CLAUSE 2.—(Delegation of certain functions of Secretary of State as respects civil aviation.) (Hansard, 25 June 1936)

§ Sir P. SASSOON
I beg to move, in page 2, line 19, after "be," to insert:
"so constituted as to consist of—
(a) persons."
This Amendment, taken in conjunction with the one that follows, is in accordance with an undertaking given in Committee. The hon. Member for Central Bradford (Mr. Leach) moved an Amendment to provide for the appointment by the Secretary of State of an independent member of the Board, and I have put it down as an official Amendment. The second abject of the batch of Amendments of which this forms the first provides that the board shall include a member who has had not less than five years' professional experience as—

Lieut.-Colonel MOORE BRABAZON
On a point of Order. May I call your attention to the fact that although you have put the question "That those words be there inserted, the Clause as moved by the Under-Secretary has never been put to the House.

§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Captain Bourne)
I am afraid I do not quite follow the hon. and gallant Gentleman.

§ Lieut.-Colonel MOORE-BRABAZON
An Amendment was moved by an hon. Gentleman on the other side of the House to leave out "(if any) as may" and to insert "to," and that is what we have been talking about. That Amendment was negatived by you from the Chair, but we have never had put before the House the original Amendment as moved by my right hon. Friend.

§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER
I think the hon. and gallant Gentleman must be under a misapprehension. Unless Subsection (3) had been left out, it would not have been in order to move the proposed Amendment to the new Sub-sections that it was proposed to put in its place.

§ Lieut.-Colonel MOORE-BRABAZON
But that is an Amendment to the substantive Motion here on the Paper, which has never been before the House.

§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER
The hon. and gallant Gentleman has not quite followed it. Unless the original Subsection had been omitted, it would not have been in order to move an Amendment that the proposed new Sub-sections should be inserted in place of the old one. The House agreed to leave out the words, 2059 and rejected an Amendment to amend the words which it was proposed to insert.

§ Mr. EDE
Surely what happened was that the original Sub-section (3) was left out, and then the right hon. Gentleman the Under-Secretary formally moved to insert the other words. An Amendment was moved by my hon. Friend the Member for North Aberdeen (Mr. Garro Jones), and that was the Amendment on which the Division took place. That Amendment was declared by you from the Chair defeated. I suggest that you did not put the question that the proposed new Subsection be there inserted.

§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER
The hon. Member for North Shields (Mr. Ede) is under a misapprehension. After the Division I put the question, "That those words be there inserted."

§ Sir P. SASSOON
I was pointing out that one of these Amendments provides that there is to be one person who has had at least five years' professional experience as a pilot of civil aircraft.

Captain GUEST
On a point of Order. At what moment in the moving of these Amendments by the Under-Secretary of State will those who wish to speak have an opportunity to do so? Will it be as he moves them one by one?

§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER
I am somewhat in the hands of the House. If hon. Members wish to raise points upon individual Amendments, we had better take them separately. We can deal at this moment with points that relate to the original statement of the Minister. As far as I can make out, the Amendment we are discussing is consequential to the one concerning the appointment of one independent person by the Secretary of State.

§ Sir P. SASSOON
I beg to move, in page 2, line 22, after "aircraft)," to insert: and (b) at least one person appointed by the Secretary of State as being an independent person.

§ Mr. EVERARD
I should like to ask one question. Under the new board which is being set up, there are, so to speak, four panels. There are four instructors, 2060 four nominees of the operators, and four nominees of the insurance companies. I understand that these 12 are to elect four other members outside those interests. Is this particular person, who is to be put in independently of those interests, to be one of the four to be elected by the other 12, or is he an extra one, appointed by the Secretary of State himself?

§ Sir P. SASSOON
He will be an extra member.

§ Sir P. SASSOON
I beg to move, in page 2, line 32, at the end, to insert: Provided that any such body as aforesaid shall be so constituted as to include among its members at least one person who has had not less than five years' professional experience as a pilot of civil aircraft. This provision complies with an undertaking which I gave to the hon. and gallant Member for the Drake Division (Captain Guest) in reply to a proposal which he submitted as to the representation of pilots on the board.

Captain GUEST
I rise to thank the Under-Secretary for having come to an agreement with those who were trying to put the case of the professional pilot, and to welcome very much the way in which he has inserted the provision into the Bill, but I cannot pass by this Amendment quite so rapidly as he has done. There is a great deal of misunderstanding, certainly among those outside the House who are concerned with the carrying out of this great Bill, first of all, as to how this original body was set up. We have had only a very short sentence, given to us a few weeks ago by the Solicitor-General. According to the OFFICIAL REPORT, he said: In August, 1934, letters were sent to the principal aviation interests inviting them to form a representative committee to frame a scheme for the consideration of the Secretary of State, and a committee was formed under the chairmanship of Mr. Handley Page for this express purpose."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th May, 1936; col. 1759, Vol. 312.] 2061 That is all that we were told. Those of us who have to find out things as best we can have more or less come to the conclusion that two very big organisations in the country, one the Society of British Aircraft Constructors—

§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER
I hardly think that we are entitled, on this Amendment, to deal with that matter.

Captain GUEST
I will not go beyond your Ruling, but, if the pilot who joins this board is to be of any independent value, he must be nominated by someone other than his employer, because otherwise he becomes merely a delegate or nominee. I will not go over the speech I delivered when the Under-Secretary saw the point and very kindly surrendered, but I would ask him to give us a little further information as to who is going to nominate this independent pilot. I have mentioned the Society of British Aircraft Constructors in order to draw the attention of the House to the fact that they were approached as a body, and have nominated their people. Coming to the operators, we must guess, because we do not know, but in all probability Imperial Airways will hold the field and will nominate people to represent them as operators. We know now that there are to be four independent persons, and I presume that the pilot referred to in the Under-Secretary's Amendment is to be an independent person, but I am not in a position to say to my own pilots—I have the honour of representing the Guild of Air Pilots—that the distinction has been conferred upon them or upon some other body, for the nomination will be of an independent character. I do not see any sense in nominating a pilot who is a servant of one of the operators or one of the constructors if we are to get a fair deal and if the pilots' point of view is to receive proper consideration.
I think we are entitled to ask the Under-Secretary definitely whether he is going to appoint the pilot in question. I do not mind if he does, but, if the pilot is appointed by his own employer, he will not dare to say that a machine is badly constructed or flies badly, because he would lose his job. Therefore, I ask for a definite statement from the Under-Secretary as to how the nomination is going to be made, and I press this point because I think it is only fair 2062 to the public, seeing that it is the pilot who takes care of the public. The operator stands on the ground, and so does the constructor, but the pilot does the work. It is the pilot who takes care of the lives of the human beings who entrust themselves to his care, and, if he is not independent, he might just as well not be on the board at all. If the Under-Secretary cannot see his way to reply now on this point, I shall raise it again on the Third Reading.

§ Mr. MONTAGUE
The question which the right hon. and gallant Gentleman has raised is a very important one. The Under-Secretary will remember that he has just said, in reply to a question, that the person appointed by the Secretary of State as an independent person would be in addition to the members of the last of the four sections comprising the board, and the Clause itself says that he shall be appointed by the Secretary of State. It is very significant that as regards the pilot there is no indication as to whether he is to be in addition to the 16 or whether he is to be just one of those four who are co-opted by the other 12, and I think we should have an assurance upon that point. I should like to take this opportunity of adding my thanks on behalf of the Opposition to the Under-Secretary for meeting us on these two points so well as he has. So far as that goes, it makes the Bill a better Bill than it was.

§ Lieut.-Colonel MOORE-BRABAZON
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for the Drake Division (Captain Guest) on having persuaded the Under-Secretary to include a pilot in this body. I represent the Royal Aeronautical Society, and I put before them the question whether they wished to be represented on such a panel. They said that they did not. I think that the claims of societies to be represented on a panel like this are really as substantial as those of the pilots, but from a Parliamentary point of view we are in a, little difficulty, because, in setting up statutory bodies of this kind in a Bill like this, it, is usual to state in the Bill itself who is to represent what. Here, however, we have a very extraordinary state of affairs, in which the Secretary of State may by 2063 Order proceed to delegate to a body appearing to him to be substantially representative. In other words, he will look about for a body which happens to coincide with his desires. That would be a very extraordinary thing if it had not happened that, long before this Bill was adumbrated, the industry itself had set up a body, rather similar to Lloyds' in the insurance world, which was actually dealing with risks and issuing certificates of airworthiness. That disappeared, but some of the gentlemen who were on that organisation met and decided that the organisation should go on. In re-forming that organisation, it has, of course, to be re-formed according to the desires of the Minister, because otherwise it would not be a body appearing to him to be substantially representative, and I take it that obviously it will include a representative of the pilots in addition to the fourth section, which itself is additional to the three other sections which are the foundation of the panel.

§ Mr. EVERARD
My right hon. and gallant Friend appears to take a rather different view from myself. He draws attention to the fact that the pilots are not mentioned as an association, but I would point out that none of the other associations is mentioned in the Bill; there is no mention of the Society of British Aircraft Constructors, Imperial Airways or anyone else. The whole thing is being organised, I understand, by this authority which has been convened by the Secretary of State, and is now busily engaged in setting up its own organisation, with representatives of different bodies. The whole question seems to me to boil down to this: Is this extra representative to be additional to the 16? There is already to be a 17th representative; will he be the 18th, or is the Secretary of State going to have some say with the board in order to earmark one of the last category of four in the 16 as this particular pilot? It does not seem to make very much difference really. I have the greatest confidence in my right hon. Friend, and know that the pilot will be someone who will be independent.
Therefore, as far as I am concerned, I have no objection to making the num- 2064 ber 18 instead of 16. But I think it would be a pity to put in the name of any particular organisation. If that were done, the Royal Aero Club, of which at the moment I have the honour to be the chairman, would, I am sure, expect to be included, and no doubt every organisation would expect its name to be put into the Bill. The only point that really arises is whether this person is to be nominated by the Secretary of State or is to be co-opted by the other members of the body. I have no feeling in the matter at all, but I should imagine that it would be better that he should be nominated by the Secretary of State as an extra member.

§ Mr. EDE
The desire was expressed in Committee that a person should be on this board as a pilot. It may well be that on the list that the Minister receives from the various bodies there will be someone nominated who incidentally may be a pilot. He will not have been appointed because he is a pilot but because he represents one of these three major interests and happens to have the requisite amount of professional service as a pilot. I do not think that the recognition of such a person as fulfilling the requirement of this Amendment would be quite carrying out the spirit of the discussion that we had in Committee. I think it was the sense of the Committee that we should have a person who would be more or less nominated by some such body as that of which the hon. Member for the Drake Division (Captain Guest) is the president, who could be regarded as representative of pilots and who would be speaking for them. I hope it may be possible that this person may not be taken from the persons representative of other interests but may be an 18th member who shall be on because he is a pilot and for no other reason.

§ Sir P. SASSOON
I thought when I moved the Amendment that it would completely satisfy my right hon. and gallant Friend, because these are exactly the words that I used on the last occasion, when I made this concession, and he thanked me very much for them. I was, therefore, surprised to find to-day that it did not meet in any way with his approval. It is obvious from the discussion that we have had that the sense 2065 of the House is that we should have a representative of pilots on the board—definitely a representative of independent pilots—and that if the other groups on the board were to nominate him it might lead—although I do not agree—to the appointment of someone who was sufficiently under their control for him not to be able to bring to bear the full measure of independent assistance and experience that might be necessary. I am, therefore, willing to meet my right hon. and gallant Friend to this extent that he should be an independent member nominated by the Secretary of State.

§ Sir P. SASSOON
I beg to move, in page 2, line 40, at the end, to insert: but the revocaton of such an Order shall be without prejudice to the making of a now Order under this Section. This is to meet a suggestion of the hon. Member for North Hammersmith (Mr. Pritt).

§ The SOLICITOR-GENERAL
I beg to move, in page 2, line 40, after the words last inserted, to insert: (3) No Order delegating or entrusting any functions to such a body as aforesaid shall be made under this Section unless, at least twenty days previously, a draft of the Order has been laid before each House of Parliament, and if either House, within twenty days from the day on which a draft of such Order is laid before it, resolves that it is inexpedient that an Order in terms of the draft should be made, no further proceedings shall be taken thereon, without prejudice, however, to the making of a new draft Order. In reckoning any period of twenty days for the purposes of this Sub-section, no account shall be taken of any time during which Parliament is dissolved or prorogued, or during which both Houses of Parliament are adjourned for more than four days. This is to implement an undertaking that I gave to the hon. Member for West Islington (Mr. Montague), who asked for a promise that we would turn into proper form an Amendment of his with regard to laying the orders of the board before Parliament. That is being done and this is the Amendment.