§ 7.5 p.m.
§ Lord GEORGE-BROWN rose to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the Town and Country Planning (Industrial Development Certificates: Exemption) (No. 2) Order 1974, laid before the House on 6th December last, be annulled. The noble Lord said: My Lords, may I say to the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, whom I knew in another capacity and under a different name and with whom I often contended about an industry in which we were both tremendously interested, how much I appreciated what he said and 1058 how much I was on his side about it. It was nice, as my noble friend Lord Beswick said, that he paid a tribute to Tom Williams. I was going to say that, Tommy Dugdale apart—but I do not know whether I am allowed to say that —I think Tom Williams was the best Minister of Agriculture that we have had. He really cared about the trees and about afforestation.
§ I hope the noble Lord will not mind my saying that each of us has his own idea about what is the most important issue on any particular day. I owe the House and also my noble friend Lord Beswick an apology, for having put down very late last night this Motion, which results in keeping here those Members of the House who do not have pressing engagements elsewhere and putting my noble friend to the nuisance of having to answer two debates, one after the other. I apologise; but it is not my fault.
§ With your Lordships' permission, I should like to explain why I am doing this. I think it is constitutionally very important. In terms of merit, I am not sure about the annulment of this Order. I have an idea that when I was last a Minister for Economic Affairs, which was eleven years ago, I then took the same view that the Government are now taking. It does not, of course, follow from that that I would take the same view today, eleven years later. So in asking your Lordships to annul the Order I am not seeking to take a position or invite my colleagues to take a position on the merits of the Order. Clearly, there are arguments either way, and both are respectable. But what I do know is that all the Labour Members of the London Group in the House of Commons are against it. They may be right, they may be wrong. Moreover, as my noble friend knows, we are nowadays, differently from yesterday, greatly in favour of manifestos and conference decisions.
§ I also know that not only are the Labour Members of the London Group against this Order but that the Greater London Council, which is Labourcontrolled, are against it. I also know that the Regional Council of the Labour Party in this area are against it. I myself would not argue strongly about it, except that in these days the Labour Party believes in Conference decisions. I also know that trade union authorities 1059 in the Greater London area are against it. Even that would not persuade me, nor would it persuade my noble friend, necessarily to accept what they say. He is like me—a dissident—but neither of us would be elected if we had to be elected on that basis. However, I have to draw his attention to the fact that a great deal has changed in the last 11 years since I was the Minister responsible for the economy of this country. I am told on very good authority that the numbers employed in manufacturing industry in the Greater London area fell in the 10 years between 1961 and 1971 by 400,000, which is 25 per cent, of the total. I am also told that in the year 1971–72 alone the numbers employed in manufacturing industry fell by another 60,000. The worry of my colleagues and, if the noble Lord will permit me to use the phrase, "our comrades" in the other place, is that if we go on in this way, there will ultimately be no blue collar workers in the London area. It will become a service area.
§ What does this Order propose? It proposes that as against the 10,000 sq. ft. limit which the Conservative Government imposed—above which special arrangements have to be made—the limit should be moved to 5,000. That is what the Conservative Government did in 1972: they increased the limit from 5,000 to 10,000. If my noble friend will not hold it against me—which I am sure he would not do because he is such a nice man—in my day it was 3,000. So it went from 3,000 to 5,000 and the Conservatives took it to 10,000, beyond which one needed to go through special machinery. This Order proposes to take it back to 5,000, despite the fact that all these industrial jobs have been lost in the meantime. So that is the basis for my asking the House to be kind enough to spend a few minutes on this subject tonight.
§ I now have to explain why it had to be tonight, having put down the Motion only last evening. I find this to be an extraordinary situation. This Order was originally made in October last year. Then it had to be remade with the coming of the new Parliament. There was a Prayer put down by the London Members of Parliament—not just Labour Members —and they were told that time would 1060 be found for them to pray against the Order. Alas! time was not found for that and something happened which I can describe only as a "schlemozzle" in the other House—there must be another more literate word for that, but I know what I mean by it—and the authorities said to my honourable friends in that place: "Don't worry, we will put the Order down again." My honourable friends in another place assumed that no Government would make an Order—the very same Order—twice, unless they meant to find time for Members to pray against it.
§ So in all that total innocence which my noble friend, when he was the Member for Uxbridge, shared with me— though, of course, both of us have now grown out of that in this House—my honourable friends assumed that they need not do any more. The Government relaid the Order. We have now sat for 80 days, not 40, plus a little bit from the "overgrowth" of the last Parliament. This is the last possible day, but still they have not been given a chance to pray against the Order. I repeat that I do not truly know on which side of the argument I would have been, but I think it is approaching sharp practice—even though the sharp practice was inadvertent in the case of my Government (it would have been deliberate in the case of any other)—to put down the Order a second time and still not provide an opportunity to debate it.
§ Therefore I offer my apologies to your Lordships for raising the subject, but there was no other time in which to do it. It so happens that I was consulted yesterday by the chairman of the Greater London Group of London Members of Parliament. That I happen to know him personally in another capacity is, of course, neither here nor there; but he consulted me late last night and I then consulted the Chief Whip in another place. It is not for me to give away any confidences that passed. Old colleagues talk to each other quite frequently, as we have noticed from the Crossman Diaries, though not everybody records the conversation; it is my view that the Chief Whip in another place, who is himself a London Member, would not be upset if the House did what I am inviting it to do tonight. I am supported by a very 1061 useful, a very important and a very distinguished body of opinion.
§
In the 1971–72 Session, the two Houses set up a Joint Committee on Delegated Legislation. It was presided over, by agreement, by our noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor, who I wish were here tonight. The Committee spent a lot of time looking at this subject. Obviously one of their great problems was that the weight of delegated legislation is overcoming the other House. Paragraph 28 of their Report says:
But, above all, your Committee's concern has been to devise proposals which will safeguard the rights of the Private Member, who has been deprived of some of them by the growing pressure of Government business over the past few years.
I stop there in order to say that it is not "the Private Member "; it is the Members who represent what must surely be a third of this country. It continues:
Present arrangements do not guarantee it"—
" it" being the right to raise the matter—
and that is why changes are necessary. If Ministers can make law by way of statutory instruments and Members of Parliament find they are without any opportunity to debate some of these instruments, Parliamentary control over delegated legislation is illusory.
I repeat that I am not on the merits of this Order. I am on the point that certain Members of Parliament, representing what must be a third of this country, wish to pray; they thought they could pray in the first 40 days; found they could not; thought they were offered another 40 days, and still find they cannot. And on this, the very last day, the only place in our Parliamentary arrangements where a right may be put to this wrong is in this way.
§ I say to my noble friend that I am looking just for a way out. He knows me quite well. He knows that if need be I would not hesitate to divide the House against this Order, and I would hope to be followed. If I divided the House against this Order, the only result that would follow is that the Government would need to lay the Order again. If they laid it again they would presumably get in touch with my honourable friend the Chairman of the Greater London Group of Labour Members of Parliament and say, "Let us have a chat about 1062 it", and presumably arrange for a debate. If the Minister, my old friend and very close friend, were able to say to me: "All right. Don't worry too much. You've made your point. I will see to it that a debate will take place down there ", that would be the end of the business so far as this evening is concerned. But failing that I would invite the whole House, all Party politics aside, to join with me to stop an arrogance. I do not think it is an arrogance of Ministers. It could quite easily be an arrogance of bureaucrats who think they can offer sops to Members of Parliament, who might well think they can get away with it at the end of the day.
§ I came up to this House not quite knowing what it would be like. I happen to believe that the British Parliamentary system requires two Houses. I happen to believe this is one of the things we could well do—put a check on the bureaucracy and on the Executive, and say:" Well, think again. We won't destroy it."
§ Just before I sit down, my Lords, I must say one other word to my noble friend in case he uses this point against me. I believe there have been only 14 Prayers against Orders—so I am told in the Committee's Report—over a very long time; and I believe that only one caused a lot of trouble. That was the one concerning Southern Rhodesia. There is a difference between this Motion and that one. I am not challenging the merits of the case; Lord Salisbury and his friends were. I am asking this House only to use its influence to give the other House a chance to do what it is supposed to be able to do: to let Members pray against an Order by the Executive and divide on it if they need to do so. Having been a Minister myself for quite a long time, I would say it is a very good check on a Minister for him to be told: "You cannot be sure you can get through simply by not allowing fellows a chance to vote." I hope that my noble friend, indeed my personal friend, will be able to say to me: "George, don't fuss. Time will be found for a debate in the other House." If he says that, the debate can end now. But if he does not, I must tell my old and noble friend that I shall ask the House to follow me into the Lobby.
§ Moved, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that 1063 the Town and Country Planning (Industrial Development Certificates: Exemption) (No. 2) Order 1974, laid before the House on 6th December last, be annulled. —(Lord George-Brown.)
§ Lord BESWICKMy Lords, does the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, wish to make a contribution, because I was going to respond fairly quickly to the invitation extended by my noble friend.
§ Lord DRUMALBYNThen, my Lords, perhaps I may ask the noble Lord this question. We have listened with great delight to the noble Lord, Lord GeorgeBrown, and this is obviously not in any way a Party political matter, because there are some Labour Members and some Conservative Members in the areas concerned. But what I was a little puzzled about was whether in fact a Prayer had ever been put on the Order Paper in the other place. It would be unusual in my experience to wait until you were given an assurance that time would be given to debate an Order in another place before you put the Order on the Paper. This Order could have been put down by either side, or by both sides, in another place and then the time might have been given. The noble Lord, Lord GeorgeBrown, did not inform us whether or not an Order was on the Order Paper.
§ Lord BESWICKMy Lords, I can probably answer that point. The Order was laid and a Prayer against it was put down, but no time was found—
§ Lord DRUMALBYNMy Lords, I am much obliged.
§ Lord BESWICK— for the Prayer to be moved. That was the position and it is not an unknown position to occur. Nevertheless, may I say that I fully appreciate why my noble friend has not been able to raise this matter until tonight, because until tonight he could not have been certain—we were not certain—that time would not have been found in another place to discuss it. Although I could make, I suppose, a debating point that there have been 80 days in which one could have come here to pray against the Order, the fact is, as my noble friend said, that we use this power very carefully indeed; and so far as a Division is concerned, by convention we have not in fact in this place used the power at all.
1064 My noble friend asked whether I could give him an assurance. I understood him to say that he would accept my personal assurance and that it would be based upon the knowledge which we have had of each other over very many years. He will recognise that it would be wrong of me to go into matters of management in another place. I have reason to believe that there will be a debate in another place, and I can give him the assurance for which he asks. On that basis, I hope that he will probably find it possible to withdraw the Motion.
§ Lord AVEBURYMy Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord George-Brown, withdraws his Motion, may I ask whether the undertaking which has just been given means that the Order will be laid for a third time in another place, so that the persons who were hoping to have the debate there can do so on the same basis as they would have done before?
§ Lord BESWICKMy Lords, I am not quite sure how much one ought to go into detail about management in another place. However, I understand that the Prayer has now been changed into a Motion and that time will be found for debating that Motion.
§ Lord GEORGE-BROWNMy Lords, my noble friend having said very clearly that he and I understand each other, and that time will be found for debate in another place, which must mean that the managers in the other place will organise matters so that time can be found, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
§ Motion, by leave, withdrawn.