HC Deb 06 October 1931 vol 257 cc1049-56
The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Ramsay MacDonald)

I beg to move, That further proceedings on the London Passenger Transport Bill be suspended till the next Session of Parliament: That on any day in that Session a Motion may be made, after notice, by a Minister of the Crown, to be decided without amendment or debate, that proceedings on that Rill may be resumed: If that Motion is decided in the affirmative, Mr. Speaker shall proceed to call upon the Minister in charge to present the Bill in the form in which it stood when the proceedings thereon were suspended, and the Bill shall be ordered to be printed and all Standing Orders applicable shall be deemed to have been complied with and the Bill shall be deemed to have been read a Second time, and to have been reported from a Joint Committee of Lords and Commons, and shall stand; re-committed to a Committee of the whole House. I need not describe this Bill; it has been before the House and has received a very large measure of support. There is, however, an opposition to it, which prevented us from getting it this Session, but the Government are under the impression that there la a real desire that the Bill should remain alive until next Session. It is a large Measure of a constructive character. It is based upon agreements between railway companies, underground companies, public authorities, tramway companies and so on, and, if it were to be dropped now, it matters not what Government is in office, this problem of London traffic must be dealt with. The procedure that we suggest is a very well established one. In 1903, for instance, a Motion similar to that which I am now moving was made with regard to the Port of London Authority Bill, which was then before the House, and on that occasion Mr. Balfour made this observation: I have to say that I do not think it would be practicable, at the present period of the Session and in the present state of public business, to proceed with the discussion of this Bill on Report. On the other hand, it is quite clear that the Bill, for all essential purposes, ought to be ranked as a Private Bill and treated as a Private Bill, so that the immense expenditure incurred by persons interested in the Bill should not be entirely thrown away, as it would be if the Bill were dropped. I propose, therefore, to apply to this Bill the practice which this House has so long sanctioned in regard to Private Bills, and I shall put down a Motion the effect of which will be to carry it over till next Session and to enable the Government to resume it next Session at the precise point at which we leave it this Session. That is exactly what I am asking the House to do at the present moment. I might also remind the House that, at the end of the last Parliament, the London Traffic Bills promoted by the London County Council and the underground companies were allowed to be carried over. If this Motion be carried, it will apply irrespective of the Dissolution of Parliament, and, therefore, when we return, we shall be able to take up the Bill and, I hope, come to a, satisfactory conclusion regarding it.

Mr. A. V. ALEXANDER

I should like to say that on this side of the House we welcome the decision of the Government with respect to this Bill, to carry over the later stages of its consideration to the next Session. The Prime Minister said that the procedure was well established, but, of course, the number of precedents is small, though, it is quite true that the particular instances which he mentioned are just the kind of instances which would justify the procedure in this case. Anyone who has any interest at all in the reorganisation of London traffic and the co-ordination that is necessary before one gets anything like public ownership, which was the underlying principle in the Bill, knows that it would be exceedingly wasteful to lose all the time and expense which have been incurred in the course of the proceedings on this Bill. However, I am bound to say, and I am sure the Prime Minister will not mind my saying it, that I think it is a very great pity that this is the only Bill which his Government has seen fit to carry over into next Session. [Interruption.] I was coming to one or two instances. The Bills which have already passed through this House and have been held up in another place are Bills which have progressed so far, and in respect of which so much time and energy has been expended, that it would certainly be justifiable to carry them over—[Interruption.]

Mr. MacLAREN

It is contemptible humbug to use a phrase like that.

HON. MEMBERS

Withdraw!

Mr. ALEXANDER

All that I want to point out is that, if it is open to the present Government to make use of precedents in order to carry over this Bill, however desirable it is, it is also open to them to conserve the expenditure of time and money that has already been given to Bills like the Town and Country Planning Bill, the Agricultural Land (Utilisation) Bill, and the Consumers' Council Bill; and, if the Government had had the will to do it, they could have passed all of these three Bills in the comparatively few hours which they have taken to force through other Measures not so popular and not so needed in the opinion of some in the country. At the same time, I want to make it clear that on this particular occasion we welcome the decision in the case of this particular Bill.

Mr. HARRIS

When this Bill came before the House for Second Reading, I criticised it rather severely, but I said at the time that I thought it ought to go to a Hybrid Committee. I would remind the House that the Bill is not a Private Bill, but a Bill promoted by the Government but considered by a Hybrid Committee and not by a Committee of the whole House. There is still the Report stage, and the next Parliament will be in a position to amend, alter, modify and, I hope, improve the Bill. I see looking at me with admiration my right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education. He, too, was a considerable critic of this Bill—an even more severe critic that I was. I am not quite sure that he did not vote against the Second Reading. I did not go so far as that—[Interruption.] My right hon. Friend criticised me severely, and, in doing so, even went so far as to give a free advertisement to a book of mine on London government. But we live and learn. I realise that £46,000 of public money has been spent in promoting this Bill. That is very good for the lawyers and the expert witnesses, but we do not want all of it to be wasted. It is a remarkable and interesting thing that we have seen the various interests, companies and otherwise, squared successfully by a Labour Minister of Transport—a very remarkable achievement on his part; but I think we can still leave to the next House of Commons an opportunity to make the Bill more democratic in sympathy and more in touch with the needs of the country, and I think we are quite justified in following the procedure recommended by the Prime Minister.

Sir BASIL PETO

As one of the two Members representing the Conservative party who had the honour of serving on the Hybrid Committee on this Bill, I am very conscious of what the Prime Minister has said with regard to the immense expenditure of time and money that has already been incurred in connection with the Bill. The Hybrid Committee sat for, I think, 36 days, and they were real day sittings, culminating in one which commenced at 10.30 in the morning and terminated at 10.30 at night, being the final sitting on the Bill. As the Bill left the Hybrid Committee., the two House of Commons Members of the Conservative party were not satisfied with the form in which the Bill is in its central features, namely, the method of appointment of the board and the complete control of the board by the Minister. Neither did that satisfy the county council, who had very great interests in the Bill. But those points of difference do not affect the question which is now before the House, namely, that the Bill should be carried over to a future Parliament. It seems to me to be quite clearly in the public interest that Parliament should decide what shall be the final fate and the final form of a Bill on which an immense amount of public time and public money has been spent. I cannot agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Alexander) that there is any parallel between this Bill and the other Bills which have proceeded through the ordinary stages in this House and are now before the other House—Bills which were put forward by the party who were then in power, which were hotly contested—

Mr. SPEAKER

This Motion is simply one to carry over this particular Bill; we cannot discuss other Bills.

Sir B. PETO

I was only answering the precise words used by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillsborough. I wish to say nothing more than that, in my view, the only point that he made in his speech, namely, that the Prime Minister should have gone further and used the same procedure to carry over a number of other Bills, has no weight whatever, because there is no other Bill that is in any way parallel to this one. I am very glad that the Prime Minister has brought forward this Motion. I am glad to think that the whole of that long attendance in Committee is not to be entirely wasted, for the proceedings of that Committee were undoubtedly almost unprecedented as regards the immense amount of expense incurred in counsel's and other fees. Therefore, I feel confident that the House will say that this is a wise Motion, and one which is in the public interest.

Mr. G. HARDIE

This Resolution is put forward on the basis of the amount of money that has been expended and that it would not be good business to let it drop. I take it that the reason behind it is really that this is going to be good for the country and for the unemployed. The Agricultural Land (Utilisation) Bill would also have provided work for the unemployed.

Mr. SPEAKER

I ruled just D OW that we are not concerned with other Bills, but only with the Bill mentioned in the Motion.

Mr. HARDIE

May I raise another point on the same issue. To those who have followed the proceedings in regard to this Bill and the investigations into the London Traffic Bill of a previous Government, it is quite easy to see that what is taking place now is just another instance of the power of the rampers outside compelling the Prime Minister and the supposed National Government to use their political power to further the interests of this ramp. It is all very well to make excuses about carrying over things that are essential. A remark was made about running away, but who ran away from these essential Bills on which the nation was depending for its reconstruction so far as employment in agriculture was concerned?

Mr. SPEAKER rose—

Mr. BUCHANAN

I am not quite sure that we should accept the Resolution, but I do not intend to oppose it. The Prime Minister mentioned the London Traffic Bill of the last Conservative Government—which was carried over. When the new Government of which he was the head came in, one of the first things that it did was to scrap that Bill and, therefore, the analogy that he uses is not an analogy for to-day, or, if it is, it is an analogy for every other Bill that the late Government brought in. The new Government can scrap this Bill if it does not want it, and that argument applies to all the other Bills on which public money has been expended. Surely, the claim of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Alexander) is sound, that all those Bills might equally well have been carried over. But it raises another issue—the assumption that the next Government is likely to deal with the problem in more or less the same way. I think the next Government will be a Socialist Government, and I hope it will deal with the problem in an entirely different manner. The Prime Minister used the taunt in reply to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillsborough that he had run away. I have seen the Prime Minister at work for close on 20 years. I hope he will not run away from the party he is now leading as he has run away from every other party. He is the last person to talk about running away, because his record in running away is the worst in the country.

Ordered, That further proceedings on the London Passenger Transport Bill be suspended till the next Session of Parliament.

Ordered, That on any day in that Session a Motion may be made, after notice, by a Minister of the Crown, to be decided without amendment or debate, that proceedings on that Bill may be resumed: If that Motion is decided in the affirmative, Mr. Speaker shall proceed to call upon the Minister in charge to present the Bill in the form in which it stood when the proceedings thereon were suspended, and the Bill shall be ordered to be printed and all Standing Orders applicable shall he deemed to have been complied with and the Bill shall be deemed to have been read a Second time, and to have been reported from a Joint Committee of Lords and Commons, and shall stand re-committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Ordered, That this Order be a Standing Order of the House.