asked the Leader of the House:

My Lords, I am deeply grateful to the noble Lord for giving me this opportunity to remind delinquent Lords of the terms of Standing Order 22. It reads:

"If any Lord has occasion to speak with another Lord while the House is sitting, they are to retire to the Prince's Chamber, and not converse in the space behind the Woolsack; or else the Lord Speaker is to call them to order, and, if necessary, to stop the business in agitation".

This is therefore quite a modern problem: the Standing Order is dated 30th March 1670.

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord for his Answer, and I hope that, after this, the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack will not be agitated too much in future. Does the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House agree that this practice has become far worse in recent years and that it is sometimes very difficult to pay attention to the debate because several conversations are going on at the same time? I wonder whether the House could not comport itself better when Question Time ends. There tends to be such a chorus of conversation as Peers leave the Chamber that it is very difficult to hear the opening few minutes of the first speech in the following debate.

My Lords, I think there are two serious points here. I believe that some noble Lords do not realise that their carefully wrought aphorisms, intended only for their immediate neighbour, are in fact picked up by the microphones. It is very disconcerting, particularly if one is trying to answer a question, because one simply cannot hear the question. The noble Lord, Lord Denham, is right. Very often I have sympathised with colleagues on the Opposition Front Bench, and on ours, who are trying to address the House above a good deal of noise as noble Lords leave the Chamber. In March 1999, the committee chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton of Eggardon, reported that,

"too many Lords have taken to conducting background conversations in the Chamber. This should be strongly discouraged".

I think we would all agree with that.

My Lords, does the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House agree that if we are to continue with a self-regulated House it imposes a responsibility on all of us to stick to the rules? We should be grateful to my noble friend Lord Denham for having raised the matter. I am aware that on occasions I have been seen to whisper to one of my colleagues and I shall now desist.

My Lords, the trouble with whispers is that they are normally not whispers at all. Plainly, this is something that the life Peers have learnt from the hereditaries.

My Lords, does the Standing Order also refer—

My Lords, may I?

My Lords, I think that it is the turn of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams.

My Lords, she thinks so too. We appreciate the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Denham. Despite the astonishingly high quality of conversation on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench, we accept a certain degree of guilt by association. We therefore confess that we have some responsibility in the matter. In future we shall maintain a trappist silence during all appropriate periods. We thank the noble Lord, Lord Denham, for his Question.

My Lords, I believe that a good deal of the blame rests on the Liberal Democrats, but I forgive them.

My Lords, does the noble and learned Lord agree that if supplementary questions related more directly to the substantive Question on the Order Paper your Lordships would be less likely to hold conversations behind the Woolsack or elsewhere? Will he also keep in mind and acknowledge that this place is after all a Parliament where we parley and speak? It is not a morgue.

My Lords, addressing myself to the last part of that observation, it sometimes feels like it. It is true that supplementary questions often do not relate to the Question. The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, now firmly declines to answer such questions. As the noble Lord, Lord Denham, pointed out, it is difficult to hear if other noble Lords are speaking at the same time because what they say is picked up by the microphones.

My Lords, I am sure that these Benches are grateful for the noble and learned Lord's absolution. Would he care to comment on the difference between a whisper and a conversation?

My Lords, whispers are much more interesting.

My Lords, as the Standing Order ultimately requires the sanction of stopping "the business in agitation", will we be given a demonstration of "in agitation" so that we shall recognise it when it happens?

My Lords, I do not think that the Standing Order is free of all doubt. It should be considered by the Privileges Committee. Does the agitation refer to the business, to your Lordships or, Heaven forfend, is it supposed to relate to my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor?

My Lords, does the noble and learned Lord accept that the conversations that go on are not only off-putting for the speaker and those listening to the speech but are also most disturbing for the occupant of the Woolsack at the time? Can the noble and learned Lord tell me when was the last occasion on which the Standing Order was enforced, by whom and against whom?

My Lords, speaking from memory, I think it was 15th January 1572.

My Lords, although conversation is forbidden, can one talk to oneself?

My Lords, one should not, but one does.

My Lords, does the noble and learned Lord agree that such conversations create additional difficulties for those Peers who are hard of hearing? There are quite a number of them in your Lordships' House.

My Lords, I agree that such conversations are disconcerting when one is trying to give a courteous and full reply whether one hears fully or not. Such conversations are discourteous, as the noble Lord, Lord Denham, implied in the Question.

My Lords, should not the Standing Order apply particularly to noble Lords on the Front Bench who often chatter among themselves when they should be listening to the debate?

My Lords, the Standing Order should be particularly appropriate for those who are members of single-member parties.

My Lords, will the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House also bear in mind, unlike another place, this is the only matter upon which our Speaker and Deputy Speakers are empowered to act from the Woolsack so far as order in the House is concerned and that there are those of us who would not wish to impose any additional burdens upon our Speaker in respect of order in the House?

My Lords, I accept that. We are all willing to blame others for doing what we normally do ourselves. There was one occasion when I believe the noble Earl, Lord Russell, challenged one of my noble friends as regards asperity of language but I have not myself come across agitation in your Lordships' House recently.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

My Lords, the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 provides measures for prohibiting spread of this invasive species. Under Section 14 it is an offence to plant or otherwise cause Japanese knotweed to grow in the wild.

Waste containing Japanese knotweed is controlled under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Environment Agency produces detailed guidance for landowners and managers on how to control this species.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that Answer. Is it correct that much research is devoted to the problems caused by Japanese knotweed? When I first asked a question on the matter in 1989 nothing much was going on. Therefore, I am grateful for the noble Lord's reply. Have any successful prosecutions been brought under the 1981 Act?

My Lords, there is no central record of all the prosecutions that take place, but I suspect that there are very few. I am aware of a prosecution earlier this year, under the Environmental Protection Act 1990, which related to fly-tipping the waste of Japanese knotweed.

My Lords, does my noble friend accept that this particular pernicious weed, and a number of other foreign species, continue to spread? Although the action taken under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 is entirely laudable, a further approach would be desirable to attack the sites where they flourish.

My Lords, certainly the species is aggressive and difficult to shift and so requires some effective measures to remove it from places such as river banks, where it creates danger by causing flood problems, and other amenities and land. For that reason, the Government are undertaking a fundamental review of policy on that and other invasive non-native species, which is due to report within the next couple of months.

My Lords, I understand that this appalling weed, as many of your Lordships may know, is perhaps the largest female clone on the globe. Whether that has any impact on what should be done about it, I do not know. The noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, is looking at me angrily, so I shall move on quickly. Given that the weed is present in perhaps over half the country, is there a good case for introducing biological controls against it, such as appropriate insects and fungi? The invasive nature of the weed is due to the lack of such predators in its environment.

My Lords, I bow to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, on the subject of female clones. It is certainly true that new methods of control need to be identified. Among the possibilities is that of biological control. It is a strong weed and has such a firm hold because, although it is a non-native species, it has been here since the early 19th century and has established itself. Therefore, one would need a pretty strong biological control system, which might well have side effects. All those points are being considered.

My Lords, what is the botanical name of Japanese knotweed?

My Lords, I am extremely glad that noble Lady asks that question. I am sure that I have the name somewhere. No, on second thoughts, I shall have to write to her.

My Lords, I do not know whether I can help the Minister. Are we talking about the plant that is known in the United States as Japanese kudzu? This is a serious question because, if it is the same plant, I wonder whether the Minister is aware of the devastating effects that kudzu has had on trees and forests in the southern United States.

My Lords, it would appear that I have neither the Latin nor the Japanese name for the plant. There have been problems in the United States with the plant that we are discussing, although I am not sure whether it is the same plant as the one to which the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, referred. Japanese knotweed has had devastating effects on parts of other countries besides our own. We have had some success in controlling it in particular areas. As the Environment Agency has said, it has threatened flood defences. There is a scheme in Cornwall that takes a focused approach to eradicate the weed, but it is very resource intensive, so we need to find other ways.

My Lords, it is called Fallopia Japonica.

My Lords, I had the Japonica bit, but the other bit failed me.

My Lords, far be it from me to minimise the threat from Japanese knotweed, but is it not a fact that the pink-flowered Himalayan balsam is just as threatening? Indeed, it is more so because it is attractive, invasive and difficult to eradicate because of its proximity to watercourses.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, is right that this is another invasive species to which we must pay attention. Of course, it does not have such a strong hold as Japanese knotweed, which was also brought over primarily for ornamental purposes. Some people, at least, find Japanese knotweed attractive. Balsam is among the plants that we shall need to consider under any changed strategy.

My Lords—

My Lords—

Cross Bench!

My Lords, is the Minister aware that, in Streatham, my son is not allowed to put oat his garden waste in plastic bags because he has an infestation of Japanese knotweed in his garden, so it has to be burned in situ?

My Lords, I was not particularly aware of Lambeth Council's approach to the problem, but it is true that one is not supposed to put Japanese knotweed in normal garden waste. The prosecution to which I referred earlier related to that matter.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

My Lords, today we published our languages strategy. Our vision is to create an appetite for learning, broadening and enriching the options available. We aim to provide a flexible system of learning languages for all ages; the opportunity for every key stage 2 child to study at least one foreign language by the end of this decade; and to ensure that language learning has a key place in the transformed secondary school of the future.

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that Answer and congratulate her on finally introducing a strategy. Does she accept that, having produced a strategy, the time will come for delivering it? Is she satisfied that the Government have the resources to deliver it?

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his kind words about the strategy. I am satisfied that in spending time on producing the strategy, and through an approach that ensures that we have time to deliver it, we shall have the resources to do so. It will be a strategy of which we can rightly be proud.

My Lords, the problem in question is as much about public motivation as teacher provision. Will the Minister comment on an earlier government's introduction of compulsory teaching of French at 11?

My Lords, I am not sure that I understand the thrust of the right reverend Prelate's comments. However, I understood the comment about motivation and opportunity. We have to provide the opportunity for children to learn languages earlier, and for all of us to continue with language learning, and to see its relevance and appropriateness, throughout the rest of our lives.

My Lords, is the Minister concerned by the fact that our continental neighbours can produce qualified teachers to teach languages from the age of seven, when Her Majesty's Government have to ask retired businessmen and others to help? Does it worry the Government that they cannot produce what our neighbours produce and have produced for many years?

My Lords, next year we propose to double the number of qualified teachers coming into primary schools. However, I caution noble Lords against the way in which the "Today" programme, particularly, represented our policies and strategies in terms of other people. There are many people in this country who are bilingual, trilingual, and whatever one calls it when one speaks four languages—quadrilingual, perhaps. Those people can offer us some expertise. By using our teaching assistant route, we propose to enable those people, through a qualification, to offer support in the classroom.

I have just been to a school in London where there were teachers teaching languages, with the support of teaching assistants who could offer a greater variety of languages—Spanish and French, for example.

My Lords, in view of our short-sighted reluctance to learn foreign languages, would the Minister give maximum publicity to page 13 of the strategy document, which states:

"Businesses need people with language skills … German being the most in demand"?

Should that not indeed be virtually self-evident, given the importance of German in Europe, both demographically and economically, with 100 million native speakers and up to another 100 million who are thoroughly competent to use it, not least in the old Austro-Hungarian empire into which the European Union is extending?

My Lords, I understand the importance of German. The noble Lord, Lord Quirk, rightly said that businesses referred to German as a language of particular concern. Sixty per cent of British trade is with non-English speaking countries. In a survey conducted in four English regions in 2001, more than 45 per cent of respondent companies said that they had experienced language barriers in their business dealings. I hope that noble Lords will enjoy reading the strategy over the Christmas break and will see that there has been and will continue to be business involvement in its development.

My Lords, while I welcome the plans to teach languages in primary schools, is the Minister aware of the research that shows that the best time to teach languages to children is before they are seven? They learn the language more easily and it gives them an ability to learn another language later on in life. In view of that, do the Government have any plans to extend the teaching of languages in primary schools to the beginning of school and even into nursery school? To resource such a scheme, would the Government consider adopting the Liberal Democrat policy of encouraging gap-year students from other European Union countries to train as language assistants and to come to teach in our primary and nursery schools?

My Lords, we are very interested in using students from other countries to come here and support the policy. Noble Lords may have read in some early press reports that we are also considering the role of our own language undergraduates, who could support us in that regard. We are at this stage looking specifically at children of seven years of age and up. However, I recognise from my own visits to early years settings and primary schools that many offer language opportunities. We will of course continue to support and encourage that and keep the strategy under review. Our ambition is to have the quality language support and education that all noble Lords wish to see.

the teaching of foreign languages or the teaching of English, which is now the language of the world?

My Lords, it is absolutely critical that our children learn to speak, read and write good English. At the heart of the Government's strategy is the literacy and numeracy strategy. I am sure that all noble Lords agree with and endorse that. We may consider English to be the language of the world and we are most fortunate in its wide use but many languages are spoken on our planet. There is a great need for us to converse with, to trade with and to understand all of our neighbours on this planet. That is why we should endeavour to support language learning for our children.

My Lords, will the Minister help teachers in this regard? If there is an entitlement for all children to be taught a language within the course of this decade and if there is an obligation in law for schools to be obliged to make that provision—I point out that the teaching of the language is dependent on an ad hoc arrangement—at what point is the school in breach of its obligation and at what point can the parent draw on that entitlement for their child?

My Lords, within the primary area there is as yet no statutory requirement on a school to make such provision. We have set out an eight-year timetable to enable all schools to offer that to children. The local education authority comes into that arrangement as our partner in ensuring that that is available. We have deliberately not used in the strategy the perhaps more simplistic approach of saying, "We will enable every primary school to be able to offer French by having at least one teacher 'who speaks French"; rather, we have sought to be more diverse. We have deliberately said that we believe that our eight-year timetable will provide that. It is our intention to make that not a burden on schools but an opportunity. Our job is to work in partnership to ensure that that can be delivered. However, it is not as yet an entitlement in law.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

My Lords, the agreement is very much alive. Devolved government had, unfortunately, to be suspended. Other institutions, such as the North-South Ministerial Council, were necessarily bound up in that suspension. Many aspects of the agreement remain fully in force, including the important guarantee of consent to constitutional change. We are intent on pursuing the many reforms and benefits flowing from it.

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord for that response. I had anticipated, knowing him a little, a monosyllabic response. Does he agree that any attempt to continue the cross-border institutions while the Assembly is suspended would be in complete breach of the spirit and letter of the Belfast agreement?

My Lords, we should do our utmost to co-operate fully with the Government of the Irish Republic. That is in the interests of everyone living south or north of the Border. There is continuing and, I suggest, appropriate contact between the two Governments because that will be the way forward for all of our fellow citizens in Northern Ireland.

My Lords, does the noble and learned Lord agree that the Belfast agreement was sold to the unionist community in Northern Ireland on the basis that it was safe to take part in cross-border bodies because there would be a unionist veto? Does he share my disgust that a few days ago the Irish Government, without consulting anyone else, rewrote the Belfast agreement to take out the unionist veto and unionist consent? We were simply taken out of the decision-making loop. That has produced a system that appears to involve joint authority between the British Government and the Irish Government. Does he understand the disgust that we in Northern Ireland feel now that there is a clear breach of the Belfast agreement? A document that we were told could not be amended has been amended by the Dublin Government. Does he agree that if, in a few months, there has been no continuation of devolution, there is likely to be no North-South Ministerial Council or implementation bodies?

My Lords, I do not believe that the Belfast agreement could properly or reasonably be described as having been amended. There is the veto in that agreement which I referred to earlier; namely, no constitutional change without the approval of the majority of those living in Northern Ireland. That is critically important. However, it would be foolish and irresponsible for the British Government not to co-operate as fully and appropriately as possible with the Irish Government. That is in the interests of everyone living on the island of Ireland.

My Lords, does the noble and learned Lord agree that a rather warped, black-lettered and strict constructionist interpretation of the Belfast agreement is wholly negative and does not help the process to continue? It is vital for Northern Ireland in particular that cross-border business and other transactions continue to take place. I am sure that he will agree that we cannot suspend normal activity in Northern Ireland simply because we currently have an abeyance in the devolutionary settlement.

My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right. The Belfast agreement is an instrument for our common purposes and we need to make it work. I believe that it has worked very significantly and I am confident that it will continue to do so. The noble Lord is right to say that we cannot simply put a line under the Belfast agreement and it is not useful to indulge in hyperbole. I remind the House that 11 people have lost their lives as a result of the security situation in Northern Ireland this year. That is 11 too many. Noble Lords will want to compare that with the lamentable numbers of deaths in previous years.

My Lords, the Lord Privy Seal said that the consent of the people of Northern Ireland is paramount. Does he recall that in selling the Belfast agreement—I was one of the negotiators—to the people of Northern Ireland there were three interdependent strands? Strand one is not now in operation. The Assembly was suspended and is increasingly unlikely to be in place by May. That being the case, can the Belfast agreement continue indefinitely without an Assembly at Stormont?

My Lords, I do not believe that the Assembly is increasingly unlikely to be re-elected. Our aim, hope and purpose is that there should be Assembly elections in May, as the Secretary of State has said on many occasions. I repeat my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Clifton: the Belfast agreement is an instrument—an agreement—for our purposes. It is not the terminus of our efforts; it is a useful way of going towards that.

My Lords, does the noble and learned Lord accept that governments anywhere who share a common frontier have to be in constant co-operative arrangements with each other regardless of the particular institutional form that that may take? As a supplement to that, can the noble and learned Lord give us any good news regarding the harmonisation of fuel duties between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland?

My Lords, I cannot deal with that specific matter. But the noble Lord's general point—as so often is the case, if I may respectfully say so, in his comments on Northern Ireland—is a civilised and reasonable approach. We cannot wish away the boundary; we cannot wish away our past separate and joint history.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

My Lords, although the United Kingdom economy continues to perform well, we are a very open economy and therefore not immune to last year's global slowdown. UK exports have been affected by the depressed level of demand in many of our main overseas markets.

The Government are working to improve the United Kingdom's competitiveness in order to narrow the productivity gap with other countries through policies that spur enterprise, promote competition and encourage innovation, investment and the acquisition of skills.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the deficit in trade in goods in October was the worst since records began to be kept in 1697? Is that not indicative of a real crisis in the economy with a buoyant consumer demand largely being met by imports and our own manufacturing sector, together with productivity and capital investment, being in the doldrums? Is that not an issue that requires much more attention than it appears to be getting at present?

My Lords, I know that if I attempt to put the figures in context I shall be accused of complacency. I hope that my original Answer made it clear that we are not in any way complacent about the problems, and in particular the export problems, of the manufacturing industry in this country.

Although October's trade in goods was the highest cash deficit in history, it nevertheless represented only 3.4 per cent of gross domestic product. There have been many higher figures—as much as 4.8 per cent in 1989. At the same time, we have had surpluses in both services and in investment income—surpluses of £0.9 billion in October and of £2.8 billion in investment income in the second quarter of this year.

My Lords, my noble friend will be aware of the difficulties that heavy industry in the United Kingdom has—in particular the steel industry. Has he any further information as to what could be termed the "wicked" American protectionism that affects not only steel imports from the United Kingdom but also from elsewhere and other products that affect our manufacturing industry in general? What is America's position now?

My Lords, I am sorry to say that there has not been a reversal of America's position on steel imports. We are still in negotiations with them. We still feel very strongly—we made clear at the time—that the protectionism shown in favour of the United States' steel industry is an abuse. We are strongly opposed to it.

My Lords, can the noble Lord confirm that in 1973 the proportion of our GDP represented by manufacturing was 32 per cent and that it has now dropped to 18 per cent? Can he also confirm that out of 28 million employees, fewer than 4 million are now employed in the manufacturing industry?

Can the Minister tell us to what level employment in manufacturing industry will need to fall before we believe that there is a crisis that needs to be confronted?

My Lords, the figures of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, are almost entirely accurate. My figure is 19 per cent for manufacturing industry, but that is still enormously important for us because it represents the majority of our exports and 4 million people employed in manufacturing. But again, I hope that I am not accused of being complacent if I put it in context; in all the major developed countries of the world, including the United States, France and Germany, there has been a similar decline in manufacturing as a proportion of their gross domestic product.

My Lords, can the Minister tell the House whether the gap is wider with the European Union or with the rest of the world?

My Lords, of the figure of £3.6 billion deficit in goods in October of this year, which was the basis of the original Question, £1.2 billion was in trade with the European Union and £2.4 billion was with the rest of the world. Since approximately half our trade is with the European Union, it will be seen that proportionately our deficit with the European Union is lower.

My Lords, while talking of the European Union, is it not a fact that the very comparable economies of France and Germany show very positive balance of trade surpluses while going through the same difficulties as we are? How is it that we seem to be so much worse off?

My Lords, I think the basic answer to that was contained in my original Answer: we are and always have been a very much more open economy than many other European countries. We have a higher proportion of our gross domestic product involved both in exports and in imports with major markets around the world. Therefore, we have been particularly vulnerable to the slowdown. When one recalls that the growth in world trade in the year 2000 was 12 per cent and that there was no growth at all in world trade in the year 2001, one can see the kind of problems that we are facing.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, we shall have two repeated Statements this afternoon. The first, from my noble friend Lord Evans, will be on the size of the Scottish Parliament and the second, from my noble friend Lord Bach, will be on Iraq contingency preparation. The Statements will be taken between the two afternoon debates.

My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

rose to call attention to the nature of the British constitution and the consequences of constitutional change; and to move for Papers.

My Lords, I welcome the debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, on the changes in our constitution. There is a need for this debate. I wish we had the benefit of a similar debate in the House of Commons. In particular, I would dearly like to hear how the newer Members see their role. Certainly, there has been a diminution of the House of Commons as the great power in the land—about which I feel very sad. The House of Commons was the central forum where all arguments were set out, decisions made and, if necessary, the executive challenged. That has been its historical role. In a limited way, there are signs that that situation may be returning. I hope that that is so.

When I knew that the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, was initiating this debate, my first question was: how do we think the constitution is doing? My answer is, "Not very well". Devolution has yet to prove itself. The dominance of the executive over Parliament has increased. The unique position of Cabinet government has seen its former power greatly reduced. The Official Opposition are weak. Elections, both national and local, have resulted in the lowest turnout for many decades. Only the Select Committee system seems to be adequately examining the state of our government departments and the policies that they are pursuing.

Obviously, any debate on constitutional matters cannot fail to take account of the present discussion on House of Lords reform. There are two aspects of this to which I shall refer. The first is that there are those who seek to use the House of Lords to remedy the defects of the House of Commons. Few can doubt that the Government are having an easier ride in the House of Commons, both from a feeble Opposition, as well as having relatively few difficulties with their own Back-Benchers. I would have wished to have heard their opinions expressed in a similar debate to the one that we are having today.

In some circumstances, the House of Lords can remedy the shortcomings of scrutiny in the other place. But surely, the better answer is "Put your own house in order first". The second aspect is the need to avoid a second Chamber so much like the House of Commons as to cause a parliamentary logjam. There is much more to say on this, but perhaps that can wait for the very important debates in the New Year.

I have always believed that our constitutional arrangements are maybe the best, but are certainly among the very best in the world. During my time in Parliament, we have seen the still-to-be-digested consequences of the poll tax—that shameful tax imposed upon us. We have also seen the reduction in power of local authorities, devolution and impending regionalism. All those have changed fundamentally the way that we run and organise our national life.

Perhaps we may examine some aspects of our past and make a comparison with an area I know—Manchester. It was at the beginning of the last century that Manchester felt it needed to have an inland port. The Manchester Ship Canal was built, covering 30 miles from Liverpool to the centre of Manchester. It cost an immense amount of money, but a decision was made that it could be done, and it was done. No one can conceive of anything like that happening in local government today.

In more recent times, the airport was built. Manchester airport was the only airport run by its local authority. When the Government wanted to take it over, the local authority said "No". I remember the speeches at the time: our forefathers built the ship canal, therefore Manchester should have the confidence to build its own airport. But that has gone. We do not see any of that today. That is finished, and that is sad.

In addition, we had the finest libraries in the country, built on the same local initiatives. Birmingham, too, had its own successes. But that is impossible to see today—Manchester was even having difficulties funding the Halle orchestra, and that is a shame.

Councillors were very important people. Councillor Pariser was one of the great unsung heroes of the old city council. He was chairman of the education committee. He decided that between the university and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology—a distance of about a mile—he wanted to see a campus that brought education together. It was a brilliant idea. However, there was great need for housing in the post-war years and he had to square it with that. Councillor Pariser had the courage and support to produce the university in order that it would civilise the city, and the city would teach the university some of the facts of life. That was the type of local initiative which could be found, but it cannot be found today.

Some Members of the House of Commons are not acquitting themselves in the ways of the past. The House of Lords is relatively free of party dogma. We have expertise, experience, the executive and legislature. The constitution does not depend on party—it should not be dominated by party, nor intimidated by it—and in this Chamber, fortunately, it is not. The position is different in the other place. I refer to the diminution of the position of Members of Parliament. The Leader is not so dependent on Members of Parliament. In the days of Harold Wilson, before the election by party members, he had to ensure that he had support in the House of Commons. There is now a large majority in the House of Commons and the role of the government Back-Bencher is diminished.

The role of the government Back-Benchers is crucial because they can bring about changes and alterations in policy. As a result, many changes have been made. There were also Members with outside experience—people who had been successful before coming to the House of Commons. I could mention, for example, Richard Cobden, but in more recent times people of reputation and standing came into the House of Commons and brought about changes as a result of their experience.

That experience is hardly present today. Election to the House of Commons is largely obtained by means of persevering in party activities, either local or national. Successful people from outside, without the kind of dedication required in party matters, are not so likely to be selected. In this House, we have a wealth of talent and experience that is valuable in producing effective political comments and improvements to legislation.

Another change in the House of Commons is that the salary is now more attractive and rebellion is less attractive. If a person is a Member for only one Parliament, he or she can return to a previous occupation. If a person is a Member for more than one Parliament, it is difficult to return to that occupation. After two elections, therefore, the future of that Member of Parliament is irrevocably changed.

That, too, has consequences on the views of Members wanting to keep a government in power not just because they believe it is the right thing to do, but additionally for their own purposes. It is essential that the tradition of the House of Commons is maintained.

There is much more to say on the matter, but I want to comment on House of Lords reform because we shall be dealing with that in the New Year. We have in this place a degree of courtesy not because we are kinder but because here the Government do not have a majority to force through any decision. We have to succeed in this place by debate and argument and sometimes by careful consideration of the views of others. That is the task imposed on us and one to which I hope we shall return in our debates on the future of this Chamber and the way in which House of Lords reform is to proceed.

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth deserves congratulation on the way he opened the debate. Perhaps I may suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Sheldon, that when he refers to the constitution as doing badly, he should bear in mind that, however hard we try, the voters will not necessarily produce the result that we want; and they do not always do so, as I shall show.

The report on House of Lords reform is open-minded and complete in mentioning the alternatives. It is lucid and excellent in the way that it does so. Of the alternative methods, only two are to my mind feasible. One is that this House should be fully appointed and the other is that it should be 80 per cent appointed and 20 per cent elected. Those elected should be representative of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the English regions.

The argument in favour of having 20 per cent of our 600 Members elected is to ensure that those parts of the United Kingdom are adequately represented among us. Of course, they are to a great extent already. If one looks across your Lordships' House, one finds that already i t is wonderfully representative of all parts of the UK. It is possible that by having more Members appointed by an appointments commission, those areas would be even better represented than if 20 per cent of our Members were democratically elected to represent them.

I fought and won 10 general elections for another place. The constituency consisted mainly of wage earners and I never had a majority of less than 5,000. I always doubted whether more than 25 per cent of those who voted really understood the issues. I once heard the great Winston Churchill say in relation to elections to the House of Commons,

"Democracy works badly but we cannot have any other system".

That applies to the House of Commons which, rightly, nevertheless, has constitutional supremacy. But there is no need to apply that sad democratic description to your Lordships' House, because it would not happen here.

During my 57 years' experience as a parliamentarian—I hope noble Lords do not think that it is too long—I have witnessed great changes in both Houses. When I first entered the Commons in 1945 after the war, Members were paid only £800 a year by way of a salary. Out of that, one had to pay all one's expenses, including employing a whole-time secretary, so one had to have another source of income. I therefore returned to my practice as a junior barrister.

It was hard work doing both jobs, but not impossible. Now being a Member of another place has become an almost whole-time occupation. It varies according to the individual and the nature of the constituency. In those days, we had members of every profession in the Commons. We had farmers, financiers and a wide range of people accustomed to responsibility of importance.

Now membership of the Commons is a well-paid and mainly full-time job. One cannot get away from that. Therefore, few MPs enrich the Commons with experience of responsibility elsewhere. One regrettable example of that is that the Government could not and a Queen's Counsel in the House of Commons to become Attorney-General. For the past five years, we have had the privilege of having the Attorney-General in this House for the first time since that appointment was first created hundreds of years ago.

Of course, there have also been other tremendous changes in your Lordships' House. An important one occurred in 1958 when, as an Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office, I helped the late "RAB" Butler pilot the Life Peerages Act through the House of Commons. All of your Lordships, except the Bishops and the 92 hereditary Peers, are now Life Peers.

As both noble Lords said, among your Lordships there is a vast range of people accustomed to responsibility of importance. We even have three Field Marshalls and a Marshall of the Royal Air Farce, besides the Law Lords and representatives of every profession. If your Lordships were to be democratised, that would no longer be so. Indeed, this House would no longer be of the great value that it is as a revising Chamber, and it would come into conflict with the Commons, even if we became a mere democratic microcosm of the Commons. I hope that we never will.

Those are among my reasons for warmly supporting the view of so many Members of the Commons, and I believe almost all noble Lords, that we should not be democratised but should remain an appointed Second Chamber with the power to ask the Commons to think again, while enabling that democratically elected body to have the last word. The Parliament Acts would remain as they are.

I want to mention one other matter. Paragraph 48 of the report suggests that all Members of this House should serve for only 12 years. That would be all right for elected Members if we had them, but it would be absurd for most life Peers. However, if a life Peer can no longer make a useful contribution he should retire from your Lordships' House. I would do so if I felt that I was no longer able to play any part.

The late Labour Peer Lord Shinwell was a wonderful example to us all. I remember our celebrating his 100th birthday with a splendid ceremony in this House. In the Library there is a memorial to him. Right up to the age of 100 he played a valuable part here. Let us not destroy such opportunities!

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Norton, not only for his admirable chairmanship of the Constitution Committee but also for managing to place on the Order Paper a Motion so extraordinarily widely worded that it leaves those of us participating free to say almost anything on the subject.

It is the fashion nowadays in your Lordships' House—indeed, it is a requirement on us—to declare interests, which we also do compulsively. In respect of constitutional reform it is more a case of having to confess that I am a bit of an old lag. I have form on these issues; for 20 years, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, I wore various hats as director of the National Committee for Electoral Reform, chairman of the Rights Campaign and chairman of the Constitutional Reform Centre; and as one of the founders of Charter 88 I laboured in the salt mines of constitutional reform.

I have to say that they were fairly barren years. Despite the help of many Members of both Houses from all parties, we had a sense of pushing water uphill on those issues. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, then Mrs Thatcher, said at a seminar at Oxford of the prospect of a bill of rights—Conservative colleagues will recognise the tone of this quotation—"Bill of rights, bill of rights: if we're in it isn't needed, and if Labour's in it's too late!"

Yet looking around now, the reward for the labour of those years which so many of us shared has been, if not in heaven, at least in your Lordships' House—of course many people are inclined to confuse those two institutions. As a member of the Constitution Committee and now chairman of the Hansard Society it has been an exhilarating experience to see this country undertaking a radical programme of constitutional reform in the past few years. To have been in Parliament during that period has been a great privilege.

Although I shall be critical of the Government shortly, every credit should be given to New Labour for embracing the constitutional reform agenda when in opposition and for having the nerve and determination in their first term in office to press ahead with an ambitious programme of constitutional reform. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will recognise that that was not without a certain amount of encouragement from these Benches.

Defining the British constitution is extremely difficult. Despite his scholarly leadership, I believe the noble Lord, Lord Norton, would agree that the Constitution Committee almost gave up on defining the constitution. It was thanks to him that in the end we succeeded in arriving at a fairly humble and workmanlike definition.

The problem is that, since it is not written down, the British constitution has some of the characteristics of a mirage. It is all towers and turrets, fountains and flags; it looks splendid in the distance, but when you come closer it tends to dissolve away into the gritty sand of the exercise of power and it is difficult to get your hands around what it actually is.

I thought that, in the brief interventions we are allowed, the best way of approaching constitutional reform—which I take to be an attempt to put the exercise of that power on a more rational, accountable and transparent basis, is to test how we are doing several years into this programme in readjusting the relationships in three dimensions: first, that between the state and the citizen; secondly, that between the centre and the locality; and thirdly, that between the executive and the legislature.

I turn to the first of those dimensions. Moving as we are from a top-down state-to-subject relationship towards a shared culture of citizenship is extremely difficult. We should recognise when talking about institutional change that it requires accompanying cultural change of one sort or another. The Human Rights Act was a great step in the right direction. All credit is due to the Lord Chancellor for his leadership on that Bill. Would that he had been as successful in repelling Sir Humphrey on freedom of information, where a great deal of progress remains to be made.

I turn to the second dimension: the relationship between the centre and the parts of the United Kingdom. There is now no doubt whatever that devolution has been a great success. It has been more successful than its opponents feared, even if it has not yet developed as its protagonists would wish. So far so good. In two dimensions at least we have partial success in constitutional reform. It is when we come to the third dimension that we realise where the failure is: the rebalancing of the relationship between the executive and the legislature—I certainly am not brave enough to take on the subject of the judiciary.

If anything, the elective dictatorship that Lord Hailsham pointed out many years ago has become worse. The popular plurality for Labour has morphed into a massive parliamentary majority via the electoral system. The second Chamber seems to be picked up and dropped like a toy by the Government on the whim of Ministers, instead of being reformed in a sustained and comprehensible way. Gallant attempts at parliamentary reform by the Leader of the House in another place have been resisted at the last ditch by a conspiracy of the Whips' club.

The media, even those committed to public service broadcasting objectives, treat Parliament as a subset of politics, entertainment and showbusiness. Ministers pander to that by giving them a priority that they do not assign to MPs. The Civil Service is suffering from creeping politicisation and there is no sign of the civil service Bill promised by the Government. I should be grateful if the noble and learned Lord would address that matter in his reply.

Talking of elective dictatorship, perhaps I may address the Conservative Benches. One of the great mysteries of modern times is why the Conservative Party has not adopted electoral reform, because at one stroke it could secure its own increasingly uncertain future—that is indeed what has happened in Scotland—it could demolish Labour's preposterous majority; and it could reassert choice and popular will on the part of the people. I would not go so far as to repeat Winston Churchill's charge, when he was a Liberal, that the Conservative Party is a stupid party, but I would certainly say that in this respect it seems to be one volume short of the collected works of Bagehot.

If my analysis is of two partial successes and one abject failure, there are reasons. The first was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, in his introductory speech: there is a total lack of joined-up thinking. For the Government these are serial pragmatic measures rather than being part of a comprehensive analysis of what needs to be done. The second is that the Government are still torn between Locke and Hobbes versions of what the constitution should be. The voice is the voice of Locke, speaking noble words about reform, but the hands—and they seem to be rather hairy hands—are the hands of Hobbes, supporting sovereignty undiluted.

Until the Government make up their mind whether they are committed to pluralism, decentralisation and openness, this fatal ambiguity will persist and we shall not get the constitution we deserve.

My Lords, when I looked at the list of speakers I very nearly withdrew my name. Five are professors—the noble Lords, Lord Norton, Lord Holme, who has just spoken, Lord Morgan, Lord Smith of Clifton, and I am sure that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth is a considerable academic.

Shortly after I became Speaker I went to Oxford to talk to the Study of Parliament Group. The master of the college asked me whether I had been up at Oxford. When I said, "Yes", he asked me, "Which college?". When I said, "Cowley Barracks" he did not think that it was terribly funny. I then asked whether they were all academics. They all said that they were and I drew to their attention the definition in the Oxford English Dictionary—of no practical value; not leading to a decision; academic.

I shall concentrate on practical issues. I am a Member of the Joint Select Committee on House of Lords Reform but I do not intend to talk about its work today because that will be the subject of a later debate. However, we are very much indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, for introducing the debate, as we were last week to the noble Lord, Lord Peyton of Yeovil, for introducing a broadly similar debate. We shall have other debates on this very important subject.

In my nine and a half years as Speaker of the other place, I kept a careful list of Back-Bench speeches which, in my presence, had caused the Government to concede to an argument. People often say that speeches in the other place do not matter—they matter in your Lordships' House—but that is a myth; they certainly used to matter. I heard 18 examples of that in my first five years and 16 examples in my second five years, and those were only the speeches that I heard myself.

My prime example is Tony Benn speaking on the Zircon affair. I will not go too deeply into the subject, but his single speech totally swung the House of Commons on that issue. It is my best example of a single speech in the House of Commons totally changing the view of other Members.

I also kept a list of speeches which had pleased me. The one I shall refer to today was given by my old friend Frank Haynes, the Labour Member for Ashfield, who, in a debate on new technology, pronounced a great truth:

"Mr Speaker, sir, I am all in favour of progress as long as it does not mean change".

One change has occurred in the other place since my departure in 1992 which has passed, without much comment. I believe that it is a constitutional outrage to which I must draw attention because I hope that it will never ever be adopted in your Lordships' House. I refer to the fact that votes after 10 o'clock at night are now deferred to the following Wednesday afternoon. This shatters one of Parliament's fundamental principles—namely, that Divisions should follow debate—and introduces instead voting in absentia on business which Members of Parliament may not have heard or attended. The logical consequence of that is surely proxy voting.

I served in the Whips' Office in the other place for some 12 years, both in government and in opposition, and I well understand the difficulty that governments have in achieving their business and the frustrations involved. I understand, too, the desire of governments to streamline procedures in the interests of efficiency. But Parliament must be a free institution first and an efficient institution second. It is the prime duty of parliamentarians to hold the Government to account and to subject their policies to careful scrutiny. If that means sitting through outrageous arguments and long-winded speeches, that must be borne with fortitude. For at the heart of the parliamentary system is the right of an individual Member, and beyond him or her an individual citizen, to have a voice in Parliament.

We do not have adjournment debates in your Lordships' House but, when I was sitting in the Chair in the other place, I used to think how wonderful it was that the individual grievance of an individual citizen should be debated in the House of Commons. It was always late at night, the last business of the day—with no one there except the poor old Speaker, a Whip on the Bench and the Member making his submissions—and it lasted for half an hour. It may not be very efficient, but it is surely one of the glories of our parliamentary system of government.

I have not previously expressed my views in your Lordships' House on the European Union. As the Member of Parliament for Croydon North East, in 1975 I asked my constituents if they wished to join the European Economic Community, not the European Union. I am increasingly alarmed by the way in which our constitution is today overridden by a flood of European directives and regulations which are seldom, if ever, debated in Parliament and yet are binding upon us.

Document FCO 30/1048 makes clear that the European Union is headed for economic and fiscal monetary union, with a common defence and foreign policy. This would constitute the greatest hand-over of national sovereignty in our history. Speakers of the House of Commons are traditionally the guardians of the rights and the privileges of Parliament achieved for us through the centuries by our forebears. No Speaker could or should see this overridden or put in jeopardy. No Speaker could envisage his or her successor becoming, in a European Union, about as important as, say, the chairman of the Greater London Council, whose former building across the river is now an up-market hotel.

This is not a frivolous point—I shall return to it on another occasion—but it should be mentioned in the context of today's debate, for which we are so indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth.

My Lords, I, too, express my appreciation to the noble Lord, Lord Norton, both for initiating the debate and for his admirable chairmanship of the Constitutional Committee, which is one of the most interesting bodies I have served upon in my life.

It is a very opportune debate. As the noble Lord and others have said, there has been a great torrent of constitutional change since 1997. It is the most radical action the Government have taken. There has been a major transformation from a relatively closed, over centralised, undemocratic constitution with no concept of citizenship to a more open system that enshrines the ideals of rights and pluralism and moves closer towards genuine popular sovereignty and a clearer civic vision. I praise the Government for this and, although I am not in the business of sycophancy, I praise my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, whose energy has driven through so much of the change.

Yet these tremendous changes are hardly ever discussed. Ministers are silent and the Prime Minister is particularly silent. It is not surprising that Larry Siedentop, in his book on a democratic Europe, says that the British are,

"constitutionally the least literate people in Europe".

One understands what he means.

I wish in the time available to focus on three broad points, alliteratively called "Coherence", "Contradictions" and "Confidentiality", all of which are problems thrown up by the process of the constitutional change to which the noble Lord, Lord Norton, referred.

Turning first to coherence, as the noble Lord, Lord Holme, said, each of these transformations has been considered as a discreet, separate change. The inter-relationship between them has not been spelt out—for example, the relationship between devolution in Scotland and Wales and the reform of the Houses of Parliament. There has been mention of the territorial aspect that might be emphasised in a newly constituted House of Lords, but the relationship of that to the existing legislatures in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast has not been made clear. There used to be, until the last general election, a constitutional unit within the secretariat. That is now no more and therefore what the overriding vision is and who or what provides it seems unclear.

Many questions are opened up, particularly by devolution—notably in intergovernmental relations, which the report of our committee deals with. The asymmetry of devolution is historically inevitable but it presents many problems. Without being too specific, one of them is obvious and is in regard to Wales. The Welsh settlement is clearly unstable and that appears to be the view, as expressed this morning by the Electoral Commission, of the people of Wales as well. The most signal symbol of incoherence seems to me the great black hole in the settlement, which is England. England is not treated within the settlement. It is almost—as was once said of Italy—a geographical expression with no distinct legal, constitutional or statutory identity. We have not posed the English question, let alone answered it. Until we do so, the basic instability and incoherence of the constitutional settlement will remain a problem.

As to contradictions, practices have taken place and are taking place as if those changes have not occurred—as though it is still the same old system that we have had lumbering on since the age of the Tudors if not the age of the Norman conquest. As my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor eloquently stated, we are trying to entrench a culture of rights, yet so many developments erode our rights and go against a culture of human or civil rights. Indeed, it is much to the credit of this House that the erosion has not been more considerable.

We have considerable contradictions in the practice of devolution. Devolution presupposes divergence. The whole point of devolution is that things will be done or may be done differently in different parts of the country, yet in practice the emphasis has been not on devolution but on dirigisme. That has been very much the view of my own party, as we saw in the election of a mayor in London and of a First Minister in Wales. Devolution has evolved and is stable—but it has evolved in a way that reflects traditional, historic, antique practices. It is determined in effect by what happens in England. The finances of devolution are dictated by the Treasury in Whitehall. The famous Barnett formula—I am sorry that the noble Lord is not with us—is determined by the Treasury and that seems again an example of the way in which developments have contradicted the original concept.

Parliament is moving, we trust, towards a more democratic system. The ending of the hereditaries will, I hope, speed that on its way—yet we do indeed have oligarchy. We have Lord Hailsham's concept of "elective dictatorship". The most dominant feature constitutionally recently has been the decline of Parliament—particularly the decline of the House of Commons. When I came to this distinguished House two and a half years ago, I had read Bagehot and believed that the House of Commons was the efficient part of the constitution and that the House of Lords was dignified. The reverse is true. The Commons is dignified. One might almost say that the Cabinet is dignified. This House is surprisingly efficient. I hope that will be borne in mind. That seems to be the fundamental point underlying the reform of the House of Lords.

Finally, confidentiality—or, perhaps a better word, informality. The British constitution has gloried in being unwritten and informal—a system of glorified muddle-through. We have had that obviously shown in devolution. It has occurred but it has occurred because the different branches of the Civil Service know each other and are interlocking. The Civil Service personnel know each other—we were told that in the precincts of this House when we studied the question. The effect of confidentiality and informality is actually to negate the principle of devolution. They actually work against it.

One of the institutions where that is clear is never discussed—the monarchy. I await protests. Republicanism is weak in this country. It is unlikely ever to achieve its objective in a lifetime that we can foresee. But the informality of our processes seem peculiarly damaging to the concept of constitutional monarchy. The effect is that discourse on the monarchy takes place through the media, not constitutionally—certainly not in a way that Bagehot or anyone else would call dignified. Hence we have the growth of a system by which the royal prerogative is expanded as a shield behind which governments hide. It is never identified and isolated. There is popular confusion, which the very informality of the constitution encourages, between the monarchy, Crown and individuals in the royal family. Time and again—in the butler trials and elsewhere—those are confused.

We do not, as Charter 88 argues, need a written constitution but Charter 88—I am a member of that body—does spell out wider weaknesses. We are moving closer towards a written constitution on Europe, human rights, devolution settlement and definition of political parties. We now need—the monarchy is a very good example—a set of more precisely and closely defined relationships. We have a good way to go before we achieve the vision of which the noble Lord, Lord Norton, spoke—the vision of what the constitution is for. At the moment, we hover between what Arthur Griffith, the first president of free Ireland, called "a dead past" and "a prophetic future".

My Lords, I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth on initiating this debate. I agree with him that we are in danger of making separate changes without any clear idea of where we are going. My remarks will be more specific but with that theme very much in mind.

Having come so recently from the other place, I will spend a few minutes examining the relationship between Commons and Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Sheldon, touched on that—as did my noble friend Lord Renton. That relationship is particularly important given the forthcoming debates on the future of this House, which will take place in the aftermath of the Joint Committee report. My central concern is that there is a gulf of misunderstanding on the role of this House today, let alone on the role that it might occupy in future.

It is about 175 paces from the Speaker's Chair in the House of Commons to the Woolsack here. I hope that noble Lords will take my word for that—I paced it out. Frankly, at times the distance between them could as well be 175 miles. We live in different worlds that seldom come together. The knowledge of the average Member of Parliament about what goes on next door is little better than zero. This House, I regret to report, is seen as a rather quaint assembly in a distant land. When MPs refer to "the other place", it is usually to protest at the actions of the unelected or to mock our eccentricities in some way.

I readily admit that I am in no position to criticise. In my 31 years in the House of Commons, I seldom watched the proceedings here. I trooped in each year for the State Opening—and, as a Secretary of State, I would occasionally crouch on the steps of the Throne and scowl as this House took great bites out of my legislation. The Lords, I emphasise, do not simply defeat Labour Governments. I hope that point is understood. Such visits were rare. Like most Members of Parliament, I was bound up in my own world of Commons debate and constituency affairs.

However, when it comes to it, Members of Parliament will make the final decision on Lords reform. The danger is that in deciding the fate of the second chamber, the 650 Members of the first chamber will judge everything by their own standards. A popular view among MPs is that there is nothing wrong with the Lords that cannot be cured by elections. They say that reform is a very simple matter: the functions of the Lords will remain exactly the same, particularly its subservience to the Commons, and as many Members as possible of the second House—perhaps all—will be elected.

That is a comforting theory, but in my view it will not work. I say that for one good reason. As matters stand today, I am an appointed Peer and, as such, I broadly accept the conventions that limit the powers of the Lords. We do not destroy government Bills, we examine legislation which time after time requires such examination and correction, and occasionally on major issues of public debate we ask MPs to think again. Ultimately, however, the Commons will have its way.

As an appointed Peer, I accept that entirely. But if I were an elected Peer I would be much more militant in my demands. I would argue that I had just as much authority as a Member of Parliament and a duty to represent the views of my electors. I would not accept for a minute that I should be excluded from making decisions on most things financial, to give just one example. As night follows day, an elected House of Lords, or a substantially elected House, will lead to demands for more powers for this House. I believe that those who want an elected "senate" are, therefore, honour bound to say what exactly the powers of this new body should be; how they would impinge on the Commons, and how conflicts between the two Houses would be reconciled.

The trouble with the present debate is that it concentrates almost exclusively on election to a second chamber and the arguments that go with that; namely, whether the remaining hereditaries—I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Morgan; I think that some of the hereditary Peers are the strongest performers in this House and are among the hardest workers—should be expelled, whether a retirement age should be introduced and so on.

What we should be debating first, as a necessary prelude, is what the country wants the second chamber to do. My guess is that, if the debate focused on functions and not merely on elections, the majority would be for the kind of revising chamber with limited powers that we now have. Indeed, that is what the Joint Committee has said. The much maligned Wakeham commission proposed ways in which the present balance could be preserved.

My guess is that the public would support a House which exhibits, as this House does, some experience and some expertise. I think that they find it reassuring that, when the country contemplates war, we can hear the voices of people who have travelled that way previously such as former Foreign Secretaries and service chiefs.

My guess is that the public support the idea that this House, as it is, is much less partisan and more independent than the elected Chamber. There is no question about that.

And my guess is that the public see the advantage of having a House that is able to devote time to scrutinising legislation. I refer not only to published Bills but to pre-legislative scrutiny. I would also argue in favour of post-legislative scrutiny. All too often, some of the mistakes that come through are the result of a lack of post-legislative scrutiny, which this House could do very well.

I believe that, if the public knew, they would also value the role of this House in holding Ministers to account. I have noted an intriguing contrast between the two Houses. Ministers in this place are often put under more pressure than they are in the other place. In the other place, Ministers can get away with simply bobbing up and sitting down very quickly—I speak entirely from experience. I observe that it does not work in this Chamber to anything like the same extent.

My fear and concern is that the other place will try to have it both ways. Members there will vote for a substantial elected element, and they will insist that the status quo as regards powers should remain. If that is what we end up with, just as certainly that will not remotely be the end of the story. It will simply set the scene for a bitter struggle between the two Houses, 175 paces apart, which can only end in a transfer of power away from the House of Commons. I cannot believe that is what Members of Parliament want, and even less do I believe that it is the kind of result that the public desire.

My Lords, I, too, declare an interest as a fully paid-up member of the movement for constitutional reform. I was an original signatory to Charter 88 and I have been a director of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Limited for many years.

I warmly congratulate the noble—and scholarly—Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, on initiating the debate and on the thrust of his argument in opening it. The constitutional scene has seen so many recent developments, and further ones are in train, that it is important to step back and reflect in order properly to survey what has been happening—and not before time. It is not, however, merely a matter of pausing to collect our thoughts on the subject, but of seeing what still needs to be done. Constitutional husbandry, like painting the Forth Bridge, should be a continuous activity; it should not be neglected, as it largely was for most of the previous century.

As my noble friend Lord Holme said, the Government deserve credit for what they have achieved since 1997, especially in the case of devolution and the attendant changes in the voting systems. They have also incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights and introduced, albeit in diluted form, the Freedom of Information Act. Now, they are proposing a system of devolution for the English regions. All of these measures are on the right lines.

The topic under debate is large, but time is short. I shall therefore focus on what I regard as possibly the major constitutional problem—one to which I have regularly referred previously—namely, the burgeoning of what I have termed the political demi-monde, where the executive government of this country now effectively resides. It operates largely informally, and almost untrammelled by any constitutional constraint. It is the extreme illustration of how flexible an unwritten constitution can be—and therein lies the source of the problem.

From one point of view, the motives for its emergence and continual, almost tropical, growth are well-intentioned. In its most simplified form, such motives are born out of a wish to cut through the bureaucracy and traditions of Whitehall in order to render government more efficient and effective and better fitted to cope with modern circumstances.

Recent governments of both colours have felt the need for a whole new repertoire of agencies and personnel to service them; and so we have seen an explosion of hived-off executive agencies, quangos, task forces, partnerships, czars, freelance peripatetic plenipotentiaries, and spin doctors. They constitute the demi-monde. Life seemed so much simpler when all we had were Ministers, civil servants, lobbyists and management consultants!

A recent mutation in the demi-monde—quite an alarming one—has been its spread into almost every locality. It is no longer confined to London. There is now a rash of so-called local partnerships of epidemic proportions, promoting and overseeing a plethora of government initiatives. The partnerships are in effect mini-quangos or task forces. Their memberships are appointed from the centre; Nolan rules are not applied: and there is little real local consultation. They function, quite deliberately, to by-pass and short-circuit local government. In one metropolitan borough, there are over 90 such agencies operating within its boundaries. As the recent authoritative study, Britain under Blair, by the think tank Democratic Audit, reveals, that pattern is now common, especially in England. Devolution has to some extent prevented its spread in Scotland and Wales.

Created with the best of intentions, this new form of governance has got out of hand. Both the people and agencies concerned are literally running amok. They exist in a constitutional limbo which is all but impenetrable to outsiders. This has many implications for the health of political life. One, I venture to suggest, has been a contributing factor in the deterioration of the Fourth Estate. Quality investigative journalism gave up examining the quagmire that executive government has become because of its complexity, and the task has been ceded to the muck-raking, cheque-hook sensationalist journalism that now characterises so much of the press. That, in turn, has contributed hugely to the general dumbing-down of the media, which has fed the public's disillusionment with politics. These days, one seeks in vain any informed, sustained analysis of public affairs. Sleaze and sensationalism have replaced substance in what now pass for current affairs.

The climate created by that feeds back, particularly on the political demi-monde as it seeks to reassert its control over events and the policy agenda. There is now a vicious circle of an almost cannibalistic character. The Prime Minister and his inner circle feel increasingly besieged, which leads to ever-stronger doses of presidentialism. Without the counterweight provided by a formal separation of powers, the apparently untrammelled exercise of presidential-style power by the Prime Minister, working through the demi-monde, arouses accusations of control-freakery and cronyism that have become so familiar in the day-to-day commentaries on the Government.

The Government are unable to administer and monitor all that goes on in their name via the demi-monde. The recent innovations of a monthly Prime Ministerial public press conference or an appearance every six months before the Commons Liaison Committee are all very well, but they are hardly a sufficient accountability counterweight to the tentacular operations of the demi-monde. In one sense, that would not matter so much if policy-making were much better than previously. But even if all policies had proved to be roaring successes, there would still be a need to render the activities of the demi-monde and its nomenklatura much more publicly accountable.

The systems of parliamentary, Cabinet arid local government are now largely confined to the "dignified" parts of the constitution. In so far as they still function, it is as a shadow of their former selves. Power and authority are now effectively vested in the demi-monde. It may well be that those traditional institutions of representative democracy have outlived their usefulness and need to be replaced by more flexible ones suited to contemporary conditions. That proposition needs to be thoroughly examined and recommendations made that could be properly codified.

More than a decade ago, the IPPR produced a written constitution against which I have never seen any cogent argument. If it was necessary a decade ago, it is even more so now. As many reformist groups, most notably Charter 88, have argued, Parliament should set aside time to look at the constitution as a whole, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, suggests, with a view to having a written one. The chances of that happening in the near future are slim. Meanwhile, we must make do with short, two-and-a-half-hour debates such as today's. They help a little, but much more consideration should be given to the subject of constitutional reform if democracy is to be regenerated in Britain.

My Lords, like many others, I welcome the opportunity to debate the significance of the constitutional changes now being considered in these Houses, which was afforded by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. I began my ministry in the county of Lincolnshire—down in Caistor, then at Grantham and out at Holland on the fens of Boston. It is good to have a Lincolnshire man lead this debate.

Taking the broad view, as I said in the Chamber on Monday, the expansion of the European Union is genuinely to be welcomed, not least because it creates a genuinely European union rather than an exclusive club for those in the western half. From the perspective of religious communities, that will create a broader canvas for many varieties of communities—Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox Christians and Muslims—to share in the prosperity that western Europe has enjoyed in recent years.

It is to be hoped that the expansion agreed in Copenhagen will be a force for change in the mound of bureaucratic regulation coming from Brussels. One can even see a future where that centre of political gravity will need to shift eastwards. Similar developments are discernible in Anglican-Lutheran relationships, to which the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Carey, as Archbishop of Canterbury, gave such impetus. The Porvoo Common Declaration of 1992, post-perestroika by three years, included the Baltic states with their Lutheran churches. Ten years on, the question is: should we include those 500 Lutheran congregations in Russia and Siberia who are of German origin but increasingly Russian character? We are wrestling with the same kind of issue.

From this perspective, however, the role of the United Kingdom is both on the outer limit, sharing many of the views and perspectives of our Scandinavian partners, and an important bridge with the English-speaking world, where the culture of business, commerce and education has its own distinct flavour.

At the same time as that shift is taking place, our own constitutional reform is taking us in different directions, with the development of devolved government to different levels in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In the regions of England, the regional development agencies are beginning to make an impact, especially in those areas that perceive themselves to be distant from the centre of power and influence. In short, it would appear to the casual observer—and I believe there is some truth in this—that the current century, as compared with the previous one, will be seen as a time when political authority is dissipated throughout various locations, and where direct accountability of those who exercise government within those locations is less clear.

I now turn to the Joint Committee's proposals. First, I thank members for the clear and collaborative way in which they worked together to produce a range of options to move us beyond the stalemate reached after the present Government's initial stage of reform. The committee is right to identify the importance of independence and expertise in the role of this House in scrutinising legislation as it comes to and fro. It is right that the House should not be dominated by those of one political party or another. It will be up to these Houses to decide on the various proportions of elected and appointed members.

I wish to make some brief observations on an area not covered by the committee's report, which is yet to be looked into. I take the liberty to do so now, because I shall be shortly on study leave until March and, therefore, may miss the debate on the report. I refer to the question of the Lords spiritual, for whom these Benches have consistently taken the view that there is a vital place. We do so in the knowledge that there was a smattering of abbots, not just bishops, on these Benches in the Middle Ages. So the composition of these Benches has a past different from its present. We believe it has a future that has the potential to be different, too. We realise that, while shorthand expressions can be a necessary nuisance, religious representation does not quite express the broad thrust of the notion of Lords spiritual. We are clear that we are not here to cling to some mythical Anglican privilege, but that the reality and breadth of spiritual values continues to develop in a post 11th September 2001 world.

But what of the central issue; that is to say, where the focus of political authority lies in the United Kingdom? The dispersal of authority, which I described earlier, was supposedly intended both to bring political decisions closer to people in their own locality through the regional assemblies, and to link in with a broader European perspective through our membership of the Union. Frankly, I nowhere detect that the people of south-east Hampshire, Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, with whom I have a self-evident relationship, have any greater sense of political involvement than they did, say, 20 or 30 years ago.

All the indications are that constitutional reform has made little dent in institutional decline and participation in the democratic experience. I am afraid that regional government has patchy heartlands of enthusiasm. If I may speak from professional conversations, such places as Durham, Liverpool and Exeter may speak with one voice, whereas Newcastle, Carlisle and Truro speak with a rather different one. That is not bishops falling out, because, of course, we never do; it is actually the people on the ground whom we are meeting all the time. That important point is continually neglected in the exercise. Regional government may be where we ought to be, but we must realise that we have a big hill to climb yet. I sometimes wonder whether the people in Gosport peninsula have a great deal of enthusiasm to cast votes in an election for an assembly sitting in Guildford, covering a region that starts in Canterbury and ends in Oxford. But, as in all things, I am convertible.

I wish to make it absolutely clear that I am not passing judgment on those who exercise political authority; nor am I suggesting that reform was unnecessary, because it was clearly needed. I wish only that parliamentary reform were seen at both ends of this Corridor, and not, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, implied earlier, focused on who sits here. Rather, I want to draw attention to the fact that our constitution, such as it is, is now a diverse and very varied beast—a body made up of many parts that is beginning to look somewhat "Heath Robinson" in its composition. All the parts have a rationale to them, but the cohesion of the whole seems to be lacking. What this House needs in particular is the ability to scrutinise legislation, not only from the perspective of a party political interest but also from that of those with real expertise and a breadth of experience.

I believe that I am almost searching for the language of wisdom, which has a long and venerable history in the religious traditions of many faiths. Wisdom is primarily about the use and application of knowledge, rather than the knowledge itself. It is about the use and application of experience rather than experience for its own sake; it is about the use and experience of historical perspective, without giving into an historical determinism, which says that things can never change—or, alternatively, that things are inevitably leading in one particular direction, which, of course, is usually the way that one thinks at the time.

In looking for "wise men", I do not want to be accused of making a pun at the festive season, nor of sexism—because wisdom in biblical literature is feminine—nor of being elitist, because I believe that we shall need rather more than three of them! But it is wisdom—whoever sits here, however they arrive here, and for whatever length of time they stay here—that I am after. I want to see it continue to be exercised in this Chamber, both now and in the future.

My Lords, I submit that the core of the British Constitution is the right of the British people to elect and dismiss those who make their laws. That right has been hard won over the centuries, and defended with tremendous sacrifice in two world wars. But I also submit that our membership of the European Union has already largely removed that right, and that this theft of their sovereignty has taken place without the people's knowledge or consent.

To see how that has been done we need look no further than Sections 2 and 3 of the European Communities Act 1972, which took us into what was then the European Economic Community. Those clauses are so chilling, and so pertinent to this debate, that I fear it is worth placing their salient words on the Official Report in your Lordships' House, because it is some years since that has been done. Section 2(1)and (2) read:

"All such rights, powers, liabilities, obligations and restrictions from time to time created or arising by or under the Treaties … are without further enactment to be given legal effect … and be enforced, allowed and followed accordingly.

"Subject to Schedule 2 of this Act, at any time after its passing Her Majesty may by Order in Council, and any designated Minister or department may by regulations, make provision … for the purpose of implementing any Community obligation of the United Kingdom".

Section 3 reads as follows:

"For the purposes of all legal proceedings any question as to the meaning or effect of any of the Treaties, or as to the validity, meaning or effect of any Community instrument, shall be treated as a question of law (and, if not referred to the European Court, be for determination as such in accordance with the principles laid down by and any relevant decision of the European Court)".

If any member state does not obey the European treaties, as interpreted by the Luxembourg Court, Articles 226–229 of the Treaty Establishing the European Community (or the TEC) allow that court to impose unlimited fines.

I say that these clauses are "chilling", because they mean that once the executive, or our Government, have used the treaty-making power of the Royal prerogative and have agreed, or have been outvoted, on a new law in Brussels, the British Parliament must enact it, on pain of unlimited fines in the Luxembourg Court. That is why no law agreed in Brussels has ever been overturned by Parliament, which has therefore become a rubber stamp.

I know that your Lordships' House and the other place spend a lot of time and energy scrutinising and debating European legislation. I feel sure that the views of your Lordships' Select Committees, particularly, have had a beneficial effect on the government of the day in their negotiations in Brussels. But once the House has debated a proposed new law, the so-called "scrutiny reserve" is lifted, and the executive is free to go ahead and sign up, whatever the opinion of the House may have been. The scrutiny reserve is only a sort of gentleman's agreement in any case, and the Government are starting to show a certain disregard for its rules.

But the fundamental point is that these new laws, which now number many thousands and form the majority of all our new legislation, are not put to a vote in the House of Commons or in your Lordships' House until they have been passed in Brussels, after which we would be in breach of our treaty obligations if Parliament were to vote them down. It is of course true that each new treaty that takes us further into the grip of the corrupt octopus in Brussels is put to a vote in Parliament, although Parliament cannot in practice amend a treaty; it has to take it all, or leave it.

There are some other irreparably unsatisfactory features about our subservience to the European treaties, which further erode what most people still believe to be our constitution. For instance, Articles 211 and 249–254 of the TEC mean that the corrupt, unelected, and unsackable EU bureaucracy, the Commission, has the monopoly of proposing new laws. What sort of democracy is that? Just about the only joke about the European Union that I have recently heard is that, if it applied to itself for membership, it would not stand a chance.

Articles 2, 3 and 6.4 of the Treaty on European Union (the TEU, or Maastricht Treaty) and Article 5 and Protocol 30 of the TEC decree that once a power has been passed to Brussels that power cannot be returned to national Parliaments. This is known in eurospeak as the "acquis communautaire", or, in plain English, the "ratchet". Article 5 and Protocol 30 of the TEC are particularly beautiful, because they confirm that the famous concept of "subsidiarity" is really the device by which the ratchet is to be enforced. Article 5, which introduced subsidiarity into the treaties, says that the member states can do their own thing only in areas that have not been ceded to Brussels. Protocol 30 rubs it in even more clearly. I shall spare your Lordships a verbatim quotation, but a filleted version goes as follows:

"subsidiarity … shall respect the … objectives of the Treaty, particularly as regards the maintaining in full of the `acquis communautaire' and the institutional balance; it shall not affect the principles developed by the Court … regarding the relationship between national and Community law, and it should take into account Article 6.4 of the Treaty on European Union, according to which"—

this is a quote within a quote—

"'the Union shall provide itself with the means necessary to attain its objectives and carry through its policies'".

I trust that your Lordships will not miss the tidy elegance of Article 6.4, as mentioned in that quote from Protocol 30, which is often referred to as the "catch-all" clause, to be used just in case the corrupt octopus has overlooked some tasty morsel of our remaining sovereignty, to which it takes a fancy.

I say that these and other features of the European treaties are irreparable because the treaties do not contain an exit clause. Article 48 of the TEU means that they can only be amended by unanimity. I fear it is therefore deceptive to pretend that we can renegotiate the treaties, unless we are prepared to leave the European Union if all the other member states do not agree the changes that we need—which, of course, they will not.

I know that the British people did vote in a referendum in 1975 to stay in what was then the European Economic Community, or Common Market. But the people were assured by the Prime Minister of the day, Harold Wilson, in a letter sent to every household in the land, that no loss of sovereignty would take place if they voted to stay in. The letter also contained another wonderful lie, which went as follows:

"There was a threat to employment in Britain from the movement in the Common Market towards an Economic and Monetary Union. This could have forced us to accept fixed exchange rates for the pound, restricting industrial growth and so putting jobs at risk. This threat has been removed".

I am aware, too, of the propaganda that says that democracy in the European Union is achieved because the council of elected ministers takes the decisions, which indeed it does. But the UK has only 14 per cent. of the votes, and even that percentage will reduce if enlargement goes ahead. The constitutional point remains that Parliament itself is by-passed.

The EU already has its own Parliament, executive, supreme court, currency, flag and anthem. Through the convention under the chairmanship of M. Valery Giscard d'Estaing, it is near to having its own written constitution, foreign policy, army, police force, legal and tax systems. It will then be a fully fledged state, with its own legal personality, dominating all its member states, which will have become merely its regions.

That seems to me to be the greatest constitutional change since the Norman conquest. I repeat that the people are almost totally unaware of it. The question as to whether we should stay in the EEC, or EU, has scarcely featured in any general election campaign since 1983, and subsequent treaties have made it into a very different animal today.

I can but hope that national debate will break out when the Giscard convention reports next spring, despite the best endeavours of the BBC and all our main political parties to hide from the people what has happened and what is in store for them. I hope that the people will be angry; I hope that the Conservative Party will then listen to them and lead them away from the total subservience to an alien regime that otherwise awaits them.

My Lords, I am grateful for the chance to discuss the nature of the constitution of this state, the United Kingdom, and to consider its virtues and how it might evolve in the future.

There are many and fine definitions of the British constitution. For me, a behaviourist definition is appropriate: it is the way we do it, stupid; or, more politely, it is how we arrange to govern ourselves in this multinational state, the UK.

It is admirable that we do not have a codified, written constitution. Clearly, we have bits of constitution written down in various pieces of legislation, but we are at liberty to alter our arrangements as and when we wish. Change is, of course, dependent only on simple majorities in Parliament. I suspect that a written constitution becomes desirable when "we" do not trust the government on a consistent basis over the years. However, it is a sorry state for a country to get into when "we" do not trust the state.

Who are "we" in that context? The term can be defined as most people in the constituent parts. How should the declining popularity of voting in general elections be interpreted? Is it a confidence born of the fact that all major parties are broadly social democrats in character, and that that political stance is popularly desirable. Or, is it a rather ineffective register of complaint about government in general? I conclude that "we" are not certain about the ambitions of the state, which is a curious development in a parliamentary democracy. I suspect that mass abstention will continue to baffle parliamentarians.

My other point is about Scotland's position within the United Kingdom. The treaty of 1706 brought about an economic and political union, which was good politics for the time. The economic union was much prized: it would lead to the end of war; a guarantee of peace; free trade with England and its colonies. The political union was the downside. Three centuries later, Scotland is back on the map as a political entity, and aspirations for Scotland are now worth having.

While some would like to return Scotland to its historic place at the international table, others would seek a variety of options within the United Kingdom. Broadly, there is a small demand for a return to direct rule, as evidenced by the Scottish Parliament (Referendum) Bill, which was introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, earlier this year. There are many who are content with devolution, and others, including those on these Benches, who would prefer a federal solution with limited sovereignty, which I choose to call home rule plus.

When I walk down the Corridor, I am reminded by the two pictures outside the Bishops' Bar of how this House defeated the Home Rule Bill in 1893. That was an example of the House trying to stop a momentum of constitutional change that was demanded by some of the British people—the Irish, in that case. We know the consequences of the actions of the House—a non-British solution to the Irish question.

I hope that the British constitution will have greater flexibility in the future when any development is proposed towards home rule plus—a federal solution for Scotland, if that is demanded by people of Scotland.

The constitution is an organic system that absorbs and adapts to change as it is needed. It is certainly right to draw attention to any legislation that would alter the constitution, but it would not be sound to oppose that legislation just because it might alter the constitution.

The British constitution can be seen as a good thing if it is in line with the aspirations of the people, or as a bad thing, if the way that things are done is out of synch with the people. The challenge is to keep the constitution evolving with the times, and with the aspirations of the constituent parts. Otherwise, we shall discover too late that some of the people want to secede.

My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend for a remarkable speech, which could form the basis of a very distinguished set of Reith lectures next year. It would be timely if he were to develop his speech in that way and if the BBC were to take up my suggestion.

I shall focus on Parliament, not on the House of Lords reform, as such, and shall refer briefly to three other countries, each of which varies considerably from us and from each other.

The first is the United States, which looked towards Europe and looked away again at the time of the founding fathers. The US planted on the virgin soil, on which the seeds of tyranny had never grown, the most remarkable political document ever, which is the American constitution. In the 250 years or so since it was adopted in 1789, there have been only 27 amendments, the most recent of which was 10 years ago. The economy of words in the American constitution is remarkable. My noble friend Lord Pearson referred to Maastricht. While the Maastricht Treaty fumbled with pages of incomprehensible script, the tenth amendment, which is part of the Bill of Rights of 1791 had very few words. It states:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people".

It is a remarkable constitution that is very different from ours, but it enshrines tremendous safeguards by the separation of the legislature from the executive.

The second country to which I wish to refer is France. I always feel that France has for centuries been an autocracy but has masqueraded recently as a democracy. After the French Revolution, France was run by exactly the same people as those who ran it before. Many books about the French Revolution show that clearly. France is now in its Fifth Republic; there have been five attempts to get a good constitution.

The most relevant thing in this debate is that France does not really have a Parliament. How is that manifested? It is manifested by the fact that when the French Government want to make an unpopular change and there are demonstrations against it, those demonstrations rapidly become mobs. In France, unlike England, the people support the mob because they see the mob as a surrogate for themselves next time round. They do not feel that they have a Parliament to protect them. In this country, we detest mobs. We support governments rather than mobs. In my hook, that applies every bit as much to the pro-hunting mob of last week as it did to Mr Scargill's flying pickets.

I refer very briefly to Russia, which we are delighted to welcome back into the democratic family. The Parliament there, however, is in an embryonic form, and it has been extremely well controlled, first by President Yeltsin and now by President Plain, by a simple expedient. In a country which is still poor and where the advantages of public office are rather limited, the members of the Dumas have been loaded with privileges and perks. Whenever they threaten to step out of line, a general election is dangled in front of them and they rapidly fall back again.

In Britain, as my noble friend said, we moved from monarchical government to constitutional representative government early in the 18th century, a process probably greatly assisted by the fact that the early Hanoverian monarchs did not speak English and therefore could not interfere too much. Parliament gained strength from that time, in a steep line of progression, for 250 years or so.

I agree with those who said that the main constitutional changes which this Government have introduced have failed to show joined-up government. In making one change, Ministers do not appear to have taken into account the effect on other parts of the constitution. What I really want to focus on, however, is Parliament, and what I want to criticise is the Government's attempt—I think almost conscious attempt—to disarm Parliament.

The disarmament is being carried out under the cloak of modernisation. I am always surprised that governments are never able, at least as individuals, to contemplate the time when they will move into opposition. In this disarmament, they are aided and abetted by civil servants who regard Parliament as an even bigger nuisance than they regard Ministers. All of that has been famously, accurately and without exaggeration documented in the "Yes Minister" series of many years ago. Recently, there were press disclosures of highly derogatory internal Civil Service briefings against "tiresome" MPs who persisted in asking awkward questions. That shows that the "Yes Minister" culture is alive and well.

We could give many examples. The noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, gave the very telling example of deferred votes, which take away the essence of parliamentary debates—that one listens, or at least sometimes listens, and decides as a result of what one has heard. My noble friend Lord Pearson has identified another problem, although not a problem of the Government, in relation to the power that must be taken—"must" because there is a limit of power—as a result of the growth of the European Union. Perhaps inevitably—possibly even beneficially in some respects, although I do not think that my noble friend would agree—parliamentary power has clearly been eroded by that growth.

I refer particularly to the increasing use of executive orders. The number of Orders in Council—things done under the famous Henry VIII clauses of Bills which give the right to secondary legislation—has grown enormously. In 1984, there were slightly more than 2,000; in 1999, there were 3,700; now, there are about 4,000. These are very seldom looked at by either House of Parliament. It is a great shortcoming on which the Procedure Committee has reported, though little seems to have been done about that very good report, which I think was issued in March 2000. I hope that Parliament will consider greater use of proper scrutiny, partly through the Joint Committee, and perhaps partly by the pre-enactment scrutiny of delegated legislation.

Finally, I give the obvious example of the way in which ever more legislation is not considered at all in the other place. Guillotines are now almost automatic, and timetable Motions tabled even on Second Reading. However much may emerge as needing discussion, discussion is limited. I strongly criticise that aspect of the Government's policy. While I am here, I shall do my best to draw attention to it and to oppose it.

My Lords, we on these Benches greatly welcome this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, is, I think, widely accepted as the foremost constitutional scholar in your Lordships' House. The Constitution Committee, of which he is the first and so far only chair, plays a very important role and has produced a number of valuable reports. He has now given us the opportunity of a wide-ranging debate about constitutional change.

The nature of the British constitution, of course, is to change. I would take some mild issue with the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, when he suggested that recent changes were more extreme than anything since the 17th century. Certainly the constitution in 1930, for example, was utterly different from what it had been in 1830. During the intervening century, we moved from an oligarchy to a democracy. In the early years of the 20th century alone, we had the emasculation of the powers of your Lordships' House, suffrage for women and independence for the Republic of Ireland. Then, of course, the pace did slow down, although we had the Parliament Act 1949 and the Life Peerages Act 1958, whose consequences were perhaps more far-reaching than anyone realised at the time.

We then had the extremely important step of the European Communities Act 1972.1 agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, about its constitutional importance. In the final years of the 20th century, we had devolution to Scotland and Wales. We also had the Human Rights Act. I echo the praise given to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for steering that legislation through Parliament. We also had the first stage of the reform of your Lordships' House. All these changes were welcome to me and my colleagues. They also had a profound effect on the British constitution.

The constitution is now very different from the days when I studied constitutional history and constitutional law at school and university some 50 years ago. In those days, the core of teaching about the constitution was still Dicey's view that there was only one principle of the British constitution—the absolute sovereignty of the Queen in Parliament. Is that still true? I believe that it is not. The European Communities Act, the Scotland Act and the Human Rights Act all restrict the powers of Parliament to legislate. In theory, each of them could be repealed; in practice, I believe that each of them is entrenched. So the constitution today is perhaps a good deal more uncertain than it was in Dicey's day.

The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, said that there was a dichotomy between positive constitutionalism, which he defined as ensuring the supremacy of the will of the people, and negative constitutionalism, which he defined as guarding against an arbitrary excess of power. I do not accept the thesis that one must adopt one of these forms to the exclusion of the other. It is, I believe, essential to get the right balance between the two.

The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, said that the Liberal Democrats support only negative constitutionalism. That is not true. Our support for electoral reform, for example, is designed to ensure that the Government represent the will of the majority of the voters, not the minority. Our support for devolution is due to the belief that the Scots and the Welsh, who see themselves as members of historic nations, should have a parliament or an assembly which will enable the will of the people of those nations to be applied. But we also recognise that the tyranny of the majority is perhaps the most fundamental problem of democracies. Negative constitutionalism is needed. At times I felt that the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, verged on anti-judicialism. Ever since the USA adopted the Bill of Rights in 1789—that is, the first 10 amendments to its constitution—the importance of entrenched rights has been recognised.

I believe that in the early post-war years British judges were unduly passive, but they have rightly changed. Francis Bacon said in the early 17th century—he was a royalist—that the judges should be lions, but lions under the throne. I was a little worried at times that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, appeared to suggest that judges should be lions, but lions under the Speaker's Chair.

We need to look at how our constitution will develop. I believe that we shall see further reform of your Lordships' House. I believe that, inevitably, that will mean the departure of the remaining hereditary Members, at least as hereditaries. I also believe that your Lordships' House will have a substantial elected element which, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, and others, I certainly welcome. However, that is a debate for another day.

We may well see disestablishment which, among other consequences, would mean that the Bishops would no longer have a place as of right in your Lordships' House. For myself—I am sorry to disagree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth on this matter—I believe that in a multi-faith and secular society ex officio representation of the Church of England, and in particular the hierarchy of the Church of England, in your Lordships' House is inappropriate.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I looked forward in my remarks to the possibility of a more comprehensive spiritual Bench. That is different from not having one at all. As I say, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way.

My Lords, when we move to a greater separation of powers I believe that we shall see the removal of the judicial functions of your Lordships' House and the creation of a separate supreme court. I know that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor does not like the idea but I do not believe that he can resist it any more than Canute could resist the waves. That is perhaps being unfair to Canute who, of course, knew that he could not turn back the tide. I believe that the noble and learned Lord will he no more successful.

At the heart of our constitution there is a larger and much more difficult problem—I agree with the remarks on this matter of my noble friend Lord Holme of Cheltenham—and that is the domination of the legislature by the executive, particularly when, as at present, the Government have a large majority. Is this an inevitable part of the constitutional system? Should we change it? Can we change it? There are some things that we could do.

Electoral reform would ensure that governments are more broadly based, as they are in Scotland arid in Wales, which undoubtedly shifts power from the executive to the legislature. We could strengthen departmental Select Committees in the House of Commons, turning them into something like the congressional or senatorial committees in the United States. That, again, would strengthen the powers of the legislature against the executive and would provide an alternative career path for MPs to the single career path, which most now seek, of ministerial office.

I turn to the role of your Lordships' House. A reformed House of Lords may play a greater role in holding the executive to account. I am not suggesting any change in the present conventions which govern the relationships between the two Houses or any attempt to challenge the supremacy of the House of Commons. But your Lordships' House, even partly reformed, has played a valuable part in modifying legislation, for example, on the Anti-terrorism Bill. Bill after Bill reaches your Lordships' House in need of improvement, and gets it. Sometimes a Bill needs improvement because the Government are deliberately trying to extend powers beyond their proper limits—as I believe was the case with the Anti-terrorism Bill—sometimes because a Bill is drafted too quickly and without adequate preparation (a current example of that is the Licensing Bill), and sometimes for both reasons. The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill was an example of that.

Finally, a number of speakers referred to a written constitution. That, I believe, is some way off. But I personally see no particular merit in an unwritten constitution. Last week I heard Mr Oliver Letwin in an interesting discussion float the possibility of a written constitution. My noble friend Lord Smith of Clifton referred to the IPPR draft of a written constitution. I am glad he did so as I contributed part of that. We are in fact still some way off a written constitution, but the building blocks are being made—the Scotland Act, the Government of Wales Act, the Human Rights Act. I believe that a time will come to put them together into a single constitutional document.

My Lords, I join all noble Lords who have spoken in thanking my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth for initiating this important debate.

I do not wish to sound discourteous but If do not plan to follow one or two noble Lords who have spoken in addressing the future of this House as I know that we can anticipate at least two major debates on that subject early in the New Year. However, I much enjoyed the comments of my noble friends Lord Renton and Lord Fowler. I very much believe that we are far better off with what we have than with another botched reform. I agree with my noble friends that we must all unite across the parties to stop Members of another place from forcing through an unworkable reform that will not give this House what it needs most of all; that is, strength, independence and authority.

My noble friend Lord Norton gives distinguished service to the House through his role on the Constitution Committee. We are lucky indeed to have a renowned expert on that subject as the committee's chairman, indeed, the establishment of the Constitution Committee in this House, and the extension of the role of the Economic Affairs Committee to cover the Finance Bill, seem to me to represent constitutional changes squarely in the best of British tradition. These changes were introduced with agreement after debate. They strengthen Parliament, improve scrutiny and control of the executive—an issue in constitutional politics stretching back to Magna Carta—and they are gradual, incremental, in the spirit of what went before, or organic, as my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth might put it. The historic strength of our constitution is that the ground rules are unwritten. They are able to evolve and to adapt in the light of experience and circumstance.

We learnt in the 17th century, from the brutal experience of revolution and civil war in every part of the kingdom and army dictatorship in England, lessons that others learnt from far more recent scars. The imposition of frameworks and examples that are right for them may not suit our own very different historical experience. Neither ideological theorising nor whole conventions of human rights lawyers outweigh tested experience or the flexibility in-built in our British constitution.

Too much that this Government have sought to do since 1997 has swept aside that experience. We have seen the ground rules of constitutional development broken up. All those changes have been abrupt, prescriptive and ill thought through. The Government have arbitrarily cut across past practice and slavishly followed the passing fashions of the hour, with even the Deputy Prime Minister's bizarre fad for regional assemblies in place of counties dating back to the Saxon era. No wonder my noble friend Lord Norton says that we possibly have the makings of a constitutional crisis.

At times in the past few years, it has seemed as if anything was up for grabs except, of course, the office of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor himself. Given the distinction of the current holder of that office, whom we are honoured to have with us this afternoon, that may be understandable. None the less, it is striking.

Let us consider the extent of the change in the past five years, let alone the past 30. The union settlements have been set aside, and the common law of England has been undermined by a code of human rights that derives very little from national law. The usages of the House of Commons have been modernised, deeply entrenching the power of the executive, as the noble Lord, Lord Sheldon, recognised. That was expressed even more strongly by the words of the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, to which I shall return in a moment.

Our own House has been purged more ruthlessly by a political hand than at any time since the 1650s. Powers that resided at Westminster have been transferred to Brussels with an almost missionary zeal. Noble Lords do not have to believe everything that my noble friend Lord Pearson says to believe that. Ministers have spun spiders' webs of regulation across the face of public life, so that no school, hospital or police officer may move without a rule book clumping behind them. We have seen a long and persistent march by the Home Office against some of our most precious personal liberties. On that last point, what price one's human rights, if a jury may be conditioned into thinking that one is a criminal before one's case is even heard?

That is only part of the Government's programme, but it is enough to indicate, as noble Lords have done in this debate, the scale of constitutional changes that have taken place in the past few years. At no stage have the Government stopped to ask the question raised by my noble friend Lord Norton, or to give an answer to the question, "What is the constitution for?". Has there been any coherence in the Government's actions, and what are their plans for the future? Indeed, even the word "plan" may be a misnomer, as so much seems to have been done by accident rather than design.

One needs only to consider the practice of devolution, which has become an expensive embarrassment to the people of Scotland. In a few minutes, in the forthcoming Statement, we shall witness the Government standing on their head and announcing a change to the number of MSPs and confirmation of a deal struck with the Liberal Democrats. The real test of devolution, however, will be during the next few years, as we see the development of different political complexions in the Scottish Executive and at Westminster. All the stresses will not be seen for some years, but the problems that they bring will cast a long shadow.

The noble Lord, Lord Morgan, raised several important questions about the working of devolution. The decision-making powers of the new Parliaments and Assemblies are based in their own bodies, but the money to pay for them comes from the centre. That will inevitably lead to wastage of expenditure and the start of a begging bowl culture. None of those issues has been resolved.

Another point about devolution arose during the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. Am I right in believing that the new Parliaments and Assemblies legislate with powers borrowed from this Parliament? In other words, their legislation is not primary legislation in the accepted form of that word, but secondary legislation, ultimately subordinate to the power and authority of this Parliament, if that power were to be used. If the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor cannot give an answer this afternoon, I should be delighted to receive it in written form.

The noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, mentioned that old chestnut, electoral reform. I wonder whatever happened to that wheeze. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will be able to tell us.

This has been a good and important debate, but I conclude with one further thought. Why, in this maelstrom of change, is another place the one institution that has not been changed, except to muddle it further, although it is the one institution that surpasses all others in importance? During the past few years, we in this House have fought a rearguard action against the ambitions of the Government, as set out in 1997, to master and control your Lordships' independence. Time and again, that spark of independence has been useful; it has saved Ministers from disastrous overreaching of executive power on issues as diverse as the surveying of e-mails, the defence of jury trials, the rights of electors to election addresses and the freedom from arbitrary detention. Time and again, proposals such as those have passed through another place as if they were as controversial as cranberry sauce at Christmas.

Noble Lords have only to accept half of what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, or the noble Lord, Lord Sheldon, to know that there is something rotten in another place. My noble friend Lord Marlesford called it "disarming Parliament". That is a good phrase. We are all the weaker for what has happened in another place. It is no wonder that turnout at elections continues to fall.

Is it not essential that far-reaching and effective reform of another place is brought further to the top of the constitutional agenda? We on this side are ready to meet that challenge; we are ready to reduce the size of another place, to buttress the independence of Back-Benchers and Select Committees and rebuild some of the procedures for scrutinising legislation that have fallen into disuse. If we could expect some attention from the Government on that matter, an assurance from the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor would make this important debate even more worthwhile than it has been.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, is to be congratulated on securing the debate. It has made for an interesting and scholarly rundown to the end of term.

The noble Lord has consistently criticised the Government for having, as he sees it, no coherent theory of the constitution and no intellectually consistent strategy for reforming it. He also implies that without the former—a proper theory of the constitution—we should not even have dared to embark on the latter—the reform of the constitution. I fear that if purism of that kind had informed our approach there would have been none of the progress since 1997 that has been approved by so many of your Lordships today.

The noble Lord knows that, in the area of constitutional change, I believe that we can proceed by way of pragmatism based on principle, without the need for an all-embracing theory. I accept that we do not have an all-embracing definition of the constitution. As I told your Lordships' Constitution Committee, which the noble Lord chairs so well, I considered its own definition,

"the set of laws, rules and practices that create the basic institutions of the state, and its component and related parts, and stipulate the powers of those institutions and the relationship between the different institutions and between those institutions and the individual".

as good as any I had read, but I do not endorse it as a government definition or as a personal definition. Nor does it address what the content of the constitution is, or any theory that may lie behind it.

The question whether any particular proposed measure should be regarded as constitutional is one on which a pragmatic view should be taken. The fact that a major part of our constitution is to be found in conventions illustrates that there is no all-embracing definition. Many important political developments have been effected since 1688 without any recourse to legal forms. The constitutional conventions describe and explain how our constitution works, lives and grows. Examples include the convention that the Sovereign acts only on the advice of her Ministers, the doctrine of collective responsibility, and that a government defeated on a Motion of confidence on the Floor of the other place should resign. Just as there is no all-embracing definition of the constitution, similarly there is no all-embracing definition of what is a "constitutional measure". Clearly, the Government have, since 1997, introduced a number of reforms that could be called "constitutional measures". An obvious such reform is the Scotland Act, with its ample devolution of legislative power to Scotland, which results in the Scottish Parliament passing primary legislation, not delegated legislation.

I do not myself see the absence of an all-embracing definition of "the constitution" as any problem at all. Our system of government and parliamentary supremacy mean that there is no difference between our arrangements for the treatment of "constitutional" measures and any others.

Moreover, it is true that we have no written constitution—that is, written down in a single place—but we do not seem to have suffered as a result in comparison with other European countries. Our governance has been remarkably stable over the centuries and our institutions have been conspicuously durable.

It may disappoint the noble Lord but I am sure that it will not disappoint or surprise your Lordships to learn that we reject the argument that because we have no all-embracing definition of the constitution, we therefore should not introduce measures that beneficially change our constitutional arrangements.

The noble Lord criticised us because he claimed that the Government have no vision of what they want the constitution to be in 10 years' time, for example, and no consistent philosophy behind our reforms. Neither is true. All of our reforms were fundamentally informed by three principles. The first is that we should remain a parliamentary democracy with the Westminster Parliament supreme and within that the other place the dominant partner. Secondly—I say this with particular regard to the notable contribution of my noble friend Lord Sheldon—we should increase public engagement in democracy, developing a maturer democracy with different centres of power where individuals enjoy greater rights and where government is carried out closer to the people. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Holme: pluralism, yes, and decentralism, yes. Our third principle is that the correct road to reform was to devise a solution to each problem on its own terms. That was not carelessness or lack of consideration for possible linkages between different reforms; it was a recognition that that is the way that our constitution has always developed and should develop.

If, as the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, contends, there was insufficient attention to the linkages, I should have to plead guilty because my chairmanship of the Cabinet committees concerned with the constitutional change programme was intended to prevent that from happening. So I would not plead guilty, would I?

I turn to devolution. Some claimed that that would mean the break-up of the United Kingdom. Not so. The powers of the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly have been devolved from the Westminster Parliament. They could, in principle, be recovered at any time, however improbable that obviously is. Regrettably, in the case of Northern Ireland, it has been necessary for the time being to do so. But I believe that the union between Scotland and England has been strengthened, not weakened, by devolution.

The sovereignty of Westminster is preserved but Scotland and Wales have government that is closer to the people, which can respond to their particular concerns and which (for Scotland) does not have to wait for legislative time in a Parliament dominated by English interests. Moreover, the arrangements established over the past three and a half years provide a robust basis on which successful long-term relationships can be built between the Government and the devolved administrations.

The detailed arrangements in each case reflected the historic circumstances of those nations. Scotland, with its long history of a distinct legal system, Church and education system, and the continuing need for separate legislation in many areas of life, has a Parliament and Executive that reflect that historical legacy with their high level of autonomy over the legal system, economic development, industrial assistance, training, transport, the police and the penal system. I was disappointed to hear the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, trot out the mantra that the constitutional reform programme was abrupt, prescriptive and ill thought out. On the contrary, it was well heralded, well debated—not least in your Lordships' House—and well thought out. My advice to the Conservative Party in Scotland is that if it wants to rehabilitate itself as a political force in Scotland, it should stop living in the past and be active in the Scottish Parliament and be seen to be helping to make devolution to Scotland the success that it is.

Wales has been much more closely integrated with England for much longer and it has a system which reflects that closeness. Its Assembly has taken over the powers of the Secretary of State, but cannot make primary legislation, unlike Scotland. Devolution, however, provides a transparent framework for the government of Wales and a focus for national identity. The Northern Ireland settlement, similarly, reflects the particular circumstances of the Province's history and politics in, for example, the specific provision for power-sharing.

It has been said by some that our system of devolution is asymmetrical. It is, and it was intended to be, so as to reflect the different circumstances of the different parts of the United Kingdom.

We have given the people of London—one of the great capital cities in the world—the opportunity for city-wide government to secure its strategic interests and the voice that it deserves. I say to my noble friend Lord Morgan that we are addressing the English question. We are offering the regions of England the opportunity to establish directly elected regional assemblies. Elected assemblies will have important strategic powers over regional issues, such as economic development, planning, housing and transport, but no region of England will have regional government forced on it. Just as devolution and the Greater London Authority were introduced only after the proposals had secured majorities in referendums, the same will apply to any directly elected assemblies in the regions of England.

The consequences of devolution will be to allow the United Kingdom to draw strength from its diversity, which should be embraced as a source of strength and innovation. Under the new settlement, the United Kingdom will be far more than the sum of its parts. A new Britain is emerging with a revised conception of citizenship that recognises the mix of cultures and traditions that form our Union.

I turn to the Human Rights Act. This immensely important measure, which I was proud to pilot through your Lordships' House, where it began, had a clear starting point: a pragmatic view of our constitutional arrangements. That view is of an accommodation between the state and the individual and of a new and dynamic co-operative endeavour that is developing between the Executive, the judiciary and Parliament. It is one in which each works within its respective constitutional sphere to give ever-developing practical effect to the values embodied in the Act. The Human Rights Act respects the sovereignty of Parliament. It enables people to pursue their human rights in their own courts. It will, over time, lead to a new culture of rights and responsibilities. The prophets of doom over that Bill have been proved comprehensively wrong, just as they have been over devolution. The union was strengthened, not weakened, by the Scotland Act. The Human Rights Act has not seen the end of civilisation as we know it. There has been none of the predicted chaos in the courts. It has not seen the rule of judges taking over from the rule of politicians. Nor has it seen the politicisation of the judiciary. The overriding theme which emerges from the impact of the Act in practice so far is one of balance: balance between scrutiny and deference; between the individual and the community, and between radical interpretation of statutes and declarations of incompatibility. The Act should be celebrated by all those who believe in our tradition of freedom under the law—as important a part of our constitution as any institutional arrangements.

The Freedom of Information Act is gradually being brought into force—I recognise not as fast as the noble Lords, Lord Holme and Lord Goodhart, would wish. But, from the beginning of this month, every government department is obliged to have a publication scheme, setting out the information it will routinely make freely available. On the immensely important subject of elections—fundamental to our democratic arrangements—we have established an independent Electoral Commission, answerable to the House of Commons, and not to government, to oversee the electoral system in this county.

Your Lordships were unlikely to have allowed a debate on the constitution to pass without reference to reform of this House, and your Lordships did not disappoint. We now have the report of the Joint Committee. I was amused, but not at all surprised, to hear that the chairman of that committee, my right honourable friend the Member for Copeland, had spoken frankly about the difficulty the committee had experienced in even identifying and commenting on seven options for the composition of your Lordships' House. No doubt your Lordships will be studying it carefully over the Christmas Recess, preparatory to our two-day debate on 21st and 22nd January. My noble friend Lady Scotland looks forward to opening that debate and I look forward to winding it up. The contribution of my noble friend Lord Sheldon to the debate gives a foretaste of how interesting that debate will be.

It may be that the executive's power over Parliament has grown excessively. But that is no justification for ill-advised reform of this House, under which instability between the two Houses might make the life of the executive of whatever political colour more difficult, but would be very damaging to the stability of Parliament. The noble Lord notes—I believe regrets—but accepts as inevitable that the other place no longer attracts the breadth of experience that it once did.. But I emphasise that this House, as an appointed House, does. So I agree with my noble friend Lord Morgan that for this House to be efficient it must add value to Parliament. That primarily must be through its composition—the kind of people that it attracts. The speech of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, was, if I may say so, essential reading for our debate in January.

This has been an interesting debate. I conclude by saying that, despite the strictures of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, the Government believe that they will be remembered and approved by history for their record of constitutional reform. The noble Lord, Lord Holme, was generous enough to agree, as did my noble friend Lord Morgan.

We believe that the way in which we have approached these reforms is consistent with the traditions of the development of our constitution—ever pragmatic, evolutionary where possible, but not fearing to make major step changes where needed, as was the reform of this House. Our nation, our democracy and our constitution will, I hope, over time be seen to have been regenerated by our efforts.

My Lords, this has been a very good debate indeed. I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part. There have been some very thoughtful speeches from all parts of the House, with several noble and scholarly Lords participating.

Your Lordships' House is an ideal arena in which such an important debate can take place. I very much hope, as I said in opening, that this prompts further. I am especially grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for responding so fully to the debate and for confirming my interpretation of the Government's position. The noble and learned Lord has been extremely open in his response and—perhaps I may say—in so doing has given me a great deal of ammunition for the future.

My Motion calls for Papers. When I have previously initiated debates in your Lordships' House, whether on the burden of bureaucracy on universities or on the case for parliamentary reform, I have made the point that the last thing that I want is more papers. Today is different. This is a subject on which I should like to see more papers. However, I shall abide by the conventions of the House. I shall do so for two reasons: first, to avoid apoplexy on the part of the Clerks: and, secondly, because conventions constitute an important component of the constitution of your Lordships' House—a constitution worth defending.

My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland on the size of the Scottish Parliament. The Statement is as follows:

"With permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to make a Statement on the future size of the Scottish Parliament.

"In the White Paper, Scotland's Parliament, published in July 1997, the Government acknowledged that the special statutory provisions which stipulated a minimum number of Scottish seats in this House would no longer apply.

"The average Scottish constituency represented here comprises around 55,000 electors, while the average for English constituencies is around 70,000.

"One factor in this increased representation has been the need to recognise the additional requirement for Scottish MPs to scrutinise separate legislation unique to the Scottish system.

"The Scotland Act 1998 provides that any reduction in the number of MPs representing Scottish constituencies at Westminster will cause a reduction in the number of MSPs in the Scottish Parliament.

"The Boundary Commission for Scotland published in March this year provisional recommendations that would lead to a reduction in the current number of Scottish Westminster constituencies from 72 to 59. The consequence for Holyrood would be a fall in the number of MSPs from 129 to around 104.

"During the passage of the Scotland Act the Government made clear that if Parliament took the view that its workings would be undermined by a reduction in numbers, then representations could be made to the government of the day to amend that section of the Act.

"My right honourable friend the then Secretary of State for Scotland, the right honourable Member for Hamilton North and Bellshill, reiterated that view in September 2000; I have made similar public Statements to this effect.

"Honouring this commitment, I launched last year a consultation to seek views on retaining or adjusting the current statutory link between Westminster and Holyrood parliamentary constituencies.

"The consultation paper, in particular, sought views on three issues: the consequence of the reduction required by the Scotland Act on the operation of the Scottish Parliament; the practical effect and issues which might arise between MPs, MSPs and councillors if boundaries were not coterminous for Westminster and Holyrood constituencies; and, the implications of non-coterminous boundaries for electoral administrators and local authorities in relation to the registration of voters and the conduct of elections, and also for the structure and operation of political parties.

"Almost 800 copies of the consultation documents were issued, and the Scotland Office website page recorded 1,300 hits. More than 230 replies were received from civic bodies, individuals, electoral administrators and councils, the Scottish Executive, MPs, MSPs and political parties.

"The purpose of the consultation was to seek to proceed on the basis of the kind of consensus born out of the Scottish Constitutional Convention's scheme for the Scottish Parliament. That broad-based convention was made up of political parties including the Scottish Labour Party and the Scottish Liberal Democrats, as well as trade unions, local authorities, churches, the voluntary sector, business groups and civic Scotland. I made clear that, if the Government were ever to consider amending the Scotland Act, any proposal should seek the same kind of consensus as emerged through the convention.

"Two strands emerge from the consultation. First, the need for stability. Among the civic and representative bodies responding, the overwhelming view was that the Scottish Parliament should continue to operate with the present number of MSPs. The argument was put that it would cause difficulties, especially to the committee system, and that it would be unwise to de-stabilise the Parliament so early in its life by a reduction in its numbers.

"They stated that a reduction would adversely affect the Parliament's scrutiny of legislation and the Executive's capacity to conduct inquiries or initiate legislation. They claimed that any reduction in the numbers of list MSPs would reduce proportionality and that the current structure should be maintained to give a proper balance of representation.

"Secondly, it was acknowledged, not least from electoral administrators, that difficulties could arise if the boundaries for Westminster and Holyrood were not coterminous. Confusion could be caused to voters and there would be problems for political parties in relation to their organisation.

"A summary of these responses has been placed in the Library of both Houses.

"I have weighed up carefully all the responses, and, in view of the overwhelming body of opinion in favour of maintaining the current number of MSPs, in the interests of stability, I propose to seek to amend the Scotland Act accordingly. However, I also take very seriously the concerns about the operation of different boundaries for Westminster and for Holyrood. I propose therefore that an independent commission should be established to examine and make recommendations on issues caused by having different boundaries for Westminster and Holyrood constituencies.

"I expect that, subject to parliamentary approval, any order giving effect to revised Westminster boundaries should be in place for the next election, no later than June 2006. Consequently, this commission, which has the approval of the Scottish Executive and is referred to in its submission, would sit after the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections. Any changes it might propose for the Scotland Act would be a matter for this Parliament.

"Retaining the present number of 129 MSPs requires an amendment to the Scotland Act by way of primary legislation. It will also be necessary to provide for the routine review of Scottish Parliament constituency boundaries. I will be seeking agreement to introduce legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows.

"Let me make it clear that any change to the Scotland Act will be narrowly drawn. The Government believe the spirit of the constitutional convention must guide any changes to the legislation.

"This announcement acknowledges the fact that, as it approaches the end of its first term, the Scottish Parliament is a hard-working and effective institution, which is committed to serving the needs of the Scottish people; it underpins the stability and success of the constitutional settlement in Scotland, which has strengthened the United Kingdom.

"I commend this Statement to the House".

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Temple Guiting, for having repeated the Statement made earlier in another place. I gather that it is the first time that the noble Lord has made a Statement from the Dispatch Box, so I congratulate him on having done so. I must say, however, that he could have picked a better one. It is an extraordinary Statement.

Of course, I have sympathy for the noble Lord. After all, he was not in the House at the time of the passage of the Scotland Act 1998. Is he aware of the statements of Government policy made from the Dispatch Box at which he stands in July 1998? I quote:

"After thinking long and hard"—

long and hard, my Lords—

"the Government have concluded that the balance of advantage lies with maintaining the link between Westminster and Scottish parliament constituencies … believed that the integrity of the Union would be strengthened by having common constituencies for the Scottish parliament and UK Parliament".

I quote again:

"different parliamentary constituencies for the Scottish parliament and the UK Parliament with overlapping boundaries"

could lead to,

"confusion among the electorate".

I quote once more:

"I am confident that once the Scottish parliament is established and its working practices are in place, it could operate perfectly effectively with fewer MSPs".—[Official Report, 8/7/98; col. 1336]

Those were the words uttered at the Dispatch Box by the noble Lord's predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Sewel. They were echoed by Mr Dewar, who said in anolher place:

"if there were a larger … number of Members, efficiency would be … sacrificed".—[Official Report, Commons, 11/11/98; col. 384]

The Secretary of State, Mrs Liddell, led her colleagues into the Lobby in another place to vote down an amendment to the effect that the number of seats in the Scottish Parliament should remain the same.

To call it a U-turn is to undersell; it is a backtrack. Will the noble Lord explain what has changed since 1998 that means that Mrs Liddell will tell him and others to vote for the policies that they voted against in 1998? Could it be something to do with the narrow political advantage of the Labour Party and their Liberal Democrat errand-boys in Holyrood? It is a ghastly, grubby political deal, and praying-in-aid the Labour-dominated Constitutional Convention simply proves that.

Can the noble Lord answer some specific questions? Given that, during the passage of the Scotland Act, Mr Henry McLeish said:

"we also believe that the Parliament could operate effectively with fewer Members".—[Official Report, Commons, 12/5/98; col. 223.],

what is the Government's reasoning for taking that sensible view at the time and what factors have led them to change their mind? Is the noble Lord aware that, under the management of the Government and, more lately, the Presiding Officer, the construction costs of the new parliament building have mushroomed to the degree that they are a major scandal for Scotland? What is the latest estimate of the cost of construction? What will be the annual revenue cost of continuing with the existing number of MSPs and their officers, rather than reducing it, as envisaged in 1998?

What will be the additional cost to local authorities of having to organise for elections based on non-coterminous boundaries? Will councils be reimbursed for that cost or will it fall, once again, to the local council tax payers? Will electors be confused by differing boundaries, as the Government previously believed? If not, why not? Did they not mean what they said then? Do they mean it now?

What hard evidence is there that the Scottish Parliament needs its current complement of MSPs, committees and Ministers to discharge its functions effectively? Why, for instance, are over 20 Ministers required to do the job that five did pre-devolution? Does the announcement mean that the number of Ministers will remain and that no cap will be placed on the mushrooming of ministerial aides?

Finally, will the noble Lord explain the timetable for the implementation of the new arrangements for Holyrood and Westminster? Can we expect to see new Westminster boundaries in place for a general election in 2005–06 and new Scottish parliamentary constituencies for the 2007 Scottish Parliament poll? When will the new independent commission be set up? How will it be set up, and who will sit on it?

Our party, at least, has a consistent view: the country needs fewer politicians. That is true for this Parliament and for the Scottish Parliament. Even if we reduced the number of MSPs as planned in 1998, Scotland would have more politicians per elector than Quebec, Catalonia or Bavaria. If they can manage, why cannot we?

Everyone knows that this astonishing U-turn has nothing to do with principle and everything to do with short-term political advantage. Yet again, it is an act that defines the very nature of this Government.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Evans, for repeating the Statement and welcome him to the discussions on Scotland. In addition, I welcome the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, back to his place and back to our Scottish discussions. In view of my complaint during the debate that Scottish and British politics are probably fairly colourless because no one really disagrees, I welcome the apoplectic views of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, to our Scottish discussions.

The Statement ends the anxiety. We now know the outcome. It was a battle of principle between the committee system and the slightly awkwardly described "coterminousity" of constituency boundaries. The committee system has won and the difficulties which "coterminousity" will bring about are to be ironed out by an independent commission. I suspect that administrators will have some difficulty with that. However, I do not believe that the public will.

On these Benches we have no problem with the principle of the reduction of Scottish Westminster MPs. However, we are anxious to ensure that the rural constituencies will not be too large. Perhaps the 6,000 elector format should be discarded in the remoter areas.

The 17 committees of the Scottish Parliament are vital and make up for the fact that there is no revising chamber. To have reduced them would have meant lack of scrutiny and, particularly, pre-legislative scrutiny. It would have created a greater legislative backlog; it would have created even more Sewel Motions; and it would have lost the number of constituency days that MSPs have. Proportionality would also have suffered. There would be less diversity in the Scottish Parliament. Fortunately, independents, greens and Scottish socialists add some colour to the generalist social democrat views of the main Scottish parties. Similarly, the rural and remote areas, which enjoy a slight over-representation, would have suffered, too. The Scottish Parliament could do without central belt domination.

Scotland is a resurgent political entity. In the 18th century the complaint was that when we had a parliament of our own we could "aye peeble" it. Now we can throw stones at it again, but we want it to be an effective Parliament. Reducing the numbers would not achieve that.

I have five questions for the Minister. Will the Government guarantee to use ward boundaries as building blocks for constituencies? Exactly which elections will these changes be in place for? Have the Government given any consideration to using the single transferable vote and abandoning the additional Member system? When will the Bill amending the Scotland Act be introduced? Finally—and, no doubt, coming to the aid of the SNP which rather foolishly seems to have declined places in this House—will the amendment Bill deal with the Dorothy-Grace Elder situation? As predicted, a regional list MP from Glasgow—Dorothy-Grace Elder—has resigned from the SNP and now sits as an independent. The SNP would like her to resign the seat, but legislation does not require her to do so. What does the Minister think will happen in that situation and will it be mentioned in the future amendment Bill?

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and to the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, for their welcome and their comments. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, finished his remarks saying that we have a consistent view. The noble Lord certainly has. He has opposed devolution from the beginning and continues to oppose it. Any obstacle or point that can be made in an attempt to damage devolution is made by the noble Lord and his party.

It is simple to trade quotations. I could read two pages of Government Ministers' quotations about the need for flexibility. The noble Lord's shadow Minister, Liam Fox, said that the first thing that would be required to make the Scottish Parliament work properly was stability. That is precisely the point my right honourable friend the Secretary of State made in her Statement.

What are the factors that have led to this? The first factor is consultation. We consulted the public on the size of the Scottish Parliament, seeking, in the light of the way the parliaments worked, their views on the number of MSPs. Word came back clearly from that consultation that the number of Members required remained 129. The reason for that is that there are 17 committees. They are effective committees and 129 MSPs are needed to ensure that the Scottish Parliament works effectively. All the evidence is that in these early days it is a highly effective Parliament. The crucial point is that, if it is to work, the Scottish Parliament must have what it requires. It is coming up—as are many other people—with compelling reasons for keeping 129 Members. Moreover, the construction of the Scottish Parliament, as the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, knows, is a devolved matter. It is not a matter that I can comment on.

The cost of any changes in the electoral boundaries will, of course, be met nationally, not locally.

As far as concerns the timetable for the consultation, the commission will be appointed by the UK Government in consultation with the First Minister. It will be a non-statutory body. It is too early to be precise about the scope of its remit but it is expected to cover any issues arising from the operation of the non-coterminous boundaries.

As the Secretary of State said in her Statement, the reason for establishing the commission is that concern has been expressed about moving away from coterminous boundaries. She is anxious that that should be looked at by an independent commission, given their importance of the issue.

I believe that I have answered all the questions that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, asked. If I have left anything out, I shall be more than happy to write to him.

I turn to the questions asked by the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie. The point about rural constituencies and their size is a matter that I shall draw to the attention of the Secretary of State. When will the change happen? That will happen at the general election in 2006 at the latest. We do not expect the commission to be prevented from looking at wider election issues. The Bill will be introduced as soon as parliamentary time allows and we expect it to be narrowly drawn. The noble Earl asked whether the Government will use ward boundaries. That is not a matter for the Government; it is a matter for the Boundary Commission.

My Lords, I, too, welcome my noble friend Lord Evans to the Front Bench. However, I am afraid that the welcome I give him to the hot house of Scottish politics is not matched by my welcome for the Statement. It is most unwelcome.

The figure of 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament was a pragmatic one arrived at by compromise in the Scottish convention and elsewhere. It has now been elevated into the principle that the Scottish Parliament cannot possibly survive unless it has 129 Members. The Secretary of State for Scotland may say that the commission will look only at coterminous constituencies, but I do not believe that my noble friend realises the Pandora's Box which has been opened.

If there is to be a review of the operation of the Scottish Parliament—and I accept that it is different from the Westminster Parliament; I accept that perhaps 129 is the right number; I accept that it may be too many; and I accept that it may be too few—we should have a proper root and branch review. We should examine whether the committee system is working and whether we need the list MPs who have no constituency duties and who constantly interfere with constituency Members. The Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament would be able to report the number of occasions on which he has to criticise the list MPs for interfering in matters which were not of their concern.

The review must be a proper one and I do not see the reason for the rush. The change to the size of the Scottish Parliament will not happen before June next year. The Parliament can sit with the same number of Members. Does my noble friend understand and accept that a deal was done for the reduction in the number of Scottish MPs in the House of Commons? That deal was signed freely by every single party representative in the Scottish Parliament. I believe that that deal should be honoured because the excuse put forward sounds very much like, "We're going to try to save our own jobs".

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Hughes of Woodside for his questions. He appears to be asking us to rewrite the Act, whereas the Statement deals with significant changes to it in the light of the successful first three years of the Parliament. The deal referred to was done not for Members of the Scottish Parliament but for Members of the Westminster Parliament. I am fully aware of that deal and it was very transparent.

We have gone out to consultation; we have been transparent in the way in which we have approached the matter; and I recognise that we have done something which has not pleased my noble friend Lord Hughes of Woodside. However, these are early days and the Parliament is working well. Give it a few more years before passing the kind of judgment that is being passed today.

My Lords, I am completely astonished by the Statement. It is amazing. Had the noble Lord been here when the Act passed through this House, he would know that we spent many hours pointing out to the Government precisely what would happen if they linked the number of Members of the Scots Parliament to the Westminster and Euro constituencies. That is what the Act does: by implication, it ties the numbers in the Scots Parliament to those constituencies in Scotland.

We warned the Government that that would happen and my late noble friend, Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, was extremely amusing on the subject. He castigated the Government about what they were about to bring upon themselves and they have now done just that.

I do not believe that the Minister has been involved in fighting parliamentary elections, nor has the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, who thought that it was quite all right to consider altering the coterminous boundaries. Does the Minister appreciate that it is most confusing to fight elections on the ground—I do it every time—when boundaries are changed by the Boundary Commission? When the boundaries are changed for the next Westminster elections—and at the next election we may have non-coterminous ones for the Scots Parliament—the situation will be even worse. The Government are bringing upon those who fight the elections a very big problem indeed. The general population may not appreciate that, but they will.

What are the Government allocating in cost for the commission, which will be doing what the Government should be doing themselves, if I may say so, and which they have known since 1998 would be necessary? How long will it take? There has been the most extraordinary collapse of business-like arrangements in the introduction of legislation.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, for the questions she has asked. She appears to be saying that the Government should be chastised for accepting points made during the debate by Her Majesty's Opposition. I believe that this is an example of how pragmatic and flexible the Government are.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I am chastising the Government for not accepting what we said—not for accepting it.

My Lords, we do not yet know what the cost of the commission will be. It is a matter for discussion. The noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, expressed concern about changes to the boundaries for the Westminster and Holyrood Parliaments. That is why the Secretary of State said in her Statement:

"I take very seriously the concerns about the operation of different boundaries for Westminster and for Holyrood".

and that is one of the main reasons why the commission is being set up.

As regards the cost allocation for the new commission, as it is not due to be set up until 200'7 it is too early to say.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for repeating the Statement and I have to say that I welcome it very much. I am particularly pleased to receive the assurance from the Government that they proceeded with the consultation on the future size of the Scottish Parliament in the spirit or the Scottish Constitutional Convention, seeking the kind of consensus which was achieved by that convention.

I speak as the last co-chair of that convention, along with the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood. So I welcome the further assurance that any changes to the Scotland Act will be guided by the spirit of the convention, which in some eight years of careful deliberation provided the blueprint for the Scottish Parliament. And I have to say that that was without the benefit of the participation of the Scottish Conservative Party, which perhaps explains the somewhat jaundiced view of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, when he speaks of the convention. His party, which he boasted was always consistent at that time, was very much against the idea of a Scottish Parliament—so much so that it did not even participate in the convention. In the referendum campaign his party was part of the "No/No" campaign, which I have to say—and I hope I ant not being too unkind—was led by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser, whom I am very pleased to see in his place. I am sorry to have to say that it was a spectacularly unsuccessful campaign.

I am glad that the decision from the consultation is not to decrease the number of MSPs. As one of the three Front Bench spokespersons who took the Scotland Bill through its very, very long passage through this House, I know that we were always clear that if it emerged that the work of the Scottish Parliament would be adversely affected by a reduction in the number of MSPs then a change could be made. It is therefore absolutely right that after such a careful and broad consultation across Scotland, very much in the spirit of the convention—which I do not expect the Benches opposite to understand—the Government should take the necessary steps to bring about the desired change.

I also congratulate the Government on showing the foresight to announce now how they propose to deal with the consideration of any problems which may well arise from different boundaries for Westminster and Holyrood constituencies, and which will appear more clearly after the Holyrood 2007 elections. I think today's Statement will be widely welcomed in Scotland, where the requirement for the efficient functioning of the Parliament will be paramount, and any administrative difficulties will have to be addressed and overcome. I would also like, in concluding, to say that I very much echo the praise for the Scottish Parliament with which the Statement concluded.

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Ramsay for her support. She was one of the most significant people involved in setting up the Scottish Parliament. The extremely positive way in which she endorses the Scottish Parliament and where it is in its development is significant. We should all acknowledge that.

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on their stand. It is extraordinary that our Conservative friends cannot understand that the consultation over the whole country showing a clear lead needs to be taken into account. The numbers in the Scottish Parliament are important; you need 129 MSPs because they have no House of Lords. We do more than half the work in Parliament, because we do all the intricate work, and the committees have been working well. I hope that the Government will keep it up.

I have no quarrel with anything that the Minister said, except when he said that the Government had nothing to do with the cost of Holyrood. They had everything to do with it. I had great respect for the late Donald Dewar, but it was an impossible site. It was chosen and built on and the Scottish Parliament have had to put up with it. Will the Minister agree that the Government should supply the cash for the mess that they made to start with?

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, makes an important point: the Scottish Parliament is a unicameral Chamber, which is another justification for its number of Members. I was asked a direct question about the costs of the Assembly building and I said that it was a devolved matter. That is a perfectly reasonable answer to that question. However, I will take back to the Secretary of State the noble Lord's suggestion that Westminster should finance Holyrood. He should not hold his breath waiting for an answer.

My Lords, will the Minister be clear on dates? Why is there such urgency? Nothing can happen until May 2007. Why are the Government not waiting until the Boundary Commission reports, either in 2003 or 2004, on the Westminster constituencies and then see whether some will be coterminous? The Government are racing ahead of the all-important Boundary Commission. Will the Minister assure us that, if the Boundary Commission reports in 2003 or 2004, its recommendations will be in place for the next general election? We do not want to happen what happened in 1978, when the Boundary Commission presented its case to Parliament and the then Labour Government voted it down, which was a disgraceful scandal.

My Lords, we cannot determine when the Boundary Commission will report. I argue with the noble Lord, Lord Monro, when he says that we are rushing ahead to set up a consultation in the year 2007, which is five years away. I fully anticipated the question of why we were not setting it up sooner. The reason for the timescale is that if we start the process now it will be a paper consultation. We must wait for elections to obtain facts and evidence so that the commission can deliberate and come up with pragmatic, sensible conclusions rather than academic conclusions based on theory.

My Lords, I welcome the Minister to this rather fraught subject. I also greatly welcome the Statement. Perhaps he shares my surprise at the expressions coming from the Opposition when the Government are doing two things: first, accepting 129 MSPs, which was the number the Opposition argued for during the Bill's passage; and secondly, doing exactly what they said they would do in terms of listening to the Scottish Parliament once it was set up and therefore acting—as my noble friend Lord Sewel said they would—as a listening Government and responding to these thoughts from Holyrood.

Does the Minister agree that there is a case for taking a broader view with regard to the commission? There is a case relating to the good governance of Scotland for looking at the series of boundaries we now have: health boards; tourist boards; local authorities; Westminster; and Holyrood. It might be a sensible opportunity to extend slightly the commission's remit. We have an opportunity to give some thought to setting a structure for the better governance of Scotland.

My Lords, we wonder who has made the U-turn. The Opposition have argued that the Government have made a U-turn. Depending on which papers and ministerial Statements you have predating the setting-up of the Scottish Parliament it is easy to argue that a U-turn has been made by the other side.

I take my noble friend Lord Elder's important point about the commission's remit. This has not been set as it is early days, but I shall pass on to the Secretary of State his view that it should have a slightly broader perspective than that currently imagined.

My Lords, I am sorry if I misunderstood that the purpose of these occasions was to make speeches and not to ask questions of the Minister about the Statement.

When he concluded the repeated Statement the Minister said that the Scottish Parliament was an effective institution. In preparing for repeating the Statement, is the Minister aware that the Scottish Executive, on its own figures, has acknowledged that since it was set up poverty in Scotland has increased; homelessness has increased; waiting lists have lengthened; and Scottish education has been sadly debased? Are they to get these extra numbers from this Westminster Government as a reward for that incompetence, or is it just for the nine members of the Labour Back-Benches who have yet to enjoy ministerial office—to give them a last opportunity to achieve that?

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser, for asking me a series of questions that have absolutely nothing to do with the Statement. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord missed the report of the Electoral Commission in today's Guardian which states:

"Nevertheless, the research says that Scots 'continue to attach relatively high importance to the parliament'. The study again indicates strong support for extra powers".

The noble and learned Lord referred to certain areas where he feels that progress has not been made. Coming from the cultural sector, I have knowledge of and can point to huge successes in the cultural matters that have developed in Scotland over the past three years. It is a tremendous tribute to the Scottish Parliament that the treatment it has given to cultural matters, which have been put centre stage, has been a huge success.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made earlier today in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence on the contingency preparations for possible military action against Iraq. The Statement is as follows:

"My right honourable friend the Prime Minister, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary and have set out the Government's approach to Iraq on a number of occasions. The Government's approach has not changed in any way. We are committed to the disarmament of Saddam Hussein's regime by ensuring its compliance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441. Our primary objective is to achieve this by peaceful means. Saddam Hussein is being given every opportunity to disarm voluntarily.

"We hope that he will take this opportunity to do so. But, given his previous record, it would be foolish to assume that he will comply unless he faces clear and overwhelming pressure. That is why we must continue to present a credible threat of force.

"When the House debated this issue on 25th November, and discussed it again at Defence Questions on 9th December, I made clear that we would continue with the prudent preparations and planning necessary for military action, should it be required. I said that we would continue to take appropriate steps to ensure that British forces were ready and had the training, equipment and support that they needed. What we are doing is ensuring that we have a range of military options available should they be required.

"The House may find it helpful if I set out again the work which we have put in hand.

"As I told the House on 25th November, we have already taken action to provide additional capabilities that may potentially be needed, either by bringing forward programmes which were already planned or by making new procurements against short timescales. As the House will recall, these measures include bringing forward the purchase of further temporary deployable accommodation, upgrading the infrastructure available in deployed field hospitals, improving battlefield ambulances and enhancing the ability of our forces to handle and exploit secure communications. We are approaching the shipping market this week to charter vessels which might be needed to move equipment and personnel. We are also acting on the lessons learnt from Exercise Saif Sareea II, particularly in relation to the Challenger II tank, the AS 90 artillery system and desert clothing and boots. I can assure the House that we are working closely with industry to ensure that British forces will have the capabilities they need for the contingencies they may face.

"As I previously indicated to the House, we are also continuing to consider the number and mix of reservists who might be required in the event of military action and to ensure that the machinery and processes involved in mobilising reserves are ready to be used if and when the time comes. Relevant units and individual reservists will be informed of the possibility that they would be included in a call-out should that become necessary. We will take steps to identify individuals who may have genuine reasons for not being available in the months ahead. Information will also be made available to reservists for their employers.

"More generally, I have authorised a range of steps to improve readiness. This includes training, ensuring that the right quantities of equipment are available to those who may need them, as well as the procurement of stocks and spares. For some units it will involve a reduction in their notice to move. This does not mean that they are about to be deployed, but it does mean that they will be ready to deploy at relatively short notice if required. I would emphasise that the involvement of any particular unit in these processes does not mean that it will necessarily take part in any military action that may be required. The purpose of these preparations is to provide the necessary range of options, not a specific plan.

"We have already announced the long-planned deployment of Naval Task Group 2003 in the new year, with scheduled visits and exercises in both the Gulf and the Asia-Pacific regions from February to August. This is a routine deployment which happens about every three years. But, like all maritime deployments, it remains available for a range of potential operations if required. The group will be led by HMS 'Ark Royal' and will include the Type 23 frigate HMS 'Marlborough', the Type 42 destroyer HMS 'Liverpool' and support from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessels 'Fort Victoria' and `Orangelear. A nuclear-powered submarine will also be assigned to the group for part of its deployment. In addition, a Mine Countermeasures Group, comprising HMS 'Ramsey', HMS `Grimsby', HMS 'Shoreham', HMS `Ledbury' and R FA 'Sir Bedivere' will deploy ahead of the task group to undertake a series of exercises and port visits in the Gulf region.

"Further to these routine deployments, we are also considering the deployment of additional maritime forces early in the new year in order to ensure the readiness of a broad range of maritime capabilities should they be required.

"Finally, I want to emphasise once more that these are contingency preparations aimed at increasing the readiness of a range of options. This process does not lead inexorably to military action. The use of force is not inevitable. But as long as Saddam's compliance with UNSCR 1441 is in doubt, the threat of force must remain and must be real".

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement of his right honourable friend. Late last night it was not on my radar, but it is a fast-moving situation. I remind the House that I have a direct interest as a serving officer in the TA.

We on these Benches and elsewhere are becoming increasingly frustrated that the media seem to be obtaining more detailed briefing than Parliament. For instance, during our recent debate I asked the Minister about the method of mobilising the TA and made some suggestions. I read the answer in yesterday's papers.

The Statement refers to a "credible threat of force". I am slightly worried that that smacks of a bare minimum. Will the Minister confirm that the intent is that the US and the UK combined could deploy an overwhelming military force?

Does the Minister agree that it may be necessary to deploy a coercive force in order to leave Saddam and/or his generals in absolutely no doubt that they must comply with UNSCR 1441 or face serious consequences? Does the Minister further agree that this is more likely to avoid war than any other course of action? On previous occasions I have raised issues of sustainability. Those issues will not go away but there is no need to repeat them this evening.

The Statement will disappoint many regular and volunteer members of the Armed Forces because they still have little idea when or if they will have to deploy—even if they make assumptions about Saddam's course of action. This could well be their last break at home for some time. I am sure that they would like to know the situation. It might not be a quick operation. It could be more than six months. In addition, Members of both Houses are concerned that the long-term future of Iraq will have to be dealt with. A political power vacuum would be bad enough but a military one would be even worse.

Ministers have made significant and welcome improvements to the policy for the operational welfare package. The principal facilities now on offer are telephones, internet facilities and two weeks' rest and recuperation mid-tour. Those arrangements are entirely appropriate for peacekeeping operations and overseas training exercises and postings. However, they may be impractical for reasons of electronic and general security and because of hostile terrain and rapid movement. Will the Minister ensure that soldiers' expectations on any deployment that may occur are realistic? I know from personal experience how painful it can be when conditions a long way from home are significantly worse than expected.

The Statement referred to exploiting secure communications. Does the Minister agree that does not mean Bowman? Even if he had a few thousand Bowman radios in stock, there is not the time to undertake the complex fitting or to train operators. The Statement referred also to improving battlefield ambulances. What consideration is being given to fitting satellite tracking so that the staff can know where an ambulance is when it is deployed? The Minister may want to reply in writing to that question.

Many Members of your Lordships' House and in another place have questioned the nature of the deployment. We know that the Minister will say nothing about that but whatever the size of the deployment, it will be necessary to mobilise TA medical formed units. Does the Minister agree that any such deployment will have a significant effect on elective surgery in the NHS? Does he envisage mobilising other TA logistic units as formed units?

I am sure that all noble Lords will join me in wishing all members of the Armed Forces and their families a merry Christmas and every success in the new year.

My Lords. I welcome the Statement that has been repeated in this House and emphasise the objective of resolving the situation peacefully. The Minister knows that we on these Benches have many reservations about war in Iraq. Having said that, if war were to come, it would be only prudent to make provision for that eventuality. I was interested by the sentence about Saif Sareea II. Many lessons have been learned, considering the shortcomings in artillery tanks, rifles and boots. I will not ask any questions about tanks because I realise that the Minister would not be able to answer them. However, I hope that the lessons from that exercise have been taken into account.

I echo the words of the noble Earl, Lord Attlee. Our thoughts must be with the families of servicemen—especially those personnel who have been designated in the naval fleet that will be deployed straight after the new year. This will be a period of great distress for servicemen with families, considering the risks that they might face in the new year.

The Statement mentioned that HMS "Ark Royal" will be leading the task force. Can the Minister say whether HMS "Ocean" will be ready for deployment at some future point, if there were any difficulty with HMS "Ark Royal"? I share the concern of the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, which we have raised a number of times in this House, about personnel availability for field hospitals. Can the Minister give any indication of the extent to which personnel are available for fitting out field hospitals? Is there still a gap in the availability of those personnel?

I hope that the Minister agrees that before action can be taken there must be a return to the Security Council for a further resolution. That seems only prudent. Will the House be recalled during the Christmas Recess for a debate if events move apace? I hope that the Minister agrees that military action will require a debate and vote in another place.

Finally, has all the information that can be provided by this country to the UN inspectors been provided? If further action is to be taken, so much will rest on a full and complete listing of information.

My Lords, I warmly thank both noble Lords, particularly for their kind, well-meant comments about the British Armed Forces and their families. I am sure that their messages will get back to those families. This House recognises just how superb our Armed Forces are—including their families. We say that all the time but we mean it every time that we say it. As a united House, we pass on our best wishes to them all.

As to deploying an "overwhelming" and "coercive" force, the noble Earl will understand better than most that I cannot possibly comment. I can say this and emphasise it. The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, began his contribution by mentioning this aspect. No decision has been taken to launch military action against Iraq. Military action is neither inevitable nor imminent but it is very important that a credible threat of force is shown to Saddam Hussein. To ensure that credible threat of force, we have been undertaking prudent planning and preparation in close consultation with the United States. That preparation forms an incremental process to that end. It involves developing a state of readiness for a range of options, depending on what may happen in the future. Some of those preparations were set out in the Statement.

The noble Earl referred to the operational welfare package—which, as he knows, is specifically designed to ensure that our Armed Forces personnel have free access to the internet, telephones and letters to allow them to keep in touch with their families as far as is possible. I think that was the point that the noble Earl was making. He knows that the package has been used successfully on recent deployments to the Balkans, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone. We hope to build on those successes for future operations, if there are any.

I will not comment on Bowman but I will say that personal role radios—which are separate from the rest of Bowman—have been introduced into service this year. They have been used successfully in Afghanistan. Some 24,000 of them are now in service and are an important new form of communication for our Armed Forces.

The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, kindly asked a question about HMS "Ocean". When he asked me about HMS "Ocean" yesterday, he mentioned that his information was that the ship would not be available in the foreseeable future because of a refit. I thought yesterday that that was not right, but with a sense of discretion I did not comment on it. I have checked it out in the 24 hours or so since. I can tell the noble Lord that it was decided in early October this year to advance by two weeks the refit of "Ocean", the Royal Navy's helicopter landing platform. This was a prudent contingency measure to broaden the range of options available to the UK and it improves the fleet's readiness. She is now out of refit, but I shall, of course, not speculate on what part she might or might not play in anything that may or may not arise.

So far as concerns hospitals, there will be no gap in terms of personnel if people are needed. I believe I have answered the questions posed by the noble Lord.

My Lords, are the Government aware that they cannot go to war by stealth? Going to go to war requires evidence, sanctions and legality. Are my noble friend and the Government aware that many people in this country feel that, unless there is a second Security Council resolution specifically authorising the use of force, the Government will not be on the right track?

I know that my noble friend is responsible for moving soldiers—he is not a Minister at the Foreign Office, but he does represent the Government. One can at least say this to him, in the hope that the Government will listen. Will he take back to his colleagues the fact that the Government must reject the extraordinary proposition raised in the Security Council—of which I found an echo in the Statement by the Secretary of State for Defence—that a country or countries are entitled to use force in order to enforce a Security Council resolution even in circumstances where the Security Council itself does not wish that resolution to be enforced? It is a staggering proposition. I hope that on behalf of the Government my noble friend will reject it.

My Lords, there will be no war by stealth. The noble Lord, who speaks with great experience on these matters and is greatly respected by all in this House, knows that very well. What I have mentioned today are, I repeat, prudent preparations: first, to put up a credible threat of force against Saddam Hussein, but also in case war is necessary—which is something that is neither imminent nor inevitable. I know from previous debates the noble Lord's strong feelings about a second resolution of the Security Council before any further steps are taken. It would be the Government's preference that there should be a second resolution, if that is necessary, before any force was used. But I have to tell the noble Lord that any decision on further action by the Security Council will be taken in the light of the circumstances at the time and that all options are open. Let Saddam Hussein be in no doubt that full compliance is the only option that will avoid serious consequences for Iraq.

It is important to state that it is up the Security Council to uphold its authority and to take whatever action is necessary to ensure full compliance. Kofi Annan, no less, has said that the Security Council must be prepared to face up to its responsibilities. Historical parallels can be dangerous, but it is perhaps worth noting that the Kosovo campaign was not one that was supported by the Security Council. I think that very few Members of this House would say that that was not a campaign that deserved to succeed or that it was not in the interests of humanity.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that there is no prospect whatever of successful inspection activity unless it is backed up by the credible use of force? As to any suggestion that sanctions can do the job after 11 years of failed sanctions, I should have thought that that was a lesson that we had now well and truly learnt. But if there is to be success based on the credible use of force, it is important that the language on both sides of the Atlantic does not suggest that war is inevitable—or there will be no pressure on Saddam Hussein; there will be no benefit in terms of the compliance that he is willing to give when hoping to avoid military intervention.

If we are to have United Nations resolutions, there must be some real belief that the members of the United Nations are prepared to support them and make sure that they are carried out. The most depressing aspect of the present situation—which will impact to an extent on the morale of our own Armed Forces, a very important factor to which a number of speakers have referred—is the feeling that there is genuine international support. The depressing point at the moment—as against the situation at the time of the Gulf War, when 28 countries contributed a large number of their specialist skills such as check detachments for chemical warfare defence units and other valuable skills—is that at present this looks very much like a two-party activity. At the moment, it appears that only ourselves and the United States are prepared to stand behind the United Nations resolution.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his questions and comments. He has vast experience of these matters. I entirely agree with him concerning sanctions. It is abundantly clear that we should not be in this position had sanctions worked over the course of the past 11 years. I agree that war is not inevitable. It is the British Government's view that war is neither imminent nor inevitable. The noble Lord is quite right: to suggest that it is inevitable in some ways takes the heat off Saddam Hussein himself. It is the credible threat of force that is so critical.

I want to make it clear that the Government's policy is to give Saddam Hussein every opportunity to comply with the obligation placed upon him in the United Nations resolution. However, as the Prime Minister has made clear, if he does not disarm, he will be disarmed.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that on these Benches as well there are those of us who are very glad that a message is going out to our Armed Services as to how much we feel for them and their families at this juncture? It must be a time of great anxiety and stress. We are fortunate to have the calibre of people that we do have in our services.

Does my noble friend agree that among those of us who look for specific authorisation for any military action by the Security Council, should it become necessary, there is nevertheless an understanding that in the present context if the threat of military action, if need be, is to be credible, the kind of action that has been spelt out today is essential and well appreciated? In that context, will my noble friend assure the House that the Security Council and the Secretary-General are fully appraised of what we are doing; and that what we are doing is being done in co-ordination with other members of the Security Council and indeed with other member nations of the UN? Or is it being done by ourselves alone, or simply with the United States?

Can my noble friend reassure the House on one point which troubles me greatly? We are putting all this effort into ensuring that the military threat is credible. Are we putting as much effort into ensuring that the UN inspection has all the resources, personnel and back-up that are necessary to ensure that it is a success and does not prove to be an inadequate operation?

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his support for our argument that it is essential, if there is to be a credible threat of force, to behave in the way that we have. What we are doing in terms of the Statement that I have read out is something that we, of course, have decided to do. But the Government are well aware of their obligations to the United Nations. My noble friend can rest assured on that point. I want to emphasise that the British Government have full faith in, and give full support to, Dr Blix and his colleague, Dr El Baradei, in their very difficult task. We want to give them every support that we can. We want them to succeed.

My Lords, it is reassuring to hear that equipment and supply lessons from recent deployments are being learned. There is no shortage of them. However, can we have the simple undertaking that whatever formations or units are warned for operations they will not be denied the equipment that they may need, and in ample quantity, on grounds of expense alone?

My Lords, I can give the noble and learned Lord the assurance that he seeks today.

My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that both Saddam Hussein and the British people will be made aware that it would be better to send out our forces now so that, in the event of Saddam Hussein's refusal to comply with the international position, our troops could take action well before the very hot weather? Such weather would place them in uncomfortable, if not intolerable, conditions, were Saddam Hussein to achieve his aim of delaying matters for as long as possible.

My Lords, I must answer my noble friend in this way: nobody can predict whether, or when, military action might become necessary. It is pointless to speculate. We are engaged in what I described as sensible planning and preparations at a pace that we judge to be right. As for the concept of a window of opportunity that some commentators mentioned, Saddam Hussein would be very ill-advised to work on the assumption that he need only make a show of co-operation for the next few months. The requirement to disarm will not go away; nor will the threat of military action.

Those who say that military operations during the Iraqi summer would be impossible—I know that that is not what my noble friend says—are perhaps those who said that military operations during the Afghan winter would be impossible. It is common sense that extreme environmental conditions present particular challenges, but those challenges apply to the Iraqis as well as to us.

My Lords, regardless of the international politics of going to war, does the Minister accept that many of us believe it would be unacceptable to commit our forces in action in the Gulf if the armoured vehicles were to be fitted with the unreliable and insecure Clansman radio system? That would make the forces vulnerable to an extent that would make their commitment unjustifiable. I do not know whether the Minister shares my opinion.

As my noble friend Lord King said, it appears that only the British are standing with the Americans on this military operation. Must we pay the entire cost of our military commitment, or are we discussing with our allies in NATO and the EU, who are not prepared physically to commit forces, the possibility that they will at least contribute to the cost?

My Lords, I am afraid that it is much too early to answer the final part of the noble Lord's question accurately. We have the matter in mind. I hope that that will satisfy him for the moment at least.

I cannot give the noble Lord the assurance that he seeks about Clansman. It has been in service for a long time. We believe that it is still capable of meeting the requirements against which it was delivered. Of course technology has moved on, and we look forward to the introduction of Bowman, when that happens. He can rest assured that we will ensure as best we can, if it comes to it, that those in Army vehicles are well protected.

My Lords, I remain of the view that there will not be a war, that the threat of farce will work, and that Saddam Hussein will respond. However, in the event that limited action were to take place, can my noble friend assure me that the Government will consider seriously the military occupation of the Basra enclave and the declaration of a free Iraq in the south, with an expanding border to the north? Some of us have advocated that case in the other place over the past five years.

My Lords, I very much hope that my noble friend's view that there will not be war is right. I have said that, and I know that the House hopes so, too. In response to the second part of my noble friend's question, I know the keen interest that he has taken in a new Iraq, as it were, over many years. But I think that he will understand that I am unable to answer his question today.

My Lords—

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for giving way. It cannot be right that someone who was not present to hear the Statement should then come into the Chamber and ask a question during the very short period available; namely, 20 minutes.

My Lords, I have apologised. I have one point, so in the method of the noble Lord, Lord Richard, I shall be wrong. Can the noble Lord give us an undertaking about Clansman? I am reliably informed that there are no spare parts for them and that spare parts are no longer manufactured. When I was in Oman for Exercise Saif Sareea, the Clansman system did not work properly; so the armoured and infantry regiments have no secure security system. That must be solved before the regiments are committed to battle. It is more important than being polite to the noble Lord, Lord Richard.

My Lords, I agree entirely with the noble Lord's preparation. He is correct. We have learned, I hope, that if we are to call out reservists, we should do so without asking for volunteers. That would put them in a very difficult position with their families and employers. It should also be borne in mind that all members of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force are volunteers in the first instance and are prepared to go at short notice.

My Lords, I shall bear very much in mind the noble Lord's point. I know that the Front Bench spokesman for the Conservatives feels very strongly about the matter. It is too early to say any more about reservists than we have said over the past few weeks.

My Lords, my noble friend said in the Statement that a nuclear submarine was among the vessels going to the Gulf. Does it have missiles equipped with nuclear warheads? In what circumstances might they be used?

My Lords, I cannot tell the noble Lord whether it would. Even if I could, I would not answer the question.

My Lords, over the past few days, or even the past couple of weeks, has the threat from Iraq grown? If not, why are we making these deployments now? The Minister said that it was to show Saddam that there was a credible show of force. But the United States has an armada of ships, 350,000 ground troops and overwhelming air power in the area. What else does he need to show him that there is force in the area, and that if he fails to comply with the United Nations resolutions he will be taken over? What is it that has persuaded the British Government at this time that they need to deploy extra force, when there is already overwhelming force in the area? Will the noble Lord please answer directly the question of whether the matter must go back to the United Nations under Resolution 1441 before any military action is taken? Will a further resolution be needed? Some believe that that should be so, and that jaw-jaw is still better than war-war.

My Lords, we all believe that jaw-jaw is better than war-war. However, for the past 11 years Saddam Hussein has taken no notice at all of the sanctions that have been imposed upon his regime by the United Nations. It is time for him to disarm. There is no doubt that he has weapons of mass destruction; indeed, our dossier of 24th September, among other documents, has shown that to be the case. It is now up to Saddam Hussein whether or not he chooses to disarm. In Resolution 1441, the United Nations has made that absolutely clear. The policy that we are adopting is absolutely in line with United Nations Resolution 1441.

I believe that I have already answered the question about whether a second resolution will be necessary. I just repeat: it will be the preference of the British Government that there should be such a second resolution, if it is necessary.

My Lords, perhaps I may clarify one point with the Minister in order to help his noble friend. I believe that it is a nuclear-powered submarine that is going to the Gulf, and that there is no question of nuclear weapons being involved.

My Lords, the noble Lord is quite right. However, I chose not to answer the question because, as is traditional, that kind of question is never answered either in the other place or in this Chamber.

rose to call attention to the decision by the British Olympic Association to support London's aspirations to host the 2012 Olympic Games; and to move for Papers.

My Lords, it is fitting that today's important and timely debate should be introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, who was an Olympic winner at the Moscow games. I defied the Thatcher boycott and went to the games because I argued then, as I would now, that I went when the Olympic flag went up and left before it came down. In other words, I went to Olympia, not to Moscow.

The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, knows all about the courage, dedication, hard work and commitment that it takes to be an Olympic winner. Those are the same qualities that the Government must demonstrate if they are to launch a successful bid to stage the Olympic Games. I sincerely hope that they do. Indeed, they have a duty to do so.

In 1997, I was the Labour Party spokesman for sport and tourism. In our policy document, Labour's Sporting Nation, and in our manifesto, we made the following commitment:

"A Labour Government would provide wholehearted support to efforts to bring major international events, such as the Olympic Games, to this country".

It is now time for the Government to come forward with that wholehearted support. The opportunity to host an Olympic Games comes only once in a generation, and it would be a real shame if we were to pass up that chance.

There is a very common phrase in the sports world, especially among those who have the responsibility for teaching young people sport, which is, "if you don't take part, you can't win". A similar phrase can be applied when considering bidding for the Olympic Games. Of course, to reach the very top, one has to be blessed with natural strength and skills. But these are all amplified by the dedication of preparation, practice and commitment.

I believe that we in this country have the natural skills, resources and infrastructure for a successful bid. We love sport and sporting heroes. We have the infrastructure and reputation for hosting many major events. London is one of the world's greatest cities—the greatest, in my view. There is much to be done, especially in transport. But let us not forget that there is much to build upon.

In this country we often talk down our sporting ability. In our sports governing bodies, we have some of the finest event organisers and marketeers. Let us consider the success and profile of events such as the London Marathon, Wimbledon, the Grand National, the Six Nations and the Great North Run. Overall we have a good track record on major events, including successful European football championships in 1996, a rugby World Cup in 1999, a cricket World Cup in the same year, and those marvellous Commonwealth Games last summer in Manchester.

There are not many countries in the world that can match that record of expertise. Some will ask why should we host the Olympic Games? I believe that we should do so not only because sport matters in itself, but because of the contribution that it makes to the health of the nation and the regeneration that it can bring to communities.

I declare an interest. Many in this House will know that I am the chairman of the Football Foundation. Funded by the Government, the FA Premier League, Football Association and Sport England, we now distribute millions of pounds to projects that develop sport and football in communities across the country.

It gives me so much pleasure to see the difference that we can make by introducing young people to sport and, in many cases, by bringing a focus and opportunity to their lives. I know that the Government are committed to improving young people's opportunities to engage in sport. Recently, the Secretary of State said that a possible bid for the Olympics would not be made at the expense of the grassroots of sport. It is a vitally important commitment, which I welcome.

We have on stream some very good sports development projects which will invest in our coaching and school facilities. Like other noble Lords, I should like to see more such projects. However, I warmly welcome the progress that has been made. We are lucky to have a Government who place sport high on the political agenda. We at the foundation are in the vanguard of reinvigorating school sports. with a £30 million ring-fenced fund to breathe new life into school football facilities. With the New Opportunities Fund investing £750 million into school sports and the arts, the future of school sports looks increasingly bright.

By 2006, the Government intend to have in place 400 specialised sports colleges, 3,200 school sports co-ordinators and 18,000 primary link teachers. That will make a real difference to our sporting landscape and the opportunities available to young people. What could be more motivating for these young people than the knowledge that the Olympic Games are coming to this country, a showcase for their talents? There is no doubt that major sporting events inspire people to become more involved in sport. One has only to think back to the summer, when the Commonwealth Gaines motivated and encouraged millions of people to take part in sport.

The benefits of an Olympic bid would run much wider than sport and physical activity. The proposed site for the Olympic stadium and village is located in an area suffering extreme deprivation. The unemployment rate in the borough of Newham is three times that of the Greater London average. The recent Arup report—referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan—into the feasibility of hosting the Olympics shows that a successful bid would deliver real benefit in this area. Hosting the games could create about 9,000 full-time jobs, 3,000 jobs in the East End economy alone. It has also been conservatively estimated that the games could generate additional tourism income of about £610 million, delivering a major boost for the economy. With the cross-London rail link, a London Olympic bid has the potential to revitalise one of London's most disadvantaged areas, providing East London with a high-speed transport link to London and beyond. CrossRail will do wonders for the regeneration of the area.

My time is up. I simply ask the Minister to recognise that the Labour Party, and therefore the Labour Government, are committed to ensuring a successful bid. I urge the Government not to shy away from this challenge and to give this hid their full backing and the opportunity it deserves.

My Lords, I welcome this debate and thank my noble friend Lord Moynihan for achieving it. I hope that it will stimulate the Government into giving maximum support to the British Olympic Association—and to Craig Reedie, Simon Clegg, Sport England and Sport UK, and indeed to the nation's aspirations. I declare an interest, as many of us have, as a member of the BOA. I have attended many Olympics, winter and summer, and the Commonwealth Games. Indeed, I was giving lunch to the British team at Munich in 1972 when the terrorist attack occurred. I have been to the Paralympics as well. I feel quite inadequate speaking tonight in this House surrounded by so many medallists in a variety of disciplines.

The application was strongly recommended by the BOA and received great support from the press. We should not underestimate the effort that the press has made in recent weeks. It seems to be firmly on side. The country is willing the Government to support the bid. I hope that the government committee accepts the enthusiasm of the nation.

Events of the past week in respect of the Scotland/ Ireland bid to UEFA are important. The proceedings highlighted that, however good one's case, one cannot count on success. Internal politics—who knows whom, which country supports another—seems more important than the quality of the bid. The bookies, who usually get things right, had Scotland as second favourite to win the bid. However, we ended up in fifth place, which shows what can be done in the voting committee rooms. Let us bear in mind, when it comes to the Olympics, that we have to compete against Paris, Madrid, New York, Toronto and perhaps Rio. It will he a massive political victory to win in very tough going.

The lesson is that votes seem more important than the details. It is similar in the USA, where I have some contact with the committee dealing with the American bid. They were down to four cities—San Francisco, Houston, Baltimore/Washington and New York—with San Francisco the hot favourite. Yet, New York came out on top. I do not think that it was an entirely emotional decision based on 9/11. We have had our failures with world athletics and World Cups, but let that not deter us, and let us use our experience to do better this time.

The BOA bid detailed the financial aspects of this complicated issue, supported with the skill of Arup's investigation. If it is true, I am sorry that the Government have been trying to push up the cost. It is a complicated subject and not really for me to question the details; I just have to accept that it is going to cost money. The money will, however, provide very many benefits. This is also perhaps our only foreseeable opportunity. It will be money well spent, both in the development of youth sport and the regeneration of a very rundown area.

If I were an Olympic voter, which I never will be, I would query a couple of issues on which I hope we can improve even more. The first, already mentioned, is transport. As the GLA and the transport authorities do not have a good track record, how can we reassure the IOC that we can provide the required facilities? Can we start soon so that we have something to show in 2004 and 2005 when the Olympic Committee will begin examining the bid in detail? Can we give a real promise that everything will be in place by, say, 2010, so that there is a little time for slippage should the authorities fall behind schedule? We need to have a benevolent dictator, like Peter Ueberroth in Los Angeles, to oversee matters such as fast-track planning and supervision of transport routes, rather than government by committee.

I would also question the stadium, although I am sure that my worries could be allayed. I was, as the Minister knows, somewhat critical of the Wembley proceedings and the £20 million from Sport England for athletics. I was concerned about the impossibility of putting an eight-lane running track and a long-jump track round a reasonably sized football field and about how all that was to be resolved. I was not the least impressed with the idea of moveable platforms and so on. How will we address the issue at the Olympic stadium, which needs to hold about 70,000 to 80,000? A football club such as West Ham or Spurs would probably say that such a stadium is far too large. Furthermore, if these clubs are interested and they need new grounds now, can they wait so long? How do we reduce an 80,000-seat stadium to something which a football club can later operate economically? However, Manchester and Munich have shown that it can be done. Let us therefore hope that we can achieve a satisfactory solution.

Finally, I put it to the IOC—it will not listen to me but I hope that it will listen to others—that we should keep the events that we want in the Olympics. I should like to cut out lawn tennis, rugby sevens, synchronised swimming and volleyball. I should not like to see golf included, as is proposed, as it already has perfectly adequate championships all over the world. Why should we lose equestrian sports such as the three-day event and an event such as the modern pentathlon, both of which we are good at? Shooting also appears to be under threat. Let us try to encourage the IOC to stick with the sports that have a tremendous following in this country. I refer to our recent great achievements in athletics.

However, we must be prepared to accept change when necessary. In 1980 when I was the Minister for Sport Chris Brasher said that he was desperately keen for the marathon to finish in the Mall. I asked the authorities whether that was possible. They threw up their hands in horror. They said that one could not possibly use the Mall on a Sunday as a running track as it gave access to the Royal Parks. However, now it is accepted as a wonderful finishing venue for the marathon. We must move with the times.

A bid for the games will cost the taxpayer money. However, as an example to the youth of this country and in the interests of revitalising a poor area, it is a challenge that we must accept. We can hold our heads high at this rare opportunity to put Britain first and to seize an opportunity that may not recur for years. I hope that the ministerial committee has the courage and enthusiasm to go ahead. We must show a united front in our desire to provide a wonderful games in 2012.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for initiating the debate. I also apologise in advance for the fact that I shall agree with virtually everything that has been said so far.

There is no real argument about the matter. We are talking about the possibility of one of the greatest cities in the world hosting the greatest sporting event in the world. We are one of the most prosperous nations in the world. If London hosts the 2012 Olympic Gaines, it will be at least a regional, and probably a national, event for Britain. That is absolutely clear. If the number of athletes involved in the Olympic Games come to Britain, it will benefit the whole of the country.

The economic benefits of hosting the games are potentially massive. Prior to the debate I was reminded that certain Olympic Games have not been successful in financial terms. However, most have of late. If we tackle successfully the investment aspect of this media feeding frenzy, we cannot but fail to gain economic benefits from that, let alone gain a kick start to the economy. My noble friend will undoubtedly cover that in considerably more detail.

One of the major advantages of the Olympic Games is the fact that they are games. There is something special about games as opposed to a championship. I have a slight disagreement with the noble Lord, Lord Monro, as regards which sports should or should not be included. However, the Olympic Gaines comprise a diversity of sport. There is something there for everyone. The games constitute a community of sport which attracts people from minority groups. Sometimes it appears that sport in this country constitutes a monoculture. However, an event such as the Olympic Games demonstrates that there is probably a sport out there for everyone. If the projections regarding the amount of new equipment and new infrastructure that will be provided for the Olympics are only half right, the general public will have infinitely greater opportunities to participate in sport. When one sees a sport performed well, one has a greater incentive to participate in that sport.

I turn to the social aspect. The Manchester Commonwealth Games probably showed us more clearly than anything else the social benefits that can be derived from such games. I refer to the 10,000 people who volunteered to help run the games. I believe that about 7,000 volunteers were turned away. That kind of community involvement is almost unheard of. Such involvement constitutes an asset to sporting and civil communities for generations to come. As we increasingly find ourselves, by accident and by design, in a situation where sport is taken out of educational establishments and placed within the wider context of the community, that kind of support and involvement is almost priceless.

The Government talk of health problems and of the genuine difficulty of trying to fit sport into the national curriculum. However, if we combine the social benefits with the other benefits that I have mentioned, the Olympic Games constitute an attractive proposition. I refer to long-term savings to the health service gained from an increasing participation in sport on the part of people who gain greater enthusiasm for sport having watched the Olympics.

However, I put my rather romantic vision to one side and try to discuss what will actually happen. The Government's willingness to support aggressively any bid will probably be the deciding factor. Unless the Government are prepared to state that they will back such a bid, and will make available what is required, a bid will not be successful. If the Government are not prepared to do that, I hope that they will say so quickly as it would be appallingly disappointing if a bid fizzled out or received only half-hearted support. I hope that the Government will give us a firm indication of their intentions in this regard. If they could give a strong hint of what is to happen, everyone would be much happier. I know that such indications have been given, but we want to hear them in Parliament and see them in Hansard.

Hosting the world's biggest sporting festival confers benefits above and beyond those on any financial balance sheet. But even in purely financial terms, the Olympic Games must be worth trying for.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, on securing the debate and on the extremely thorough way in which he introduced the various issues and the reasons why a London Olympics hid makes sense.

I should make clear that I come to the debate not as a former Olympic athlete or, indeed, as a sportsman of any kind. I was expelled from my school's games department at the age of 12 due to lack of commitment. The consequences are visible for all to see. However, I am leader of the Labour Group at the London Assembly and am chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority which will, of course, have a major responsibility in terms of security issues, should the games come to London.

I believe passionately that now is the time for London to make its bid for the Olympics. I believe passionately that it is right not only for London but right for the nation as a whole for the bid to be made. There may well be some—although it has not been suggested so far in the debate—who ask why the games should come to London. Manchester and Birmingham have both had their chances. As has been pointed out, in the next contest to host the Olympics, if this country submits a bid, the bidding city will compete against probably New York, Paris, Madrid or Moscow. Only London, frankly, can submit a credible bid. Those are the signals that have come from the IOC; that is, that London should make a bid and that London is the city it wishes to see bidding from this nation.

Can it be done? The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, referred extensively to the Ove Arup report. That makes clear that the potential is there and that a bid is feasible. Ove Arup is clear that it can he achieved. It has looked at every element and looked in detail at the sort of structures that would need to he created to deliver in the various areas.

The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, referred to transport. Clearly, good transport for people to get to and from the games and to move the athletes around is an important element. However, I would caution against saying that CrossRail should be in place as an essential precondition for proceeding with a bid for the Olympic Games. CrossRail is essential for London's long-term future; it should and, I believe, will happen. However, I do not believe that it is essential for the Olympic Games—and Ove Arup confirmed this—although it would clearly be desirable. I would like to decouple the two issues. If a decision is made to bid for the Olympic Games and we are successful in such a bid, there will be every incentive to deliver CrossRail on time and to add to the transport resources available. I do not believe that it is a necessary requirement before we proceed, however.

Noble Lords have remarked on how accommodation would be delivered and how there might be a new Olympic village. We should remember that a legacy would be provided by such a village in terms of much-needed housing accommodation, which could be used for key public sector workers and which is very much at a premium in London. That, too, would be an advantage, even if it did not become available until after an Olympic Games in 2012. It is feasible and desirable in the long term.

I mentioned in passing the responsibilities of the Metropolitan Police Service for security. That is an area in which London can offer something unique. The experience of the Metropolitan Police Service in delivering security is recognised to be unparalleled in the world. There is enormous experience there, which was drawn on in preparation for the Olympic Games in Athens. Again, that is a positive point, on which London can provide some of the best opportunities.

We should focus on the benefits for London and the nation as a whole. It is not for me to talk about sporting benefits; clearly, all the sporting organisations that have written to me and to other noble Lords in the past few days believe in those benefits passionately. They clearly see that this is a major opportunity to improve the quality of sport and give people new opportunities. But there are obvious and immediate benefits for tourism, which is a major part of the London and national economy. It needs the revitalisation and the momentum that the Olympic Games would give. Ove Arup has studied the details—the hotel rooms and accommodation generally available—and some of the spin-off benefits to the rest of the country. It is clearly achievable, and it is there.

There is also the issue of jobs. I refer not only to short-term employment, in preparation for the games themselves and the building of new stadiums and other facilities, but to the long-term employment created as part of a continuing regeneration legacy. Let us be clear: proposals for games based essentially in east London would focus resources into some of the most deprived areas in the country. They would have a long-term major revitalising impact on the economy in that area, and provide hope and economic futures for thousands, if not millions, of people.

The games would not benefit only London or east London, however. The wider benefits should be emphasised. One has only to consider the lessons learned from the games in Sydney or Barcelona to see what is possible. In Barcelona, the whole city benefited; no part of the city felt that it had not got something positive from the games or from what was put in place for the games. That represents a marvellous opportunity, behind which London could unite. We can learn lessons from Sydney about community participation, involving the public and providing a new sense of civic involvement. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, referred to the same thing happening in Manchester with the Commonwealth Games. That prize is worth aiming for in order to build civic involvement and community responsibility.

The games would have a wide impact and economic benefits, not only because of the flow of people coming into the country, since London is the gateway to the rest of the country, or because of the economic benefits that would flow perhaps initially to London then out to the rest of the country, but directly. Some elements of the games would take place in cities around London and around the country, but there would also be holding camps, as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said. The camps would bring direct benefits to the areas in which they were located, and would have lasting benefits.

For many noble Lords, what my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said at the last Labour Party conference is of limited interest, but he urged the Labour Party to dare to be bold. I suggest to my noble friend the Minister that this is precisely the moment for the British Government and the nation to be bold, in terms of making a bid. I do not want us to go through the sort of processes that we have gone through too often in the past. I would not want support from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to be conditional on yet another report being written by someone else on particular aspects, and for various hurdles to be created over which we must go. Economic assessments have been done. If we believe those assessments, now is the time for the Government and for all of us to be bold. Let us make that bid and win the bid for London and for the nation.

My Lords, I must admit that for most of my life I have been an observer of sport and very rarely, unlike some noble Lords here this evening, a participant. I hope that that does not completely rule me out as a speaker this evening.

I speak in favour of a bid by London for two reasons. First, because it is good economics and, secondly, because I was born in the East End, as noble Lords can tell from my accent. For that reason, I believe in the bid with my heart and with real passion.

Bidding for and hosting the games, if well used, could be used to reinforce London's position as a world city. It would thereby provide tangible benefits to the whole of the UK, just as London provides currently as one of the UK's lead economic brands. In fact, the city is probably the lead economic brand in the UK. Well marketed, hosting the games would bring opportunities for tourism, as we have heard, and for building on inward investment.

As noble Lords have said, proposals for the games focus on east London. Sustainable long-term generation in the Thames Gateway area is an economic and political priority. As other noble Lords have said, it is an area of great deprivation, it is completely unacceptable, in an area of great prosperity, for there to be such low standards in inner-city areas. We hear a lot about brownfield sites; there are certainly plenty of those sites in that area, where traditional industries have failed. There is room for housing and other developments.

The games would provide a focus for regeneration and a catalyst for provision of desperately needed infrastructure. Most businessmen in London have stopped being frustrated by the lack of infrastructure and are now angry about it, so any reason for getting on with it, rather than simply talking and doing studies, is a good thing. I agree that there is no direct one-to-one link with CrossRail, for example, but any excuse will do for getting on and doing something about our horrific transport situation.

Bidding and getting on with the establishment of facilities for these games would help some private and public sector investments that have already taken place in the area, including Excel, the Channel Tunnel rail link, the Docklands Light Railway, the Jubilee line and, yes, even the Dome. The games would provide a deadline for delivery of those infrastructure requirements and give an infrastructure requirement date for the three river crossings, for example, which we have discussed and which have been politically agreed oil by everyone, but which nobody has yet done anything about. I refer also to extensions to the East London line, which to my knowledge have been discussed for 20 years or more, and to CrossRail, which other noble Lords have mentioned.

I hope that the legacy of a development in the Thames Gateway area would not be a stadium alone. I am a West Ham supporter—although perhaps I should not admit that, given the club's position in the league. The club could certainly do with something, but it might be better off with new players. Help would include a new stadium, swimming facilities, the triggering of transport facilities and affordable housing—the use of villages has been mentioned. Skill enhancement for the local labour force would also be involved. We are still in a position in east London in which there are not people with adequate basic skills to fill some of the jobs there. We can give people practical experience through direct jobs or volunteerism.

I could continue discussing London for as long as noble Lords would like, but I should refer to these games as the UK games. As has been said, football, sailing, shooting and some other events will take place outside London. Training camps, which have been mentioned, will provide sports facilities and accommodation around Britain.

The timing of all this is right for London. London is winning and a leader in the world. As we all know—particularly those of us involved in business—when one thinks that one is winning and a world leader, that is the time when one starts failing. London must be pushed—we must press on and take every action in the corning years if we are to succeed. The Olympics is a great reason for determining that we will take action. That would concentrate minds across all government departments. It would provide deadlines for infrastructure that London so desperately needs, even if that is not "one-to-one" with the Olympics.

The Government's wholehearted commitment to the bid is essential. Just in case there is a change of government, we had better have all-party support. We have seen the lack of political will in Wembley. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey—I should much prefer not to have more studies but for someone to start doing something.

London desperately needs another aspect that is missing. We need national, London and borough governments to work together effectively as a team. The Olympic bid is a great excuse for getting that to happen. It will not succeed unless they work together. We have already seen the effect that the lack of joined-up government—forget whose fault it is—is having on the Tube and on London's roads. One sees that when one walks outside this place.

The business community is keen to play its part: to help win the bid and make the games happen because, as I have said, it is good business. Recently the London Business Board, which is made up of London First— of which I am president—London CBI and the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry wrote to the Prime Minister asking for strong political leadership on the bid and its implementation. To gain the full and active support of business, business must be wholly engaged from the beginning. It is no good coming along and saying, "By the way, can you give us a few tens of millions of pounds'?". We need to he deeply involved from the beginning. The London Business Board stands ready to have discussions with the British Olympic Association, the Government and anyone else who wants to talk to us about what we mean by getting business deeply involved and putting our money where our mouth is.

London is a great city. Collectively we have the skills and resources to make this bid happen and to make 2012 an exciting year in the history of Britain. My view is that London could win this hid. We should proceed with enthusiasm and be determined to win.

My Lords, it is entirely appropriate that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, should lead this debate tonight. He has a very distinguished sporting record and I congratulate him particularly on his sense of timing. This is a good moment for us to be debating this issue.

As we have heard this evening, this issue crosses party divisions in this House and outside. There cannot he many matters on which the Mayor of London, Her Royal Highness Princess Anne, the editors of The Times, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and the Evening Standard, and the London Business Bureau are all agreed, but this is one of them.

I am happy to admit that I changed my mind on whether we should bid for the Olympics. When we debated the future of athletics precisely one year ago to the day, on a Motion tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, I spoke immediately after the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Coe, who I am delighted to see here this evening. He is, I believe, one of four Olympic athletes speaking from the Benches opposite. I congratulate them on fielding their full team for this debate. I said in that debate a year ago that we should look at ways in which we could improve assistance to individual athletes and increase sports provision generally, rather than spend all of our resources on big and unrealistic projects. In mitigation, I remind noble Lords that that debate occurred while the Wembley Stadium saga was continuing, and the Picketts Lock fiasco and the humiliation of the 2006 football World Cup bid were painful recent memories. Many people then doubted whether we would ever again be able to mount a serious challenge for a major world sporting event.

I was wrong. I have listened carefully to the case made by the BOA, particularly at the excellent presentation it made to interested Members of this House on 3rd December. I have read most of the reports that have appeared in the press over recent weeks and I have also studied the summary of the Arup report.

I am now convinced that we should bid for 2012, provided that three conditions are met. First—the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, made this point—the Government must come out wholeheartedly and unequivocally in favour of it. Secondly, work must begin at once on preparing for the games, if we decide to bid, particularly in respect of assembling the ingredients of the site in east London; smoothing the way on planning issues for the Olympic village and the stadium construction; and approving the necessary transport infrastructure investments—especially the CrossRail east-west London line, to which many noble Lords have referred. I was pleased to receive briefing from the Mayor's office to the effect that the London Development Agency seems to be well up to speed on site assembly issues; it rightly takes the view that the sites are crucial for the regeneration of the area, whether we bid or not. Thirdly, a worthwhile legacy must be left after the games have been staged.

On the need for government support, I draw the attention of noble Lords to the revealing interview given by the president of the International Olympic Committee and published in the Evening Standard on 9th December. Mr Jacques Rogge is quoted as saying:

"I would be very happy to have a well prepared, well-organised London bid. Definitely London would be a front runner, given a good technical file. There is no doubt about that.

"But Government backing is a vital determining factor. If there is any feeling of reluctance on behalf of the Government, then the bid would fail. It is as simple as that".

Mr Rogge also offered some interesting comments about transport. He said:

"Transport is always a challenge for big cities and I don't think the challenge would be bigger for London than it would be for other big cities bidding. We are facing the same problems in Athens in 2004. Sydney had to refurbish its airport. It had to build a freeway".

Interestingly, Mr Rogge attached most importance to what is left behind after the games have finished and the athletes have gone home. He said:

"The issue is the legacy you leave for the city. That has been clearly proven by Barcelona in 1992 and Sydney".

He defined the legacy as,

"an acceleration in a short period of spending that the city would have to do anyhow".

He continued:

"This acceleration has a price tag. But ultimately citizens must realise that they are getting sooner what they would need in the long term. That is the good thing about the Games. It is not an extravagance. It is a bonus. It leaves a legacy to a city and a country".

It is indeed that aspect that has caused me to change my mind about a bid. In addition to delivering permanent public transport improvements, which would be good for London and for everyone who works here or visits as a tourist, staging the games in east London would also provide the opportunity to convert an Olympic village for 16,000 athletes, coaches and officials into affordable social housing for thousands of families.

In Athens, where they are constructing 2,300 units for the athletes, the decision has already been taken to release them for housing, the ownership of which will be settled by a public lottery. Unsurprisingly, they have already had 10,000 applications.

Then there is the issue of the stadium, which must be built from scratch and cater for audiences of up to 80,000. It is crucial that agreement is reached early on its long-term use. There are too many examples from previous games where the stadium has become a "white elephant".

The Commonwealth Games stadium in Manchester provides a model, as that will be Manchester City's home ground from next season.

The Minister for Sport, Mr Caborn, was quoted in the Evening Standard, on Monday as saying:

"It has become absolutely clear to me that where you can get an anchor tenant for facilities, it is far, far better. That could well be a football club or a rugby club or a combination of those because dual use of facilities is something sport has to look at, including football clubs because football is going through difficult financial times.

If the decision is made to bid, in my view, we have got to take certain steps pretty quickly and that would be to say: 'Are there any clubs who would want to come and join us?".

I might be able to help the Minister a little in answer to that question. At the weekend I was speaking to Terence Brown, the chairman of West Ham United Football Club. He authorised me to say to your Lordships in this debate today that his club would certainly be interested. Mr Brown regards Stratford as a "fantastic site" for a stadium. He regards the regeneration of east London as very important and the club enthusiastically backs the bid.

On the question of cost, the Arup report demonstrates a cash deficit of £385 million, or £494 million after some fairly gloomy risk assessments. But it has also carried out a cost-benefit analysis which takes account of the net increase in tourists and the economic effects of the games. At worst that reduces the deficit to £145 million, and at best produces a surplus of £82 million.

The report describes these forecasts as "conservative", compared with other recent Olympic Games. The Spanish Government, by contrast, calculate that the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 were worth £7 billion to the country.

If the Government are looking for ways of raising money for the Olympic Games and of involving and generating the public's enthusiasm, and reviving at the same time a failing national institution, I suggest that they look seriously at the suggestion that a special Olympic lottery—possibly under different management from the present National Lottery—is launched specifically for that purpose.

Finally, we should remember that the staging of the games acts as a catalyst in improving a nation's sporting success. The BOA tells us how many more medals a nation wins if one of its cities is chosen as host—South Korea and Australia being two particularly good recent examples.

I conclude with a quote from the editorial in The Times last Thursday. It said:

"The greatest argument … is simply that hosting the Olympic Games would show some real determination and optimism, fill sportsmen and spectators with enthusiasm and boost participation in sports. It would also be great fun. It would be sad if this country lacked the self-confidence even to compete".

I agree.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Moynihan for bringing this debate. It is good to be back in your Lordships' House once again debating sport with Olympian colleagues and others. I am also delighted to be following the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, in the debate. Although we sit on opposite sides of the House, we have spent many hours discussing sport—on one occasion for about six hours while we were trying to drive back from the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. We have found ourselves, surprisingly mostly in agreement.

I shall not keep your Lordships for long because at this stage in the debate I can really only repeat the highlights of what other noble Lords have said. But there are certain principles that I should like to bring forward from some bullet points that I have.

First, the Minister has, apparently, an easy job tonight. The whole House is united in support of a London hid for the 2012 Olympics. However, as we all know, there will be plenty of knockers and plenty of antis. There will be people who will say that we cannot do it, that it will bung up the traffic in London and that it will make people's lives more uncomfortable than they are already. I say—well, I had better not use unparliamentary language, so I will not say it. Most of your Lordships will understand my feelings about the knockers.

I will be serious for a moment. Modern Olympic Games need not be loss-makers, It has been demonstrated by several noble Lords tonight that previous Olympic Games have been run profitably, in cash and investment terms, and, most importantly, have been run profitably for the people of the host nation. Nations do not run a budget for a year; we look at our future for many years to come and at the legacies that we leave to our children, grandchildren and others. An Olympic Games bid is certainly about that. It goes down in the history books, and the investment made should help our children and grandchildren for many years to come and should be extremely beneficial to the country.

Another point that has been made is that the bid for the Olympic Games must be government-led. The Olympic Games are still the biggest spectator event in the world. The competition to host the event is the toughest such competition in the world. It happens only every four years, and the games probably come to a nation only once in a generation or perhaps only once in two generations, as the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, said. So, I am convinced that we should make an Olympic bid and that it must be government-led. I am not speaking from the Front Bench, but my noble friend will do so shortly, and I am sure that my party will join the Government in an all-party bid for a London Olympics.

Although I said that the bid must be nationally led by the Government and that the whole kingdom must be behind it, it is evident to me, from other events en a larger or smaller scale with which I have been involved, that that does not mean that it must be managed by the government of the day. That would he fatal. If we go for the event, we must make sure that we have on board the most professional people that we can empower—British or not. They must understand about managing events on such a scale and about the organisation and delivery of projects on such a scale.

As an aside, I must say that the Dome was referred to in a rather derogatory way. I do not think that I need to declare my interest in that at this stage. The actual facility was delivered on budget and on time; it was only the content and the visitor numbers that fell apart. The content and the visitor numbers are not in doubt with an Olympic Games. If we are lucky enough to win an Olympic bid for London, we will fill the event stadiums everywhere without any trouble. We have the technology, the expertise and the management skills to deliver whatever structures are required for hosting an Olympic Games.

Another point that has already been made is that, nowadays, although an Olympic bid will be headed by London—by a city—the games are not a city event. The bid will be a truly national bid, particularly in a nation the size of ours. If we succeed in the bid, no corner of this kingdom—except, perhaps, the farthest Hebridean corners will miss out on the benefits, with all the pre-camps and pre-training centres and the events that will take place outside the stadiums—and some, such as football, inside the stadiums. By necessity, travelling is part and parcel of participating in a modern Olympiad. Even in the winter games in my days, when we competed in Grenoble, my event was over an hour's drive from Grenoble. We can go a long way in this country in an hour, sometimes. Sometimes, as we know, we cannot get to Trafalgar Square from Westminster.

I am certain that, in the event of a successful Olympic bid, the nation will come behind us. I use the word "us" advisedly; I hope that all parties and the whole nation will be together. It would be a tragedy if the Government admitted that they did not have sufficient faith in the management, industry, expertise or finances of the nation to allow them to put together a real, meaningful, we-are-jolly-well-going-to-win bid.

My Lords, I have absolutely no doubt whatever that securing the Olympic Games for London would guarantee a stunning and wonderful event. They would be wonderful as a demonstration of our national pride, and of our commitment to sport as a force for good and well-being in our society. They should dispel the notion that other countries less economically strong, without our proven record of organisational success, have somehow leapfrogged over us, leaving us forlorn spectators. The Olympic Games could give a wonderful old city a huge uplift and show a generation of young people a can do/will do example of leadership, optimism, determination and competence. They would undoubtedly put London centre stage, with a spotlight creating a unique opportunity for displaying our talents—architecturally, socially, financially and politically.

But I am a realist. Not everyone shares that view. Today's debate gives the opportunity to analyse the project and weigh up the pros and cons: in short, to make the case for the London bid. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is to be thanked for giving us this opportunity.

Perhaps we may start with the venue. Put bluntly, nowhere else in the United Kingdom has the attraction of the capital city. On that fact alone there appears to be a consensus, based not on some southerner's prejudice, but on the assessment of other likely candidates in the frame. If we are talking Paris, New York and Milan as competitors, we must give ourselves the best possible chance of success. London provides an inspirational backdrop and a nostalgic venue for the games, which we supported when others turned away.

I am particularly drawn to the legacy for London in staging the games. They would give a huge opportunity to regenerate an area of London significantly in need of redevelopment. As one in the business of regeneration myself, I see an unparalleled opportunity for the East End of London—a part of the city which has a noble and historic tradition of sport within its own community.

However, surely the benefits need not solely be London-based? Could some of the Olympic jewels be spread around the country? The value of that would be to multiply the positive impact right across the UK. The effect on the tourism industry alone would be dynamic. There would be financial gain, both short and long term, and there would be the creation of a network of new employment. The shop window and the catwalk would be rolled into one. Various communities would have the opportunity of doing what sport does best; namely, drawing in a whole army of volunteers, eager and capable, wanting to put back into sport just a morsel of what sport has given them.

All that said and done, there is still a hard-nosed debate to be had. My most significant anxiety is, of course, finance. How much will staging the Olympic Games cost? How will they be paid for? What legacy will remain when the games are over? There seems to be a plethora of financial appraisals flying about. Already, different sums have been quoted in the Chamber tonight. In brief, there seems to be a consensus that the minimum sporting costs for stadiums and swimming pools would be in the region of £2 billion. The associated investment for essential infrastructure improvements could cost a further £10 billion.

At the other end of the speculative costing scale, there is a view that that is woefully low: a more realistic estimate would be £4 billion rather than £2 billion, and £18 billion rather than £10 billion, and rising.

With the Dome and Wembley costs still fresh in our minds, I believe that I can safely guarantee that our Chancellor—wonderful though he is—is unlikely to sign up to a blank cheque of this magnitude. Christmas it may be, but prudence is still around.

How do we move forward? Clearly, partnerships must be formed. There could be a public/private partnership—so despised by the Mayor of London in other areas, but which looks now to be his only option. I look forward to hearing his views on this. It has also been suggested by the Minister for Sport, Richard Caborn, that in order to avoid draining government funds, with the agreement of the Cabinet it could be sought to make lottery funding available. A sum of £100 million of lottery funds every year up to the games has been suggested by him. I will return to that proposal later.

On the plus side of the balance sheet, we can assume huge commercial and media revenue directly attributable to the games. Add to this a host of related boosts to the national and local economy in the form of increased tourism, related merchandising and jobs generated by the project. In addition, we have the possibility of European funding, for that part of London enjoys—if that is the right word—objective 2 status. It would be reasonable to expect, therefore, significant grants from the EU with the example of Athens to be used. Adding up that side, we begin to see a more realistic financial profile emerging. In addition, we have a legacy of state-of-the-art sporting facilities in a country which is woefully under-provided.

I return to the basic funding issue. Would it be right to take funds from the lottery? At what cost would it be to the good causes and to grass-roots sport for which that money was originally promised? Why, I continue to ask, do we differ so radically from our European neighbours in our reluctance to pay for major sporting facilities from government funding? Why do France, Germany, Holland and Sweden all see this as a valid national responsibility? Why have successive governments of all complexions turned their backs on what I see as proper expenditure? Do we really believe that sport plays a key role in our society? Do we believe that health and social inclusion are priceless assets, and quantifiable perhaps in the short term but absolutely crucial in the long term? And should we deprive a whole generation of young people of access to a sporting landmark? Do sporting heroes make us better, giving inspiration to lead a more dedicated life? Well, I challenge the number crunchers to come up with an analysis that takes all that into account.

The questions I have posed today will have to be answered around a Cabinet table in January. I personally hope that the outcome will lift our hearts and that 2012 will see the Olympic torch arriving in Britain as the herald of a most wonderful games.

My Lords, I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak during such an important debate today and to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for highlighting the exciting opportunity not only for London but for the whole of the UK. My sporting career never reached Olympic level, but I love sport and I love London. I admire great sportsmen such as the noble Lords, Lord Moynihan and Lord Coe.

I must declare an interest as a member of the board of the London Development Agency. The LDA is the regional development agency for London, responsible for economic development. We believe that bidding for the Olympics would be of huge benefit to London as well as to the UK as a whole, and that is why we were proud to co-fund with the Government the Arup cost-benefit analysis of bringing the games to London.

This was not just a feasibility study on whether hosting the games was possible; this was a study on whether east London could deliver the games effectively and whether a games could deliver benefits which would not otherwise occur. I believe that this is an instructive document that realistically spells out the issues involved in bidding, as well as helping to put an Olympic bid firmly on the agenda.

Just this morning, my fellow LDA board colleagues voted unanimously to support a London bid and I know that the whole agency relishes the challenge of playing a pivotal partnership role in bringing the games to London.

I would also like to pay tribute to the work of the Mayor of London. He is deeply committed to London's future and is doing a tremendous job. From day one, Ken Livingstone has thrown his weight behind the hid and continues to work with the Government and all other stakeholders to put forward a convincing case for hosting the Olympics. His mind will of course be on other matters at present while he settles into his important new role as a father. I know that noble Lords will join me in sending him and his new family their best wishes.

Noble Lords have highlighted the important role the games could play in raising the profile of sport in this country. We have heard about the important health benefits brought about by increased participation and enthusiasm for sport and the provision of world-class facilities. I would like to focus on and reiterate the massive regeneration and economic benefits that the Olympics could bring about.

The proposed site of the games is Stratford and the Lower Lee Valley in East London. This is one of the most deprived areas in the country, with high unemployment and deprivation. The Government have highlighted it as a priority for regeneration and development and the LDA is already investing in the area. Most of the sites are already accessible and much can be achieved with relatively modest investment.

Opportunities such as bidding for the Olympics come only once in a generation. We must seize this chance to deliver a huge boost to East London. The immediate benefits are clear. An estimated 9,000 jobs would be created, with 3,000 going straight into the East London economy. The bid would also facilitate comprehensive redevelopment, rather than the piecemeal development that has hampered the area in the past.

A house-building programme for around 80,000 new homes is planned in the Thames Gateway over the next 15 years. That is ambitious, but we believe it is achievable. Staging the Olympics could play a major part in the programme, with the Olympic village alone estimated to provide up to 4,000 affordable units.

The positive legacy of an Olympic bid will go far wider than sport. To transform derelict brownfield land into an area that will have endless benefits for years to come must be regarded as one of the exciting opportunities presented by this bid.

Environmental and landscaping improvements" a technology centre, flagship sports facilities, the Olympic stadium and a cultural and tourism boost would be just some of the long-term benefits resulting from staging this world-class, awe-inspiring event.

Arup concluded that the transport capacity is dealt with. Improvements to East London's transport infrastructure have already been highlighted and set in train for regeneration purposes. The report did not suggest that major new infrastructure projects will need to be undertaken for the sole purpose of servicing the games.

London is a world city—the most multicultural city in the world—that can compete on a world stage. There is a clear commitment and masses of enthusiasm from all the major stakeholders in this project. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity not only to develop a derelict area of London but also to spark a sense of excitement in everyone in the United Kingdom. We have a site which has been independently assessed as being viable and we know from the tremendous job done by Manchester in hosting the Commonwealth Games this year that the United Kingdom can stage world-class events.

I urge the Government strongly to support this bid so that we can move forward to work on the most compelling case that does London, and the United Kingdom, justice.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Moynihan for his timely contribution in getting the debate up and running. As many noble Lords have made clear, time is of the essence.

Noble Lords on all sides of the House have presented the arguments for a compelling and powerful series of causes, and they are right to do so. I do not intend to trudge through the same economic and sporting landscape today. Suffice it to say that the economic impact of a London Olympics on jobs, on urban renewal and on sporting legacy is hard to refute, as my noble friend Lord Sheppard rightly pointed out.

At the risk of not heeding my own words, I shall present one further piece of evidence to the arguments made today. During the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000, I met the chief economist of the West Pac Bank. "You could trace the uplift in consumer confidence", he told me, "from the very day that Sydney was awarded the games back in 1993". Michael Knight, the Olympic Minister, told me that he and his Government saw sport and tourism as inextricably linked policy areas. In Sydney alone, more than £2 billion in inward tourism was attributed to the games.

As the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, said, sport does not come alive on the balance sheet or in the board room or even in the Red Book; it comes alive on the track, in the pool and on the pitch. Its effects on the country are profound, both in hard-pressed inner city areas and in facility-starved rural areas. The odysseys that the Olympic Games throw up are not only the stuff of re-runs at Christmas or glossy coffee-table books; they change lives.

On the last day of the spectacular Manchester Commonwealth Games—games which saved our country's sporting reputation—I got into a car driven by one of the many thousands of volunteers in that city who both distinguished and dignified those games. "She's something else, isn't she, that Paula Radcliffe?", the driver turned to me and said. I smiled and I said, "Yes, she is", expecting him to come out with a litany of statistical times and laps and splits. He said, "No, no, that is not what I am interested in. Over the past three years my daughter has hardly left the sofa in front of the television set, and two nights ago she went down to Sale Harriers Athletic Club"—a well-known athletic club in Manchester—"and she joined up".

London has been there before in 1948. It was arguably those games that saved the Olympic movement. It would have been very difficult for the Olympic movement to have survived from 1936 through to 1952 without an ability to stage and house an Olympic Games. If they were saved in 1948, they were rescued again in 1984 in Los Angeles by Peter Ueberroth, who, as my noble friend Lord Monro pointed out, was the brains and the inspiration behind the 1984 Olympic Games. And on what did he model his Olympic Games? He modelled them on London. He modelled them on the use of volunteers and the refurbishment of existing facilities.

It is time for the Prime Minister to be brave and for his Chancellor to see the big economic picture and to look at these figures properly. There are no insurmountable barriers—certainly no greater barriers than in Paris, Madrid, New York or even Rio. Only our ability to doubt our ability can hold us back.

The games are worth our collective efforts. We are the fourth largest economy in the world and we have a site earmarked which is only a stone's throw from the largest financial centre in the world. I simply do not believe that the nation is any less able or willing to support a London games in 2012 than it was in 1948.

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for introducing this debate. It is fitting that he should do so. The debate has inevitably been somewhat repetitious and I regret that I will repeat some of the repetition. For once, that is appropriate because it emphasises the unanimity in the House on this subject—particularly given the rather daunting background of so many speakers in sport and economic regeneration. I hope that the Minister will join our supporters club.

Happily, Hansard will not record that I am so obviously not a sportswoman. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Harris, I was not thrown out. The comments were more along the lines of "Are you having difficulty seeing the ball, dear?" That will not deter me tonight.

I declare an interest as a member of the London Assembly and want to talk particularly about London as a host city. I am also a Mancunian by birth. As great as Manchester is, I see this as London or nothing. As my noble friend Lord Addington said, the smoke signals are quite clear. London and Manchester are both great cities and this is a great country, but we have a national tendency to suck our teeth and list reasons for not doing something. I am not suggesting that the project should be approached irresponsibly. There is debate, particularly about the associated costs to which the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, referred—but the British Olympic Association hotly disputes some of the high-end costs.

Being realistic does not preclude a can-do attitude. We on these Benches think can-do and that we can and should do it in London. The prospect of hosting the 2012 Olympics gives the opportunity to harness the enthusiasm of the British public. One has to admit that in this building there is far more interest in sport than in politics. I am sure that we shall see a lot of polls on the subject. I am not always prepared to take polls at their face value—it depends on the question—but I was struck by a poll by YouGov about the enthusiasm of young people for holding the Olympics in this country. Public enthusiasm is important. The Commonwealth Games made great use of local people. Volunteering—contributing to the success of a project and sharing in the buzz of the event—gives one a feeling of ownership and involvement.

I have no idea how flexible is the balance of events in an Olympics but, given the mass following for football in this country, anything that can boost and increase accessibility to that sport—which my noble friend reminds me is not in the happiest of states at the moment—would be welcome. Supporting London does not preclude supporting other cities hosting training camps and providing venues for football matches. I am not sure where I first saw the comment "Think legacy first", but the prospective legacy is much in my mind. The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, dealt extensively with that point. The legacy of sports venues would include training venues, which will be used afterwards by those who enjoy sport at every level.

For training swimmers for the Olympics, we would need 32 50-metre lanes. Currently, London has one 50-metre pool and two others are being considered. Paris, Rome and Berlin each have 20 pools. We have a lot of catching up to do. This is the opportunity. It is quite easy to provide pools because essentially they are tanks. One can drop in a pool and a warm-up pool next to it, then remove one if the facilities are more than those needed. I knew that we would hear a great deal about sport and the legacy of the venues would be immense.

There is a great deal of sceptism about the ability of London's transport system to cope. I shall be quite clear. I want to see CrossRail, and this seems to me to be a good way to encourage the Government to get on with it. The Arup view is that it is not necessary to the games but it is clearly desirable. The timetable is tight. Currently, it is hoped that if it goes ahead it will be operational early in 2012. The Strategic Rail Authority says that its coffers would be bare. I hope that the Minister can give news of the progress in this area. I part company slightly with the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, who talked about legislation to overcome the planning obstacles. Some procedures are quite important and I would ask him to go easy in terms of planning.

The third factor is housing. London needs to build more than 26,000 homes a year, and the Olympic village must contribute to London's needs and offer suitable homes for Londoners.

Housing and transport are aspects of regeneration. We have heard about the benefits to East London, especially the lower Lee Valley, which would be substantial. Boosting London's capacity to do well is a boost for the whole country. The capital contributes some £20 billion to the national economy. The noble Lords, Lord Sheppard and Lord Paul, spoke with considerable authority on the point.

I suppose that one must ask whether the Olympics would make a difference to regeneration. Yes, I believe that they would. Conversely, would they be a disincentive to inward investment because of the disruption that would be caused for a short period? To my mind they would not be, provided that the transport was there. There would be some disruption during the 17 or so days while the games were taking place. But I heard that people in Sydney changed their working habits over the period, and that roads that were normally clogged were not clogged during the games. It could be the case that people stayed at home to watch or attended the games, but it worked.

There are security concerns too—about which the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, is well placed to speak—both within and around the Olympic zone. The Met is represented on the stakeholders' group. The cost must not fall on Londoners' pockets. It is a national responsibility; and a continuing thread in budgetary discussions about the cost of policing London is how much of that is undertaking national responsibilities.

Mention has been made of lottery funding. I share the view that the Olympics should not take away from existing sports funding. Is there scope to promote a special lottery? The noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, made a valid point about the Government's role in applying funding critieria.

My final question is: what do athletes want? The athletes in this Chamber have not addressed that point directly. I was interested to see that, among others, the British Paralympic Association supports the hid because of the accessible facilities that would he provided. That, too, has a legacy element for those who are able to use the facilities afterwards. An opportunity would be offered for paralympic sports to gain "stability"—the term used by the association—and to demonstrate the diversity and to spread understanding of disability and of the sports. Integration with the rest of the games, as we saw recently in Manchester, is very significant.

We know of the fiascos of Wembley and Picketts Lock. But that does not mean that we must always fail. Politicians will recognise the disease "candiclatitis"—confidence built on almost no evidence of likely success. In this case, I believe that we can be realistic, but at the same time say that we "can do".

My Lords, I join those who have congratulated my noble friend Lord Moynihan on being fortunate in the ballot, and on his speech in support of the Motion. This has been a fascinating debate and one worthy of this House. The speakers have not simply been sports enthusiasts. Our approach has been a team effort between the sports enthusiasts on the one hand, and those involved in local government or London on the other—namely, the noble Lords, Lord Harris, Lord Sheppard and Lord Paul, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee.

I declare an interest as patron of Herne Hill Harriers and a member of the Achilles Club. That said, it might be felt that my qualifications to speak in this debate are either obsolescent or obsolete, because it is well over half a century since, as a member of the British athletics team, I marched around the stadium at Wembley in the 1948 Olympics. We have had many Olympiads since then. In the event, I did not compete because only four of the five people selected for the relay ran. I had to wait another four years before competing in Helsinki. That was the last of the small Olympics.

The Olympics have now grown to an enormous scale, which we must consider in debating the Motion. They have grown larger and larger. We have had a distinguished debate, with little discussion of the actual events. I find it difficult to believe that football is an appropriate event, but no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, would disagree. We need to retain certain events, particularly the modern pentathlon.

Several speakers realistically recognised some of the handicaps with regard to the Wembley Stadium saga, the Picketts Lock affair and even the Dome. I take my noble friend Lord Glentoran's point that the problem with the Dome was what was inside it. As he rightly said, nobody could doubt that, if the Olympics were staged in London, there would be enormous support from the public and more broadly. The success of Manchester shows how such an event can be handled. I hope that we will learn the lesson of retaining an athletics track in whatever stadium is built. Manchester did not manage to solve that problem. Generally, the Manchester experience is heartening. The noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, said that we need to lift up our hearts.

Some noble Lords mentioned transport, which is a problem. Perhaps those involved in London affairs might stress to the Mayor that, in supporting the idea of the Olympics coming to London, we must do something about transport. I spoke last night to my daughter, who aspires to be on the dressage team in 2012. She said that dressage and other events might take place at the Royal Veterinary College, which has 500 acres at Potters Bar. It took her nearly three hours to travel from London to Potters Bar. We must be determined to beat the transport problem. I am sure that London can respond in that way. It is estimated that 150,000 people will travel to the stadium on the same morning, with 125,000 coming from, or through, London. We must solve that problem at an early stage.

Inevitably, there are risks, particularly in the heats and semi-finals. We must get through at an early stage. We must invest money in the bid before we know whether we have won. It is all very well to say that the important part of the Olympic Games is, "not the winning but the taking part". It is better to take that view after the event rather than before. I have the support of my noble friend Lord Glentoran. If we enter the contest, we must bid with a determination to reach the final. That requires government commitment, as was rightly pointed out.

In the analysis that has been put before us, it is interesting to note the suggestion that, even if one bids and fails, there are still very real advantages to be derived. Therefore, it should not deter us in any way from bidding if we believe that the odds are perhaps stacked against us. My noble friend Lord Monro, who, as a former Minister for Sport, has experience of this, pointed out that the bidding process in the past has not always been as transparent as it might be. Indeed, it will require a considerable degree of diplomacy, as well as determination. However, we need to make a fast start with our application, because, as has been said, time is running short.

I turn to the other important points that were made in the debate. In particular, although there are financial risks involved, we need to remember that there are also potential profits to be made. Over the years, the experience of different Olympic cities has been varied. But I believe that the analysis gives us reason to suppose that the kind of costs that are likely to be incurred are not disproportionate to the sort of benefits that should accrue, not least as regards infrastructure, social housing, the various sports facilities, and so on.

Moreover, when a city has the privilege of holding an Olympic Games, that special feeling seems to permeate through to the younger members of the community in a quite remarkable way. Indeed, mention has been made of the extraordinary way in which countries that are about to stage an Olympics suddenly seem to do better as far as concerns medals than they do on later occasions. So there is a huge uplift in morale, for want of a better word, as regards the ability and the enthusiasm of people both in school, and later. They are inspired by the performance of so-called "elite competitors", which was not an expression used in my day.

In addition, there is the whole regeneration of the Lower Lee Valley to consider. A number of speakers have stressed this particular point. Clearly, we shall face a number of competitors in the early stages of the bidding—from Paris, New York, Moscow, Rio, and so on. However, if the privilege goes to a European city in 2012, it will be a very long time indeed before London has another opportunity to bid because of the normal basis of rotation from one continent to another that the Olympic Committee seems to have developed as an approach to the problem. Therefore, it is particularly important that we put in a bid for the 2012 Olympics rather than leaving it to 2016, or whatever may be the case.

We have had an important debate this evening—one that gives cause for enthusiasm. We look forward with great interest to the Minister's response. The other place has already debated the subject. My honourable friend Mr Greenway, the shadow Minister for Sport, has very clearly said:

"A well-organised, viable London bid for the 2012 Olympics will naturally enjoy the support of the Conservative Party. We believe that, organised properly, it would lead to massive social, economic and other benefits for the whole of the UK".

My noble friend Lord Coe asked me before the debate how long noble Lords are allowed to speak during the gap. I referred the matter to the Clerk, and the answer was four minutes. Not surprisingly, my noble friend managed to complete the distance in slightly less time. However, he made an important point about the 1948 Olympic Games in London. It was a time of appalling austerity; the rationing system was still in operation. I remember receiving an extra pint of milk to help me in my training. Yet London wanted to continue the Olympic tradition when much of the rest of Europe, and countries elsewhere, were devastated. We really managed to respond to the challenge facing us at that time. I am quite sure that London is capable of responding to the challenge of a new Olympic bid. I hope that it will have the enthusiastic support of the Government and all parties that it rightly deserves.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, on securing today's debate. A possible London bid for the 2012 summer Olympic Games is rightly a subject of enormous topical interest. The noble Lord set out many of the key issues that need to be addressed, and I shall try to respond to all of them.

I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Higgins. We have had an interesting and high quality debate, if a unanimous one. I take away a clear message and I shall pass it on to the my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and my right honourable friend the Minister for Sport. Although I am not the Minister for Sport, I am interested in sport and have always participated in sport—at a very low level of course.

The Olympic Games, particularly over the past 20 years, have experienced unparalleled growth and universal popularity. It is the largest and the most successful sporting event in the world. More than 10,000 athletes now take part in the games from 200 countries in 28 sports.

To participate in the Olympic Games and Paralympics is the highest aspiration of most athletes, and winning a medal at the games would undoubtedly be the pinnacle of their careers. That was probably the experience, too, of the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, who was part of the relay team in the Olympic Games last held in London in 1948 and in Helsinki in 1952. It was probably the experience of the noble Lords, Lord Moynihan. Lord Glentoran and Lord Coe. It is a great privilege for me to speak in a debate with four former members of our Olympic team, as well as two former Ministers for Sport.

We have also recently seen the wonderful success of the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, as mentioned by a number of speakers, especially the noble Lord, Lord Coe. They were quite rightly recognised as a tremendous achievement for the city and an indication that the UK can organise major multi-sport events.

The Olympic Games attract millions of spectators to the host city and billions of television viewers world wide. They have a huge impact outside the sporting world. In fact, the global impact of the games is massive when it is considered that the cumulative TV audience doubled for the Sydney 2000 games to more than 20 billion viewers from 220 countries since the games were held in Seoul in 1988. I mention those statistics because I do not think that they have been referred to in this debate and they should be taken into account.

Britain regards itself as one of the major sporting nations in the world and it is only right that we should be seriously interested in staging major sporting events such as the Olympic Games. However, hosting that event in its current format is a substantial challenge for the host nation. The organisation of the many different events and hosting an Olympic family of up to 40,000, plus all the spectators, is a huge undertaking. It has serious financial implications, which were clearly pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. Therefore, in assessing whether London should hid to host the games in 10 years—in 2012—we need to consider carefully the implications of holding the games and what will be their legacy long after the Olympic circus has left town.

This assessment started last year when a report by Arup on the cost and benefits of bidding for and staging the 2012 Olympic Games in London was jointly commissioned by my department, the GLA, the BOA and UK Sport.

The summary of the report was published in early November so that the issues involved could be in the public domain and therefore available for public discussion. The only reason that the whole report was not made available is that some of the information it contains is commercially sensitive and would, I think, give advantage to our potential competitors. The report covers in some detail issues and some of the projected costs of regeneration, transport, venues and facilities, accommodation and other matters. It also clearly recommends that the location of the games should be in east London, where there is enough available land for development of the games village and possibilities to enhance transport links.

The Government are currently involved in a careful analysis of the report and the possible impact of an Olympic Games in London. We have learnt from previous projects that such a full assessment and a full consultation with the major stakeholders is essential before any decision is made. Our decision will be guided by four principal considerations: affordability, deliverability, winnability and legacy. I should like to talk about them all.

From the lessons of other Olympic cities and also our experience with the Commonwealth Games, we know that it is extremely difficult to predict the final costs of staging such a major event. However, I assure the noble Lord, Lord Monro of Langholm. and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that we are not trying to push up the predicted costs. What we are trying to do is ensure that we have truly realistic assessments. It is in no one's interest to have unrealistic assessments, as we could end up bidding and then not having enough money to do it properly.

Based on Arup's work, and allowing for inflation at 2.5 per cent, we estimate the overall cost of bidding for and staging the Olympic Games at nearly £3.6 billion, with associated revenues of £2.4 billion. In addition, the Government expect that there could be further costs for spectator and traffic management, security, improvements to the look of London, land acquisition and venues. Arup has now told my officials that it accepts that additional costs may well arise in these spheres. In particular, given the history of the games and the troubled times in which we live, noble Lords will not expect the Government to take any chances with security.

The Government must also consider possible areas of risk in the report. For example, we should allow for a realistic contingency on the staging costs; increased costs if the price comparison is with Australia, where prices are 80 per cent of those in the UK; and the risk that anticipated revenue streams might not materialise. Our preliminary, cautious view is that public subsidy of the games, even after the staging revenues received from the IOC from the sale of broadcasting rights and sponsorship might well exceed £2 billion. That is what we need to consider in our future public expenditure plans. No one would expect us to do that other than carefully.

Any subsidy, whether it is the Arup figure of just over £1 billion or our rather cautious view that it may be double that, needs to be justified to the taxpayer by the benefits that it brings. We are examining the possible gains to the public benefit and the wider economy. Some Olympic spending would be used to regenerate brownfield sites in the lower Lee Valley and the Stratford area of East London into sporting venues for athletics and swimming and the Olympic village.

The noble Lord, Lord Sheppard of Didgemere, talked about east London. He is absolutely right in saying that there is considerable deprivation in east London and that the regeneration resulting from the games could bring a great boost to the area. My noble friend Lord Paul mentioned that the games could create 9,000 badly needed jobs for local residents in east London. Our assessment includes an evaluation of the employment benefits attributable to the games. For the Olympic Games to be of real value in the creation of employment for residents in that area, we must be sure that the jobs created are sustainable and long term and not just for a temporary period.

The Olympic Games have been and can be used for regeneration purposes, as at Barcelona, for example. But a regeneration strategy purely based on staging the Olympic Games will struggle to deliver what is required in the long term.

Our current regeneration strategy for east London is directed through the Thames Gateway. It is delivering benefits to an area which desperately requires development and an Olympic Games would need to be incorporated into this strategy rather than just driving it. We must not hinder or blight the regeneration that is already beginning.

I turn to transport. As well as a well-located site, the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, was absolutely right to recognise that an efficient transport infrastructure is essential for an Olympic Games to succeed. Our bid will be judged in part on that, so there is no point in glossing it over.

An opportunity to host the Olympic Games is seen by some as an opportunity to cut through bureaucracy and deliver a better transport system for London. However, they should also consider that the Government's initiatives for transport have allocated substantial sums already to improve transport in London. Under this plan national rail, the Underground, buses and other forms of transport will all be improved. I am confident about that.

My noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, referred to CrossRail. CrossRail could also deliver further benefits provided a satisfactory business case is demonstrated and the powers secured, but it is unlikely to be completed by 2012. We are considering how well transport would operate for the Games without CrossRail in place. It is important that if we host the Olympic Games it does not lead our transport strategy or our regeneration strategy. The Olympics may be an opportunity but we cannot rely on London winning the bid to achieve what is needed for London's infrastructure.

Although regeneration and transport are, of course, important aspects of hosting the Games, the Government consider the impact on sport as equally, if not more, significant and are therefore looking at the impact of the Games on their current and future sporting policy. One of the reasons for bidding for the Olympic Games in the past has been that they improve a nation's sporting success, as my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester mentioned. Evidence certainly shows that Olympic host countries increase their chances of winning medals. However, that is also a result of the increased investment in elite sport that is usually made by the host country in the lead up to the Games.

Since our performance at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, significant lottery investment has been made in our elite athletes through the World Class Performance Programme. That investment led to our best ever medal haul, in terms of gold medals won, at the Sydney Olympics, since the Antwerp Games in 1920. We are committed to supporting our very best athletes and to maintaining the level of funding which was provided in the build up to the Sydney Games to help our elite athletes' preparations for the Athens Olympics, whether or not we decide to bid for the 2012 Games.

This Government are also committed to ensuring that there is increased participation in sport generally. We know that sport can have an important impact on some of the problems associated with lack of exercise such as obesity and heart disease which, sadly, are beginning to affect even our children. Increasing participation requires a long-term strategy which we are developing through the Government's initiatives for school sports and club links. Major sporting events may help but are only one of the factors that encourage sporting participation. We need to ensure that our strategy in this area is developed and progressed irrespective of whether or not we win a possible bid. We should not let the Olympics divert us from that terribly important aim. There are also clear policies from some of the major national governing bodies for sport on the development of facilities. It is important that those should be taken into consideration in the assessment.

There are important legacy issues, as several noble Lords have mentioned, but we must take care that we do not over-invest in facilities that have no long-term use. Even successful games, such as Sydney in 2000 and Barcelona in 1992, have found the legacy to be costly. My right honourable friend the Minister for Sport recently visited Moscow and Munich, which were responsible for staging games in 1980 and 1972 respectively. In terms of legacy, Munich is regarded as providing the most successful facilities for the future use of its citizens. Those games were staged around a beautifully landscaped artificial lake, with the Olympic stadium in the park. Even those facilities, however, which are located with good access, cost the local authority between £4 million and £6 million a year to maintain. Stadium costs are also a problem to the local government in Moscow; it owns 50 per cent of the stadium, which still runs at a loss.

In the UK, we have learned from our experience of Wembley and Picketts Lock that our decisions should he based on long-term strategies and careful investment, not on short-term solutions. That is why we are carefully reviewing the facilities that Arup believes are required for a successful games. We are reviewing not only their use during the games but considering the plan for their use after the games. That is simply sensible long-term planning. We do not want what happened in Montreal, after the games in 1976, to happen here. That city constructed an unsustainable stadium, for which its citizens will still be paying until 2006.

Our assessment of all those aspects is important because, if we decide to bid, the IOC will evaluate our submissions based on some of the issues to which I and other noble Lords referred earlier. Our assessment also involves determining London's chances of winning the hid. It is not the bid that will go down in history, but winning it. London is one of the great cities in the world; it attracts millions of tourists every year, but that does not give us the right to assume that any bid would automatically be successful.

There are strong candidates in the field, as the noble Lord, Lord Monro of Langholm, rightly pointed out. New York has already announced its bid, with further bids likely from other major candidates such as Moscow, Budapest, Madrid or Seville, Paris, Toronto, a German city and Rio de Janeiro. It is therefore essential that we ensure that, if we decide to bid, our bid can be a winning one.

I agree with what my noble friend Lord Pendry and the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said: any bid must be totally committed and absolutely whole hearted. I give my pledge this evening that if we do decide to bid., the bid will be whole hearted. A poor bid would mean not only the loss of any chance of hosting the games in 2012 but would harm our status as a sporting nation and make it difficult for Britain to win the rights to stage any future sporting event, such as football's World Cup or the World Athletics Championship. We should neither be complacent about the bid nor write a blank cheque. We will need to demonstrate that we can deliver what we offer.

The IOC will invite national Olympic committees to submit the name of their applicant city in May 2003. Therefore, we will have to decide whether to support the bid by the end of January 2003. I confirm to the noble Lords, Lord Moynihan and Lord Addington, that we will make a decision by then.

Our analysis of the feasibilty of delivering the games will be thorough, but it will not be determined only by assessing the Arup report. The views of the public are essential to the project. The games will have an impact not only on London but throughout the country. so it is only right that the public have an opportunity to comment. We will carry out an opinion poll in the early new year to gauge the views of the public. We shall meet regularly with all non-government stakeholders to ensure that their views are represented in coming to a decision. We welcome the views of Members of this House, including those given this evening.

As the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said, bidding for the Olympic Games is not to be taken lightly. It requires a clear and thorough assessment of all the issues involved in such a decision. That is why our decision on the hid will be based on a full assessment of what is best for sport. best for London and best for the country.

My Lords, I could not be more grateful to noble Lords who have participated in the debate. At the outset, I say that inadvertently I may have failed to declare my interests in sport inter alia as president of the British Biathlon Union and president of the Welsh Amateur Rowing Association. If I did, I apologise.

It would be invidious, with other noble Lords about to start another debate, for me to speak for more than 30 seconds, so I shall thank one or two noble Lords. First, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, whose conviction and commitment to the interests of sport—sportsmen and women—is second to none. I also thank my noble friend Lord Monro. who is a former Minister responsible for sport. I have never spoken with him in a debate on sport from the Front Bench or the Back Benches in nearly 20 years in both Houses, when he has not spoken wisely and with genuine emotion and insight. Collectively, I refer to my noble friends Lord Higgins, Lord Coe and Lord Glentoran for their sporting and political prowess, and to the Minister, who is always persuaded by logic and clear reason. The transport challenges will in part be alleviated by the fact that the games are likely to be held in the school summer holidays. It is important to consider the games in the context of the transport challenges. I leave that thought with noble Lords.

It is wise to conclude that the message going out from this House tonight is clear and unambiguous. Noble Lords on all sides of the House have spoken clearly and with one voice. Let us back the London bid. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what consideration they are giving to introducing legislation to protect people with mental incapacity.

My Lords, I start, as usual, by declaring my interest as the father of a 22 year-old Down's syndrome daughter and as; the honorary president of RESCARE, the National Society for Mentally Handicapped People in Residential Care. I shall divide my contribution into two parts: remarks about legislation to protect children with mental incapacity and remarks about legislation to protect mentally handicapped or incapacitated adults.

First., I shall speak about children. Last year's Special Educational Needs and Disability Act is not working as the Government hoped and promised. Your Lordships will recall that the Act gave parents who wanted their mentally incapacitated children to go to a mainstream school the right to send them there. When the Bill was going through your Lordships' House in January and February 2001, I and others predicted that it would result in greater difficulty for parents who wanted their mentally incapacitated children to go to a special school. We tried to amend the Bill accordingly, and the amendments can be found in the Official Report for 23rd January 2001 at columns CWH 43 to 47 and 57 to 58 and for 29th January at columns CWH 80 to 84.

Of course, the Government did their best to assure us that our fears were unfounded. In fact, the Minister—the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone—was quite specific:

"The noble Lord, Lord Pearson, was particularly concerned about the claim that has been made by some people that the Bill will make it harder for parents to get a special school place for their child. That is not true. We want an inclusive education service to offer excellence and choice and we recognise that some children need the support that special schools provide. We see no reason why the Bill should result in any diminution of that choice or any reduction in the number of special schools.

I categorically assure noble Lords that the existing right of a parent whose child has a statement to make a positive choice and express a preference for a special school place will be fully maintained. It is important that LEAs listen to what parents want and where a parent wants a special school place and an LEA refuses it, parents can appeal to the SEN tribunal".—[Official Report, 23/1/01; col. CWH 46.]

I trust that your Lordships will agree that that was a pretty firm commitment from the Government that parents of mentally incapacitated children who want those children to go to special schools would not be disadvantaged by the Act.

However, there is now ample evidence that the Government's promises have not been fulfilled, just as some of us predicted. There is even evidence that the tribunals have been influenced against special schools. Indeed, I wrote to the Minister for Education recently with a particularly tragic case, to receive the reply that there is no appeal against a tribunal's decision.

The failure of the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act to protect mentally incapacitated children was amply reported in the Daily Telegraph last Thursday 12th December in a substantial article by that newspaper's respected education correspondent, Liz Lightfoot, and entitled "Parents reveal torment of special needs pupils". I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland of Asthal, who is to reply to this debate is not an education Minister, but I ask her to do her best to make sure that her colleagues in education do read that article, and also the letters to the editor of the Daily Telegraph which followed on 14th December.

The article reveals that children with learning difficulties are threatening to take their lives rather than go through the school gates in the morning. It says that others lock themselves into their bedrooms or run away in order to avoid the hurly-burly of comprehensive schools. It then points out that despite a 40 per cent increase over the past 10 years in the number of children identified as having special needs—from 178,000 to 248,982—the number of schools dedicated to catering for them has gone down from 1,352 to 1,162, and around 100 more are facing closure under plans published by local authorities in England.

The article quotes Mr Peter Clark, the leader of Gloucestershire County Council. It reads:

"We are following Government policy on inclusion, an Act which was passed by Parliament".

It seems that parents have become so desperate with this situation that they have set up a special schools protection league. The article ends with a quote from the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton of Upholland, the education Minister who has responsibility for special needs. She says that the Government have,

"underlined that there remains a continuing and vital role for special schools. The right of parents—where their children have a statement—to make a positive choice and express a preference for a special school place is being fully maintained".

Noble Lords will note the resonance in those words, and the quote that I gave earlier from the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, on 23rd January 2001.

If the Government find any article printed in the Daily Telegraph unconvincing, perhaps I could quote from the letter published by that organ from Mr Mic Carolan, head of the excellent Hurst Special School in St Helens, last Saturday, 14th December. It reads:

"I write as a socialist, and as a special educationalist, with experience as the head of three special schools and an inspector of special schools over three decades … Racial and religious differences are legally recognised. Faith schools have a legal right to exist. The talented and gifted are recognised. We have the ridiculous pattern where specialist schools for art, drama, technology and business are encouraged, and yet special schools for very special children are seen as being unacceptable".

Mr Carolan then makes another very telling point:

"The growth in SEN tribunals is in the area of parents insisting on a place in a special school, rather than insisting on places in mainstream schools. I am working with children who never communicate with adults, who hit, bite, spit, who do not believe in themselves. We are tired of the 'specialist' who never teaches a class, making value judgements about our effectiveness, and I am tired of picking up the pieces for professionals who wait while the child experiences six years of frustration and damaging self-concept, and who then decide that maybe a special school has something to offer".

Not my words, but from a leading SEN practitioner, confirming what as a parent I have been saying to your Lordships for several years.

Before I leave children and move on to adults, I should just say that I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton of Upholland, is in good faith, as no doubt was the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, before her.

The problem is that what the Government want is quite simply not being carried out at local level.

It is the same problem with adults. The Government have recognised that many adults with mental incapacity, especially those with the more extreme disabilities which are often accompanied by severe health problems, can only with great difficulty and at disproportionate expense be properly looked after under their policy of care in the community. The Government have also recognised that many of the families of such people who cannot make choices for themselves want a place in a village community for their relative.

In this, the Government are also attempting to meet their commitment to choice, but here again they are being frustrated at local level. A very informative debate about what is happening in one such instance at St Ebba's, Epsom, took place in your Lordships' House on 12th June this year in the name of my noble friend Lord Renton. I would like to record my sincere thanks and those of the St Ebba's families, to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and to his colleague, Miss Jacqui Smith, for their tenacity in trying to see that the families' wishes are met in this case. But it is not easy when the local authority, Surrey County Council, brazenly denies that there is any demand for a village community in the face of massive and unequivocal evidence that there is. So here again, with mentally handicapped adults generally, we have the problem that the Government's, parents' and families' wishes are being blocked at local level. We very much hope that the Government will stick to their guns.

I conclude by repeating that RESCARE is not against inclusion; indeed, we support it when it enriches the life of a person with mental incapacity. But that cannot always be the case, especially with the more handicapped people like my daughter. Nearly all of the professionals who take the decisions which affect the lives of people with mental incapacity have no experience of it in their families or immediate circle of friends. So perhaps I may offer them some quiet advice, born of long and uncomfortable experience. That is that you cannot make a mentally incapacitated person normal by making him or her live what you regard as a normal life. You may satisfy your innate fear of mental handicap, but you may not help them. Indeed, you may make them extremely unhappy and bewildered. I am sure that none of us wants to do that.

My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Ashley of Stoke for introducing this debate. I have listened attentively to what he said and to what the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, said about the existing provision for those persons with a mental health incapacity and of the need for clear legislation.

Because I would want to support any legislation on this matter, I should like to express my fear that any legislation which does not take on board the black communities' culture and special needs would not facilitate the black communities in using those services. So I use today to speak out on their behalf.

I am prompted by a recent report commissioned by the Sainsbury Centre called Breaking the Circles of Fear. The report has been a review of the relationship between mental health services and the African and Caribbean communities. I will confine myself very briefly to a précis of the findings of that report. There are circles of fear that stop black people from engaging the services. The report restates that young black men in particular are heavily over-represented in the most destructive parts of the mental health service, more especially in secure services, and that black people generally have an overwhelming negative experience of the present mental health services.

Those communities are least likely to access the primary care/mental health promotion or the specialist community services which might prevent or lessen the mental health problems. They believe that they are getting the mental health service they do not want, not the one they feel would do them much good.

The report states that black people fear and mistrust the services. Staff in those services rarely reflect their culture nor are they even taught anything in their training about dealing with the cultural norms of that group. Instead it is a widely held view that staff are wary o f the black community, fearing criticism and not knowing how to respond, especially to black men.

The cycle is also fuelled by the prejudices professionals in the field endure when they are working in the organisations that deliver the services. It is sometimes uncomfortable to listen to the tales of how professionals go to great lengths to undermine the work of psychiatrists who are black. Other health professionals often receive the same treatment. Before anyone tries to deny this by saying that they have a chip on their shoulder, I would say that they do not have a chip but perhaps a whole tree, which is put there by the unconscious racism that often prevails when they try to show that their culture may be different and the treatment may be more useful another way.

The report is thorough and I would like to share its key findings. Circles of fear stop black people from engaging with the services. Black service users are not treated with respect and their voices are not heard. Black people come to the services too late, mostly when they are in crisis. Primary care involvement is limited and community-based care is lacking. Acute care is perceived negatively and does not aid recovery. Different models and descriptions are used and other people's philosophies are not understood. Family and carer involvement is almost always absent. Conflict occurs regularly. Black-led organisations are not valued. The stigma helps to ostracise the patient, and that is never taken into account or given any consideration. Those are the research's findings.

There are 15 recommendations in the report, which I trust the Government will want to consider should they be considering legislation. I recommend the report to anyone who is interested or who has doubts. I want to ask the Government to consider in any future legislation their commitment to diversity, noting the huge gap that often exists between government legislation and the delivery of services.

Black British citizens must share the good effects of any legislation. As a people we are all too aware of the gap between management and leadership. Too often leadership styles have been a brand by which delivery of the laws of the country has discriminated against the opinions and values of the black British citizen—not, of course, in this House. I urge the House to consult the black community as a matter of right in whatever legislation it proposes to protect persons with a mental incapacity.

My Lords. I must first declare my long-standing interest in the world of learning disability as president of Mencap, as the father of a severely learning-disabled daughter and as a grandfather of a learning-disabled grandson.

I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Ashley of Stoke— I wish that I could call him my noble friend for he is indeed a noble friend to people with disabilities—for securing the debate and for his admirable speech. I thank him for giving us yet another opportunity to raise this important issue, which is close to my heart. Perhaps I may add a footnote to it.

I remind your Lordships briefly of the history which many of us have not only read but lived. Well into the 1960s, many people with a learning disability had no voice in the decisions of others to place them in large institutions, and then no say in what was done for them and to them in those institutions. Until the 1970s, they had no voice in what happened to them during school age; they were excluded as being unable to learn as well as unable to decide. Having gained the right to go to school, it was another decade or more before some choice of school became a reality—and we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, that the problem still exists.

Then at the beginning of this millennium there was yet another beginning for people with a learning disability, the Valuing People white Paper, which enshrines choice, rights, independence and inclusion, all of which could be summed up in the term "decision making". Alas this most basic decision of all is denied the majority of adults with a learning disability, who cannot even decide if and when they wish to leave home as beyond the family unit there is nowhere else for them to go.

If we are to secure the principles of choice, rights, independence and inclusion—and, indeed, to live up to the Human Rights Act—we need legislation, while to deliver these principles we need to work on recognising and supporting communication, decision making and the extension of advocacy.

Regrettably, there is such a long history of people with a learning disability being excluded from decision making, having decisions made for them and having their decisions overridden for no good reason that, without a conscious effort, legislation—while essential—will not on its own set aside centuries of ignorance, fear, prejudice, exclusion and—dare I say it?—brutality

All of us in your Lordships' House are extremely lucky to be in a position where most of our opinions are taken into account—well, sometimes. Unfortunately, this is not the case for the majority of people with a learning disability who may have difficulties communicating their wishes and are often ignored because assumptions are made about their capacity. Learning disability and communication impairment tend to go together, butt it is an assumption not a reality that automatically links learning disability and impaired decision making.

It follows, therefore, that any interpretation of a person's mental capacity and ability to make decisions needs to include consideration of his or her communication skills. It is all too easily accepted that some people with social or communication difficulties may appear to be incapable of making choices. They may, however, be fully able to make such choices given the means to express themselves. If we give them a communication passport; if we learn to recognise what they are saying by building trusting relationships which are sensitive to an individual's needs and circumstances; and if we use communications systems and equipment—all available nowadays—which are tailored to their individual needs, anything is possible. With such support and that of independent and informed advocacy, many a person with a learning disability can understand their choices and express their decisions effectively.

However, helping people with communication impairments to understand their choices and to make decisions requires an investment of time, money and skills—from government and carers alike. Above all, though, is the need for legislation in this area, which is long overdue. New legislation on mental capacity would also ensure a more functional approach to decision making. This recognises that a person's ability to make decisions may vary over time and depend on the level of difficulty of particular decisions—such as choosing where to live or how to manage money. It means that individuals would not be prevented from making certain decisions just because they had a medical diagnosis of a disability or illness.

The current law is not just unfair to people with a learning disability but it is also confusing to carers—who at times have to make or help to make decisions for those for whom they care. Currently, it is distressingly unclear who has the legal right to take day-to-day welfare, healthcare or financial decisions. What is clear, however, is that the law needs to clarify what carers can and cannot do. Clarifying who can make decisions will also improve the position of those who have to step in, often at the last minute, to take decisions for someone else.

I am aware that the Government agree with the need for legislation. Ministers in both Houses have expressed their support for such a Bill. I therefore look forward to their proposals. Indeed, consultations and deliberations in this area have been debated over a number of years—about 15 to be exact. There was an announcement last Monday that work will start on legislation in consultation with interested groups. Legislation has been promised by successive Ministers ever since the Government came to power in 1997 but still no legislation has been forthcoming. Still we are promised a Bill as soon as parliamentary time allows—which could mean this year, next year, sometime, never.

People with a learning disability and their carers have found themselves in this cloud cuckoo land far too long. Just across the border, the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000 is already in place. The option to continue doing nothing in the rest of the United Kingdom is really not an option. It would mean the betrayal of too many expectations and the denial of choice, rights, independence and inclusion to those who are relying—a little wearily after so much waiting—on the fulfilment of Government promises. We must not fail them.

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, for securing this debate. I have been very moved as well as interested to hear the eloquent speeches—particularly because they were based on so much personal experience as well as expertise.

If we are to have a just society as well as a compassionate one, we must address the needs of some of the most vulnerable people among—us I will concentrate on older people because I have spent so much of my life working in that field—how we view and treat them; and whether we give them adequate respect and understand their views—because they remain adults, however frail they may have become.

I demonstrated my feelings about the importance of those issues when I secured a dinner break debate last May on the future of the Public Guardianship Office, about which there was much concern. Those issues are of growing importance, partly because of our ageing population, about which we are hearing so much these days, in other aspects of life. Most people who have mental incapacities and problems are older people.

We all realise that the sort of incapacity from which such people suffer is often a slow process of decline. The issues are complex, resulting from very difficult and different conditions such as the dementias. The capacity of people as those awful conditions progress is difficult to grasp. Decision-making capacity can fluctuate. People can make adequate decisions sometimes, then not be able to do so, then be able to do so again.

Without a legal framework, it is extremely difficult to take these situations on board, assess people adequately and arrive at decisions. I agree with the priorities that have been expressed. Mental incapacity is a very important issue. We are all extremely disappointed that no legislation has yet been published on the subject. As the noble Lord, Lord Rix, mentioned, it seems odd that the Scottish Parliament, within a year of its being established, managed to legislate on this matter: the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act was passed in the year 2000.

The 1999 White Paper was entitled Making Decisions. That is what we want Her Majesty's Government to do. A Green Paper had been published in 1997 entitled Who Decides? But at present we are not very sure about who makes the decisions, because the law is so cloudy and out of date. For everyone who works with people with impaired mental incapacity, and for the people themselves, we need a legal definition of "capacity"; otherwise our system will not have the capacity itself to work in the best interests of those whom it is designed to protect. We must have clarity.

I want to concentrate on the day-to-day small-scale activities of someone who has mental incapacity to show why the law must be updated soon. The parliamentary timetable still means that such legislation cannot be implemented for some years—no earlier than 2004 or 2005. As I said, the majority of people affected by these conditions are very elderly; they cannot wait that long.

This is not merely about the big headline issues of advance directives or substitute decision-making; it is about the day-to-day financial and welfare issues, where people have very few rights—demanding action on appointeeship, power of attorney, the role of the Public Guardianship Office and so on. I have to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, that it is somewhat medieval that the priority is still that such an attorney call act over issues of finance but not over issues such as health or welfare. That is appalling. It must be dealt with quickly.

I accept that consent in health and social care is a difficult and vexed area in which to legislate. But that is no excuse for inaction. These matters must be dealt with in a reasonable and sensible way which leaves room for a court to intervene when there are differences of view in families or among carers and where other people close to the person concerned disagree fundamentally. These are difficult matters. However, it seems to me that the Law Commission's proposals are sensible, and I believe that the Government feel the same way.

I conclude my remarks with a reference to the impending reform of the Mental Health Act 1983. In an ideal world we should have an incapacity Bill giving us clear definitions, limits and so on, followed by a redraft of the mental health reform Bill. Indications are that it will be the other way round. But it is vital to define capacity and mental health issues soon.

If the parliamentary timetable is to blame because of the shortage of legislative slots, perhaps the suggestion that I made last month during the debate on the gracious Speech could be reconsidered; namely, consideration could be given to combining the two Bills into one Bill with two distinct parts. Both deal with different aspects of the condition of the human mind, and we see many examples of legislation crossing departmental boundaries. An example is the nationality Bill, which contains educational elements. Sometimes, Bills cover quite separate issues within one department's remit, as some of the health Bills have done. If joined-up government and cross-departmental collaboration are high priorities for the Government, would not a bit of joint working between the departments concerned—the Lord Chancellor's Department and the Department of Health—be a good thing? Indeed, would it not serve the best interests of some of the most frail and vulnerable people? Perhaps we could then make recognition of their needs a reality—recognised in our legal system.

My Lords, I, too, am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ashley of Stoke, for instigating this important debate about protecting people with mental incapacity. I wish to address the importance of mental incapacity from the standpoint of the clinical need to protect vulnerable people when they are patients in receipt of care. I declare an interest as a clinician who looks after terminally ill patients, and as having two children with severe learning difficulties in my extended family.

In all I say, it must be borne in mind that I fully recognise everything the noble Lord. Lord Pearson, said. When people are physically ill, those with learning difficulties are especially vulnerable because of the environment in which they find themselves. Clinically, the problem is that capacity and incapacity are not absolutes. They vary with time. They may progress or improve. Plasticity of the brain means that, following an insult such as a stroke, people may recover quite a lot of function with time. The other difficulty is that capacity can fluctuate rapidly. For example, with an infection, someone with moderately impaired decision-making can rapidly find it extremely difficult to cope with new information.

A person's capacity depends on the size of decision to be taken. To give a simple example, take an elderly lady who has a small degree of renal failure but who functions well in her own home. She develops a urinary tract infection and has dysuria; that is to say, pain on passing water. She also becomes confused. She can understand the decision to take antibiotics and can quite safely be treated. But, if she develops a renal abscess, she may not be able to fully understand all the implications of having surgery on that kidney, of having that kidney removed and potentially going on to dialysis. She can understand a set of risks at one level but cannot understand all the implications of a larger, more complex decision.

As the noble Lord, Lord Rix, said, the ability to communicate is crucial to the concept of capacity. The clearest example in recent times is that of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of Elle magazine, who had a massive stroke and locked-in syndrome. It was assumed that he was unaware of what was happening around him because he was completely unable to communicate, until a speech therapist noticed that he had one eye movement. With that single eye movement, he was able to communicate and to dictate a whole book, The Diving Bell & the Butterfly, Which I have asked to be compulsory reading for all our medical students. It is an astounding book, which gives insight into the problems of someone who is completely locked in, unable to communicate but aware of everything that is happening.

In my own clinical practice, I have had patients with neurological conditions who were assumed to be incompetent to take a decision because they could not communicate it. But, when I have spent time with them, sometimes an hour or more, it has become evident that they fully understood; they just could not communicate. Their refusal of treatment was a very competent decision.

The concept of global incompetence, however, is very dangerous because it cannot be proven and may only truly coexist if someone is effectively brain-dead. Put at its simplest, the concept of capacity refers to the patient's ability to understand the nature and purpose of the recommended treatment, including the consequences of having or not having it, and the ability to reason using that information. As I said, the difficulty is that competence may be impaired; for example, by drugs. Midazolam is a drug that is commonly used clinically because it calms down anxious people; but on the streets it is the date-rape drug. The person sounds completely compos mentis, but after the drug has worn off he will have no recall of what he said, what has happened, or, of the decision that he might have taken; and, indeed, might have appeared to communicate properly.

Another common clinical condition is depression, which alters the patient's perception. The person may have a very black and pessimistic view of his future. He may feel that any treatment for him is completely pointless and that his life is worthless, until he is treated. It must be remembered that 20 per cent of medically-ill patients have a treatable depression. Sadly, not that number actually get their depression either recognised or treated. Indeed, one in four of the population has had a mental disorder at some time, many of which have been depression.

So where is that important? If one considers an advance statement, or an advance refusal of treatment, it becomes crucial. When you are depressed you have a different view of the world. Your circumstances and priorities change. Therefore, any advance statement must be renegotiated at the time when a new decision is to be taken so as to ensure that it is still valid. The other problem is that an advance statement made at one time when a person was deemed to be competent that is now looked at when he is deemed to be incompetent may have become time expired; it may not apply to the clinical situation that now has to be faced. Moreover, there may be a new directive revoking the old one that is not known, or which is actively withheld from the clinician.

How many of us have had a member of our family to whom we felt obliged to be kind, because it was probably his last Christmas—yet many years later that relative is still alive and going strong? But what if that person has a fixed-term life insurance policy, has previously written a statement to the effect that he does not wish any treatment in the event of deterioration and then develops a treatable, incidental complication—such as a urinary tract infection—that makes him confused? The doctors looking after that person may not know of an advance statement, or, if one is presented, they may not know whether it has been superseded by another statement. They know that the condition is treatable, but they may not know about the life insurance policy. They may feel that relatives who place pressure upon them, and claim to be acting in the person's best interests, are not acting in his best interests.

I should like to illustrate that situation with a short example from my own clinical practice. At present, any document presented is an expression of the person's wishes and must be renegotiated and subject to the "best interest" principle. The latter adopts the patient's perspective. I know that clinicians come in for a lot of criticism, but the one good point is that they are impartial: they do not stand to gain materially, unlike the relative who may inherit when the patient dies.

It is important to remember that the autonomy of one person cannot override the autonomy of another. But autonomy can exist only if it is respected. Any legislation must ensure that every effort is repeatedly made to ascertain a person's wishes and that material is presented in the most understandable way. As the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, said, it must be done in an environment in which the person is comfortable. It must also be free from any possible coercion by anyone who may have a vested interest. A person with a vested interest will be someone who stands to gain materially in any way.

As I said, I had such a situation in my clinical practice. A lady aged 59 was very ill. Her family appeared to be very concerned about her pain and constantly asked for her diamorphine to be increased. However, we remained unconvinced that her pain was really that severe. In fact, the patient declined increasing doses of diamorphine. Her 60th birthday arrived and was passed with minimal celebration. after which the family visited very little. She became depressed and spoke to one of the night nurses, explaining that the problem was that on her 60th birthday, her fixed-term life insurance policy expired. The family would not now inherit what they thought they would if she had died, and if her drugs been duly increased.

That is a sad story, but I am afraid it is human nature. It is important not to use mental incapacity or concepts of advance statements as a convenient, back-door way of allowing the introduction of euthanasia in any form. Legislation must presume in favour of competence, and such presumption must be overturned before someone can be deemed truly incompetent to take such decisions.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ashley of Stoke, is to be congratulated on raising, not for the first time, extremely important issues on the subject of incapacity. He has had universal support from those who have spoken—certainly from the noble Lord, Lord Rix, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Greengross and Lady Finlay. Although the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howells of St Davids, spoke on slightly different, although related, issues, I have no reason to doubt that they would entirely endorse what the noble Lord said.

We on these Benches entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ashley. We believe that the law relating to incapacity is in urgent need of reform. The Law Commission report of seven years ago, in 1995, made many sensible suggestions for reform. The Government published a discussion paper in December 1997, but we are now five years on from that time and still nothing has been done. We greatly regret that the Queen's Speech contained no proposal for a new mental health Act in this Session, covering the reform of the law of capacity, although we had been led to understand until quite shortly before the Queen's Speech that such a Bill would be included.

We want a radical shake-up of legislation and the institutions involved in dealing with those adults for whom others assume legal responsibility on the ground of mental incapacity. It is one of the most sensitive and contentious areas of social policy, involving fundamental personal rights, issues of personal welfare, and sometimes even life and death decisions. It concerns the duty of government to protect and enshrine in law the rights of the most vulnerable members of our society.

The Government have failed to follow through their early promises on law reform in this area. Many aspects of the current law are no longer compatible with the Human Rights Act. The Law Commission report concluded:

"the law as it now stands is unsystematic and full of glaring gaps. It does not rest on clear or modern foundations of principle. It has failed to keep up with social and demographic changes. It has also failed to keep up with developments in our understanding of rights and needs of those with mental disability".

In effect, people who are deemed to lack capacity have no legal rights; they become non-people. That position leaves the most vulnerable—often elderly adults —open to abuse. That is made possible, in part, by the fact that people without capacity are largely hidden from public view. They may be in care and in residential home settings, incapacitated in intensive care, sectioned under mental health legislation or under the charge of carers or relatives who have power of attorney. There has never been comprehensive research on how many people in these situations have their legal rights suspended because by law they lack the required "mental capacity" to make decisions for themselves. Our approach is for a fundamental reform to give all those assessed as lacking capacity new rights to maximise their own preferences on how their daily lives should be managed and experienced, and to redefine radically the way in which incapacity is treated in law.

We propose that the principles and methods used to define and assess mental capacity should be fundamentally reconceived so that simplistic tests, such as naming the Prime Minister or subtracting seven from 100, are not applied by doctors and lawyers in an all-or-nothing way and so that partial capacity is recognised and utilised. As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, pointed out, capacity very much fluctuates and people can have capacity to take some decisions even if at the same time they lack capacity to take others. For example, the capacity to enter into a complicated financial transaction is obviously very different from the capacity to maintain a life at home by going out to a local corner shop and buying the food which they will then cook to look after themselves.

New legislation is needed also as a basis for a code of practice to support practitioners. It is necessary for those caring for people who lack mental capacity to have a general authority to "act reasonably" in order to protect people. However, there should be certain restrictions on the general authority to act reasonably—for example, force should never be used—and there is a class of decisions which can only ever be taken by a person acting for himself or herself, such as consenting to marriage or divorce or to sexual relations.

We also propose that the Court of Protection should extend its jurisdiction beyond its present somewhat Victorian jurisdiction which is concerned almost entirely with the protection of property rights. The extension of the jurisdiction should 'be a key plank of new legislation. Too often, relatives and carers find themselves in a legal maze when someone ceases to be able to be responsible for themselves. We also propose that new continuing powers of attorney should be introduced to replace the present enduring powers of attorney. These continuing powers of attorney should be extended to cover health and welfare as well as financial issues. They should be regulated through the Court of Protection's jurisdiction. There should also be tighter regulation of informal mechanisms of taking decisions on behalf of someone else, such as appointeeships, which are all too often open to abuse.

We also believe that where an individual with capacity has made clear instructions as to anything to be done or not to be done when they are without capacity, these should trump the views of relatives, nominees and statutory services. We therefore propose a statutory scheme of advance directives, an extension of the principle of the "living will", as anticipatory statements of intent which should be legally binding on the parties who subsequently become involved in decision-making on their behalf.

Finally, we believe that new legislation could and should include specific statutory torts and criminal offences covering the abuse of a vulnerable adult. Currently there are no such specific provisions on the statute book, at least in part because the extent of problems such as elder abuse has not been recognised.

I am very happy to give our support to the noble Lord, Lord Ashley of Stoke.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ashley of Stoke, on introducing this very important debate. I agree with him that the problems of the mentally incapacitated have been neglected.

There have been some very well-informed speeches tonight. I share the concern of my noble friend Lord Pearson of Rannoch about special schools. I very much hope that the Minister will pass that on to education Ministers. In doing so, I declare an interest as the father of an autistic daughter now at a special school where she is thriving after many, many difficulties.

The Government stated their policy position on mental incapacity in the 1997 consultation paper, Making Decisions. However, the only commitment forthcoming on this issue is that they will introduce legislation "when parliamentary time allows". Like other speakers, we believe that, five years on, the Government should take the opportunity to introduce legislation as soon as possible.

We are pleased that the Lord Chancellor's Department is pursuing work on mental capacity including beginning to look at drafting a Bill. That work also includes good practice guidance for professionals, which was recently published for consultation, and a consultative forum on mental incapacity.

However, as the noble Lord, Lord Rix, said, concern remains that a Bill to afford protection for some of the most vulnerable people in society will not be given the priority for legislative time that it clearly deserves. I also look forward to clarification of the Government's intentions from the Minister.

The law assumes that every adult has the mental capacity, or is competent, to make their own decisions if given the information, support and time to make their own choices. However, the law does not define capacity and we do not have a legal definition of when someone does not have the capacity to make their own decisions. This means that although very few people are totally unable to make any decisions, those who may need support to make decisions, or who are able to make some decisions and not others, are not adequately protected by the law.

People with autism spectrum disorders may have difficulty making and communicating decisions across a range of every day activities, from what to eat to how to spend their money. More profound decisions about where they live or what work they may be suited for may be taken for them as a matter of course. The National Autistic Society would like to see new legislation to ensure that people with autism spectrum disorders are supported to make as many decisions as possible and also to give their carers a legal right to have a say on decisions taken when they are unable to decide for themselves.

There does need to be greater legal protection for adults without mental capacity. Similarly, adults who have difficulty making or communicating some decisions must have a legal right to the support they need to make as many decisions as possible for themselves. It is particularly important for people with autism spectrum disorders that the proposed new legislation on sexual offences against people with a mental disorder includes a comprehensive and workable test of capacity.

As has been pointed out, the law in England and Wales lags behind that of Scotland where the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000 defines incapacity. The law here is unclear, inconsistent and fails to protect a person's right to make their own decisions. It fails to protect people from abuse when they cannot make their own decisions as a result of disability, illness or injury and has not kept up with changes in attitudes and understanding; for example, towards people with learning disabilities, as the noble Lord, Lord Rix, pointed out. Nor has the law kept up with advances in treatments and care which mean that people with Alzheimer's Disease are diagnosed earlier and remain independent for longer. There is also now new legislation—the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, mentioned the Human Rights Act—that the current law on decision-making does not take account of.

Furthermore, while it should be assumed that adults have the capacity to consent and that no one can consent on their behalf, in practice the principle is confused. For example, there have been cases where people, because of assumptions made about an individual's capacity, have been asked to give consent about an older relative's medical treatment. That denies people their basic right to make choices, and demonstrates the confusing situation faced by professionals and carers when dealing with the consent process.

The current legal situation does not provide people with adequate safeguards, even when an attorney can be appointed to make decisions. For example, a person might enter a care home and another person might be allowed to deal with their finances without official authority from the individual, the local authority or another official body. That demonstrates that, although there is legislation relating to finances in the enduring power of attorney, stronger protection measures are needed.

The cases of the Crown and Bournewood Community and Mental Health NHS Trust ex parte L highlighted the loophole in current legal protection for people with a mental disorder who lack capacity to consent to treatment and are informally detained in hospital. Section 131 of the Mental Health Act 1983 permits doctors to detain patients in hospital on the basis of common law without recourse to the safeguards in the Act. In this case, the plaintiff L was kept in hospital and prevented from seeing his carers and those closest to him for almost four months—far too long.

The current legal situation in England and Wales, as set out by Lord Justice Steyn in the House of Lords judgment, is that people who lack capacity to consent to treatment can be informally detained indefinitely on the opinion of a single doctor. There is no right of appeal for relatives or carers on this decision, nor is it subject to the review processes of the current Mental Health Act. Although the Government have published a draft mental health Bill that goes some way to addressing those concerns, those who have campaigned on L's behalf feel that the proposed new safeguards would have offered him little protection.

Legal protection for all people with impaired mental capacity would be provided if the Government implemented the policy position set out in their policy statement, Making Decisions. I urge the Government to give priority to introducing legislation on mental capacity. If possible, that should be done at the same time or, as the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, suggested, as part of the proposed mental health Bill.

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to have this debate, and thank all noble Lords who have participated. I particularly thank my noble friend Lord Ashley of Stoke not only for introducing the debate but for his kind acknowledgement of the efforts made by the Government to address the issue. Of course, I acknowledge the frustration that he feels, and that others have expressed, such as the noble Lord, Lord Rix, about the length of time that we have journeyed together towards this point.

We have had some moving contributions in today's debate. and I take the opportunity to thank all who have participated. They have all demonstrated not only their expertise but their special and personal experience of the difficult issues faced by those labouring under disability and by their carers and families. I mention particularly in that regard my noble friend Lord Ashley, the noble Lords, Lord Pearson, Lord Rix and Lord Astor, arid the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay.

I share the concerns that have been eloquently expressed this evening; we all share a common purpose. I have no hesitation whatever in saying to my noble friend Lord Ashley that the Government are sensitive to the fact that the law in this area has developed in a piecemeal fashion and does not always offer sufficient protection either for mentally incapacitated adults or for those who look after them. With that in mind, we recognise the importance of creating a new statutory framework within which decisions can be taken on behalf of adults without capacity.

We understand the concerns and anxieties expressed by my noble friend Lady Howells about addressing the needs of all those who suffer from mental illness incapacity or disability, and the special demands of culture and ethnicity in that regard.

On 9th December 2002, my honourable friend Rosie Winterton announced to the mental incapacity consultative forum of the Lord Chancellor's Department that work has begun on producing a draft mental incapacity Bill. I say to my noble friend Lord Ashley and other noble Lords that at this stage we cannot commit to when it will be published, nor has the situation on securing legislative time changed. However, this is an important first step to readiness. The draft Bill will be based upon the policies set out in Making Decisions and will use the draft Bill prepared by the Law Commission in 1995. That gives us a very good starting point. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that time spent on preparation will enable us to focus on what the legislation should look like.

I say straight away to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, that the Law Commission's recommendation, accepted in the Government's policy statement, "Who Decides?", was that new statutory provisions should apply to those aged 16 or over. Other government departments, such as the Department for Education and Skills, are involved in our consultative forum. It is important to discuss how any new legislation would interact with current legislation relating, for example, to special educational needs.

Thu draft Bill will not just be another academic piece of legislation. It will provide common-sense guidance to those working with people with impaired capacity, making sure that good practice is embedded into every decision. We will ensure that implementation is carefully and comprehensively managed so that the legislation makes a real difference to the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in our society. To do that takes time and we have used the time, since 1999, to good effect by identifying and working on projects that can make a difference now, as well as paving the way for legislation.

By working closely with stakeholders and listening to what they say—their concerns and problems—we can get it right the first time. Working together buys in the support that we need to make the legislation work on the ground. We will look with care at the experience in Scotland and try to learn from everything that is currently being done there.

We are all in agreement that such legislation is much needed to ensure that people lacking capacity retain as much autonomy as possible in making decisions in their everyday lives while also being protected by effective safeguards. The Government are all too aware that the current situation is far from satisfactory. There is a great deal of confusion as to how decisions should be made on behalf of those without capacity, leading to a lack of legal protection for both vulnerable incapacitated adults and those who care for them. That point was made by virtually every noble Lord who has spoken.

We are very aware that legislation must meet the many and diverse needs of everyone in our society, since it is a fact that almost all of us will suffer from incapacity ourselves at some time in our lives or help to care for someone who does. We are looking to empower and protect those who are born with impaired capacity, those who lose capacity suddenly through a head injury, those who develop a mental disorder and those who lose capacity in later life, a subject upon which the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, spoke so powerfully.

A draft Bill will be welcomed by the majority of people as a positive way of empowering and protecting those with mental impairment or incapacity. Some people, as indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Astor, will have reservations about some of the proposals for reform. They may have concerns about the proposals for healthcare, or may disagree about how the legislation will meet the needs of those with impaired capacity. But I am pleased to say that most people appear to be broadly supportive of the need for legislation on mental incapacity and how it can make real changes to the lives of many vulnerable people for the better.

As I have said, we have been doing work to make changes for the better now, which will also put us in a better position to take forward legislation. Working with stakeholders we have listened to their concerns and identified, with them—it is important to say that—what can be done to make the present situation better.

We have already increased physical accessibility to the law by establishing a regional Court of Protection in Preston. Having a local hearing makes sense on many counts. It saves time, costs and, above all, reduces the stress that a court appearance inevitably involves. This regional court has been successful and there will be other regional courts set up for hearing some mental incapacity cases. However, we must be sure of a consistent approach to the work. We must have good electronic links and supporting administration for the regional courts. So there is much to do—identifying and training judiciary and staff, developing procedures, installing links and heightening awareness as to the existence of these regional courts and the limits of their jurisdiction.

As the noble Lord, Lord Astor, said, we are publishing a series of new guidance leaflets based on existing practice and law and have recently finished a consultation exercise on those issues. These leaflets are both for people who have to make decisions on behalf of others and for people who want to provide for future help in decision making on their own behalf, should the need arise. These guidance leaflets provide a starting point for the code of practice that will support the legislation.

The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, raised the issue of how we will work together with our colleagues from the Department of Health. I can reassure the noble Lady that officials continue to work with colleagues in the Department of Health to ensure that any mental health legislation is consistent with the definitions of making decisions, and that legislation in any area that impacts on people with mental incapacity works in harmony with the proposed draft mental incapacity Bill. We shall do everything in our power to make sure that legislation is brought forward as quickly as possible. But, as noble Lords will appreciate, it is not always within our gift.

The proposals for making decisions will allow financial, personal, welfare and healthcare decisions to be made on behalf of mentally incapacitated adults. The current enduring powers of attorney apply only, as noble Lords have said, to financial decisions. But people with mental incapacity will be able to plan for a time when they may lose that capacity, by appointing another person to make those decisions for them under a continuing power of attorney. Perhaps I may say how very cogently I thought the case was put by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, about the real difficulties experienced with fluctuating capacity and the need continually to ensure that the last expressed view is actually the real view communicated by the person who may from time to time suffer from that incapacity. We are determined that our proposals should not lead the way—through the back or any other door—to euthanasia. The noble Baroness may be confident that that is not our intent.

We have come a long way. In closing, I must say that the forum that we have set up provides a useful setting for operational and policy discussions. The practical experiences and expertise of forum members, many of whom work with or care for vulnerable adults, will help us to build appropriate safeguards into a framework that ensures that decisions are made in a caring and transparent way and are focused on safeguarding the best interests of all involved. Forum members will also ensure that we are constantly reminded of the practical considerations that the implementation of future legislation must address. All the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, will be addressed and discussed together, with the forum as one of the vehicles that we will be able to use.

I thank all noble Lords present. I almost feel like saying, "We few, we precious few". People in the House tonight have been on this journey for a long time, but we have been in the very best of company.