DEFENCE REGULATIONS (TRESPASS ON GROWING CROPS) (Hansard, 14 July 1943)

§ Mr. Levy (Elland)
I beg to move, That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty praying that the Order in Council dated 10th May, 1943, made under the Emergency Powers (Defence) Acts, 1939 and 5940, amending Regulations 61, 62A, 62AA, 100, Dar and 102 of the Defence (General) Regulations, 1939, a copy of which was presented to this House on 25th May, be annulled. I hope the House will agree that where a drastic or fundamental change in the law takes place, it is not unreasonable that the House should have the opportunity of discussing something which is vital to nearly all the members of the population. I do not want anything I may say to-day to be construed as an attack upon my right hon. Friends the Minister of Agriculture and the Parliamentary Secretary, because I think we all agree that they have done very good work for agriculture. But here we have an Order in Council and it is needless for me to remind the House that an Order in Council can also be called a legislative incubator, because it hatches out orders, sub-orders, sub-sub-orders and regulations and rules, none of which can be discussed by this House except by means of Questions, or, if we are successful in getting a special day for a discussion. There are between 16,000 and 17,000 allotment holders in this country.

§ Earl Winterton (Horsham and Worthing)
The hon. Member, inadvertently, I think, said 17,000 allotment holders. I know of 6,000 allotment holders in one borough alone. I think he meant 1,700,000.

§ Mr. Levy
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that correction. I left out some noughts. If this Order did anything to protect the food which allotment-holders and others are growing, or did anything to prevent the pilfering of or damage to that food, I should not be standing here to ask for its withdrawal. If the powers contained in this Order merely augmented the present powers for the protection of what is grown by allotment-holders or farmers, I should not move this Motion. But in order to make out my case and to convince the House, as I hope I shall be able to do, I have to show that this Order is unnecessary; that the Minister has ample powers in the courts; that it interferes with the liberty of the subject and will create a vast number of criminals out of innocent people. The law of trespass which this Order would reimpose existed in the old feudal times, when the universal franchise did not exist, when the great landowners imposed the law, and when thousands of innocent people were turned into criminals. The common people agitated for centuries in order to get this and similar laws abolished and they succeeded at the end of the 17th century, in the year 1694. That was the position in the good—or bad—old days. By an Order in Council it is now proposed to re-impose the very criminal law which the common people fought against for centuries. Therefore it is a retrograde step.
Prior to the war penalties, which included imprisonment, had been provided by various statutes for theft and malicious damage, respecting many different kinds of property, including plants and crops. The Larceny Acts of 1861 and 1916 still operate and apply to plants and crops. The Malicious Damage Act, 1861, dealt with damage to plants and crops. I submit that most of the offences to which attention is now being called can be dealt with under those Acts. The position at the outbreak of war was that the trespasser could be sued for damage by the occupier of any land in any event, and that theft and damage of plants and crops were covered as criminal offences by statute. There is a good deal of misapprehension as to the power of the Minister, and people are very much concerned about the theft, damage and pilfering which take place on various allotments. They think that the proposed Order will be a cure for those 315 evils. At the outbreak of war, the Minister took power, under Regulation 61, under the Emergency Powers Act, to provide that a trespasser on agricultural land on which there was growing any crop other than grass, who damaged the crop, should be liable to a fine up to 50. The Minister has that power now, and the Order does not increase it.

§ Earl Winterton
May I ask my hon. Friend a question to elucidate his argument? Surely the Acts to which he is referring relate to crops in market gardens and farms, but not to grass or to the hay crop.

§ Mr. Levy
I was coming to the question of the hay crop and I did say that those Acts excluded grass.

§ Earl Winterton
The original Acts?

§ Mr. Levy
Yes. The second provision was that the Minister of Agriculture could specify by Order—I think this will partly meet the point made by my right hon. Friend—any agricultural land and, provided there was a warning notice, any trespasser thereon should be liable to a fine up to £50. The point made by my right hon. Friend is covered, because on land anywhere in the United Kingdom that is specified by the Minister, it is a criminal offence punishable by fine or imprisonment to trespass, and it is not unreasonable to expect a notice to be displayed. To use an analogy, an Order which provided that no motorist should exceed 30 miles per hour in a built-up area would be unreasonable, unless a notice was displayed showing when the motorist arrived at a built-up area. Some so-called built-up areas have no buildings on either side of the road where the notice is displayed, and without the notice, innocent people who kept on driving at a certain speed until they came to a building, would be committing a criminal offence and might be made to suffer. Therefore the notice is a necessary provision. I will try to give a further analogy later on.

§ Mr. Turton (Thirsk and Malton)
Does my hon. Friend suggest that he would not be able to see an allotment when he came to it?

§ Mr. Levy
if my hon. Friend will allow me to develop my own argument I think 316 I shall cover that point, I hope to his satisfaction. Let us take the first question, that of trespassing on an allotment. Nothing is said about doing any damage. The mere act of being on an allotment without an excuse is a criminal offence under this Regulation.

§ Mr. Silverman (Nelson and Colne)
Not without an excuse but without a reasonable excuse.

§ Mr. Levy
A reasonable excuse.

§ Mr. Silverman
That makes all the difference.

§ Mr. Levy
I am sorry I left out the word "reasonable." The first question that arises in relation to a member of the public is what is an allotment. Allotments and allotment gardens are defined under the Allotments Act, 1922. It is true that members of the public are supposed to carry with them, either in their heads or on a piece of paper, the precise definition of what allotments are. Ignorance of the fact is no excuse in law. Therefore, they are supposed to carry this knowledge around with them. Let us consider for a moment—and I shall try to answer my hon. Friend's question—the position of a member of the public walking across, shall I say Barnes Common, or any common. Some part of it appears to be given over to growing garden produce, and in all innocence, being interested in gardening, he strolls over to have a look at it. First, he has probably no indication at all of where the common ends and where the allotment begins; there is no notice, and there need not be any warning notice under this Regulation. So if he stands in one position on that common he is a law-abiding citizen; if he stands in another position on the common, he is a criminal. He walks a little further and crosses a path of beaten earth between two cultivated patches. Is he on the allotment or on the common?

§ Mr. Silverman
Suppose he has one foot on each?

§ Mr. Levy
This is really a joke, I agree. It is hilarious. I am hoping to laugh this thing out; that is the object. This gentleman who is out for a morning stroll, and who happens to be interested in gardening, perhaps comes across a part of the common where he sees, say, some 317 runner beans and puts his foot off the path just to have a look. He does no damage whatever. He is a criminal under this—

§ Mr. Silverman
No, he is not.

§ Mr. Levy
Oh, yes, forgive me. He has to refer to the slip of paper which gives the precise definition of an allotment under the 1922 Act. He has to ask himself whether the cultivated area is more than two acres in extent. If it is, he is a law-abiding citizen; if it is less than two acres in extent, he is a criminal. I am quoting from the Allotments Act. He also has to inquire whether the cultivated area is held by a tenant under a landlord—I am quoting still from the Act. If it is, he is a criminal, but if it is not, he can safely put his foot down. I do not know the legal phraseology; I will leave that to my hon. Friend. He may, previously, have taken the precaution of having measured the area. If it does not exceed 40 poles in extent, he is not technically on an allotment at all; he is on an allotment garden, always provided it is being cultivated by the occupier for himself and his family.
Let us turn to the position of a member of the public who trespasses on any land on which a crop is growing. The question is, when is a crop not a crop? Consider the question of grass, which was explicitly excluded from the previous Regulations and which is included in the amended Regulations. A member of the public steps on to a field where grass is grown. Is he a criminal or is he not? That depends on what the owner of the field is going to do with the grass. If he is going to leave that grass for grazing, the man is not a criminal, as it is not a crop; but if he is going to grow that grass for hay, it is a crop. I want to emphasise that there is no notice. If the owner of the land is going to keep this grass for hay and the man treads on it, if the grass remains down, he is a criminal, but if the grass obligingly springs up again he has done no damage, and is a respectable citizen. The position of a member of the public previous to this Regulation was a reasonable one. The previous Regulation with the other Statutes afforded all the protection that the Minister could reasonably require for all growing plants and crops, including all allotment crops, throughout the country. Nobody dis- 318 putes the need for the protection, particularly in war-time, of all growing crops. We all know what picnic parties do, and how people can go into hay fields and damage crops in the country, and we know the pilfering that goes on in allotments. But I argue that that is all provided for.
A member of the public strolling anywhere in the United Kingdom in the neighbourhood of a growing crop, including grass—and, believe me, nowadays you cannot stray very far without being in close proximity to one—may be suddenly transformed into a criminal, although he has no notice of the Regulation, of which he has probably never heard, although he has no intention of doing damage, and probably does no damage whatsoever. When he is standing on a given spot he is either an innocent stroller or a criminal; depending on a number of questions, not of law but of fact, of which, in the nature of things, he cannot have any knowledge. We consider that this Order is unnecessary; we consider that the display of a notice ought to be obligatory. For an innocent person to run the risk of becoming a criminal, where he has no knowledge that he is committing an offence, is a serious thing. If he is arrested he goes before a magistrate, who says, "I have very great sympathy with you, but I am here to administer the law, as laid down by Parliament,"—and that innocent man or woman may be convicted of a criminal offence. That is a slur not only upon the person, but upon his family, for all time. It was because of the vicious criminal law that existed prior to the 17th century that the agitation for freedom and liberty was so intense, and people managed to have it abolished at the end of the 17th century. I hope that this House will not allow it to be reimposed in this Order and thus bring us back to the bad old days.

§ Flight-Lieutenant Challen (Hampstead)
I beg to second the Motion.
In doing so I desire to emphasise, as my hon. Friend has done, that there is not the slightest desire on our part in moving the Prayer, to aid and abet in any way wanton damage to corn crops, allotments or any form of growth. I am well aware that there is a strong feeling in the country on the subject of damage to allotments and I can understand that any Member 319 of this House, and, a fortiori, any member of the public, in reading such an Order as that which has now been promulgated might imagine it to be very reasonable and desirable for the prevention of wanton damage to allotments. I again emphasise that, if I felt that this Order was really necessary, I would not dream of seconding the Prayer to annul it, but when you examine it in relation to the law of trespass, and the customs and habits of the people as they have prevailed in the countryside of England for many centuries, you find that on analysis it goes very far. It is very wide. It is very indefinite. It does not even specify that the person trespassing on an allotment has to be on the actual part where the plants are growing. It says, "Land used for the purpose of allotments."
I can imagine a good many legal quibbles being devised upon that phraseology. One point which an hon. Member opposite attempted to make was that the words "reasonable excuse" might be sufficient. You might have many legal arguments, in an appropriate case, on such a question as that. The whole background of the law of trespass is that there is no excuse in law for going on somebody else's land. Everybody knows that perfectly well. People in the country districts know well that if they walk across a field which is not their own property, they may be liable for trespass. They also know that unless they do damage, the landlord or farmer has no effective power to bring an action against them. Therefore, you find this ingrained habit of our people of walking across fields, and, on the part of children, of romping and playing in fields. They regard the countryside as open common, provided they do not do damage. The country people know well that the notice, "Trespassers will be prosecuted" means nothing at all. There may have been vindictive landlords—I have never met one myself—who would like to make trespass a criminal offence and to prosecute anyone walking across a field, whether he did any damage or not. This Order does give power to prosecute whether there is damage or not. If my hon. Friend opposite is going to rely upon the words "reasonable excuse" as sufficient in an Order of this sort, he may be raising many serious legal questions. There is no excuse for going on somebody else's land.
320 What this Order is doing is to make it a criminal offence, without getting proof of damage at all. Had such a law been sought to be enacted at any time during the past few hundred years, it would not have been given a first Reading; it would not have passed through Parliament. It is only under Emergency Regulation procedure that such a Regulation could be contemplated. Serious as the circumstances in which we live may be, and serious as may be the damage to property, all the more seriously should we consider whether we should lightly allow a stringent Regulation, altering the law of trespass, so that it becomes a crime, to be passed by this House. It is easy to laught at the points which my hon. Friend the Member for Elland (Mr. Levy) raised, but the fact that they were amusing only shows the ridiculous lengths to which we can go in drafting an Order of this nature in a few lines, an Order that violates the fundamental customs of our people.
Although this Order may end when the war finishes, it may be the thin end of the wedge. However short a time it is in force it will have a serious psychological effect on people who are in the habit of walking across fields and who have always regarded themselves as entitled to do so. To be told by a policeman or any other official, that one can be haled before a magistrate and fined, as if one had committed a criminal offence will be a shock to those who discover that they have broken the law. We have heard a little too much of the facile saying, "ignorance of the law is no excuse." It is high time that the people were told the law, if we are bringing in a law of this nature. I see no objection at all to some qualification of an Order of this kind. The existing Order, which would be sufficient if properly enforced provides that notices shall be displayed informing people of the penalty to which they are subject. If it is said that boys pull down these notices, such an argument is trivial because the land is flooded with notices telling people what they must not do. We see War Department notices, forbidding people to go on Government property, in all parts of the country. Everybody knows we are at war and people will obey such notices if they see them. An unqualified Order of this nature is not one that the House should pass without the closest examination and I hope some justification for it, 321 as distinct from the one it superseded, will be forthcoming. At present there appears no real reason for this new Order.

§ Mr. Silverman (Nelson and Colne)
I so rarely have the opportunity of defending the Government in connection with Defence Regulations that I propose to give myself a holiday to-day by taking the present opportunity. There is no Member of the House who has watched more jealously than I have these Defence Regulations. There is no one who has been more willing to criticise and oppose the Government when Regulations have gone beyond the limit of what I think to be reasonable. But it seems to me that the whole of the criticism of the Government on these matters is prejudiced if Members move Prayers against perfectly reasonable Regulations merely for the fun of it. This is really a very remarkable Debate. We have a Prayer moved and seconded by two of the most reactionary Tories in the House, with the support of one of the leaders of that group who have recently been described as Vichy Liberals, against the rights of landlords to be protected—

§ Mr. Levy
Will the hon. Member justify what he means by Vichy Liberals?

§ Mr. Silverman
I would not attempt to define it. I simply quote the phrase.

§ Mr. Holdsworth (Bradford, South)
To which Member does the term apply?

§ Mr. Silverman
I again prefer to leave it as I put it.

§ Captain C. S. Taylor (Eastbourne)
On a point of Order. A very grave accusation has been levelled against either myself or one of my hon. Friends. Will the hon. Member please define what he means by a "Vichy Liberal"? I regard the term with the greatest distaste, and I would ask him to say to whom he is referring.

§ Mr. Silverman
One hears from time to time a great many expressions used in debate which awaken distaste on the other side. That is what debate is for.

§ Mr. Holdsworth
Is the hon. Member entitled to use about any Member a term which carries with it the greatest opprobrium? I am very proud to be a Liberal, but I do not care whether this applies to Labour, Liberal or Conservative. Is it a proper term to use?

§ Mr. Speaker
No point of Order arises here. Hon. Members are entitled to present their case as they think fit. Whether it is regarded with some distaste or not does not matter in the least. All I am concerned with is whether it is within the bounds of Order, and the expression used, whatever it may mean, does not appear to be outside these bounds.

§ Mr. Silverman
If the hon. Member sees anything in it which makes him put the cap upon his own head, that is his business and not mine.

§ Mr. Holdsworth
There is not a Liberal of any kind on the Paper.

§ Mr. Silverman
Perhaps it would be as well to get back to the subject before the House. Two reactionary Tories have moved a Prayer. Their interest has usually been on the side of the landlords, and not of persons who go upon the land. I wonder what the hon. Gentleman did in the days before the war when the Access to Mountains Bill was before the House. It seems to me in this instance that he is making a mountain out of a molehill. He said that the Regulation is going back to the old vicious legislation and that he does not want to see it perpetuated. The Regulation is a Defence Regulation and will come to an end with the Act under which it is passed. It is passed to meet the exigencies of the war, like a great many other Defence Regulations.
What does it seek to do? It says that you shall not, unless you have reasonable excuse for doing it, go upon an allotment. What is the objection to that? To-day we have to use every particle of space to grow food. A great many people are devoting a lot of time in order to raise food supplies, and a great deal of damage is being done by careless and vicious people straying upon allotments, sometimes with a dishonest purpose and sometimes not. What can possibly be wrong with saying that in war-time, when we need to conserve every bit of food, people must keep off allotments unless they have a reasonable excuse for going on them? What does the hon. Member object to? Then he says it is not confined to allotments but includes any cultivated land, but that is only if damage is done. Surely in these days it is not asking too much of people not to do damage to cultivated land and growing crops. I have every sympathy 323 with watching carefully Regulations promulgated by the Government and seeing that they do not go too far. If they do not go too far, the Government are entitled to support from every one of us.
I cannot see anything in this Regulation which ought to attract the kind of opposition that has been indulged in. The hon. Member who moved the Prayer talks about notices and about becoming a criminal without knowledge and all that kind of thing. Presumably the Order will be promulgated in the ordinary way. There is nothing to prevent an allotment holder putting a copy of the Order at the entrance to his allotment. There is nothing to prevent a local authority that has set land aside for allotments taking care to see that the Regulation is brought to the notice of people who might stray upon allotments.

§ Mr. Ralph Etherton (Stretford)
Does the hon. Member appreciate that there is nothing in the Regulation which provides that that should be done?

§ Mr. Silverman
Why should there be? This is a Regulation which will be published in the ordinary way. The Government will not get the Regulation promulgated and then conceal it. They want the Regulation so that people shall not commit these offences, and I am certain they will take proper steps to see that when they have these powers people know that the powers exist.

§ Sir Herbert Williams (Croydon, South)
Surely the hon. Gentleman has not read the Regulation, for he does not seem to be aware that it has been in operation a month, and that the Government have done all the promulgating, which is not very much.

§ Mr. Silverman
If it has been in operation a month, I understand still less what the objection is to it on the ground that people do not know it. If they do not know it, it is a reasonable request to the Government to take steps to see that it shall be properly known. I would support such a request, but I would not regard it as a reason for supporting a Prayer against the Regulation. That is carrying the thing too far. Something was said about making new laws. Do hon. Members realise that under the existing law it is a criminal offence to do damage to cultivated mushrooms?

§ Mr. Levy
I agree. That is what I am saying.

§ Mr. Silverman
All the Government are proposing to do is to protect a lot of other crops as well as mushrooms, and I hope that those Members who make a pastime of attacking Defence Regulations will not spoil the efforts of those of us who like to make serious criticisms from time to time by raising trivial Prayers against perfectly reasonable Regulations.

§ Mr. Norman Bower (Harrow)
I agree with the hon. Member for Nelson and Come (Mr. Silverman). I hope that the Minister will not be deterred by this opposition from proceeding with, this excellent and very necessary Order. The hon. Member far Elland (Mr. Levy) said it would do nothing to assist the growing of food or increase the safeguards for allotment holders. There are approximately 5,000 allotment holders in my constituency, and I can assure him that they are unanimously in favour of this Order, because they realise that it will do a great deal to protect them, and that without it much of the labour and effort which they are exerting in responding to the appeals to grow more food will be wasted.

§ Mr. Levy
My hon. Friend seems to be entirely under a misapprehension. This Order does no more than give the Minister permission to have these prosecutions without displaying a notice. The Minister has already power under Regulation 61 to do all that my hon. Friend has said.

§ Mr. Bower
I was coming to the display of notices. The whole point there is that these warning notices are frequently pulled down or defaced. People who are intent upon pilfering take very good care to remove the notices if they can, with that very object in view. If the notices are not there, they cannot be prosecuted for their offence.

§ Mr. Levy
Yes, they can.

§ Mr. Bower
Under this Order, but not without this Order.

§ Flight-Lieutenant Challen
Has the hon. Member read Regulation 61, under which they can be prosecuted for the offence of pilfering, whether there is a notice or not?

§ Mr. Bower
They can be prosecuted for pilfering, but cannot be prosecuted for 325 going on the land unless a notice is displayed. People who are intent on pilfering frequently walk over the land for some considerable time without actually doing anything, until they think they are not being watched, and that is why it is necessary to be able to prosecute them for going on the land without having warning notices exhibited. Under present conditions it is very difficult for local authorities to find the necessary labour to replace the notices and the boards. As an example, in Wembley, most of which is in my constituency, no fewer than 50 notices on 96 sites were either defaced or pulled down in the space of one month. That gives an idea of the measure of this problem. In my opinion this Order is absolutely necessary. It may be a regrettable interference in some respects with the liberty of the subject—I think we should all regret it in normal times—but these are not normal times. This is wartime and we have to give every possible help and encouragement to people to grow more food, and in my view this Order is urgently required and will be a valuable protection to allotment holders, and I hope the Minister will proceed with it undeterred.

§ Mr. John Wilmot (Kennington)
I am rather surprised that the hon. Member for Elland (Mr. Levy) should have taken the line he has taken to-clay. It is very regrettable that such an Order has to be made, and it would be even more regrettable if this sort of thing were to be embedded in the ordinary law. One of the advantages of this procedure is that it is temporary, for the war period, and will automatically lapse when the Statute comes to an end. I am an inveterate trespasser. My principal recreation is walking about the country, and, as an hon. Member has said, the habit of walking over grassland without doing damage is part of our national heritage, and we do not want it interfered with by all sorts of additions to the ordinary law. The hon. Member must be aware of the very urgent need there is for doing something to curb the growing practice of mean and despicable people of roving about allotments and looking for opportunities to steal other people's hard-won crops, and the hon. Member will find little thanks for his attempt to stop the Minister from doing what millions of people will be grateful to him for doing. The point about notices encounters the difficulty 326 that there is neither labour nor material for making fences and notice boards in order to carry out the ordinary law. Surely it is not too much to ask the House in these times and in all these very special circumstances to approve of a Regulation which, normally, would be very distasteful and unnecessary.

§ The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. R. S. Hudson)
I am in some ways very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Elland (Mr. Levy) and to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Hampstead (Flight-Lieutenant Challen) for putting down this Prayer, because it will serve, 7 hope, to provide greatly needed publicity on this question. Let me deal briefly with the legal aspect of the matter. Both, unwittingly, I am sure, failed to give anything like an accurate account of the legal aspect. Under peace-time conditions, trespass was not in itself a criminal offence, contrary to what my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Hampstead seemed to think, and it was not possible to prosecute a man for walking over a field so long as he did not do any clam-age. If he walked over grass, it was impossible to prove damage, and in fact you could walk over grass.

§ Mr. Silverman
Even if one did damage, that was not a criminal offence.

§ Mr. Hudson
No, it was a civil offence.

§ Flight-Lieutenant Challen
I did not follow the Minister's remark that I appeared to think that trespass before the war was a criminal offence.

§ Mr. Hudson
Then my hon. Friend had better look at Hansard in the morning.[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I think I am within the recollection of the House. It is clear that before the war you could wander over fields without being prosecuted at all. [Several HON. MEMBERS: "He said so."] Then I must have missed it. At any rate, the position was altered at the beginning of the war by the original Defence Regulations, which provided that a person trespassing on agricultural land, of any description specified in an Order by the Minister of Agriculture, would be guilty of an offence. This particular Regulation requires that notices should be displayed warning the trespassers of their liability. Later, in September, 1939, my predecessor made an 327 Order, under Regulation 61 (2), specifying that any land used as allotments or allotment gardens was agricultural land for the purpose of that Regulation. In July, 1940, I made an additional Regulation, paragraph I (a), making it an offence to trespass on ordinary agricultural land in such a way as to damage growing crops. That was done because, during the Battle of Britain, people were inclined to rush over land to look at crashed German planes. The House will therefore see that the recent Amendment to Regulation 61 does not make any revolutionary change in the law applicable under war conditions. The only difference this Regulation makes from the conditions and the law under the wartime Regulation existing before this last Regulation is that it is no longer necessary for a notice to be put up on an allotment before a person can be prosecuted, a very narrow point. That is the only difference this Regulation makes.

§ Mr. Etherton
Plus the inclusion of grassland.

§ Mr. Hudson
No, I do not think so.

§ Mr. Etherton
Yes.

§ Mr. Hudson
I will make sure of that, but I am dealing with allotments. I in elect made grass a crop in May, 1941.

§ Sir H. Williams
In the Order of 1(a) it says, "Any crop other than grass." Grass is brought in under this Order.

§ Mr. Hudson
I will have that checked up. Let me deal with allotments and inquire why it is necessary to make this alteration. Before the war, in the overwhelming majority of cases allotments were fenced, and therefore they were to some extent protected, and before the war the police had more leisure than they have to-day. Since the war we have been conducting an intensive "Dig for victory" campaign, and we have been urging everyone who possibly could to make themselves and their families self-supporting in vegetables as a contribution to the war effort in order to save shipping and in order to release farmers for producing other crops. The result of that has been very striking. The number of allotments has risen from 930,000 to 1,675,000. The number of private gardens being cultivated for the growing of vegetables has risen from 3,000,000 to 5,000,000. There- 328 fore the fact that that has been done has definitely made an invaluable—I use that word advisedly—contribution to our total war effort. But at the same time, as some hon. Members have said, it is a regrettable fact that pilfering and damage, both malicious and involuntary, have been on the upgrade, and I have been receiving letters from all over the country in increasing numbers.
After all, as part of this "Dig for victory" campaign we have taken vacant building plots scattered throughout towns and turned them into allotments. There is no fencing or anything, but everyone must know and recognise when a piece of ground is being cultivated. It may not be easy to define what an allotment is, but it is like an elephant—you recognise it when you see it. We want to make it abundantly clear to the public at large that for the period of the emergency, that ground is the property of the man who works it. The object of this is to serve with a notice all and sundry that an allotment belongs to the person who is working the land and also to his family. I would like to read one letter from a serving naval rating: It is precious little my wife has bought in two years and she is rightly proud of it, for with a number of people making every effort to support themselves, the remaining agricultural produce in the country will go round better amongst those who are unable to do anything like that. But there is a fly in the ointment and that fly is becoming a nasty sore. Stealing from allotments. It is a nasty business. It doesn't begin and end there. Many of us would willingly give to those who are needy, but to have produce stolen is disheartening Can nothing be done to deter this type of criminal? The devil take those who are too tired and lazy to ever do anything except invent excuses for doing nothing. That is very typical of the letters I am receiving by shoals. I think that if the writers would only send them to hon. Members, instead of to me, there would be a demand from all sides of the House for this sort of Regulation. It is distasteful to us to have to bring in Regulations creating new offences, but we have been extremely patient; we have applied every possible alternative remedy we could think of. With the increasing demand made on people for Civil Defence, fire guard and so forth, and the increased demands on the police, it is a physical impossibility to exercise supervision over these allotments. Even where a policeman is on his beat and he sees someone 329 on an allotment, the person obviously is not going to be such a "mug" as to steal right under the policeman's nose. The policeman has to go on his beat, and the man then steals the onions, or whatever it may be. In future, the man will be prosecuted unless he has a reasonable excuse for being on the allotment. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has sent a circular to chief constables pointing out the necessity of exercising discretion in this matter, and seeing that people are not prosecuted if they can give a reasonable excuse.

§ Sir H. Williams
Has the Home Secretary interpreted the word "reasonable"?

§ Mr. Hudson
No, Sir. That obviously will be left to the magistrates. We have a system of justice in this country, and the people to decide would be the bench of magistrates. Cultivating an allotment to-day is work of national importance, and nothing is more disheartening, not only to the man concerned, but to the whole neighbourhood, than if theft is going on. It soon spreads, and everybody thinks he will be the next victim. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow (Mr. Bower) said, it is idle to say that we have existing powers, and that they are adequate. He has pointed out that in one borough alone, Wembley, notices which were posted up were defaced or taken down in 50 cases. So long as the notice was taken down or defaced, the man could not be prosecuted. It was to meet that difficulty that, very much against our will, we brought in this Regulation. I believe that, with the safeguards I have explained, it will not be misused, and that it will give added confidence and heart to the men, who are doing this job.

§ Sir H. Williams
The first comment I have to make on the Minister's speech is that he had not read his own Order, because he did not realise that his Order brought grass for the first time into the purview.

§ Mr. Hudson
I understand that the only difference which is made about grass is that a man can now be prosecuted without a warning notice being put up, but damage has to be proved. I brought it in because I remember the question being raised of grass being used for hay and for silage.

§ Sir H. Williams
Paragraph I (a) of the original Order reads as follows: 330 If, without reasonable excuse, any person trespasses on any agricultural land in the United Kingdom on which there is growing any crop other than grass. Grass is specifically exempted. This is now repealed by the Order I have in my hand, which says trespassers on any land. For the first time grass is brought into the scheme. That is a little disturbing. The Minister says that the justification is that pilfering is on the increase. The hon. Member for Harrow (Mr. Bower) says that people go wandering about, and when you are not looking they steal. He described something which must have been seen. If they were seen, then the offence would be seen. He says that it is necessary to have this because an offence is not seen. Therefore his own statement is a complete contradiction.

§ Mr. Hudson
Until this Regulation was imposed a man could wander with impunity over allotments so long as the notice had been defaced or torn down. In future, whether there is a notice or not, he will not be able to do that unless he can show reasonable excuse.

§ Sir H. Williams
The right hon. Gentleman was dealing with a point with which I was not dealing. I have come back to the point of the hon. Member for Harrow, who deprecated the method of pilfering. How can you describe those habits unless they were seen? I suggest that he was imagining these things. [Interruption.] He must have imagined them, because, if seen, a prosecution would follow.

§ Mr. Bower
What I was saying was—and I think the point was dealt with by the Minister—that they wander about on these sites, that they may be safe while wandering about and doing nothing, and then afterwards, when they are no longer being observed, they pilfer.

§ Sir H. Williams
That is exactly what I wanted the hon. Member to say. Every person who is seen on an allotment in future is to be a suspected person. [Interruption.] It is no good getting angry. The sole object of this is to stop pilfering or theft. The reason you prosecute is because you think that a person on an allotment is about to commit a theft. In the law as it was he would not be committing an offence by being there.

§ Mr. Hudson
Yes, he would.

§ Sir H. Williams
Take the peace-time law before the Defence Regulation. Trespass was not a criminal offence. It was a civil offence against the person who owned the land. The person who owned the land could ask a person to withdraw, and if he failed he was entitled to use reasonable force for the purpose of removing him from the land. If he resisted he committed an assault, on which a summons could be taken out against him for assault. But it was not presumed that because a man was on land which was not his own he was about to commit a crime. Now the presumption is that he is about to commit a crime—the crime of theft—and for that reason you have made it a crime for him to be on the allotment. [Interruption.] It is no good hon. Members making charges and getting excited over "Dig for victory" and sentiment. You are turning every person who goes for a country stroll into a potential criminal in the sense that he can be charged.

§ Mr. Silverman
Would the hon. Member explain in what way this Regulation circumscribes the liberty of any reasonable person?

§ Sir H. Williams
Certainly. On Sunday afternoon I went for a stroll past one of the allotments in our park to which the Minister has referred. I saw two people digging for victory with enthusiasm, and I exercised the Briton's right of watching other people work. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Dumbarton Burghs (Mr. Kirkwood), who is always most angry if anyone interrupts him, seems to take a delight in interrupting me. It is neither very intelligent, nor is it characteristic of the good manners of the Scottish race.

§ Mr. Kirkwood
What do you mean, mental or physical?

§ Sir H. Williams
As I was walking past the allotment I stopped to watch the operations, and at that moment a constable came along, and I engaged him in conversation. I said to him, "Do you know that if I walked from this pavement on to that path you could possibly issue a summons against me?" The policeman said, "A summons in respect of trespass? Trespass is a civil matter." I said, "It was, but it is not now" and he replied, "What is happening to our liberties?" This was the instinctive reaction of a normal citizen who happened to be a Metropolitan policeman. When I 332 told him what the law was he expressed great surprise. My hon. Friend the Member for Elland (Mr. Levy) raised the question, "When are you trespassing on an allotment?" You are trespassing when you walk on a path dividing allotments because you are in the allotment area. If I went on to a path, I pointed out to a constable it would be his duty to find out why I was there, on the ground that I had no right to be there, and he would have to exercise his judgment as td whether the reasons I gave him were reasonable or not. If he thought they were not, it would be his duty to report me to his superior for a summons to be issued, and I should be under the obligation of defending myself and proving to the magistrate that my business there was reasonable. There is no case law, so far as I am aware, as to what "reasonable" means in this case. No case has been taken to the High Court; there is no interpretation of the word "reasonable" for this purpose. An enterprising constable who wanted to secure promotion could bring a vast number of cases before the courts. You could have the persecution of a great many people.
An hon. Member behind me said a little while ago that this was only while the Act lasts. How long is the Act to last? The Defence of the Realm Act ran for at least two years after the last war, and before it was allowed to lapse a great many of the enactments in it were turned into permanent law. Many of us are old enough to remember the complaints that were made about the continuance of "D.O.R.A." after the last war. There has been no assurance whatever that a great many of these Defence Regulations will not be enacted in our Statute Book if certain people in the country have their way, and it is just as well to put our objections on record now. The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Silverman) jibed at my hon. Friends who moved and seconded the Motion and asked what was their attitude to the Access to Mountains Bill. I do not know what their attitude was, but I do know what my own was. I opposed it for the obvious reason that there is all the difference in the world between maintaining the sensible law of trespass we had in this country before the war, which meant that in the ordinary way people could go where they wished and be removed if they were doing harm, and giving people the unqualified right to 333 go on land with great prejudice sometimes to growing crops but still more to animals we were grazing on what was mountain land. We try to take the intermediate position. I do not think the Minister has made out his case for these very drastic powers; there is no safeguard whatsoever for the liberty of the subject, and having regard to the very considerable unfamiliarity with Orders shown by the Minister and everyone who has spoken on his behalf—

§ Mr. R. J. Taylor (Morpeth)
The hon. Member is the only one who knows.

§ Sir H. Williams
I do not say that, but at least those who have supported this Prayer have read this Order, which is not true of other speakers.

§ Mr. Silverman
Will the hon. Gentleman answer the question which I intervened to put and which he promised to answer? In what way does this Regulation limit the liberty of any reasonable person?

§ Sir H. Williams
Take the position as it was before the war, After all, if this Order is annulled now, it also annuls Regulation 61, and you go back to the pre-war position. If the Minister studies the Interpretation Act, he will find that I am right. His Majesty has already repealed Regulation 61. I do not know whether the Minister realises that. If this Order is annulled, Regulation 61 is not revived, therefore the effect of the annulment is to take us back to the position as it was before the Emergency Powers Act was passed. For that reason I am entitled to compare the position under the Order with what it would be before the war and, that is what I am doing.
Now I will answer the hon. Member's question, since we have cleared up the constitutional point, with which the Minister was not familiar. Before the war any person who was either on an allotment or in an ordinary field could be asked to withdraw, but he was not ipso facto a suspected person. To-day every person is a suspected person on the ground that he might be there for the purpose of committing some other offence and, to prevent him committing that offence, he is charged with trespass, in the case of an allotment, trespass by itself, or if some damage can be shown it is only necessary to prove technical damage to secure a conviction. I think I have answered the point.

§ Mr. Levy
Having regard to the fact that, if this Order is annulled, Regulation 61 will also be annulled—

§ Mr. Hudson
I am not a lawyer, but I am advised that the fact of annulling the Regulation would not be to annul 61.

§ Sir H. Williams
This is a constitutional point of substance. I made a statement as to the effect of annulling the Regulation, and the Minister has made a further statement, This point arose some four or five months ago on another Order. Steps were taken to inquire of the Law Officers of the Crown—I was one of those who made the inquiry—and what I state now is based on information supplied me at the time in an entirely analagous case by the Attorney-General.

§ Mr. Levy
As the information at our disposal, which eminated from the Law Officers of the Crown is that this would cancel 61—

§ Earl Winterton
On a point of Order. May I ask exactly what the proceedings are? I have always understood that except by leave of the House no one could speak twice on the same Order.

§ Mr. Speaker
The Mover of the Order has the right of reply.

§ Mr. Levy
I was endeavouring to say that, in view of the fact that it would, according to the information at our disposal, cancel Regulation 61 and since we have aired what we considered to be a grievance in the fact that people might innocently become criminal because no notice was displayed, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Hon. Members
No.