danger. I conclude by quoting from a letter written by Lord Howard of Effingham to Lord Treasurer Burghley on the day that the Spanish Armada was sighted off the Lizard:

"God send Her Majesty not now to stay for charges".

I rise to express my support for this amendment. I should like to associate myself with all the previous speakers in this respect. I believe that a pension should be for life and that these widows are being treated badly. However, I should like to turn to the question of co-habiting partners and to those who lose a partner in service. In the debate last October, the noble Baroness raised the case of a pilot who lost his life in service. He left a fiancée who was expecting their first child but who was not entitled to a pension.

I believe that we should review the arrangements for co-habiting partners. Indeed, this seems to be an ideal opportunity to do so. There is much to be learnt from the private sector where the rules as regards cohabitation are much better than those which apply to the public sector; for example, some 75 per cent of pension schemes in the private sector recognise the rights of co-habiting couples. I urge my noble friend the Minister to look at this area in more detail to see what can be done for co-habiting partners.

For the benefit of noble Lords who are fairly new to this place, I should explain that I have a special interest in these matters because I preceded the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham, in her job at the Department of Social Security and was the Minister with responsibility for war pensions. I am pretty certain that I could give the Committee a preview of the Minister's speech, having made it myself on a number of occasions. I suspect that the noble Baroness will be as unhappy in delivering that speech as I was on the occasions that I had to deliver it. I was successful on all those occasions in persuading this Chamber not to take the matter to a vote, although, as noble Lords may recall, I was less successful on one or two war pensions issues and was defeated by the noble Baroness, Lady Strange, and her large army of supporters. I shall return to that point presently.

Before the commencement of this debate I checked my file and came across an important letter from the MoD. It was written by the Minister of State for the Armed Forces, a certain Dr John Reid and thus noble Lords will realise that the letter is not exactly of yesterday's vintage. In the letter, Dr Reid says that the,

"Government has commissioned a comprehensive review of the arrangements for the payment of compensation to Service personnel or their dependants, for injury, illness, or death as a result of their military service … Experience from the Gulf conflict and operations in Bosnia underlines the need for arrangements which properly reflect the special nature of the commitment which Service men and women make to the defence of our country".

I should have been quite happy with that and, indeed, with the advice that the noble Baroness will undoubtedly give noble Lords—namely, to await the outcome of that review—but then I noticed that the letter was dated 8th December 1997. That review has been a long time in coming.

I must repeat the important point that I have made in this Chamber on a number of occasions. Thanks to pension splitting on divorce, which was taken through this place by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, and which followed a White Paper that I presented to the House before the 1997 election, we have the following anomalous position. Let us take, for example, two service families who live side by side. One of those couples may divorce and the wife will be able to claim a portion of the pension pot of her former husband. The husband in the other family may be killed, leaving his wife with a widow's pension which I, and war widows, accept is a generous one. So both women would, so to speak, be alone without husbands.

However, if both women decided to remarry, the divorced woman would keep her share of the pension pot and be able to translate it into a pension when she reached retirement, but the widow would lose hers. That cannot be fair. In my view, the way that we have treated war widows on remarriage has never been fair. It is particularly unfair when both the Government and the Opposition agree that we have made the situation regarding widows' pensions in the military even more ludicrous by way of the pension splitting on divorce.

On the last occasion that we debated this issue, much was made by the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, of the read-across factor. Indeed, so much was made of it that I actually wondered whether the scale of read-across was pretty well equal; in other words, that as many people in the other services of the Crown and of the community are likely to be killed in the line of duty as applies to military personnel. Therefore, I have tabled some Questions on this, relating to "service-attributable deaths" in each of the past five years. In November 1999, the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, replied, and informed me that the total number of "attributable deaths" in the Armed Forces was 138. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, replied regarding the fire service where, of course, dangers are encountered daily. The total number of deaths in that service during those years was 13. The noble Lord also informed me that the total number of deaths in the police service was 28, of whom, rather worryingly, 21 were killed in road accidents.

It appears from that information that the scale of attributable deaths in the military is quite markedly different from the scale applying to the other services, so I do not want to hear about the read-across. I have a second argument against the latter. I have in mind the fact that this Chamber defeated the then government on the question of restoration of the war widows' pension on second widowhood. As far as I know, no effort has been made to extend the read-across argument to the police, the fire service or anyone else regarding the concession that the Conservative government were forced to make in this respect. Therefore, I hope that the Minister does not have mention of the read-across in her speech and that any such mention has been removed.

Those are the main arguments that I wish to put before the Committee, but. I have just one further point to make. When we discussed this issue last year, I suggested to the noble Baroness, Lady Strange, that she should withdraw her amendment so as to allow the MoD to move quicker. However, we are a year on and nothing much has happened. Indeed, this matter has been debated since 1994. The arguments that I put before noble Lords during the years before the election were, "Just wait! The MoD is reviewing the situation. All will be well; it will come up with a conclusion". The only thing that will force the MoD to come forward with a conclusion is for noble Lords to defeat the Government and insist on this new clause being inserted into the Bill—

I hope that I may ask a simple question: why did not the noble Lord do this when he was in office?

I thought that I had explained that, but the noble Lord was not present when I did so. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, I was the Minister responsible for social security and I had to deal with the MoD on this issue. I have no doubt that the noble Baroness will have written a few letters to the MoD on this matter; T wrote a few myself. However, all the response I obtained was that there was a review. That is the short answer. Therefore I am aware of the prevarication that arises. I suspect that the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is as convinced as I was with regard to this issue. However, the only way that the noble Baroness will be given a sword in her hand is through this Chamber putting the amendment on the face of the Bill. Contrary to the advice I gave last year, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Strange, will press her amendment to a Division and that Members on all sides of the Committee will support it.

It comes as no surprise that perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, and, at one time, my noble friend Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, with their ministerial responsibilities had it in mind that they had to be fair to widows other than war widows. However, my noble friend Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish and others who have spoken have already pointed out that war widows are in a more difficult and, indeed, often a more desperate position. I hope that I may emphasise the reasons for that. I do not think that it is unjustifiable to attempt to generalise. One reason is that war widows are nearly always younger than other widows. Another reason is that they and their late husbands have had less chance to build up some savings for their retirement. As has been mentioned, war widows are often left with young families and no husband to support them. They must do their best for their families. If we were to evade the proposals put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Strange, we would place war widows at a disadvantage which they do not deserve. Therefore I, too, earnestly hope that the Government will be sympathetic towards her amendment.

I am sure we are all sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, who is the Minister responsible for defence, is not present. However, I remind the Committee that the Long Title of the Bill includes the following words:

"to amend the law relating to occupational and personal pensions and war pensions".

This Bill is about war pensions. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham, who is the Minister responsible for social security, speaks for the whole Government when she replies to this Bill. Therefore we do not want to be told that because the Minister responsible for defence cannot be present this is an inappropriate matter to discuss. I hope that the Minister will not persuade the noble Baroness, Lady Strange, to withdraw her amendment. I believe that it is perfectly appropriate to move this important amendment at this stage. I shall support it if the noble Baroness presses it to a Division.

I certainly applaud the confession of the noble Lord, Lord Mackay, when he expressed regret at sentiments that he had expressed on this issue in the past from the Front Bench of the previous government. Nevertheless I do not believe that the argument he proposes with regard to the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Social Security holds as much water as he thinks. At the end of the day Cabinet decisions and government decisions are taken. I suspect that the Government adopt exactly the same stance as did the government of which the noble Lord, Lord Mackay, was a member, and for exactly the same reasons. Therefore I expect Members of the Committee on the Benches opposite to act tonight as they did when they were in government and support the Government on this issue.

I did not intend to speak but I was astonished to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Coity, has just said. It is only noble Lords on the Front Bench who have any official capacity in this debate. The rest of us are free to do what we like. It is not the case that everyone who has held office must think that they have always been right and that if they were wrong they must still maintain that position. My noble friend has described a situation with which I am familiar. About a decade before the time of which my noble friend spoke I sat in that rather dreary office in Alexander Fleming House and faced the same problems. Interdepartmental squabbles are nothing whatever to do with this Chamber, or with the Front Bench opposite because the Front Bench opposite answers for the Government. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Coity, has rightly said, the issue we are discussing is one to be resolved in Cabinet. The function of Parliament is to control the executive, not to give it free rein. If it needs a steer, I should have thought that the Committee is in a good position to do so this afternoon.

Support for the amendment has been expressed on three sides of the Chamber, and, indeed, from this side. I lend my voice to that support. I should not want it to be thought that the Labour Benches were not sympathetic to the aims of the amendment. I know that many of my noble friends on these Benches are indeed sympathetic to those aims. I sincerely hope that we can achieve them. My noble friend was certainly in favour of this kind of amendment when we were in opposition. I feel sure that she has not changed her mind. Even if my noble friend cannot accept the amendment, will she give all sides of the Chamber, including these Benches, an assurance that before we conclude all stages of the Bill a provision can be inserted in the Bill, either by herself or by someone else, that will achieve the objective of the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Strange?

The proposed new clause raises an issue that was debated last year during the passage of the then Welfare Reform and Pensions Bill. As the Committee has noticed, it was not then—as it is now—a matter for the DSS, but for the MoD. At that time my noble friend Lady Symons explained that the Government have enormous sympathy for the widows who would achieve a lifetime award of a pension as proposed in the amendment. She sends her apologies to the Committee. As has been said, she is in Washington on government business and regrets—as I do, obviously—that the amendment is having to be discussed in her inevitable absence. This longstanding engagement is one that she cannot break. However, we are only at Committee stage, we still have the Report and Third Reading stages. As my noble friend will certainly be present at those later stages to discuss noble Lords' concerns and will perhaps be able to respond to them in greater detail than I can tonight—

Does not the Minister accept that she is answering for the Government at this point?

Yes, but the Bill concerns DSS pensions and the pension we are now discussing is an MoD attributable war pension. Of course I speak on behalf of the Government. However, the whole push of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mackay, was that the department that has to be persuaded of the merits of the amendment is the MoD. I therefore expressed, perfectly properly, my regrets and those of my noble friend that she cannot be present this evening. I suggest that Members of the Committee may consider it prudent to put their arguments to my noble friend when she is present at Report or subsequent stages of the Bill. I note that two noble Lords wish to speak. I give way to either or both.

I do not wish to be unpleasant or personal; I am speaking about offices, not people. The proceedings of the House were adjourned this afternoon because the Minister was not able to be in the Chamber when the Committee wished to proceed with business. For her to then argue that any decision on the business in hand should be deferred because another member of the Government—who shares that responsibility, but not the responsibility of the Dispatch Box—cannot be here to answer in person is beginning to make the House of Lords look as though it is dependent on the convenience of government Ministers in order to pursue its business. I am sure that is not the noble Baroness's intention. I repeat that there is nothing personal in this, but we have to defend the dignity of the House—and that is now in issue.

I shall be a little gentler than my noble friend, who makes a valid point. If we are to be asked to wait until the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, can be here, either on Report or at Third Reading, can we have a guarantee that we shall hear, not that there is to be another review, but that she will come forward with an amendment that will do what the Committee wishes to be done?

Perhaps I may return to this point later. Let me carry on with what I was going to say and let us see whether it deals with the points raised.

As I said, my noble friend explained last summer that the MoD is currently undertaking a review of the Armed Forces pension scheme. I understand that an announcement is due to be made during the summer. The review will include consultation with all parties with an interest in the pension arrangements for the Armed Forces. I am sure that those who speak for the War Widows Association will put their case eloquently and forcefully, as has been demonstrated today.

The review of the Armed Forces pension scheme has to be wide ranging and comprehensive. There are many different pension schemes in the public and private sectors and we need to consider how the best elements of these schemes can be incorporated into providing a pension scheme that meets the needs of all servicemen and women. As the Committee will know, in many respects private sector schemes are nowadays very different from public sector schemes; they have different arrangements for widows who remarry and, to respond to the point made by my noble friend Lord Alli, they have different arrangements for trustees, for example, to allow named dependants—including same-sex partners—to inherit a widow's pension. So there are obviously those considerations. As I say, we need to see how the best of those schemes can be incorporated into building a pension scheme that meets the needs of all servicemen and women.

In his remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Mackay, made two points in particular. First, he said that this was unfair to the widows of servicemen when compared to the pension sharing of divorced wives. It is true that, under pension sharing, pension rights are to he treated as property and that a divorced wife will keep her pension share, regardless of whether she remarries later. But she will not necessarily be better off. The widow whose husband dies as a result of service receives an attributable pension, which is paid at a higher rate than the normal Armed Forces pension as it includes an element of compensation. So it is more generous than a divorced wife would get from a share of her husband's occupational scheme. Secondly, a widow receives a pension from the time of her husband's death, whereas a divorcee would have to wait. Thirdly, of course, even 'when a widow remarries the pension that she would get for her children—which is again relatively generous, and rightly so—continues.

Before the noble Baroness leaves that point, I do not think that she has put up a good argument. While of course a divorcee will have to wait until she reaches retirement age to receive the pension, she will still receive the pension even if she remarries. The lady whose husband is killed in action loses her pension for ever the moment she remarries—unless, of course, she is widowed for a second time. But she will lose it for ever as far as her marriage to the serviceman is concerned. Even though I accept that her pension starts immediately and is, rightly, far better than that of a divorcee, that does not alter the fact that a divorcee keeps the pension on second marriage.

Yes, but the widow, of course—as your Lordships expressed against the advice of the noble Lord on an earlier occasion—is able to regain it following, possibly, the end of a second marriage. That was a decision of your Lordships.

The point I was making is that that is one of the reasons why the war widows' pension is more generous than the settlement of a divorced wife of a serviceman. It reflects the different circumstances in which she finds herself, including the fact that she loses her pension on remarriage. However, she keeps the pension for the children. I do not think we disagree on those facts.

The second point of the noble Lord, Lord Mackay—from his experience as a former Minister for war pensions—challenged the notion of the costs involved. We know, for example, that if we were to ring-fence a figure it would be based on something like 2,500 war widows below the age of 60. Based on their historical remarriage rates—I am sorry to use such a cold phrase—the additional costs would be about £3 million per year, but buying back the superannuation liability in retrospection would cost some £400 million a year. The read-across to the public service—including the fire service, the police and so on, as the noble Lord suggested—would cost about £150 million a year. Again, if it were to be made retrospective, the cost would grow. In other words, the cost for the narrow group ring-fenced in this amendment is relatively modest, but I do not think that it would be right or proper to confine any such amendment to that very narrow group. Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Mackay, said, the read-across costs are quite significant.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. There is a point relating to the read-across which she has not addressed. She has made no attempt to argue the read-across on the pension being restored on second widowhood, as far as I know. If it has been ascertained, I should be interested to hear it. That is a major point. I urge caution on the noble Baroness. I remember the figures I used for restoration on second marriage, all cleverly obtained by the Treasury. The noble Baroness herself, in her usual very able way, rubbished my figures to such an extent that I went back and had them checked in my presence. Frankly, the figures were out of all proportion to the £40 million that restoration actually costs. So I do not, frankly, believe the figure of £400 million.

It is £40 million. The noble Lord is quite right. None the less, the read-across to the rest of the public sector is calculated to be £150 million. I think it was the figure that the noble Lord gave to the House when he was on these Benches. He has said nothing today to suggest that those figures are not correct.

We believe that if we are making provision for one group of people, it is right that others should be considered; in other words, there is a wide Treasury interest as well as an MoD interest. The Armed Forces pension review is working with other pension providers to ensure that, where appropriate, the Government's approach to pension provision is fair and even-handed.

The Committee has put its points strongly. Those points have been heard by the Government in this Chamber and in another place. I am asking the Committee to wait for a few more weeks until the review has been completed and my noble friend the Minister who answers for Defence in your Lordships' House—who is, unfortunately, absent today—is in a position to respond in the kind of detail that the House and the War Widows Association have a right to expect. As I said, we are at Committee stage now; we have a Report stage and a Third Reading to go. I ask my noble friend Lady Strange—I call her my noble friend because we have together, on many occasions, tried to do our best for war widows and for the War Widows Association—to withdraw her amendment. I shall ensure that the MoD receives the concerns of the Committee and that my noble friend is fully briefed should we wish to return to this at Report stage.

I suggest that with a review to be published by the MoD only a matter of a few weeks away, which will then go out to consultation, it would not be appropriate for the Committee to pre-empt that review and that consultation exercise. As I say, that will come before your Lordships' House at the appropriate time. The Committee will be in a better position to make an informed decision as to how this matter should progress after my noble friend has returned and after the forthcoming review and the consultation that will follow it. In the light of that, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

Before the noble Baroness sits down, I shall do nothing to persuade the noble Baroness, Lady Strange, to stay her hand today. It would be easier for her to come to a conclusion if the Minister, who has held forth inducements to delay—including the expected return of her noble friend, a review, and a consultation on that review—could tell us what stage the Bill will have reached by the time the consultation is concluded so that we know what the Government are going to do. Will it be on Report or at Third Reading? If the Minister cannot answer "Yes" to either, I see no reason to wait at all.

If a review is to be published in the next few weeks—in June is my understanding—and with the possibility that the Bill will have concluded its stages in your Lordships' House by the end of July, is the noble Lord really suggesting that the consultation exercise, which involves full consultation with all the servicemen's organisations, the War Widows Association and possibly other organisations as well, should be compressed into the space of two, three or four weeks in order to meet that request? That would make a mockery of the consultation. The organisations out there, for which noble Lords have spoken today, have a right to be heard.

I have made no such suggestion. Unless something very unusual happens, we will not prorogue before November. We have the whole of the spill-over for Third Reading. This is a Bill brought from the Commons. It has no further stages there except consideration of our amendments to it. I am suggesting nothing extraordinary or hasty but simply that we should know that the House's decision will not be deferred beyond the point at which the noble Baroness's arguments cease to have force.

It will be in your Lordships' hands as to when the Bill leaves your Lordships' House. I am saying that the review is due to be published in the next few weeks. Those are the words I have been given and I have no reason to believe that there has been any slippage on that. As a result, it will then go out to consultation. I cannot tell the noble Lord how long is envisaged for that consultation exercise. It is usually a minimum of three months, particularly over a summer period possibly when members of organisations may well be away. But it would not be unreasonable for your Lordships to have that information in mind. Clearly, in the light of what the noble Lord has said, it would be up to the MoD to try to expedite the consultation exercise. However, given that this is such an important matter, with such read-across effects to other public sector bodies, it would not be reasonable to compress that consultation in order to meet the timetable here today.

Different stages of the Bill are due to be taken. If your Lordships are not happy with the review and the consultation exercise and the MoD and government response to it, there is ample opportunity for your Lordships to revisit the issue. But I would hope that when the review is published and goes out to consultation it will embody positions which your Lordships might feel address some of the concerns expressed today. As a result, your Lordships might wish, in an individual capacity or representing organisations, to put forward evidence to that effect. As a result, that would carry extra weight with the Government. That is the point I was making about timetables.

The noble Baroness made the point that we would be able to return to the issue after those processes were completed. The point that I hope your Lordships have seized is that there will be no ability to return to it effectively if the Bill is already on the statute book. All I am asking the noble Baroness is whether the reasons she is offering us for delay are valid, because if the processes she has described are complete after the Bill is out of our hands, they are not relevant.

I am in a dilemma here, too. Your Lordships know perfectly well—certainly someone as experienced as the noble Lord, Lord Elton—that, if a review document is going out to consultation, there is usually agreement with the organisations concerned as to how long that consultation period will be, particularly when that consultation document is being issued over the summer. Given that, I really do not think that I can go beyond what I have already said to your Lordships.

I wish to make one final remark. At the end of the day, I am not arguing about the merits or otherwise of the proposal. That argument has been well addressed and aired in previous discussions in your Lordships' House. What I am saying is that, with a review document due to come forth fairly quickly and with the consultation process following, it is not in my view appropriate for your Lordships to seek to prejudge the issue. Your Lordships are entirely free to do so, but it would seem to be wise to respect the nature of a consultation exercise, which, as I have said, I would expect to take place over the summer.

Perhaps I may help the Committee on this point. I clearly do not wish to discuss from the Dispatch Box the timing of Bills but the fact is that there is a legal requirement for certain Bills before the House—for example, the Terrorism Bill—to receive their Royal Assent by the Summer Recess. With regard to other Bills, like this one, it would be desirable but not legally essential for them to receive Royal Assent by that time. We have not yet thought of a date for Report. By the time that date becomes available and is clearer, we shall know much more about the timetable of the consultation. So your Lordships will not lose anything by accepting what my noble friend has proposed.

There will be a Report stage. When we reach the Report stage, noble Lords will know exactly the state of the consultation and the likely reporting date. If noble Lords then feel that that is too long, they can take the necessary action. If they are satisfied with that process, they might wish to deal with the matter in a different way on Report.

As the Government Chief Whip has intervened, will he then go further and offer an assurance that, irrespective of the date of the Report stage, he will be able to delay the Third Reading until possibly November to allow us to see both the document and the results of the consultation promised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis?

That was a good try! I see some noble Lords opposite whom we do not often see here, so I understand the Opposition Chief Whip's anxiety on this matter. Obviously, I cannot say that I can delay the Third Reading until November. I have said that we have to get the Committee stage, Report and Third Reading of certain Bills by the summer and that, by the time this Bill has a date for Report stage, noble Lords will be much better informed. We can inform noble Lords about the nature of the consultation and its timetable and they can then decide at the Report stage what to do with the proposal from the noble Baroness, Lady Strange.

Perhaps I may suggest to the Minister that there is no reason why the Committee should not express its view—incidentally, I have spoken before on this subject: I am not new to it—and let that be taken into consideration when the consultation comes along. We are surely part of that consultation. The amendment is a means of expressing our view. Moreover, we have expressed it on several earlier occasions. I shall be very interested to know what new factor might emerge, other than money and the availability or lack of it, that could change that. As far as I understand it, the Government's difficulty is very much more with the extension of the decision to a number of other deserving parts of society than with the actual issue of the MoD. That is why I think it would be wrong to forgo our chance now of expressing our view on this very limited, precise matter. We have gone over it many times before. I cannot see why we should not express our view now and have it taken into consideration in the consultation.

I do not know what to say or what to do. So many noble Lords have spoken and I thank them all. I should like to thank my noble friend Lady Fookes, who is also the vice-president of the War Widows Association, my noble friend Lord Astor of Hever, who made a moving speech, my noble and gallant friend Lord Craig of Radley, my noble kinsman Lord Russell, my noble friend Lord Alli, my noble friend and former enemy Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, my noble friend Lord Renton, my noble friend Lady Carnegy, my noble friend Lord Elton, my noble friend Lady Park of Monmouth, my noble friend Lord Stoddart of Swindon and, particularly, my noble friend Lady Hollis, who has been really sweet and has listened to absolutely everything.

I am very sorry to have to do this to her—I really am. Perhaps even now, if it could see the amount of support that there is for it, the Ministry of Defence might consider moving this small item forward in a separate agenda. I do not know that I shall even allow my noble friend the Chief Whip to have another bite at the cherry. He will just have to gobble me up now. I shall cross my fingers, shut my eyes and fling myself onto the patchwork, fibreglass cow. I wish to test the opinion of the Committee.

In speaking to the question of whether Clause 61 should stand part of the Bill, I will speak also to the subsequent Motions on whether Clauses 62, 63, 64 and 65 should stand part of the Bill.

These clauses are controversial. If they are enacted, they will authorise loss of benefit for an alleged breach of a community order. The Government's proposals were strongly criticised on all sides of the House at Second Reading. Since then, as the full significance of what is proposed has become apparent, the opposition has intensified.

So what is so unusual and objectionable about these clauses? Put simply, it is that the procedure put forward by the Government confuses administrative practice—that is, the conditions that apply to entitlement to, or disqualification from, social security benefit—with the sentencing of offenders. Entitlement to benefit is based on need. Needs do not change when conditions of community orders are not observed.

A probation order or community service order is—there should be no mistake about it—a non-custodial penalty. It is at the discretion of the court to decide, once guilt has been established, whether an offender convicted of a less serious offence is sentenced to a term of imprisonment, or receives a fine, or whether that person is sentenced to a community penalty. If sentenced to a community penalty, the offender will be subject to supervision by a probation officer who has the responsibility to see that the sentence of the court is properly carried out. If, for example, the offender fails to report regularly, or does not carry out allocated tasks of community service, after one warning he or she will be at risk of being taken back to the court. Enforcement of community orders by the Probation Service has recently been strengthened. A great deal of work has been done to that end. Two independent surveys have indicated the scale of the improvement that has taken place over the past 12 months. Just a few weeks ago, the Minister of State at the Home Office, Paul Boateng, congratulated the Association of Chief Officers of Probation on the improvements that had been made in enforcement by the service.

The crucial point to keep in mind is that the decision on whether there has been a breach is taken not by the probation officer; it is taken by the court after a judicial hearing. The court may be satisfied that there is a reasonable explanation, and may continue the order. It may, and in many cases does, agree to the withdrawal of the application by the Probation Service because new information has come to light since the original notification of breach. It may revoke the order and re-sentence either to custody or to a further non-custodial penalty.

I rehearse the sequence of events, which will be familiar to some but not all Members of the Committee, because it is into this well-established legal order, statutory and evolutionary, that the Department of Social Security has blundered. One is bound to ask why, unlike other proposals for the reorganisation of the Probation Service which are contained in the Criminal Justice and Court Services Bill currently before Parliament, there has been no prior public consultation or discussion with the services affected. The proposal came as a complete surprise.

Loss of benefit was first announced by the Prime Minister when introducing the Government's legislative programme in another place last November. It was part of a package of six punishment-related items included in a "tough on crime" section in the Queen's Speech. Since then, every public service that will be directly affected in its implementation has gone on record as deploring the intention to withdraw or reduce social security payments as soon as an alleged—I repeat, alleged—breach of a community order is reported to a local benefit office by the Probation Service.

The highly responsible Association of Chief Officers of Probation has been joined by the National Association of Probation Officers, the Magistrates' Association, the Justices' Clerks' Society, and the Commission for Racial Equality in a rare display of unanimity. If this is a listening Government, surely Ministers have an obligation to listen, rather than to dig themselves further into what is an indefensible position.

The Penal Affairs Consortium, representing no fewer than 41 organisations concerned with the penal system, goes further than the injustice of what is proposed and describes the measure as,

"retrograde, counter-productive and bound to increase crime".

Such a perverse outcome is a real possibility if offenders who are attempting to establish themselves in a local community suddenly find that they have no money, or that their income, which is already set at a low level, is reduced. We should remind ourselves that many are drug or alcohol misusers for whom the court has decided that a period under supervision offers the best hope of overcoming their addiction, so reducing the prospect of further offending in future. For them, as for many others, whether caused by impoverishment, recklessness or resentment, reoffending is often impulsive and irrational.

Since deterrence—which it seems the Government had in mind in introducing the proposal—depends on rational calculation, it will be at its least effective in such circumstances. The idea of sending messages by way of legislation is simply absurd. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the full implications of the proposal were not properly thought out before it was announced. Since then, the Government seem to have had difficulty in comprehending why the clauses are wrong in principle and likely to prove counter-productive in practice.

The intention of my noble friends, if I may so describe them in different parts of the Committee, is to provide an opportunity for the Government to hear at first hand from those who have experience of the workings of the penal system just why these clauses are so objectionable, and to give them an opportunity to reconsider.

I have put my name to a number of amendments because of my profound concerns about these proposals. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, that these provisions are an attack on the poor. They create a discriminatory punishment which applies only to the poorest in our society: those on benefit. This punishment will not apply to the drug-taking sons of the privileged or the shoplifting wives of the well-to-do who are in breach of community orders. It is a double punishment, and the inherent unfairness of it is wrong in principle. It is an extraordinary departure. In addition to the courts, a department of state will now mete out punishment. The Secretary of State, Mr Alistair Darling, is to dress himself up in the clothes of the Lord Chancellor.

I was worried because perhaps this was the new big idea of government. In a moment of reverie, I imagined the development of that idea into other areas. Perhaps next month child benefit will be stopped if children are taken on holiday in term time, or tax relief will be reduced if one's dog fouls the pavement. This matter should concern the Committee. The proposal represents an unacceptable cross-over between different arms of government. The "Big Brother" quality of this thinking should create alarm and despondency. People should not be duped into thinking that it is a reasonable response to anti-social behaviour. The proposals are an affront to human rights not only because they are discriminatory but because they punish in advance of conviction. They breach Articles 6, 7 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act which is to come into force in the autumn. I believe that in particular cases other articles will also be violated; for example, when the punishment impacts on the children of offenders.

On the previous occasion when the Committee debated these provisions the Minister disagreed with me when I said that women and children would be affected. I took the opportunity to discover whether my fears about the effect on women and children were unfounded. Eleven per cent of those on community sentences are women. It is believed by the agencies involved that two-thirds of those women have children. For example, a single parent with one child would face a reduction in benefit from £90 to £70 a week, which would be a minimal benefit. I ask the Committee to consider what effect that would have on the ability of an individual to cope. Last but not least, this measure is a sure-fire way to increase crime. It takes little imagination to envisage what people may do when they lose a significant proportion of their income. This proposal will increase the temptation to steal, burgle, solicit for prostitution or sell drugs—all the matters about which we are so concerned.

I am sure that initially many members of the public would regard this as a sensible proposal to prevent people who had been placed on probation or other community service orders from cocking a snook at the system and failing to fulfil their obligations. However, the proper way to deal with breaches of court orders is to bring people back before the courts. In that way a proper judgment can be made as to whether a breach has occurred. In my experience—I have spent 25 years in the courts—often poor people who are placed on probation have a multiplicity of social problems.

One of the purposes of a community order is rehabilitation and to bring a degree of order into lives which sometimes have become chaotic. The purpose is to help people who are trying to kick a drug habit or alcoholism to cope so that eventually they can return to work or to training and play a part in society. But that takes time, and in the early stages people can find it very challenging. To get one's children up for school in such circumstances can be hard. One may miss an appointment because one has been up all night with a child who is sick or suffers nightmares; or one may have to deal with a neighbour who has overdosed, or one may forget to set the alarm clock. Such instances taken together may result in the probation officer being obliged to refer the case back to the courts. A second failure to attend is now a ground on which the Probation Service must report back to the court.

Under this proposal there is a duty to inform the Benefits Agency. Sometimes the court finds that there is a reasonable excuse; if not, the offender is punished. That is the right way to deal with it because the court is the proper arbiter. This proposal is not in keeping with the values of a Labour government. Our principles are based on abiding values, of which I am proud. Those values are not about handouts, but about looking out for the poor and giving them ways to throw off their impoverishment, crushing discrimination wherever we see it rather than fostering it, creating equality before the law, not differentials and double punishment, and protecting citizens from unfair treatment by the state. It is not for us to become the state and to invent exquisite new ways to punish. When it comes to civil liberties, there is no third way.

One of the advantages of Committee stage when one has not taken part in the Second Reading is that one has had an opportunity to read the speeches made on that occasion. All I can say is that, having read the speeches of my noble friend Lord Windlesham, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, I agree with every word that each has said. To repeat their words would be tautologous and, therefore, I intend to be brief.

I believe that what is proposed in these clauses is wrong in principle and that it would be wholly counter-productive in practice. First, it is wrong in principle because the withholding of benefits is used as a non-judicial means to punish and attempt to enforce the orders of the courts. Secondly, it is wrong in principle because it clearly involves a double penalty. In those cases where a breach is proved, the withdrawal or reduction of benefit is a further punishment on top of the order of the court. Thirdly, it is wrong in principle because it discriminates between those who are out of work as against those who are in work as to the form of penalty that they face. Fourthly, to impose a reduction of benefit on an allegation of breach of an order rather than on a finding of a breach is a principle that I regard as both novel and unacceptable.

As far as concerns practicality, I believe that the measure will be wholly counter-productive. The fact is that most of those who are on probation or subject to community service orders have a history of thieving and stealing of various kinds. To impose greater poverty on the poorest at that time by this measure will substantially increase the temptation for them to commit further offences. Undoubtedly many will fall to that temptation and commit further offences. Therefore, the effect in practice will be to increase rather than reduce the amount of crime.

I strongly believe that those who are in breach of a condition of a probation order, particularly a community service order, should be dealt with severely by the courts. Community service is accepted and intended to be an alternative to imprisonment, and it is right that those who breach a community service order should realise that they stand in real jeopardy of losing their liberty.

I understand that 21 per cent of those who were brought back before the courts in the past year for breach of community service went to prison. It would not worry me if that figure were far higher. I believe that they should be warned clearly of the effect. But to attempt to punish them in the way that the Bill provides is, I believe, wrong in principle and will fail in practice.

If I do not repeat what has been said in the three previous speeches, it is only because I am not addicted to the gilding of lilies.

The penal affairs case against the clause, and the attendant comet of other clauses which form its tail, is so overwhelming that, having listened to the speeches made already, any sensible government would withdraw the clause. But there is also a social security aspect. As the only social security specialist with his name to the amendment, I think that it would make sense if I concentrate on that part of the argument.

It seems as clear from the social security perspective as from the penal perspective that the effect of the proposal would be to increase crime. In the words of the Penal Affairs Consortium, pushing poor people into even greater poverty must increase the temptation to steal, burgle, rob, shoplift, solicit or sell drugs. One might add that it is particularly likely to do that if those people, because they are a pre-selected sample, already have experience of crime. If we are on our uppers, we tend to rely on those skills we know. If we are criminals, the skills we know are those of crime, and the temptation to use them may be irresistible.

The Minister may tell me that that is a rebuttable presumption. If the noble Baroness tells me that, I shall not argue with her. But I think she knows that she is in no position to rebut it because she and her predecessors have failed conspicuously to collect the evidence upon which it might be rebutted. We have no significant body of evidence on how those who are disentitled to benefit make a living. The Minister knows that I have questioned her and her predecessors on this issue for quite a long time and have not received answers. If it were not true that the measure will increase crime, the Minister is in no position to make the case.

It is a slight exaggeration to say that the noble Baroness knows of no evidence. In a debate immediately before the Easter Recess in which my noble friend Lord Addington spoke, the Minister recommended one piece of government research: the DfEE Research Report 86 on the effect of sanctions on jobseeker's allowance. In that report I find one and a quarter pages on the effect of sanctions. It states that people experienced considerable hardship, but those who were single experienced slightly greater hardship. Doubtless the Minister will make much of hardship payments. I invite her, not for the first time, to explain why the Government believe that single people by definition cannot be in hardship. I have never understood that argument and I have never heard a coherent explanation.

The report quotes one person who had been sanctioned saying that he,

"just scraped through, but it wasn't easy at all".

It does not say how those people make a living, what sources of income were available to them, whether they were legally or illegally obtained, how far short of benefit levels they were, and what things they had to forgo in order to live. Until we know those factors we are in no position to judge the effects of benefit sanctions. Since that ignorance is the result of deliberate inaction by the Department of Social Security, I think that I am entitled to describe it as culpable negligence. Before the proposal is reintroduced, that culpable negligence must be put right.

Noble Lords have touched on the fact that the benefit is withdrawn before a hearing. I shall not soon forget the speeches made by the Minister herself against that proposal when it was introduced in the Jobseekers Act. They were some of the best speeches I have ever heard in Parliament; and I still agree with every word of them. The noble Baroness will point out that the benefit forgone can be withdrawn if the penalty were found to be mistakenly imposed. But you cannot hang your stomach on skyhooks. If your benefit is withdrawn for several weeks, you will be unable to postpone eating until you get the benefit back. You have to do something in the meantime. Some of the people in that position will adopt what the Children's Society described as risky survival strategies: theft, sleeping rough, begging, drug pushing—crime of various kinds. I am advised that drug couriers can make £50 for one single trip. That must look very tempting if you do not know where your next meal is coming from. "Lead us not into temptation" is advice which might be heeded by legislators as well as others.

I am sure the Minister will say that this is not a penalty. That does not sound particularly convincing. I am reminded of the story of Kaiser Wilhelm (as he subsequently became) at the age of five being spanked by his nurse. The nurse said solemnly, "This hurts me as much as it hurts you", to which the Kaiser replied, "Oh, and in the same place?". The argument that it is not a punishment is just about as convincing as that.

However, for the sake of fair play I take the argument on the premises on which the DSS has chosen to advance it. I take it on the letter from Mr Alistair Darling in The Times of 11th May replying to letters from the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, and myself. Mr Darling said that the proposal is based on the clear principle that rights to benefits are conditional on an individual fulfilling their responsibilities to society. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, pointed out, that is dangerously open-ended. I am not clear what might be done in future under it.

On conditions to benefits, we need to make some distinctions. At Second Reading, the Minister said that conditions to benefits have been imposed before. Yes, they have, but we need to consider under what headings. First, in means-tested benefits there is inevitably a condition about the sufficiency of means. None of us argues about that. Secondly, there is a condition about being available for work. There is plenty of room for argument on both sides about that. On the one hand, it is a valid principle that the need can be seen, like intentional homelessness, as self-inflicted if the person is not seriously trying to get out of it. On the other hand, it is an equally valid principle that starvation is a punishment which should not be inflicted by authority in civilised society. We on these Benches have debated the issue at considerable length among ourselves on various occasions. The position we take is that since both those principles are valid in the moral plain we should judge between them according to the effects that disentitlement has. We should judge by the consequences if ever we can find what those are. Meanwhile the benefit claimant should be given the benefit of the doubt.

However, with Mr Darling's letter we are in an altogether different line of country. There is nothing in this new condition to benefit about whether the person is attempting to get work. It is not even a condition of a probation order that you should actively seek work. The condition is based simply on the fact that the Secretary of State happens to disapprove of the activity in question. Once you get into disentitlement to benefit because the Secretary of State disapproves of the activity in question, you are in very dangerous country. Secretaries of State are addicted to disapproval; it is part of their professional apparatus. Once we get that far, surely we are back in the territory of the distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor. I heard the Minister powerfully and movingly denounce that many times when she was in opposition.

The idea that some of the poor are undeserving is always tempting to those who have property. I do not believe that we should encourage it, especially when by doing so we are wandering into an area where we confuse the business of two ministries. Late last weekend, I happened purely by chance to be looking at the 13th report of the Social Security Advisory Committee. It was considering a quite different measure, but it stated a general principle which is worth thought:

"Caution is required to ensure that inter-departmental policies are compatible before making receipt of a social security benefit dependent upon satisfying a non-money related condition. Care is also needed to ensure that the introduction of additional requirements does not make the administration of social security benefits unnecessarily complex and correspondingly expensive".

There are problems here. If people lose their benefits, what will happen to their repayments of Social Fund loans? I know that they keep housing benefit, but what will happen if they are paying some of their rent out of income support? What will happen to instalment payments to the utility companies? What will happen to the £5 which they are required to pay as child maintenance if they are in receipt of income support?

If that goes, the Minister must abandon the position she took about the absolute priority of money for child maintenance. If it does not go, she must abandon the insistence she then made that she cannot imagine any situation in which people are unable to pay what they were assessed for under the Child Support Act.

The Government are not so much shooting themselves in the foot as shooting themselves in the toes one by one. It is a wistful procedure. We should stick to the basic simple principle that benefits are not given for being good; they are given for being in need.

I rise to speak briefly in support of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, and others. I say "briefly" advisedly since the principal objections to the measure were admirably covered by the noble Lord both at Second Reading and earlier today. The logic and common sense of what he has said has been strongly reinforced from all sides of the Committee.

I shall not dwell on what the measure will do to the disadvantaged because it was much more ably expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell. However, like others, I have received representations from the Probation Service at all levels and from the Penal Affairs Consortium. In order to complement those, I have been in touch with the Magistrates' Association. Here I must declare an interest as a member of that association and as a magistrate on the supplementary list. I have also been in touch with the Justices' Clerks' Society of England and Wales. In every single case, grave reservations were expressed about this extremely dubious initiative. Their concerns concentrated in the main on the leapfrogging over the due process of law; potential double punishment for the same offence for some but not for others; the implications for this country under forthcoming human rights obligations this autumn—and that despite the Minister's assurances at Second Reading—and, perhaps most importantly, the effect that it will have on the Probation Service and its delicate relationship with offenders. I could easily enlarge on that list, but the clock ticks on and the Committee stage has been long.

I have some sympathy for the Minister. She has already been under fire today under MoD rules of engagement. She is now being charged with an unauthorised poaching expedition into a territory of the law. Like many other Members of the Committee—and these are not weasel words—I have great respect for the Minister and her passionate promotion for what she believe in, but I hope that in this case she will allow me to say that it is a pretty rum do all round! It is difficult to see why the many minefields around such a proposal were not spotted well in advance. For example, unused though I am to the workings of the Whitehall machine—and I say that almost thankfully—I find it odd in the extreme that one great department of state, the Home Office, has allowed itself to be "cut up" by another, the Department of Social Security.

One simply cannot, and certainly should not, mix up the law and the executive in this way and confer powers on the executive ahead of trial. Unless my appreciation of English constitutional history is seriously flawed, that is a fundamental fact about the constitution of this country. Accordingly, I most warmly urge the Minister to think again, having heard the compelling arguments advanced tonight, and to give us all grounds for hope. Once that subtle and precious link has been broken, the first step towards possibly greater infelicities in the future will have been taken and that is a serious matter.

Someone would have to be totally insensitive not to be moved and to have sympathies with the arguments expressed today. However, some of the expressions were emotive and perhaps went further than necessary. Furthermore, there was a measure of unfairness as regards the proposals put forward by the Government.

We must recognise that law and order is becoming an increasingly major problem. The observance of it is undoubtedly worsening; crime is increasing; and prisons are overcrowded. We know that in large measure community service orders are not working. We have heard comments about a penalty for the poor. The vast majority of poor people on benefit are not offenders. Certainly, the vast majority of people on benefit, poor or otherwise, are not offenders. In this provision, we are talking about people who are offenders.

I understood the noble Earl, Lord Russell, to say that benefit is for need and I understand that. However, we also know that from time to time there has been fairly widespread benefit fraud. Whether that is committed by people who offend in another area of crime perhaps cannot be totally quantified, but the Government want to see people subject to community service orders fulfilling their responsibilities. If they do not, they place at risk their entitlement to benefit. It is one measure in the armoury of provisions in our legal system; for example, fines, community service orders, conditional discharges or imprisonment. The last thing I would want to see is the abandonment of community service orders because we would then have to return to the issue of imprisonment.

It seems to me that this provision will not be used very easily; it will be used to try to bring about a greater degree of observance of a penalty that has been imposed by a court. If it succeeds in doing that, then of course the benefit will not be removed. I believe that this is the way in which the Government want to approach the matter. There may well be amendments to be made to the provision; nevertheless, I believe that there has been a measure of unfairness in the way that it has been described this afternoon.

I remind Members of the Committee that we are legislating for Scotland as well as for the rest of the United Kingdom. I believe that the noble Lord's defence of what the Government are doing may be echoed somewhere in Scotland, but I have not yet heard it. What I have heard is very much more the line put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws.

I wish to ask the Minister one or two questions about the way in which Clause 61 in particular will operate in Scotland because I do not believe that anomalies make it any more acceptable. First, as I read the Bill, a JP will report to the Secretary of State that an offender is not carrying out a community service order properly. As Members of the Committee know, a JP in Scotland is not the same as a magistrate in England and Wales. It is the view of the Law Society of Scotland, and it is certainly my view, that the sheriff should perform that function. It is a grave matter to remove someone's benefit before it is proved that the order is being broken and for it to be done by a Scots JP. That is no reflection on JPs, but it should be done at the sheriff's court. I should be grateful if the noble Baroness would say whether that change is under consideration.

Secondly, I want to ask what happens if the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy., is right and Clause 61 becomes law in Scotland and is found in a Scottish court to be in contravention of the convention on human rights. As I understand it, if a Bill has been passed by the Scots Parliament, it can be struck down by a Scottish judge in a Scottish court. However, this will be a UK Bill. I should like to know what happens if a Scottish judge finds that it is in contravention of human rights. That could happen at any time once the Bill becomes law because the convention on human rights is already incorporated in Scots law. There may be no difference. However, I should like to know the answer to that question. Certainly, I believe that the Committee needs to know whether the Bill is to be treated differently in the Scottish courts.

My final question is why there have been no pilot schemes in Scotland. The social work system in Scotland is very different from the probation system in England and Wales.

Perhaps I may help the noble Baroness on that point. Pilot schemes are proposed in the Bill. I certainly take the point that perhaps one of them should be exercised in Scotland. However, the noble Baroness is asking us to anticipate what has not yet happened.

I thank the noble Baroness and I apologise for my mistake. However, the Bill states quite clearly that there will be pilot schemes in England and Wales but not in Scotland. I should like to know whether that has anything to do with the fact that, under the Bill, one benefit which the Government propose that it should be possible to remove from an offender is the training allowance. The whole area relating to training is a matter that has been devolved to Scotland. The Bill has been altered to allow for that. I believe that Clause 61 is probably absolutely accurate. However, I wondered whether that was one reason why it was proposed not to have pilot schemes in Scotland. If it is not, then it seems to me absolutely essential that there should be pilot schemes there, and I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to answer that point.

I welcome the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, and other noble Lords to oppose the clause. Like the noble Lord, Lord Carlisle of Bucklow, I also concur with almost everything that was said during Second Reading of the Bill.

Perhaps I may take just one thread of the arguments that have been advanced. Ethnic minorities are twice as likely as their white counterparts to be unemployed. In some areas, the proportion would be even higher. Sentencing research has already demonstrated clearly how the criminal justice system works against the interests of the minority community. This is not the place to elaborate on such researches. However, perhaps I may draw the attention of the Committee to the research conducted by Roger Hood of the Centre for Criminological Research at Oxford, which bears out what I have said.

In this country, between 15 per cent and 18 per cent of the prison population in male prisons is black and up to one in four women in British prisons is black. Why do I say that? I do so because the Commission for Racial Equality is seriously concerned about the implication that the proposal to withdraw benefits will have to the disadvantage of ethnic minorities. If they are serving a community sentence, they are more likely to be in receipt of benefits than are their white counterparts. The commission is concerned also that the withdrawal of benefits will follow an alleged but not proven breach.

The commission wrote to the Minister, Alistair Darling MP, about its concern, particularly in relation to the aims of the Race Relations (Amendment) Bill, about which we had a substantial discussion in this House, and the aim of the amendment approved by the Government. The Bill extends the Race Relations Act 1976 to those functions of public authorities that currently are not covered under the Bill. A policy which in its application operates to the disadvantage of a particular racial group who are proportionately less able to comply with the conditions or requirements of that policy would be unlawful unless it could be justified. I ask the Minister to consider whether justification for the proposed measure outweighs its likely disproportionate impact on ethnic minorities.

I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Coity, talk about the prison population. I had put a Question to the Minister—to which I have received a reply only today (I hope that it will be printed in today's Hansard)—about the impact of community sentences and the breach of those sentences. I asked the Minister what is the estimated likely increase in the number of people imprisoned each year and the average daily prison population as a result not of this particular clause but of Clause 46 of the Criminal Justice and Court Services Bill, which concerns the breach of community orders, warnings and punishment. The Minister replied:

"We expect that the new proposals will be effective in persuading offenders to comply with their community sentences. In the short term, it is possible that there will be an increase in the numbers imprisoned. It is difficult to make firm estimates of the numbers involved, but if the new statutory warning scheme is ignored by half of those offenders who currently fail to comply without good reason on one or more occasions, some 25,000 additional offenders could be imprisoned resulting in an increase in the average daily prison population of about 1,900".

That is the impact on the prison population of breaches of community service orders, either directly or indirectly. I ask one question. What is the Labour Party's estimate of a reasonable prison population in this country? We are already at the point of competing with Turkey. How low do we have to sink?

I, too, support the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham. I do not wish to detain the Committee or the noble Baroness long. The arguments have already been put very convincingly, but I should like to add two points. I have spent many years of my life working with the people with whom this clause is concerned; that is, people in all kinds of trouble. Often their trouble with the law was the least of their worries.

All the research from the Home Office and from the Government's admirable Social Exclusion Unit bears out this experience. Many of the people we are talking about are struggling. There is one image of them as violent, offensive, thuggish and yobbish: many epithets can be found about them in the pages of any newspaper. There is another side that those who work with offenders, especially younger offenders, see often. The 19 year-old who does not look his age and who comes to a project, a day centre or to see his probation officer on a Monday morning full of misery. What sort of weekend has he had? He has tried to protect his mother from being beaten by his father. He has tried to look after the three younger children and feed them. He has suffered more than usual from the headaches he gets but he does not have a GP and the doctors on the estate where he lives are not very sympathetic to people like him.

According to Home Office Research Study 167, Offenders on Probation, nearly half of the people subject to probation and community penalties said they suffered from a long-term illness compared to 13 per cent in the general population. That is the background of many of the people subject to community penalties and that case could be multiplied many thousands of times. These are the people who will be subject to this provision. They are already very poor.

It may be said that these are all excuses and that there are no excuses for crime. These are not excuses but explanations of why this measure is grossly inappropriate. It will have another effect. When dispensing justice, one has to be just.

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, said in his famous and sadly neglected 1991 report on the prison system:

"There must … be justice in our prisons. The system of justice which has put a person in prison cannot end at the prison doors. It must accompany the prisoner into the prison".

Nor must it end once the community sentence has been passed. The aim of the justice system is to get offenders to play by the rules; to respect the law; to understand justice and injustice; and to stop treating other people unjustly.

This provision is clearly unjust. If so many noble Lords think it is unjust, so will offenders subject to community orders. Those in work will continue to receive money. Those without work will be deprived of benefit before a hearing. This measure makes the task of those working to get offenders back into society very much more difficult. It is desperately hard work—painstaking work for which too little credit is given. This measure will make their work even harder and the outcome will be one that nobody wants: fewer people helped into law-abiding lives, more social exclusion and more crime.

There was reference at Second Reading to punishment fitting the crime; to the quality of mercy; and other more classical references from the noble Earl, Lord Russell. We have heard today a great deal of eloquence about community sentencing and benefit entitlements. My noble friend Lady Kennedy of the Shaws spoke very emotively and passionately. However, she does not speak for or represent the vast majority of Labour Back-Benchers.

I want to make a few simple points underlined by the commitment in the Bill to evaluate the system of community sentences before rolling the scheme out. The points I make are about deterrents, choice, rights and responsibilities and setting examples.

Members of the Committee are aware that community sentences are given to and indeed chosen by offenders whose crimes are not so serious that prison is the only appropriate measure. Community service orders, probation orders and combination orders impose sanctions through some restriction of liberty for offending behaviour and making reparation for the community; for example, by performing unpaid work. In many cases, successful completion of community sentences improves the opportunities of employment for the offender. Completing a community sentence requires self-discipline in attending appointments with the Probation Service and others and turning up for work on a community service placement.

I, too, am a supporter of civil liberties of many kinds. I do not believe in punishment for punishment's sake. I believe in justice and playing by the rules. I believe that people, particularly young people referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, need to be provided with information and education to make choices in their lives. I believe that they also need frameworks and boundaries set by families, society and ultimately themselves. I believe it does no one any good, in fact it might do harm, to encourage choice, in this case choice of a community sentence, to set frameworks and then not sanction a breach of commitment. What is that saying to the offender? What is it saying to those who might offend? What is it saying to society in general?

We have now introduced citizenship education in our schools as part of the curriculum. It would be a travesty not to advocate and set examples of responsibilities as well as rights. Surely we should be saying loudly and clearly to our young people that civil liberties also carry civic duties and that offending should carry sanctions, not only for the sake of society but of the offender. There is nothing wrong with disapproval sometimes.

I understand that around 130,000 community sentences are handed down each year in England and Wales. In 30,000 cases a year, offenders have to be referred back to court because they have not complied with their sentences. This situation surely calls for action.

The Bill contains powers to withdraw selected benefits from offenders who fail to comply with community sentences. I will not go into detail; that is well known. Your Lordships are also aware that the pilot scheme will permit hardship payments, even if the jobseeker's allowance and the training allowance are withdrawn, but only the element of selected training allowances, which equates with the participant's underlying jobseeker's allowance, will be withdrawn. Any additional premium, top-up payment or payment of expenses will remain payable subject to continued participation in the scheme. The allowances selected will include those payable to participants in work-based learning for adults and the New Deal for young people. Housing benefit entitlements will not be affected.

This is surely about deterring people from breaching a contract they make with the state and making it clear that breach of contract will result in sanctions. Yes, it does send messages. Surely, it is fair that benefit systems should be seen to be applied to those who merit them and not to people who choose—I emphasise the word again—to fail to comply with agreed rules. There are conditions applicable to most aspects of life including good citizenship. We all have to learn the conditions and learn obligations to society. I believe that there are key principles at stake here, principles of being fair and being seen to be fair. I do not want to get into the draconian views of welfare and benefit sometimes voiced in the "vox pop" interviews. I strongly support welfare for those who deserve it and who have an entitlement to it. I also believe that people can learn and should learn to respect a system of rights and responsibilities. We must encourage them to do so. This is why I reject the amendment.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln is very sorry indeed that he is not able to be here. His name is associated with these amendments. He has been called back to the diocese on urgent business. I want to express my agreement with this proposal and my support for it. I agree completely with what has been said by many Members of the Committee—the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, the noble Earl, Lord Russell and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. Breaching a community service order is a very serious matter. It is not something which can be overlooked and it is not something which is trivial. But what the Government are proposing is an extremely blunt and immoral instrument with which to deal with that particular alleged offence.

It is quite right that if someone is alleged to have breached a community service order, he should go back to the courts as soon as possible. It is for the courts to establish whether there is a breach. The circumstances of each case must be established. Those cases will be extremely different, from person to person. What is the proper course of action for each of the 65 per cent of those under probation supervision who are on benefits and who would be punished by this proposal?

I do not want to reiterate the arguments which have been set so eloquently before the Committee, but I want to express my support for the Motion and I apologise for the absence of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln.

Perhaps I may respond briefly to the intervention of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. She has addressed the practicalities of this debate in a manner which is very attractive to a large number of people outside this Chamber and to some Members on all sides of the Committee. Therefore, in turn, it needs to be addressed.

We are debating two matters: principle and practice. The case about principle, which my noble friend Lord Windlesham and others have advanced, is unanswerable in the form in which it has been put. Sometimes practicalities argue against principle. One can bend principle because practicalities make it difficult to enforce or unreliable in effect.

But I do not believe that that is so now. Many people, including the Association of Chief Officers of Probation, have adduced the way in which those provisions will work. The noble Baroness said that there must be fairness; that people expect punishment to be fair; that if you breach the order, you should be punished. My noble friend did not suggest that that should not be the case. He has merely said that it should be done by the courts; that these orders are an alternative to imprisonment; and that those who are subject to them should be exposed to the risk of imprisonment if they fail to comply.

The noble Baroness said that the appeal to the hearts of Members of the Committee because of hardship is overstated because there will be hardship payments. In the provisions, we learn that those will not be available until two weeks after the orders bite. So is it possible to survive for a fortnight on an empty stomach but not for six weeks or six months?

The noble Baroness said also that the payments for housing benefit would not be affected. But housing benefit payments are often less than rents. What happens to the unfortunate person who must meet those payments out of income? Even if he receives a hardship payment, the whole amount is not clawed back and the income element is untouched by the hardship payment.

We need to look at the practical effects of the proposed provisions. The practical effect is that many people, who are fairly incompetent at managing their lives in any event, will find it impossible to do so without resorting to crime.

Along with my noble friend Lady Massey, it is important that I put on record that my noble friend Lady Kennedy does not speak on behalf of many of us on the Back Benches here. I say that partly because recent publicity featuring my noble friend, certainly over the past weekend, suggested that somehow my noble friend is seen as the conscience of this Labour Government. My socialist conscience is in good working order and functioning very well.

What exercises my conscience is the notion that this Government are not listening or taking seriously the terrifying nature of the lives being led by some of our citizens on the estates and in the housing schemes where violence, robbery and vandalism are a huge problem. Perhaps I may say to the noble Earl that the people on those estates are not usually property owners. Do they not also have a right to be heard in this debate? This proposal is consistent with the Government's philosophy of being tough on crime and on the causes of crime.

Is the noble Baroness able to rebut the proposition that this proposal will increase crime?

I say that the proposal is consistent with the philosophy which underpins the New Deal, welfare reform and the crime and justice policy. It is a philosophy about rights and responsibilities. I shall answer the noble Earl's question when I address that point at the end of my remarks.

However. I find it puzzling that some Members of the Committee, including those on this side, speak of rights and responsibilities as a kind of pick-and-mix. It is a pick-and-mix idea of rights and responsibilities. Those people imprisoned in their houses may feel that the rights are all on one side and they may ask who is taking the responsibility.

This is not a stand-alone measure because, of course, it is part of a jigsaw of measures. It is important to support it as one small part of that.

Finally, I believe that there is an odd alliance here which includes the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and my noble friend Lady Kennedy. I know that they must be aware that when probation and community service orders are broken, the end result is that people are put in prison. I know that they cannot believe that that is a good outcome. However, I am not quite so sure about the Benches opposite, particularly after listening to the Leader of the Conservative Party, Mr Hague, on this subject during the past week. I merely say that that must give people cause for thought.

I want to ask a single question about the application of this Bill in Scotland. In view of the fact that the criminal justice system has been devolved to the Scottish Parliament, will it be intra vires for the Secretary of State to run a pilot scheme in Scotland?

I would like to indicate that from these Benches there is certainly not total unanimity about what should be done in this regard. I had better explain where I come from. For some time before 1998, I was involved with three charitable bodies concerned with penal reform and with offenders. The best part of that time was spent as chairman of NACRO, one of the organisations which was a party to the representations which have been made to many Members.

It has always seemed to me that the concept of deterrence was very confused. We live in an extremely penal-oriented society but one man's deterrent is another man's incentive. I have little doubt that the prospect of going to prison would be a 120 per cent deterrent to the Minister. Indeed, the very fact of being anywhere near the thought would be dreadful to her.

But I am puzzled by the belief that the withdrawal of this money will deter those who are under those two particular forms of sentence to whom the prospect of going to prison is not a deterrent. I find that totally unconvincing.

Perhaps I may say to my noble friend Lady Massey that most of the people that she is talking about could not spell the word "contract", let alone understand it. One problem is in being cost-effective in dealing with crime, its consequences and offenders. I assure the Committee that I should not wish to be classed as wet, soft Left or pink in this concept because I was one of the major players in producing the Audit Commission's report on mis-spent youth. I commend it to a number of Members of this Chamber who have not read it. If there is a failing with the youth justice system, it certainly will not be cured by these clauses in the Bill.

I do not want to repeat what others have said before me. As I have indicated, I wish to be constructive. I have no quarrel at all with being tough on those who break that contract and in dealing with them. But the subtleties of the matter need to be understood. Only about a third of those who are taken hack to the courts are given a prison sentence. Where do the other two-thirds fall?

I believe that the real answer lies in doing something tough quickly and getting those allegedly in breach before a magistrate fast. I understand that on average it takes about six weeks. In some parts of the country I believe that it takes a good deal longer, which is utterly ridiculous. If we want people to feel that there is a deterrent and that if they are caught they will be dealt with quickly, we must deal with them quickly. Because we have dealt with them so slowly—as set out in the misspent youth report—the whole system has fallen into disrepute with such people.

There is also the belief that somehow or other the public will feel satisfied if this provision is enacted. Of course, in terms of taxation and cost, the price will be a great deal heavier. I have no doubt whatever that the consequences of this will lead to increased, often nuisance crime. I see no constructive point in that at all.

Perhaps I may conclude with an anecdote. In the 1960s I used regularly to visit two London prisons, where I spoke to prisoners who were due for release within two or three months. After a short while it was borne in upon me that, whether one liked it or not, it was desirable to try to remove any possible causes of grievance on release. Many of these men and women look for something to justify doing what they should not do. I came across several prisoners who returned to prison quickly. They had left prison, got a job, promised their wives that they would go straight and so on. Then pay day came on the Friday and they found that the inspector of taxes had taken 30 per cent of their pay so they went home with a lot less than they had thought or had promised to go home with.

That is a simple, mechanistic issue that, I hope, has been dealt with. I found the Inland Revenue extremely co-operative. At the end of the day a form was produced and given to any prisoner who wanted it so that he or she left prison with a piece of paper saying, in the majority of cases, that he or she is not liable to pay any tax. Therefore, the potential sense of grievance is removed.

This proposal invents a new potential sense of grievance. It will not be understood, except in its simplistic form. I hope that we shall not be required to vote on this matter as I hope that the Minister and the Government will think through whether there is not a better answer to dealing with this problem.

I hope that the Minister will carefully consider the points that have been made not only from this side of the House and from the Liberal Democrat Benches, but also from the Benches behind her. The measure that she proposes is offensive on two grounds of principle.

The first principle is that the responsibility for trying to condition criminal behaviour lies with the Home Office. Those of us concerned with bringing in criminal justice Bills know only too well that this is an immensely complex measure. Whatever proposals one brings forward, one must be satisfied that one will not increase the incidence of crime, rather than reduce it. That requires a long study of criminological reports which are available only in the Home Office, in our system, or to various criminological departments in our universities. That is not the responsibility of the Department of Social Security. The Minister cannot be expected to make the case convincingly on this point because she is not responsible for such matters. Previous Labour governments and previous Conservative governments have always observed that important principle. The consequences of the Minister's suggestion is that quite lowly paid officials in the Department of Social Security will make a decision which was never intended to be part of our criminal justice system.

The second principle is that I do not believe that one should use the withdrawal of benefits and entitlements as some sort of further punishment. For many years, the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, represented the interests of the Inland Revenue and he could advise the Minister that if one of his staff had been convicted of grievous fraud, convicted and sent to prison, his or her Civil Service pension would not be removed.

When a judge was found guilty of smuggling—I believe, bootleg liquor into this country from France—there was a suggestion that his pension should be removed. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, the then Lord Chancellor, said that he would not do that, thus preventing other judges following suit.

The principle is wrong, as the noble Earl, Lord Russell, said. This measure cannot be used as a yo-yo penalty to withdraw entitlements. If it can be used in relation to breaches of community orders, why not use it in relation to breaches of probation orders? The Minister will say that such a person has been convicted. What about someone who breaches a probation order six times and commits six offences in between? Shall we try to condition his or her behaviour by using these sorts of penalties?

I suggest that the Minister should listen carefully to the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, who has spent most of her life and career dealing with offenders, prisons and criminals. She probably has a greater understanding of the motivation of criminals than anybody in this House. The Minister should also listen to the noble Lord, Lord Christopher.

This is the sort of proposal that is dreamt up on a Saturday afternoon in No. 10, when the spin doctors have come in and said, "The Sundays are going to say that we are weak on law and order; come on, Tony, come up with some really clever idea, a spiffing wheeze that will get us the headlines for a few days". They have had the headlines for a few days; they will have the headaches for years.

Perhaps I can intervene on that point which I regard as somewhat unkind and grossly unfair. In relation to the opening remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, who asked why the Department of Social Security blundered into these proposals, if he listened to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Coity, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, he would understand why the Government had to do something about the situation with which the people in this country live. It is absolute chaos out there. I do not know how many noble Lords visit the areas that have been referred to, but they are out of hand and running wild. Our people require a government who care more about the poor than did the Conservative government during their 18 or 20 years in power. We are talking about a government who genuinely care; something needs to be done.

This is not necessarily a complete solution, but it is a solution to how to deal with the problem. This is not a solution devised by judges or barristers. We have heard a lot from them this afternoon, protecting, some would say, their own interests, as ever. It is about a government who are trying to deal with the specific problem. I suggest that they be given our best wishes to proceed in the way that they intend.

Before the noble Lord sits down, can he say how there would be greater protection in the neighbourhoods that he has described so emotively if offending is increased as a result of this measure?

I take the view that this Government are concerned with responsibilities and benefits. Why cannot these people toe the line when they know the issue with which they are faced?

Reducing benefits as a punishment for non-compliance with a community order is profoundly objectionable. The reasons have been expressed extremely powerfully by my noble friend Lord Russell and, with the exception of four speakers from the Government Back Benches, by everybody else who has spoken. It appears, not only from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, but also from the body language of a good many who have not spoken, that those on the Government Back Benches are at least as much in support of the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, as they are in support of the Government's position.

These points have all been made extremely well by many speakers. I want to concentrate, therefore, on a more limited question; that is, whether Clause 61 complies with the European Convention on Human Rights. I am doubtful whether, in itself, reducing benefits as a form of punishment is a breach of the European convention. I am tempted to say that it amounts to inhuman treatment under Article 3, but it possibly falls a little way short of that. I see from his body language that the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, clearly takes that view.

I shall not go through the other arguments, save to say that it is well known that one of the defects of the European convention is that it does not deal in any way adequately with the problem of discrimination. While the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, pointed out effectively and unchallengeably that the provision discriminates against the poor, and my noble friend Lord Dholakia pointed out, equally effectively and unchallengeably, that it discriminates against ethnic minorities, they do not in themselves constitute breaches of the European convention as it now stands. But what is plainly in breach of the convention is the fact that the proposed punishment is to be imposed before conviction.

This is an extraordinary provision. Clause 61 may be, in form, a civil penalty. But in substance it is a criminal one because it imposes a penalty for misbehaviour. It will undoubtedly be recognised as criminal proceedings by the European Court of Human Rights when these provisions, if they become law, are challenged, as they plainly will be.

The European Convention on Human Rights provides, as does British law, a presumption of innocence. What happens to that presumption of innocence under Clause 61? What we have here is not a presumption of innocence, but a presumption of guilt because the penalty is imposed as soon as the information is laid and the Secretary of State has been notified of that fact. It is true that under Clause 61(6), if the court finds that there has been no failure to comply with the community order or there has been a reasonable excuse for non-compliance, the offender has those benefits made up. But that is not good enough. As my noble friend Lord Russell pointed out, the reduction of benefit will in itself cause severe hardship and it is not good enough, in the end, to say that the offender may receive back the money that he or she should have had in the first place. That will not compensate for the hardship caused by the unjustified withdrawal of benefits.

Why do the Government want to impose sentence before conviction? There seems to be no reason. It does not necessarily undermine the principle of Clause 61, even if one sticks to that.

Perhaps the noble Lord will give way. I am intrigued by the question of penalty before conviction. How would the noble Lord answer if the legislation were framed in such a way that the person going before the courts was given a community service order on the understanding that, if they broke it, they would lose benefit?

It would still have to be proved that they had broken the order. Surely, it would be better to wait a few weeks and make sure that a harsh penalty is not being imposed on an innocent person; a person who is innocent of the breach of the order.

The specific element of imposing penalty before conviction is almost certainly contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights and is perhaps the most objectionable of all the objectionable features of this clause.

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I say nothing of the merits of his argument. But if he is predicting the way in which an application to the Court of Human Rights might emerge, does he remember the case of Duhs v. Sweden, where an ex post facto remedy by a court was regarded as justifying what was done?

The facts of that case are a long 'way from the facts of this case. I do not believe that, in a case of this kind, the court would find any justification for imposing a penalty before the conviction.

I conclude by saying that I feel that this is perhaps the most objectionable provision of what is, in itself, an entirely objectionable clause. I hope that in due course the whole of Clause 61 will be withdrawn by the Government.

The question of the legality of this provision was rightly raised by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. There was a risk that that question might go by default; that it might be assumed by Members of the Committee, in the light of comments that were made, that this provision would be unlawful. I want to spend a few moments on that issue. I do not want to say anything about the question of underlying policy, on which so much has been said so powerfully on both sides of the argument.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, that the question of legality depends upon Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. I agree with him, and that is why I was noticeably shaking my head, that this cannot be a question of inhuman treatment, nor does he suggest that it would be. Nor can it be given the state of the law on discrimination; in my view, a question of unlawful discrimination. My noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws referred to Article 7—no punishment without law—but should this Bill be passed by this Parliament, that could not be an issue.

Reference was also made by several Members of the Committee to the principle of no double punishment. In so far as that is to be found in the European Convention on Human Rights, it is to he found in a protocol which, so far, this Government have not ratified. In any event, the idea that more than one detriment may follow from a single act is well known, well understood and happens quite frequently.

The real question, therefore, relates to Article 6. What is the substance of the requirement of that: article? First, that those who have their civil or criminal rights to be determined, should have them determined by a court, independent, impartial, in public and in a reasonable time. But—and this is the substance and the purport of the intervention of my noble and learned friend Lord Archer—the European Court of Human Rights, in its jurisprudence, recognised that that does not require that in every case the penalty be imposed only at the time of determination by a court. There are a number of cases—my noble and learned friend referred to one—the case of Ozturk; the case of Malige is another, and in its judgment the court said that,

"where a penalty is criminal in nature there must be the possibility of review by a court which satisfies the requirements of Article 6 § 1, even though it is not inconsistent with the Convention for the prosecution and punishment of minor offences to be primarily a matter for the administrative authorities".

That refers back to earlier jurisdiction of the court and is a commonplace in certain countries that, for certain minor offences, administrative authorities impose sanctions which have to be paid at that stage. There is the right to determination by the court and, on determination, that penalty is returned, so long as that court is, as magistrates' courts undoubtedly are, public, impartial and hear the offences within a reasonable time. Those conditions are required.

I recognise that there is scope for argument, as there always is under the European Convention on Human Rights, as to which side of a line something would fall. There are certain features about this regime, however, which justify the view which my noble friend the Minister has expressed on the face of the Bill, pursuant to legal advice which the department has received, and she has told your Lordships that this will comply with the ECHR.

Those conditions seem to me to be these. First, the very important fact that, under the proposed legislation, the question of whether or not ultimately the benefit is to be lost is for the magistrates' court. That is plainly a critical consideration. Secondly, the degree of punishment involved—and I am prepared for these purposes to treat it as such.

My understanding is that under the proposed regulations this will be limited to a four-week deprivation; secondly, that it will not be a complete deprivation of benefit, depending upon the circumstances of the individual. Reference has been made to a hardship allowance remaining available and to income support not being completely removed. Finally, the approach corresponds to the general approach taken under the legislation, where the conditions for benefit are determined by administrative act in the first instance.

Those considerations lead me to the view therefore that on the question of legality this is not, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, certain or almost certain to breach the ECHR. I take the opposite view. I recognise that there is a grey area but, having regard to the jurisprudence of the court which exists, I take the view that the Government are justified in putting this forward on the basis that it will not do so. As the Minister has said in this House, should it turn out that the court takes a different view, effect will have to be given to that. As it stands, however, I suggest that your Lordships should not consider this matter on the basis that it will be illegal. On the basis of the merits of the argument, I say nothing.

Before the noble Lords sits down, can he help me in this matter? He says that the real question is whether there has been a breach of Article 6. Is not the real question whether punishment before conviction is an insult to one's elementary sense of fairness?

The niceties of the European law, deeply stimulating to the lawyer, have absolutely no relevance to the question here of fairness. How does he deal with that?

It is very refreshing to hear the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, dismiss law in that way. As the noble and learned Lord will have heard, my observations to your Lordships were addressed to one argument which has been advanced in support of the proposition that these clauses should not stand part of the Bill, namely that these provisions will be unlawful.

I made it very plain that it was no part of what I was dealing with to say anything about the policy of the matter. That is for your Lordships to determine and others on both sides of the House have spoken eloquently about it.

So far as the law is concerned I believe, particularly in the light of the observations of the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, and of others, that it is important to address the question of legality. That is what I have sought to do and I hope that it will be of some assistance to your Lordships.

The noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, spoke of other jurisdictions and used the words "minor administrative penalties". Is it the noble Lord's thinking that withdrawal of benefits could conceivably be viewed as minor in the circumstances with which we are dealing here?

Yes. I emphasise the limit in terms of time and in terms of amount. I do not doubt for a moment that, for the individual involved, the effect is significant; but when one looks at this in the overall context of the criminal law, punishments, procedures, and puts it in the scale, the European Court of Human Rights has recognised that, so long as there is a right of review by a court which offers these guarantees—which the magistrates' court does and which is required under this Act—then it does not breach the European Convention on Human Rights. As the noble Lord puts it, the punishment is placed first or, as I believe the Minister will explain it, the condition for the benefit is triggered at an earlier stage. I was prepared to approach it on the basis of punishment, in order to deal with the argument.

I apologise for missing the beginning of this debate, but I have an excuse. Perhaps I may offer the excuse to your Lordships and make a few comments on this issue from my perspective as chairman of the Youth Justice Board. I have been out of London, launching a youth offending team, following the excellent report from the Audit Commission on misspent youth. I am pleased to be able t o say that these changes are going extremely well.

Perhaps I may be allowed to offer a few points on the policy underlying this. If it is your Lordships' wish that I should not then I will, of course, sit down.

I will take that silence as consent to go ahead! First, there is the issue of conditionality. There is in this provision the notion of conditionality of benefit. This is not a new principle. Conditionality for paying benefit is a long-established principle, as I know from my own experience of working in social security.

What may be deemed a little novel is the idea that conditionality should be linked to breaches of criminal justice orders. The conditionality of social security benefit payments, however, is part and parcel of the individual's contract with the state. The state agrees to pay benefits on certain conditions if certain contingencies arise. We are doing no more in this provision, I suggest, than extending that to another part of the individual's contract with the state. In this circumstance the contract is one in which the individual has undertaken to abide by the terms of a particular court order. The terms of the court order and the arrangements for its enforcement have been made clear to that individual. This provision does no more than produce a lower alternative penalty than the existing arrangements for breaches of that court order, which is imprisonment.

The noble Baroness has made it clear that the terms of this punishment will be no more than a four-week deprivation of the benefit and there will be hardship provisions. That does not seem to me to be a very onerous set of circumstances if you consider the alternative, which might be imprisonment for the breaches of the court order.

The noble Lord, Lord Baker, implied that all wisdom in these matters should reside in the Home Office. A lot of wisdom does reside in the Home Office. I suggest to the noble Lord, however, that it is also apparent that not all of the changes which the previous government introduced to the criminal justice system were the result of carefully researched and weighed proposals, supported by a basis of academic research. Sometimes, I suggest, people make judgments about sensible ways forward in the light of circumstances which people face.

On the issue of whether or not people understand, it seems to me that the suggestion that people do not understand the consequences of a community order is rather patronising. They have been through this process. The circumstances have been explained to them. They have knowingly breached the contract that they have undertaken to carry out. The response proposed in this clause, it seems to me, is proportionate to the offence that they have committed.

Before the noble Lord sits down, I have a question for him. I understand his application, generally, of the principle of "conditionality", but I should like some assistance on the following: who is to establish whether the condition has been broken?