HC Deb 08 July 1943 vol 390 cc2384-404
Sir Harold Webbe (Westminster, Abbey)

I beg to move, That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty praying that the Order in Council, dated 20th May, 1943, made under the Emergency Powers (Defence) Acts, 1930 and 1940, amending Regulation 55 of, and adding Regulation 55AA to, the Defence (General) Regulations, 1939, a copy of which was presented to this House on 25th May, be annulled. A week or so ago, on the Motion of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Penryn and Falmouth (Major Petherick) this House reaffirmed its duty to watch vigilantly any delegation of its own legislative authority and to scrutinise the use which was made of such delegated powers. In the course of the Debate on that occasion attention was drawn to one statutory Order in particular, No. 102, which had been made by the President of the Board of Trade under Defence Regulation 55. That Order, in the view of a number of hon. Members and myself, not only went far beyond what was necessary for the effective prosecution of the war, but also contained provisions which we considered threatened the proper right of the individual subject to conduct his business in his own way, subject only to the over-riding consideration of the national interest. In his speech in reply the Home Secretary informed the House that the Government had decided, in view of the representations which had been made, to revoke this Order No. 102 and to introduce a new Defence Regulation which would render it unnecessary and would meet some of the points of criticism which had been made against the old Regulation 55 and the Order No. 102 made under it.

That promise has been implemented, and the new Defence Regulation 55AA is now before the House. I would like to say at once that in my view the new Regulation is very much better than the old one, and still more is it better than the Order No. 102, which, by fixing the attention of hon. Members on what could be done under Regulation 55, brought this whole matter to a head. The new Regulation is much more definite than the old one. It sets out much more clearly the intentions of the Regulation, the purpose it is intended to fulfil and the manner in which it should be operated. One particularly obnoxious provision of No. 102, which called on members of the staffs of industrial undertakings to procure the means of access to documents and articles required for inspection, has disappeared. I am not at all sure whether that provision was not all the time ultra vires. That point has never been checked, and I doubt whether it could ever have been put to the test because it is one of the persistent characteristics of this delegated legislation that pains are always taken to put the Minister so far as possible outside any control of the courts. We thought we had got rid of things like the Henry VIII clause, and I am surprised to see something very like it turn up in the Foreign Service Bill. We got rid of that clause which enabled a Minister to validate his acts merely by doing them. We now have a new type of clause, which is becoming common, which enables a Minister to validate almost anything merely by stating that in his opinion it is in the interests of the country that he should do what he proposes. All these devices to get round that bugbear of administration, the doctrine of the separation of powers, have been frowned on. I am certain that the Executive will continue the struggle, and I hope that this House will continue to fight against it, because, however much it may be the bugbear of administration, it is a fundamental necessity of any democratic Constitution.

All this is to the good, and I want to express my personal appreciation of the trouble which Ministers have taken and particularly thank my right hon. Friend the Lord President, who has given so much personal attention to this matter. The promise made by the Home Secretary has been carried out, and I would like to mention two consequences of the fulfilment of that promise. The first I mention with a good deal of pleasure. When I personally interested myself first in this matter I took a shot at an attractive looking blackbird called No. 102. To my astonishment, I found that my shot brought down a whole rookery of at least 65 birds in it, because the Orders made, consequent on the revision of Regulation 55, to revoke No. 102 also revoked no fewer than 64 other Orders into which the provisions, which the Government now agree are objectionable, had crept during the period of a couple of years. That is a pretty satisfactory to begin with, but I have every hope that before long it will be added to by Orders made by every Government Department under this Regulation now being altered which may have to be revoked. But even if there is no addition to the practice, it seems to me that the mere fact that over a period of two years objectionable provisions can creep into 65 Orders before the House of Commons does anything effective about it is a conclusive and smashing answer to all the clever debating arguments which were put forward by the Home Secretary in opposition to the proposal that some machinery should be set up to see that these Orders are "vetted" before the mischief is done, and not leaving it to be discovered afterwards.

The second consequence I am not so pleased about. An Order was made by the Minister of Labour under Regulation 55 in very much the same objectionably wide terms as 102 and as the original Regulation. In consequence of the revision of Regulation 55 by the introduction of this new Order, the Minister of Labour has, of course, been obliged to revoke his Order, but he has not accepted the clearly expressed intention of the Government in altering Regulation 55. He has now issued a new Order, No. 870, in almost identical terms with the previous one, still objectionable on the grounds of its very wide spread and lack of definition, actually throwing his net a little wider than it was before, and he has done that because he has discovered another Regulation, No. 58A, under which he can make an Order and so avoid the consequences of the change made in Regulation 55. I cannot discuss that Order now; I can only comment that that kind of avoiding action, to use a current term, does not exactly inspire confidence, and I would invite my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council, or whichever Minister is interested at the moment in these matters, to have a look at Regulation 58A with a view to bringing it into line with the more enlightened version of Regulation 55 which we now have.

Now I want to deal with my objections to the new Order. The new Order is much more definite than the old one, but I am in some difficulty. It deals with two main points. Section f confers upon the Minister powers to prescribe the form in which accounts, records and statistics shall be kept, to call for information and for figures from manufacturers and undertakings of any kind, and to demand such other information as he may think necessary. I am not clear about the meaning of the Section, and particularly of the last paragraph, which says that the competent authority, that is the Minister, may in certain conditions delegate all or any of his functions under that paragraph to any specified persons or class of persons. I am not clear whether this means that he may delegate to some other person the power to make Orders or to give directions in order to obtain this information, whether in fact it means that in future no one can be called upon to furnish returns or statistics or give information except in so far as the form, extent and contents of those returns or statistics are laid down definitely in form in an Order or a direction -made by the Minister. If that is so, then it means that the sole authority for calling for information is with the Minister, with the Minister personally. I would, from one angle, hope that that were the correct interpretation. If it is, it certainly means a very important change from what clearly must be present practice.

I can only say that, if that is the proper interpretation, those of us who by our intervention have brought about this result will have to avoid Ministers carefully in future, but we shall have earned the undying gratitude of the whole business community. What I am afraid seems much more likely is that this Section does no more than confirm and continue the present arrangement. I do not know what the theoretical view may be, but I do know what is the effect upon manufacturers and business people all over the country of the endless stream of demands for returns, figures, information and everything of that kind. It really is one of the greatest burdens which industry has to carry in the whole war effort. Those of us who have ever held any office of responsibility, particularly those who have served in a Government Department, know that there is a great temptation to call for information and returns. These forms look impressive in files when they are alive and are useful for waste paper when they are dead, and most of them die young, and the regular receipt of these returns gives one a pleasant sense of importance; but, at the other end, the poor manufacturer is badgered, deluged, almost swamped, day after day, not only by single demands for information but by duplicated, triplicated and quadrupled demands for practically the same information, in a slightly different form, from one Department after another. This is such a serious matter that if the interpretation of this Section—as I believe it mast be, through sheer physical necessity—is that someone other than the Minister must share the responsibility of determining what returns shall be called for and when they shall be called for, I do ask that that power to badger manufacturers with these inquisitions shall be limited to a small number of people for whom the Minister should be directly responsible and who should perhaps be appointed as designated officers, as provided for later in the Order.

The second part of the Order deals with something that, I think, is much more serious. It deals with the authorisation of inspectors to enter factories and business premises to make inquiries and inspections. The new Regulation is a great improvement on the old one. It provides for the first time for proper warrants to be issued to inspectors, warrants which, if I read the Order aright, will define with reasonable clearness the limits of authority of the inspector and the scope and the nature of the inspection he is to carry out. That is a great advance. But what does alarm me is that the right to issue these warrants is to be in turn delegated by the Minister to a number of people who are termed "designated officers." From the answer to a Question which I put the other day, I found that already something like 5o officers in the Board of Trade alone had been so designated, with, of course, the usual power, and probability, to add to their number.

I submit that manufacturers and business people, with the exception of one class to which I would like to refer later, are reasonable. They accept routine inspection as a normal and necessary part of their job. I do not believe that in one case in 10,000 any objection is taken by the manufacturer to an inspector going into the factory to make a reasonable and sensible inquiry on behalf of the Minister. I accept at once the position that the Minister should have the power, in the case of recalcitrant or unreasonable business managers, to insist on inspection, but it is a reserve power, to be used only in special cases, and should rest with the Minister alone. The number of cases in which he would be obliged to exercise it would be so small, I am convinced, that with the assistance of his Parliamentary Secretary, and possibly of the Permanent Secretary of his Department, he could quite well exercise it by sending inspectors with a legal right, as distinct from a courtesy right, of entry, without having to appoint 50 or 60, or goodness knows how many, officers of his Department.

There is one class of trader and industrialist where difficulty perhaps arises. We have to face the unfortunate and unpleasant fact that in pretty well every type of business a group of people do not want to play the game, and they are just the people who would take advantage of any delay, or formal objection to inspection, in order to hide any evidence from the inspector. I submit that in such types of case, where enforcement is essential, it might be necessary that the Minister should, in publishing the control Order, take power to appoint the necessary number of inspectors with full authority from him to make such inspection as he had laid down in the Order, in order to secure enforcement. It should be done ad hoc in order to meet the case of the man who would dodge if he had the chance, in order to gain time. Otherwise, the right to send inspectors to invade the proper privacy of business should not be handed out to anyone, but the Minister should take the responsibility for enforcing this right against the views of industry.

Mr. A. Bevan (Ebbw Vale)

May I point out that industry has no views?

Sir H. Webbe

I am suggesting that if industry objects, the Minister can enforce inspection, and that in the vast majority of cases no objection would be raised.

Mr. Bevan

If the designated authority wished the inspector to inspect the premises of an owner of industry—I use the term "owner of industry" because industry as such does not exist—and if the owner of those premises objected in the meantime, all evidence could be destroyed.

Sir H. Webbe

I have actually drawn attention to that type of case and have said that when that was likely to arise, the Minister should take special power in the control Order to appoint inspectors in advance, but he should not take the general power to do it every case.

Mr. Evelyn Walkden (Doncaster)

Take the case of person who is manufacturing foodstuffs which may poison people. Is there to be delay until the Minister can satisfy himself that this employer is doing wrong? Would the hon. Member say that the Minister has to wait weeks before such an Order is decided upon and before such an Order is decided upon and before the inspector can go and inspect?

Sir H. Webbe

I am afraid that my hon. Friend has chosen a very bad case. In the food industry the particular danger he mentioned is already amply covered under the various Food and Factory Acts, and inspectors are already appointed for the specific purpose to which he referred. His question does not affect my argument one little bit. The hon. 'Member asked whether I would stop something being done which has been done for years, and the answer is that I would not. This business of inspection is a greater nuisance to the owners of industry—I will use the phrase which I have been asked to use—and to the workers in industry also, than is justified. I was reading a book by Sir Cecil Carr, one of the greatest authorities on delegated powers, and I found in it an old Burmese proverb which states that there are three calamities—fire, flood and officials. Manufacturers in this country have experienced two of those calamities. I suppose manufacturers in the Ruhr Valley have now experienced all three. I do not suppose there is one manufacturer on either side of the North Sea who would not agree with the spirit of that proverb, although they might very well put the calamities in a different order of preference.

My reason for asking that this power to send inspectors should be restricted to the Minister is that I am not convinced that if heads of Departments who desired to carry out inspections knew that if they went beyond what was reasonable and proper, and their desire was challenged, they would have to make their case to the Minister and they would be much more careful in sending people unnecessarily, as I am afraid they do, to occupy the time of executives, foremen, clerks, accountants and all sorts of people who would be very much better engaged on the job. I therefore ask that the Order should be amended so as to make it clear that the number of people who are entitled to deluge the country with demands for information should be limited, and that the power to enforce inspection—I emphasise the word "enforce" as distinct from "carry out"—should be limited to the Minister himself. This business of forms and inspections is such a serious drag on industry that the whole problem deserves special consideration.

Finally, I want to answer in advance two general arguments which I am sure will be used against me. The first is the very common argument that in matters of this kind you must trust the Minister. The second is that the position cannot be so bad, because nobody has made much of a complaint about it. The first of those two arguments I reject utterly, not because of any personal feelings towards the Minister, but because it is the basis of totalitarianism. I am not prepared to accept that argument as a justification for doing something which I think is wrong. As for the second argument, I would like to answer it in the words of one of His Majesty's distinguished Judges. It was Lord Sumner who said in the de Keyser Hotel case: Experience must have taught us too, that many things are done by the executive in such time"— that is to say in time of crisis— purporting to be for the common good which Englishmen are too patriotic to contest. I believe that is a fair explanation of the fact that there have been no representations about that. The mere fact of that explanation, it seems to me, lays upon Parliament even more clearly as the guardian of the liberties of the individual subject, hard won liberties, the responsibility, the greater responsibility, of seeing that those liberties are not filched from them in the name of national necessity.

Sir John Mellor (Tamworth)

I beg to second the Motion.

I think it would be fair to say that for a Regulation of this character to be justi- fied the powers which it gives should be reasonably necessary, those powers should be clearly defined and should only be exercisable under adequate authority in any particular case. I submit that this Regulation is objectionable on the ground that it offends against the second and third of these three provisos. I entirely recognise that a Minister must have at his disposal drastic powers, and I think it would be perfectly reasonable that he should have at his disposal drastic powers of this character, but I do think, as my hon. Friend the Member for the Abbey Division (Sir H. Webbe) has argued, that he should only have these powers in the sense of reserve powers to use by his direct authority and not by delegation. I think they may well be required in cases where firms are obstructive, but in the ordinary case business people will comply with reasonable requests for information and facilities for inspection. In the vast majority of cases no compulsion will be necessary, but the fact that the Minister has at his disposal compulsory powers and the threat of their possible exercise should be quite sufficient to ensure in almost all cases that people will be reasonably compliant. But if they are not, I agree that the Minister should use these drastic powers, but I think they should only be exercised by his direct authority and not by delegation.

It will be said, or I think it is likely to be said, that any Minister is absolutely responsible to this House for anything that is done by any officers in his Department. Of course, that is perfectly true in theory, and it is true in the sense that the Minister can always be made and held responsible after the event, but we want to see the Minister responsible for the exercise of these very drastic powers not only in theory but also in fact. If we look for a moment at the first paragraph of Regulation 55AA and refer to the last sentence, there will be seen one example of the very far-reaching character of those powers because a competent authority can delegate to any class of persons power to demand from any undertaking or class of undertaking information which it requires. I know that the Minister may point to precedents for this. He may point to other Regulations in which this formula has occurred, but I do not think that that should be a conclusive argument. It may be that words of this kind escaped the notice of the House previously without criticism and attention, but that is no reason why they should not be objected to now. I am afraid that many expressions in these Regulations have slipped past without adequate criticism.

Under this paragraph as I read it, although I think my hon. Friend the Member for the Abbey Division read it in not quite the same sense, power can be delegated by the Minister to any person or class of persons to make an Order having statutory authority. But an Order of that character would not, of course, be automatically debatable in this House. I say "automatically," because it could not be raised by way of a Prayer, and the only way in which it could be raised in practice would be either on the Adjournment or by the Government being willing to give time for its discussion. That power can be delegated to any person or any one of a class of persons. For example, the competent authority could delegate to all policemen, to all factory inspectors, to all civil servants of a certain grade, or even of the lowest grade, the power to give those directions and to make Orders. That is, of course, quite fantastic, but the very fact that that is a fantastic proposition only proves that the provisions of this Regulation go a great deal further than is absolutely necessary. All these people could require secret information to be given. I think that if any delegation is necessary in practice—and I am not at all sure that it is—delegation should be limited to a few people very close to the Minister, like his Parliamentary Secretary.

Again, in paragraph 2, one finds very much the same kind of thing. Anyone can be designated by the Minister, and once designated it is his opinion as to the necessity that will determine future action. Having been designated, if he thinks it necessary he can appoint anyone an inspector, and the warrant of appointment of an inspector need only specify the class of undertaking to be inspected, and the warrant would then enable the inspector to enter and inspect any particular undertaking within that class. In fact, it would be a roving commission. The inspector can take samples and make tests, he can investigate some research that is in progress, and it must be borne in mind that the inspector himself may have been before the war, and have every prospect of being after the war, a competitor in business of the firm which he is inspecting. I think, without suggesting that he would act dishonestly in that way, that with the very best will in the world it may be quite impossible for a person, having acquired knowledge of a business in those circumstances, to forget all about it as soon as he has reported to the Minister. He would no doubt see lists of customers and other confidential information of great importance in the business. He is entitled to take copies of any papers which he considers necessary. It is entirely a matter for his own discretion. There is no safeguard against abuse of this power except his own discretion and good faith. We have to be very careful that these tremendous powers are not used, intentionally or unintentionally, for some ulterior purpose.

I have said that it may be very difficult for a man who has been in the business to put all he has learned during the war about some rival's business out of his head. I recognise that a Government Department are always in a dilemma about the selection of people to make investigations. If they appoint someone who knows nothing about the business, his investigation is not likely to be of much value. If, on the other hand, they appoint someone who has been a long time in the business, and is an expert, it naturally causes considerable anxiety to that man's competitors, lest he learns too much about their business and puts it to some practical use in his own after the war. I submit that the powers contained in this Regulation are too sweeping. I hope that my right hon. Friend and the Minister of Fuel and Power, who, I understand, is to reply, will give some precise guarantees as to the sort of use to which it is intended to put these powers. I still think that such powers should be used only in exceptional cases, and used ad hoc, under the direct authority of a Minister, and I think that if that were the case, if the warrant of authority for the exercise of these powers were under the hand of a Minister, businesses affected would take to them much more kindly.

Mr. A. Bevan (Ebbw Vale)

I hope that on this occasion the Minister will resist the Prayer. I have been watching, as have Members in all parts of the House, the activities of certain Members in scrutinising these Orders, and on many occasions I have had a great deal of symparty with the point of view they have advanced. Where the powers of the Executive are enlarged at the expense of the individual citizen, it is the duty of the House to watch those enlargements and to compel the Government to justify them, because the Executive is always inclined in such circumstances to abuse its powers. Therefore, everybody, I think, has sympathised with the intentions of a number of Prayers which have been laid in recent months. On this occasion, I think the zeal of the scrutineers has gone to excess. It seems here that they are going to resist a reasonable use of powers by the Executive. The Mover and the Seconder of the Prayer took exception on two grounds. One was that there is a demand for information, which imposes great burdens upon those making the returns, and the other is that the inspectors are permitted under these Orders to go into premises on the authority given to them by persons to whom the Minister himself has delegated authority. Those inspections ought not, they say, to be made except at the instance of the Minister himself.

On the first point, as a Socialist Member of this House, I would say that it is one of the penalties we have to pay for private enterprise that we never know what people are going to do until they have done it, and we are always faced with the collective and social consequences of their individual actions. It has always been the difficulty of the State, in trying to predict the course of events and to decide what is the result of its economic decisions, to get information. On many occasions I have seen Ministers standing at that Box unable to give, on behalf of the Government, statistical information which the following week you could get from the columns of "The Economist," because the Government have never had sufficient power to collect information from private businesses. Therefore, on many occasions it has been impossible to base any intelligent estimate of the trend of certain business activities in this country.

Sir H. Webbe

Is the hon. Member not making a mistake? This is not a new Regulation, or a new position. It is, in fact, as I admitted, an actual reduction in the power which the Government have hitherto enjoyed. So I do not think it is reasonable to attack me on the ground that I have tried to stop an innovation. I have only advocated that the good work of reduction should go on.

Mr. Bevan

And I take the opposite view. I regret the success that the hon. Member has achieved. I hope that the Government will make no further surrenders to him.

Sir Herbert Williams (Croydon, South)

The hon. Member said that the Government had often been unable to answer questions because they could not get the requisite information. Will he give an example?

Mr. Bevan

Certainly. For a long time in this House we have been unable to have any index of production. In fact, we have never had any index of production.

Sir H. Williams

Surely before the war the Board of Trade published an index of production once a month? The only question was whether the net was cast wide enough. As a matter of fact, I was Parliamentary Secretary at the moment when the index was introduced.

Mr. Bevan

The hon. Member is an authority on these matters, but I think that this time he is making a mistake. We have never had an index of production comparable with that provided in every other highly industrialised country. The United States always had one; so did Germany; so did the Scandinavian countries; so did Holland. We have never had a proper index of production because the Government never had power to demand a proper return from industry. Over and over again we have had difficulty in getting information. The point is that if you are going to have private enterprise—and I am not myself in favour of the complete elimination of private enterprise in every department of economic activity—and if private enterprise is going to sub-serve the interests of the State, we must have some information to enable us to form judgments upon how it is going to behave, and the Government must have full rights of obtaining information from firms. In so far as the Government have relaxed their energies in that direction, at the instance of hon. Members, I hope that they will retrace their steps.

Mr. Levy (Elland)

If the hon. Member agrees that legislation is necessary, particularly in peace-time—not necessarily in war-time, because everybody is busy then in the war effort—could it not be brought into some comprehensive legislation, so that it could be properly examined, as ordinary legislation has been and should be? Are these innovations always to be brought in in the form of Orders in Council, which I will describe as the legislative incubator which hatches out Orders and Sub-orders and Sub-sub-orders and directions?

Mr. Bevan

If I attempted to answer the hon. Member, Mr. Speaker would pull me up. We cannot at the moment discuss the wisdom of having Orders in Council. All we can discuss is the actual Content of the Order before the House. Although I would like to follow my hon. Friend into a most interesting discussion, I am afraid that Mr. Speaker would prevent my doing so. The point I am making at the moment—and it is time that Members of this House made these points—is that it is essential that the Executive should have the power to collect information from private industry so as to enable us to make intelligent estimates of the trend of industry and the behaviour of individuals in particular concerns.

What does the hon. Member propose? First of all, the Government might suspect that firms, many of whom are operating on Government contracts and are dependent on the State for their profits, were not behaving as they should behave. Does he seriously suggest that an inspector should ask permission of the business concern to make a necessary inspection, that then the business concern could refuse it and that before the inspection could be made the Minister himself must make a special Order with respect to the particular concern? Was he to make an ad hoc decision in each instance before an effective inspection could be made? By that time warning could be given and evidence concealed, the whole concern could be remodelled from top to bottom, and the culprit could escape. I am sure that hon. Members do not intend that any unworthy persons should escape in that way and that dishonest business practices should be concealed, but the concessions for which they are asking would have precisely that result. I have been connected with certain activities of a semi- public character, and I do not see what objection there could be to a State official coming in and inspecting one's books and looking at the premises. There could be no objection, but it is an entirely different matter when it is a private house.

Sir H. Williams

Is the hon. Member aware that "undertaking" is defined in this Order to include a very large number of private houses?

Mr. Bevan

In that case, if it is a private house, it is improper to enter.

Sir H. Webbe

How would the hon. Member deal with 40,000 factories in London alone, where there are fewer than ten employees and where a large proportion of them are in families?

Mr. Bevan

That is straining the whole matter. There is still a great deal of semi-domestic industry, and I imagine that, if a Government inspector were to inspect premises of that sort and were to invade a private establishment it would be an affront, and the householder would object. I cannot imagine any inspector behaving in such an outrageous fashion. If there are such instances, it is obviously an abuse of the powers imposed on an inspector. I am not certain how this is going to affect the mining industry, but if there is one industry of which the Minister should have ample powers of investigation it is the mining industry. To suggest that a colliery management can resist the entrance of an inspector and withhold books and that the Minister should make a special Order before they could be inspected, thus giving them time to be "cooked," is an unworthy suggestion. This kind of zeal on the part of watch dogs of the individual citizen has been carried to excess, and the House ought to resist the suggestion.

The Minister of Fuel and Power (Major Lloyd George)

I do not think that anybody on any side of the House would resent a Debate of this character, because, as the Mover of the Prayer said, it is the duty of this House at all times to watch carefully over its representatives. The very fact that he himself expressed satisfaction at the result of an examination so made shows that very careful consideration has been given by the Government to this matter, and, I think, rightly so. He himself expressed the opinion that the present Order is a very much better one than the one before it, although I gather that that was not altogether shared by the hon. Member who seconded the Prayer. I should probably congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his shooting. He was much more successful than he expected when he started, and his bag was greater, but I hope that he will not be encouraged by that success to try too many shots. He did mention that No. 102 had been withdrawn, but another improvement which I shall have to mention is that referred to by the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. A. Bevan), and that is with regard to private houses. The power to inspect private premises, which was included in the last Order, has now been omitted, so that there is no question of this power being applied to private houses.

Sir H. Williams

The word "undertaking" is not defined. It is "by way of trade or business," and that might include solicitors and doctors, but certainly would include any kind of business a man carried on from his private residence.

Major Lloyd George

Where the residence has been "used or appropriated." I think that that is very clear, and I do not think that this could arise. There would, I gather, from what hon. Members have said seem to be two points—delegation and inspection. I would like to refer to the point made by the hon. Member who moved the Prayer with regard to the fact that this House must not just expect to trust the Minister, and I do not think that a Minister has the right to expect the House to do so. It is not for the House to trust him. The House has considerable powers in these matters, and these powers, great as they are—and nobody denies that they are very great indeed—should be used with great discretion, but nobody denies that with these powers the Minister is responsible to this House. I have had personal experience in recent weeks of this House in regard to an Order I made, and I did not complain. The two points are the powers of delegation and the question of inspection of premises. I rather gathered with regard to delegation that the hon. Member who seconded the Prayer suggested that it was the Minister and possibly the Parliamentary Secretary who alone should have the power. I can, it is true, delegate under this Order power to anybody. I do not want to go to an absurd extent, but there is no reason why I should not delegate power to anybody. It would be impossible for any Minister to carry out the duties he has to carry out in the war if he did not have this power of delegation. I may refer to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour, with National Service Officers all over the country. Then there is my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, who has delegated the authority for carrying out many Orders to the war agricultural executive committees. Another example is the Minister of Commerce in Northern Ireland, to whom certain powers have been delegated.

Sir J. Mellor

Is it necessary that they should be delegated or be capable of being delegated to any person or any class of persons? That is what is in the Regulation.

Major Lloyd George

It is within the Minister's discretion. If my hon. Friend looks at that particular paragraph—I am not making a big point of it, but it is prominent in these Regulations—he will see that it says: to such extent and subject to such restrictions as it thinks proper"— it being the competent authority. All it does is to delegate authority in order to carry out the work which is entrusted to it. It is quite impossible, under war conditions, for most of the Ministers to carry out their work unless they have this power of delegation, which, of course, they use with discretion. Most industries do not complain of inspection. Most inspectors are able just to walk into most industries in this country; there is no question of showing authority or anything of that sort, but there are cases where it is vitally necessary for compulsory powers to be in the hands of the Minister. We have known perfectly well for some considerable time that all sorts of illegal activities do take place in wartime. I have had some experience of it myself in connection with the Ministries in which I have served. Let me give one example—the Board of Trade. By the Orders which the Board have to put out from time to time they have set up a very elaborate control of industry. It is absolutely essential that they should have adequate powers to enforce those Orders. The overwhelming majority of the traders of this country are honest people, but unfortunately there are some who are not law-abiding and it is quite impossible for such people to be brought to book, as they ought to be, unless these powers are available to the Ministry. It is also suspected that at the present time there is going on a racket in what are known as toilet preparations, much to the genuine anger of the people in the trade who are honest. Even with all the powers you have to deal with that, or with the powers which the Ministry of Food have to deal with something concerning them, it would be impossible to do anything unless you had compulsory powers to inspect. As for saying that you could have inspectors appointed by the Minister, that would be extremely difficult because this refers to: any class or description of undertaking. Take the Catering industry. If you wanted to do something there, unless you had power to designate, it would not be possible because of the number of catering establishments all over the country. Unless you have power to act immediately, in connection with certain types of offences, the evidence is gone. If it were essential that I, or one of my designated inspectors, should be approached to give the necessary authority, I can assure the House that very few cases indeed would be brought to book.

Sir H. Webbe

Does not the Regulation quite expressly provide that the only persons who can issue warrants to inspectors are the designated officers so that the point to which the Minister has just referred has already arisen?

Mr. A. Bevan

In the one case it is a general application.

Major Lloyd George

The designated officer authorises the inspector to go in and I can assure the House that this is not done lightly. I cannot see how control could possibly be worked, unless this power was given to the Ministry.

Sir J. Mellor

Assuming that it is necessary for the Minister to be able to designate the officers who will then give warrant to inspectors should not the power of the warrant be limited to enabling inspection to be made on a particular date and not drawn so widely as it is in this Regulation, which says: Inspection of any class or description of undertaking.

Major Lloyd George

Under the one you limit it to "class or description." If the hon. Gentleman looks further down he will find that the purposes for which the inspection takes place are not strictly laid down but are laid down as near as possible in the Regulation. There is a double check on that. After all, the inspector can only inspect for the purpose for which he is authorised to go in. I do not see how much further he could go without overwhelming the Ministry with work which it could not undertake.

Sir J. Mellor

If you are having a designated officer, this would only affect him, and what I am asking is that the warrant which the designated officer gives to the inspector should specify the particular undertaking of which the inspection is authorised and not enable the inspector to inspect any undertaking of a certain specified class or description, which gives him a roving commission.

Major Lloyd George

My hon. Friend does not seriously mean that he should have a warrant which specifies the particular place he has to see?

Sir J. Mellor

Yes.

Major Lloyd George

It would be quite impossible. Take, for instance, the farms of this country. You would have to have a specification for every farm. Suppose an industry makes many different commodities. You would have to specify each one.

Sir J. Mellor

Only where ordinary inspection is refused.

Major Lloyd George

That does not alter the point that you have to have power without specifying any particular undertaking. The fact that it is not refused in most cases—and it is a credit to the industries of this country—does not alter the fact that we have to have power. To specify each individual undertaking before inspection was allowed to take place would be an impossible task.

One other point to which I wish to refer is the danger of people who might be interested in a particular industry going to a rival firm with information. I can assure the House that Ministers are very much alive to that and that every precaution is being taken in case that should happen. In conclusion, I would like to say, in reply to those who say that we must not have this control because it invades the rights of private industry, that there is not much private industry left in this country to-day. All of it practically is under control. If you have control, many of these things have to follow. They are not pleasant, but every class of this community has to put up to-day with things that are not pleasant. I admit that the powers that are given to the Executive are very big, and it behoves the Executive to see that they are used with the very greatest care and discretion. I am certain that that will be so, and I can only repeat that the Minister who does all the designating is, after all, responsible to this House, as he ought to be.

Sir H. Webbe

In view of the nature of the reply and in recognition of what has been done already, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

The remaining Orders were read, and Postponed.

It being after the hour appointed for the Adjournment of the House, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House,, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.